Telegraph Discovers Wind Farms Don’t Work When There Is No Wind

Written by Paul Homewood on July 19, 2025. Posted in Current News

The Telegraph finally worked out that the wind does not blow all the time!

On July 12th, it reported:

A surge of windless heatwaves hitting Britain this summer is wreaking havoc on electricity markets and driving up bills for consumers, according to energy experts.

The industry is already familiar with “dunkelflautes” – the increasingly common spells of freezing windless winter weather when wind and solar farm output plummets.

Now it is reporting a similar “hitzeflaute” phenomenon in summer, with longer spells of warm windless weather also becoming more prevalent with climate change.

Hitzeflaute comes from hitze – the German word for heat – and flaute, which means lull, reflecting the absence of strong winds in such spells.

It means Europe and the UK are becoming increasingly dependent on solar power during the day but, in the absence of wind, having to ramp up gas, coal and nuclear power stations in the evening.

The phenomenon also causes massive market swings with power prices often going negative in daytime when solar is peaking, but surging up to £200 or £300 per megawatt hour when the sun goes down, especially if wind output is low.

The UK faces just such a spell this weekend, with a high pressure weather system bringing clear skies, sunshine and low winds that will coincide with the Wimbledon tennis finals.

“These spells are becoming longer and more frequent and hitzeflaute is emerging as the new term for them,” said Jean-Paul Harreman, a senior analyst at Montel, which specialises in European energy data and convening the first conference on hitzeflautes this week.

“The weather is changing at a time when the energy transition is making us more dependent on the weather to generate our electricity from wind and solar. So it is all causing a degree of chaos in the energy markets.”

Met Office data confirms that British wind speeds have been falling, with recent spells of very low winds. UK wind speeds from March to May this year were 14pc lower than the same spell last year – averaging 7.3 knots compared with 8.3 knots in 2024.

The Met Office said in a report: “March to May 2025 was the least windiest recorded for the period in the series commencing from 2001.”

Such weather phenomena have become increasingly important as the UK and Europe ramp up their dependence on intermittent sources of electricity such as wind and solar farms. A spell of windless weather in winter or summer leaves the UK highly reliant on imports via the subsea interconnectors linking us with the Continent.

Recent windless spells have seen southern England sourcing up to 65pc of its electricity from abroad, mostly from France.

Yorkshire’s electricity is even more anachronistic. When wind speeds plummet and solar switches off, the county is often powered largely by wood imported from North America and burnt to generate electricity at the massive Drax power station.

Mr Harreman said the growing dominance of renewables and the growing prevalence of both hitzeflautes and dunkelflautes was changing British and European energy markets – often causing price spikes.

“On a sunny day we can see solar farms ramping up through the morning. They often produce so much energy that prices become negative and gas, nuclear and coal stations are turned down.

“But as the sun goes down demand surges as do prices – so we have to ramp them back up again. It’s not good for power stations to ramp up and down like this. And the costs all get added to bills.”

Read the full story here.

Of course, it’s all the fault of ‘climate change’, not the ludicrous obsession with wind farms that don’t generate enough half the time and generate too much the rest!

See more here notalotofpeopleknowthat

Header image: Wales Online

Please Donate Below To Support Our Ongoing Work To Defend The Scientific Method

PRINCIPIA SCIENTIFIC INTERNATIONAL, legally registered in the UK as a company incorporated for charitable purposes. Head Office: 27 Old Gloucester Street, London WC1N 3AX. 

Trackback from your site.