UnNews:Wind farms using too much 'leccy, told to switch off

This article is part of UnNews, your source for up-to-the-picosecond misinformation.

3 May 2011

It's stopped! Quick, go put some more cash in the meter!

EDINBURGH, Scotland -- A number of Scottish wind farm operators were told to switch off their fans for a while, during a period of high electrical demand because they were using too much electricity.

It appears that a buildup of global warming had been detected over some parts of Scotland due to increased recreational travel over the May Holiday weekend. The wind generators in these regions were therefore put onto their 'turbo' speed setting in order to quickly blow away the polluting carbon which threatened to settle in a thin black film over the countryside.

The carbon was successfully dispersed, and landed somewhere in Belgium. This led to protests, and a retaliatory outpouring of red tape in the UK's direction. This red tape has created around 30,000 new pen-pusher jobs and caused a 35% reduction in Scotland's GDP. OK, we won't do it again.

As we all know it takes a fair amount of power to keep these giant fans turning even at the standard setting, in fact each large machine requires about 200MW. When in turbo mode, the energy requirement is around 50% higher still. With the proliferation of wind farms as a response to global warming concerns, the situation has now been reached where there is insufficient hydro, coal or nuclear generating capacity to keep them all turning at once.

As John Campbell of Scottish Power told them, "Your fans are doing a good job, but they are simply taking too much juice, and we need you to cut back if we are to keep within available generating capacity."

As a sweetener it has been agreed to compensate the wind farm operators to the tune of £300bn for each enforced switch-off. A wind farm operator replied, "Thank you, but it's a trivial amount compared to the EU subsidies we get already. Nevertheless, the gesture is appreciated."

Sources

• BBC "Scots windfarms paid cash to stop producing energy" BBC News, May 1 2011

See Also

• Wind generators
• Wind turbine