POWERLINE 10/30/2025
The Government has slashed forecasts for the amount of electricity it expects wind farms to generate in a blow to Ed Miliband’s net zero plans.
In documents published before an auction of green energy subsidies this week, officials said they were revising down the predicted efficiency of wind turbines by more than a quarter as a result of “updated modelling”.
Presumably that “updated modelling” is the result of experience and observation rather than the pie-in-the-sky models on the basis of which wind energy was sold.
The Government’s new estimates slashed the predicted “load factor” – the proportion of the year turbines are expected to generate power – from 61pc to 43.6pc for offshore wind. The estimated load factor for onshore turbines was also revised down, from 48.7pc to 33.4pc.
Those are major changes. Apparently the industry had been aware of the shortfall for a while, but the Labour government has only now acknowledged it:
Industry sources claimed developers had previously warned officials that estimates for power generation were unrealistic, but that the Government had stuck with them anyway. One said: “The numbers were statistically absurd.”
More:
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2025/10/green-calculations-wrong-again.php
