The pathetic energy density of wind power is just another reason why it is so insanely expensive, compared to any meaningful power source.
The bigger turbine, the further apart they need to be spread – so that the dirty wake of one turbine doesn’t affect the airflow to any turbine downwind and, thereby, reduce its output and/or wreck its blades and running gear (see above).
Britain’s PM, Boris Johnson has hatched a plan to thoroughly encircle his islands with these things, throwing something like an additional £50 billion in over the market contracts and government subsidies at foreign-owned wind power outfits, which – in a country that will take decades to recover from its self-imposed lockdown recession – is positively bonkers.
Now it seems, that on the numbers, Johnson’s grand plan is even crazier, still. Dr John Constable reports.
New data casts doubt on Boris Johnson’s 2030 offshore wind plans
Global Warming Policy Forum
Press Release
9 November 2020
London, 9 November: The Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) has today written to the chairman of the Treasury Committee of the House of Commons providing new evidence for their inquiry into the Net Zero target.
The letter presents data from windfarm accounts showing that the wind industry has overestimated the technically accessible wind resource around the UK.
This new information shows that it will be necessary to introduce greater separation distances between wind turbines and wind farms, at greater costs.
This will force a move further away from shore, into much deeper water, and with a higher share of floating turbines, both increasing costs significantly.
The letter draws attention to evidence in the audited accounts of Burbo Bank Extension wind farm, recording payments made to another wind farm nearby, in compensation for reduced output caused by so-called “wake effects”. In effect, the Burbo Extension turbines have been taking the wind out of its neighbour’s sails.
Photograph showing the “wake effect” at the Horns Rev off-shore wind farm off the shores of Denmark. Source: Hasager et al. (2013)
The new evidence reveals that the industry has overestimated the density at which wind farms can be constructed, even at sea, an error that has serious implications for the Prime Minister’s aspiration for an additional 30 GW of offshore wind by the end of the decade.
GWPF director Dr Benny Peiser, said:
“Boris Johnson’s utopian wind ‘vision’ for 2030 was always going to be extremely expensive, but it now seems his plans may require spreading the wind turbines over a much bigger area, and in deeper water, with very significant environmental and economic implications. This is unlikely to be feasible, let alone affordable.”
Letter to the chairman of the House of Commons Treasury Committee (pdf)
Global Warming Policy Forum
STOP THESE THINGS 
And what of the migratory bird patterns surrounding the UK? It is an island after all. So much for the RSPB, the Royal Society for the Pulverisation of Birds!
Luckily for Boris..no UK newspapers have journalists with access to “the google” to be able to work out the costings…and the “result”
Sounds like at some point the world will run out of clean energy just like with oil and gas.
Peak oil & gas is a myth originally propounded by the Western ‘oil barons’ in the early 1900s, to control (increase) the price. Russia knows the truth.. https://rense.com/general75/zoil.htm .
Also why is there no mention off the mincing & dicing slaughter of precious offshore marine bird-life!
Boris ‘Bonkers’ Johnson is committing big bucks just for intermittent electricity. The undisputable science is that wind turbines are incapable of manufacturing the oil derivatives that are the basis of more than 6,000 products that did not exist before 1900, that are now the basis of economies and lifestyles around the world.
Johnson is a real disappointment. He seems to have fallen under the thumb of his live-in girl friend Carrie Symonds, an environmentalist fruitcake who has been dubbed “Princess Nut-Nut” in the media. He seems to be thinking with the wrong head.
Don’t just dabble with nuclear power, Boris! Decarbonise all UK energy use with massive build out of nuclear power plants (NPPs). You’ll do it for less than 1/4 of the capital investment needed per GW than attempting it with wind and solar plants (WASPs).
The basket case energy economy of Germany, with their WASP obsession, have committed €9 billion to the manufacture of green hydrogen. But €2 billion of that is going to Morocco, because Germany can’t build out enough WASPs to manufacture their own. How lunatic is that???
NPPs combined with electrolyser plants are the combination made in heaven. The NPPs can generate 24/7/365 electricity at 100% availability and load follow electricity and/or green hydrogen demand.
Not only can it be done on a daily basis, but also across the seasons of the year, by switching between grid electricity supply and green hydrogen manufacture.
It doesn’t matter how many TWh per year needs generating, this proportion of £18.47 billion every year for WASPs, against £4.06 billion every year for NPPs will apply:
Search for: “£18.47 billion every year-FOREVER!!!”
Behind and largely ignored all these emerging cost consequences lies the second law of thermodynamics which requires an external source of energy to upgrade low density energy to a level that could be considered useful. Utilising this renewable energy to provide the upgrade based on the assumption that renewables are infinite and free results in an exponential increase in harvesting costs. It is simply a circular logic situation exacerbated by endemic losses in the system.