It is pretty sad, that this guy one wants to see through His rose colored glasses, he failed to mentioned that every energy sector is heavily subsidiesed with tax payer money, the nuke industry is the worst, they recieve more money than all alternative energy sources, then oil and coal and natural gas industries, being the porportionl how big each 'energy source' is being used in America.
Id put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we dont have to wait til oil and coal run out before we tackle that. I wish I had a few more years left. -- Thomas Edison♽☯♑ ----- Original Message ----- From: "Stanislav Jakuba" <[email protected]> To: "U.S. Metric Association" <[email protected]> Sent: Wednesday, January 19, 2011 8:02:44 AM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern Subject: [USMA:49560] wind power in SI I thought some on this USMA list will appreciate the use SI in this letter to editor. Dear Mr. Green: I read your column in the Friday H.C. in which you praised wind power and advocated a need for regulation of the towers' noise and vibration. It was informative but not entirely objective. When writing about renewables, please include also information from those who claim: "Building and operating renewable plants will make US go broke." Also, please consider that low cost energy is the basis for our high standard of living. Renewables provide energy several times more expensive than the traditional sources. Renewables also do not represent a solution to the pollution and CO2 problem. Renewable plants are built today only because of the funds provided by rate- and taxpayers thru Government subsidies. Politicians vote for this spending influenced by information from the media such as your article. I write this letter to show two examples of the exaggerations in the output of renewables and their cost the media propagate incessantly. Example 1: An article reported on a $24 million wind farm of 6 turbines generating 9.6 MW enough for 9600 houses. Those claims are misleading. The turbines will not generate the 9.6 MW except for a brief moment when the wind is "at its best for the design." What is reported is the name-plate power, not the power the turbines will generate thru their useful life. In our New England, that figure is typically 1/5th of the name-plate rating, or about 2 MW here. Also, my modest colonial house uses a total of about 5 kW which means the true figure is more like 400 houses, not 9600. Example 2: In her lovely travelogue, a writer claims that the Clinton County's windmills produce a total output of 1.21 GW. The project cost is $350 million. The truth? There are 54 turbines rated 1.5 MW each in that complex. That means that the mills cannot produce more than 81 MW - far from the claimed 1210 MW. Wind conditions in the Northeast are such that the mills typically supply to the grid 1/5th of the rated power. That brings the number to 0.016 GW, an error of almost one hundred times the published figure. The 16 MW is enough for about 3000 homes, not the claimed 60,000 if all their energy were to be provided from the mills. Also, the project cost divided by the likely output yields 22.5 $/W. For a comparison, gas turbine plants are about 0.4 $/W. If future electricity is many-times more expensive, we'll be many-times "poorer" for paying our higher monthly electricity bills. In addition, we'll be proportionally poorer paying for goods and services that will cost more because they are produced/provided with electricity cost hidden in them. Some people defend the miniscule (and costly) output of renewables on the basis that "Every little bit helps." Not so when there are less expensive, non-polluting alternatives for that money, such as nuclear that provide both cheap and green electricity. Mankind progressed into the modern times because it learned how to produce energy cheaply. It will regress with the increase, and the poor among us will be affected most. As to the carbon footprint, the manufacture, erection, and maintenance of most renewable plants produce more CO2 then they will ever save during their useful life thru "displacing" fossil fuel burning. Again there are better solutions - nuclear plants, for example, pay their CO2 debt in 6 years and may operate another 60 years and more. Your article asks for regulations that would guard against the noise and vibration of the wind mills. I believe we should also have a more basic regulation: A regulation stipulating that no public money (subsidies) be spent erecting wind mills on sites where their electricity will cost more than, say, 40 $/GJ or the region's close to average rate. The dollars in this criterion must include all costs: purchase, transportation, on site erection, grid hookup, operation, maintenance and debt service, and be based on a 5-year average, actual net output. A failure to meet this goal would result in a penalty to the owners to the amount that would return the subsidies plus interest. Many a "noise and vibration" problem would disappear with such a regulation in place. Stan Jakuba
