As you fly over Germany towards the Czech Republic, you might see lots of wind farms across Germany - if the skies are clear anyway. In Europe, 'green' power is all the rage simply because of concerns over the CO2 resulting in global warming. As an energy expert, I can tell you that wind power is problematic in its own right because the wind doesn't blow all of the time and the utility has problems 'dispatching' and planning for wind power - put simply, the utility doesn't know how to forecast wind power at any particular point and sending that power down the grid can be an issue.

In the Czech Republic, President Vaclav Klaus is an active advocate that CO2 isn't responsible for the warming of the Earth's atmosphere. He is outspoken on the topic but actually there is increasing evidence that he might well be right despite claims that the science is proven. But - that's not a topic for this blog. Despite his opinions, there is wind power in the Czech Republic too and you will see the odd wind turbine in the Brno area - particularly on the tops of local hills.

Not having ever see a wind turbine close up myself, I took the opportunity to visit a couple last weekend just outside of Brno. They aren't particularly big ones but they were generating power the day we visited. Funnily enough, there was a story here recently on TV about the theft of copper cable from wind turbines in the Czech Republic. Plainly, the copper wiring is valuable (take a look at Copper prices these days) and some smart thief had managed to break into a number of turbines and steal the copper! They were very fortunate not to be electrocuted actually but the damage they caused to the facilities was quite extensive...