From today's FT:
Anti-Mafia magistrates in Sicily have opened a sweeping investigation into the wind power sector where local officials, entrepreneurs and crime gangs are suspected of collusion in the construction of lucrative wind farms before their eventual sale to multinational companies.
Italian and EU subsidies for the building of wind farms and the world's highest guaranteed rates, €180 ($240, £160) per kwh, for the electricity they produce have turned southern Italy into a highly attractive market exploited by organised crime.
Roberto Scarpinato, a veteran anti-Mafia prosecutor in the regional capital Palermo, told the Financial Times that his investigation, which began last week, was focused on the three large provinces of Palermo, Trapani and Agrigento.
An earlier investigation into a case near Trapani in western Sicily resulted in eight arrests in February, leading to accusations of a suspected nexus between a leading Mafia family that offered money and votes in exchange for permits to construct wind farms...
Tuesday, 5 May 2009
Arguments against subsidies (Part 94)
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8 comments:
the world's highest guaranteed rates, €180 ($240, £160) per kwhThat sounds like a another case of "sack the sub-editor" - or maybe hire one quick 'cause the journo hasn't a clue.
€180 per MWh would be high by the standards of the UK, but much more likely than €180 per kWh.
If it really is per kWh then it's another reason to move to warmer climes....
:-)
FT, well spotted. D'oh!
With the London Array costing £2 bn & giving an average output of 351 MW http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Array
that comes to £5,700 per kwh. Looks like the Mafia give pretty good value for money - well compared to our government.
NC, how about this calculation:
Interest & running costs £200 bn per annum = £550,000 per day ÷ 16 hours = £35,000 per hour.
In one hour, the Array generates 350,000 kWh (assuming that their forecast is correct, which is probably isn't, but hey).
£35,000 ÷ 350,000 kWh = 10p per kWh that doesn't seem too extravagant.
PS, I hate doing these calculations because I usually end up out by a factor of ten or a thousand, so please correct me if I'm wrong.
We don't need the Mafia; we have the eco-loonies. The UK is on double-ROCs from 1 April 09 (coincidence in the date?) and they're guaranteed until 2027, making the ROC return from your own windmill, grid-connected, about £100 per MWh. I was on the point of buying a 6.5kWh one last year and spend many a happy hour on the spreadsheets. Although not an eco-mentalist, I live in a very suitable area of the country, have underfloor heating in a new-ish house, and an oil boiler. The idea of powering an air-source heating system "for free" (I know, I know) was greatly appealing.
Then came November last, and the continuity of revenues entering the Formertory household started to look less assured so I canned the windmill in favour of paying off the mortgage. It probably goes a long way to showing what a bupid stastard I am. I'm quite sure it'll be a decision I regret when oil starts to march back towards and beyond $150 a barrel.
Mafia sums: £4000 grant towards the windmill, £2000 grant towards the air-source heat exchanger, £2000 p.a. ROC income for 20MWh generated, plus around 10p a kWh for units generated, "used" or not.
Niiiiice. But at least owing not a bean gives a warm glow of a different sort, and when push cometh to shove, I can't eat a windmill.
[sigh]
FT, what was the maths of it in your case?
You can still take out a mortgage and buy one; surely the calculation is simple - what costs more, the repayments or your current electricity bill? (subject to guessing future interest rates and oil prices, which is nigh impossible, of course)
It all depended on how much one factored in for oil prices (as a cost saved) and future electricity prices (as a cost which would increase by running the air-source system as well as because if oil & gas go up, the electricity follows).
Essentially under the most "pro-windmill" set of assumptions (low interest rates, high oil prices, and optimistic generation figures) payback was about 6 years (on a project cost of around £30k less grants) and on the most "anti-windmill" figures just short of 10 years. Unknowns, as you say, included borrowing costs but I'm a pessimist; I charted BoE base rates since 1975 and it's as plain as the nose on your face that the long term average is about 8% and with the current fecking aboot with borrowing and QE it could be 14% again any time you like.
Consequently, the figures I used for borrowing costs (even in the "anti" scenario) were less pessimistic than I'd use now.
The final decision wasn't wholly rational. There were a couple of non-cost items in the mix as well - unhappy neighboring landowner and the intangible but valuable benefit of being within spitting distance of owing nothing to nobody and being able to tell the world to go screw itself. And I'd like to be able to retire in about 4 years so I'm not eager to go borrowing again; my pension's going to be under enough pressure as is.
Were I more of a gambling man, or 10 years younger, or £30000 wealthier, no probs!
Your figures look right, on the promises given, Mark. I would suspect that, particularly if we are producing a lot of power from windmills we would not use 16 hours a day worth. In Denmark they only use about half their wind electricity & export the rest, almost for free, because it is at times it can't be used. Also I have doubts about official costings - for example to put up 341 x 300ft tall windmills will require at least dozens of very large barges & thousands of workers trained in pretty hazardous jobs. That many doesn't currently exist in Britain. I would be surprised if it came out at less than 15p a unit & knowing what UK public cost overruns are, not astonised at 5 times that
And of course France is producing at 1.7p a unit, so even if they take a large profit it would still be much cheaper as well as more reliable to expand our interconnector & get them to build 1/3rd of an extra nuclear plant & just acknowledge that we don't do technology here. Even better if we did do.
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