For centuries, western civilization has worked to lessen the dependency on the weather for conducting our daily manufactured lives. That given, it does seem interesting that the current populist push for ‘renewables’ is a move to reverse that long avoided position. Although I might add that all forms of energy are actually renewable — just that the timescales for coal or uranium might be a tad long for the typical investor mindset.
Solar panels both photovoltaic and thermal require sunshine to harvest energy. A long spate of cloudy weather (this past winter comes to mind) significantly compromises their output. Not to worry though — here in Ontario there are immense solar panel arrays scattered about the rural landscape — after all, what do we need farmland for? Everything we need can be flown in from China, Chile or Mexico. Been noticing that last winter no one could be bothered to clear the snow from these things — suspect the Province was paying them for the power they might have generated, so why waste money on maintenance?
Wind farms are even more interesting — the huge monsters now in fashion need just enough — not too much and not too little. So areas that have any wind at all, away from the urban areas, are being carpeted with wind farms — mostly over the objections of the folks who live there. Freezing rain shuts them down. No way to defrost things — need to wait for the sun. Too much wind — you hope the automagic controls stop them. Watching video of overspeed turbines tearing themselves apart is pretty entertaining. But a broken blade can get lobbed a kilometer or more — and the Ontario setback is 550 meters. Don’t want one through my living room window… And we won’t mention that when the original research was done it was observed that little of the local winds blew during the same timeframes as the power was needed. Terawatt batteries? Dream on.
What we have seen over the last few years is that here in Eastern Ontario we are getting more days of cloud [I am an amateur astronomer] and wind levels overall are dropping in the Great Lakes area. And when it does blow it can be more extreme. And we will ignore for the moment the side effects of the technology itself — solar farms absorb heat differently than fields. And would not evaporate moisture in the same way as plants. Similarly, wind turbines work by taking energy from the low level air movement — and affect atmospheric mixing and increase low level turbulence. And as they turn the vibration shakes the ground.. big critters seem to ignore it but one wonders about worms?
So here we have it… re-introducing technology driven by weather as a means to ‘fight’ changes in the weather. One might think it was a big bet that conditions won’t change. And the apparent direction of the change we see moves away from the current conditions that support these things. Glad everybody is eager to make a quick buck from this stuff. But are we not being a bit over eager? Makes my head hurt…
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