Kiva Micro Finance for Free!

OK My grubby little Englanders, love or hate me, HERE is a a free gift. It is not actually a gift to you. But it gives you a chance to get a handle on how Kiva micro finance works.

It is rare to get a free lunch, especially from Billothewisp, even if that free lunch is for someone else.

So give it a go. If you can - let me know what happens - even if you back out. Seriously, I do not actually know what happens next. I expect you get to sign up with KIVA but also get to loan out $25 (for free) out of an anonymous donation.

You choose who gets the money, Nobody in our government, or their government gets a look in.

Also remember, this is a loan not a gift. Expect it to be repaid. So it is not even really a gift!

OK. It's a gimmick. A way of attracting people into Kiva Micro Finance. Kiva arranges person to person loans for poor but honorable people.

In my humble opinion, if we are ever to get away from the filthy immoral debilitating and corrupt methods that currently define what is laughably known as Foreign Aid then Kiva or Kiva like solutions are the only way.

So do your own Foreign Aid.

To hell with Cameron Clegg and Milliband and their failed "Globalisation". And to hell with the the rest of the ugly face of graft, greed, and global corruption that defines modern inter-governmental Foreign Aid..

Do it HERE and do it (this time) for free.

Remember, this is not "charity" or a "gift" or a "donation".

This is a face-to-face short term loan to decent hard working people. But just this time, you get to finance  the loan for nothing.

Missed the link?  HERE it is!!

(post posting Note - Yes I finally did the sensible thing and clicked it myself to see what it looked like. here's a tip ...click on the link at the bottom of the featured load applicant, then you can see the rest of potential loanees. This is not just for one particular applicant! Front page on this offer could be better!)

The Myth of Wind Power Distribution.

Sometime back I came across the pie chart below on the REF website. This chart is formed from the analysis of OfGem wind power data for December 2010. ( Link HERE )

Nearly 50% of UK wind generated power in that month was produced by just 16 wind farms. Almost all of those were the stupedously expensive offshore variety. The other half was left to the remaining 268 wind farms across the country.

Remember, December 2010 was the month that notoriously showed wind power up for what it was, unreliable,  intermittent and failing to deliver. This pie chart also clearly nails the wind industry propaganda lie of energy distribution.

Not much distribution here is there? (Not much power either!)

Actually though there is nothing wildly unusual about this graph. A turbine built in a windy site (there are a few) will produce much more energy than the ones (i.e. most of them) built
simply to cash in on the subsidy scheme (ROC).

Over a year, very few on-shore wind farms would actually produce enough energy to be regarded as anywhere near self sustaining without the current massive subsidy known as the ROC.

These poor performing wind farms are all locked into the subsidy system for ever. There is no possibility that they can ever compete without the crutch of the ROC. Yet because of the ROC, the owners turn profits even from the utterly, desperate poor performers.

Meanwhile the very few turbines running with a Capacity Factor of about 30% are raking it in.
Instead of potentially breaking even, they are hugely and scandalously profitable - all at the expense of the consumer.

Nothing will ever get better about this. The poor performers will remain so. The good performers will continue to be grossly overpaid.

Wind turbines are capital intensive. The cost of running one of the few turbines that could just about compete, is much the same as the cost of running one of the very many dogs. Even Renewables UK used the caveat of "a good windy site" when it describes on-shore turbines as "becoming increasingly competitive". Clearly then, from both the above pie chart and even the words from RenewablesUK, if it is not a good windy site then (without the ROC) the turbines are uncompetitive. De Facto.

Nearly all on-shore turbines in the UK and especially England and the South West are uneconomic without subsidy and will always remain so.

But because of the ROC, there are huge profits to be made from on-shore wind. Profits that are usually distributed among the rich, the landed gentry, the politically aware and large faceless corporations. They all gain at the expense of the average consumer.

The wilful abuse of ROC by building turbines that can never hope to be free of subsidy is little more than a rich mans version of benefit fraud. It is a dirty little con trick that robs the deserving and stunts innovation while lining the pockets of people many would regard as fraudsters.

It is time it was stopped.

If You Tolerate This Then Your Children Will Be Next

The obscene and depraved actions of a section of the immigrant community in Rochdale, who have been involved in gang raping vulnerable children has disgusted and appalled just about everybody in the land whatever their background.  I'm not going to address the  leniency of their sentences, but Thoughts Of John does a good job about that HERE.

But what I want to address now is the apparent craven appeasemnet to the self righteous god of political correctness that prevented this obscenity from being stopped in its tracks way back in 2002. (yes .. ten years ago) see Guardian Here and Telegraph Here

It would appear that from 2002 to today, the authorities have been less concerned about the abduction, rape and brutalisation of vulnerable children than they were about offending the harridan demands of a group of immigrants who have no wish or intent of adopting the basic moral concepts that epitomise this group of countries known as the UK.

I am not particularly religious, but one outstanding image from Christiantity is how Pontius Pilate washed his hands and so betrayed an innocent man rather than offend the political correctness of his day.

It would appear that today we have many Pontius Pilates, all willing to betray the innocent to appease the harridan cries from the persecutors.

This gangrenous boil must be lanced.
This must involve a public enquiry.

This inquiry must apportion blame where it is due, especially to those who were in high office and washed their hands for political expediency - or to meet a hidden agenda. The guilty are not only the rapists. But also includes those who when in government, for political expediency, have turned a blind eye and so aided and abetted these crimes.

In 1936 a Spanish Republican Civl war poster raged against crimes against children.

The bye line to this poster was later made famous by the great Welsh Rock band "The Manic Street Preachers"

The byeline was (of course)

"If You Tolerate this, Your children will be next".

Well, In Rochdale, it looks like it was tolerated.

And yes.

Our children, our poor vulnerable children in Rochdale, were next.

China Cools on Solar PV and Wind

It has been pointed out to me that China doesn't have many hippies. That's a shame. (I like hippies). The argument goes that, as there are a lack of hippies in this centrally planned bureaucratic dictatorship then their rapid adoption of wind and solar must be solely due to good sound green economic reasons.

Sadly there now appear to be some flaws with this argument.

True, last year the amount of deployed WTG's went up by a stonking 43%. Solar PV deployment actually tripled.

Impressive Eh?

Unfortuantely the Chinese prime minister has decided to ruin the illusion. In a recent, and utterly boring speech he sidelined future wind and solar deployment.

You can read ( The whole speech here ). Just make sure you remember to keep breathing.

Alternatively you can read ( Synopsis here )

It appears that while the installation of WTGs and Solar PV has been truly stupendous, the end result is that the average output of both technologies has fallen off a cliff.

The Chinese do not like failure. It looks bad. In future, the Chinese prime minister announced, progress in renewables will be focussed on hydro. Nuclear and coal will be given a higher priority.

Sadly this was bound to happen. The hopelessly optimistic ideal that you can actually just keep piling on marginal power sources like wind or solar PV, and it will somehow someway, come good, was doomed to failure.

If this is true for China, it is also true for the UK.

Maybe there is a lesson to learn here?

Wind Power: The Devil is in the Detail

 Take a look at this table from the USA Energy Information Administration (EIA). 

(Doc Link Here)

From a first glance it looks like the MW/Hr cost of on-shore wind is actually less than that for nuclear.

Meanwhile the price of off-shore wind is the same untenable basket case that it is over here.
This off-shore nightmare really needs no further discussion now. Maybe another day.

What about the on-shore figures?

The figures are full enough to give us a really good insight into the viability of wind turbine generators (WTG's) in the UK.

This table gives the levelised (or naked - no subsidy) costs and necessary charges.

It shows the obvious - that wind has no fuel costs.
It gives a viable price for each generation technology per MW/hr
It gives a price for the capital cost and running costs., including fuel where appropriate
Crucially it also gives the capacity factor needed for achieving this price MW/hr

This table is vitally important to understanding why almost all windpower in the UK is unviable without subsidy, and also why almost all on-shore as well as off-shore wind generation  in the UK is hugely more expensive than other generation technologies.

How come? It all comes down to the capacity factor (CF) used. Here it is a whopping 34%

We know from the table that almost all of the costs of running a turbine are fixed costs. This means that a WTG generating alot of electricity is going to have (as near as dammit) the same overall costs as a similar WTG generating much less.

Obviously the more productive turbine gets paid more. Remember - the running costs are fixed.

The amount of electricity generated over a year is directly related to the CF. Double the CF - double the amount of electricity generated. Half the CF then you halve the amount of electricity generated. Double the CF = double the income and vice sa versa.

We also know (from the table) the viable price for electricity MW/hr at the given capacity factor. (CF). After all, the whole point of this table is to provide price comparisons between generation technologies.

The table tells us that the system levelised cost for an on-shore wind turbine generator (WTG) per MW/hr to be viable  is $97 per MW/hr.

To achieve this price, according to the EIA, the WTG needs to operate with a CF of 34%

The costs are fixed. If the CF drops there is no fuel saving because there is no fuel. The potential loss of revenue has to be made up by increasing the cost per MW/hr.

If the WTG was to operate at 20% CF then the price needed to break-even rockets from $97 MW/hr to  $165 per MW/hr.

The rolling average UK CF is 27%. The English rolling CF is 25%. in the SouthWest this drops to 23%. East Stoke in Dorset, the CF would be about 20%. The Reading Turbine is around 15%. If I remember correctly, the highest individual on-shore English CF was in 2009 at Workington at 32%

Clearly without the double payment from the ROC subsidy there will be very few WTG's in the UK that are viable. Yet with the double payment even the utterly crap turbines can make a profit.

Nothing is going to get better about this.

There is no magic to increase the CF or wind speed. A turbine addicted to the ROC will always be addicted to the ROC

And you will pay for it.