Wellington’s whirling wonders: lazy as bro!

Never there when you need it, often there when you don’t, wind power is, at best, an infantile joke. Promised output figures are rarely realised.

What’s referred to as the “capacity factor” of any given wind farm is said to represent a proportional, and meaningful, contribution to electricity demand.

Except, instead of powering the putative hundreds of thousands of homes, the vast majority of the time, wind farms are powering absolutely nothing.

Instead, they’re consuming electricity from the grid to maintain their on-board systems, such as heating, cooling and braking – in order to prevent ‘component liberation’ – eg:

Not that you’ll read any of this in the mainstream press, nor are the wind industry’s spin doctors likely to eagerly reveal just how pathetic the actual (and completely chaotic) output from their beloved wind turbines, really is.

New Zealand, like plenty of others, has…