Buried deep in a report about John Key’s current visit to the Chathams is this telling paragraph:
“Two wind turbines were installed on the island in 2010, but they have failed to reduce the cost of electricity, which was mostly diesel-powered and around four times the price of power on the mainland.”
Now you would think that this would be a perfect and controlled test of the usefulness of wind turbines.
The Chathams are windier than the Beehive during question time. It is a controlled environment, with all costs known before and after the introduction of the turbines.
The turbines were built for the specific purpose of reducing power costs for the island.
They were installed with a Govt subsidy of $2.16 million.
And they are a failure.
Google pops up well over a hundred references to this splendid project & not one of them – as far as I can detect – reveals that the wind turbines are an expensive flop.
So here’s the deal, we’ll do a swap – Maori can have the wind, all of NZ will keep the water.
