Featured comment by Eric Anderson;

SaskPower’s Centennial Wind Power Facility
• 83 “Vestas-V80” with a potential capacity of 150 megawatts of power on 30 km2 or 11.7 mile2
• 2nd largest wind facility in Canada when opened in 2006
• But, in SK they generate about 40% of this potential or 60 megawatts (see Saskatchewan Legislature Hansard, January 2007, page 794)
• They require a minimum wind speed of 14km/hr to operate and reach maximum power at 50km/hr
• They do not work at temperatures below -30 Celsius
• Footprint is thus 2 MW/km2 or 5.13 MW/mile2
• Each unit;
• is 351 ft tall , or 107 meters, or over 30-stories
• weighs 222 tonnes or 489,510 pounds
• has 3 x 39-meter blades, with tips moving at speeds up to 256kms/hr
Footprint of Wind vs. Nuclear is 1,440:1
• Bruce Power proposal for AB and “eluded to” for SK is, for example;
– 2 Areva EPRs
– 3,200 megawatts from a 250-acre facility (1 km2 or less than ½ mile2)
– Operates 90% of the time at full capacity or 2,880 MW
– Footprint is 2,880 MW/km2
• To get 2,880 MW from wind, at same scale as the Centennial project and efficiency (0.72 MW/turbine) (2 MW/km2), it would require;
– 4,000 turbines covering 1,440 km2
– or, a wind farm over 4.6 kms wide, stretching from Regina to Prince Albert (or 1 km wide from Regina Victoria, BC)
– The total weight of 4,000 turbines themselves (mostly steel, and without the concrete pads they sit on) would be 888,000 tonnes or 1,958,040,000 lbs (a lot of GHG).
• The Centennial Project was placed in the best wind producing area in the province (south of Swift Current) so its abilities cannot be reproduced elsewhere, so the farm would need to be even larger than described.
• See this link for wind averages/resource in SK
http://generationprocurement.saskpower.com/pdf/SPD_80m_021403.pdf
Nuclear capitol costs are less than wind
• The Centennial Project cost $275 million to generate 60 MW (see Saskatchewan Legislature Hansard, January 2007, page 793 for costs); that is $4.5833 million/MW
• A nuclear complex generating 2,880 MW would thus have a comparable cost allowance of; $4.5833 million/MW x 2,880 MW = $13,199.99 million
• A will-reported Finland reactor complex being built by Areva had a budget of $3,300 million that is now 50% over budget at $4,950 million. However, even at $4,950 million this reactor facility has less than half the capitol cost of wind, on a per MW basis.

We could have told you… the wind don’t blow when it’s cold.

The cold weather has been accompanied by high pressure and a lack of wind, which meant that only 0.2pc of a possible 5pc of the UK’s energy was generated by wind turbines over the last few days.
Jeremy Nicholson, director of the Energy Intensive Users Group (EIUG), gave warning that this could turn into a crisis when the UK is reliant on 6,400 turbines accounting for a quarter of all UK electricity demand over the next 10 years.
He said the shortfall in power generated by wind during cold snaps seriously undermined the Government’s pledge on Friday to build nine major new wind “super farms” by 2020.
“If we had this 30 gigawatts of wind power, it wouldn’t have contributed anything of any significance this winter,” he said. “The current cold snap is a warning that our power generation and gas supplies are under strain and it is getting worse.”

But nobody bothers listening.
h/t John B.

…concerning what the Liberal government knew and when they knew it.’ A post at The Torch:

Facts: The previous Liberal government and Afghan detainees
…here is a translation from a friend of a story in La Presse, April 28, 2007; draw your own conclusions over what should be the extent of any enquiry, should one be held. And what happened to those detainees transferred to the Americans? Where is, and was, the outcry?

The Liberals were in the know…

…what an erudite, literary bunch we Canadians are.” Do read Terry Glavin via the link; quagmires may not be all they’re quacked up to be.