Wind Turbine ********. Just opened the mail and seen the plan for three massive units

[MossRoad]

How do you get electricity to your county road? Public expense, right? You would have no commercial electricity without government involvement. How do the interstates and roads you drive on get built? The airports you fly in and out of? The hydro dams? ..... Public expense to set up necessary infrastructure.

Most electricity infrastructure is owned by private utility companies, not government, not public expense. Its paid for by consumers, not public. Interstates are a completely different thing.

 

[LAFarm]

Just remember your neighbors paid for a big part of that system, not you! You are welcome. HS

I fail to understand how you can determine who paid for my solar system based on the information in my comment. We have net metering in our area and there is no subsidy or payment provided by the utility or my neighbors. I pay the local utility each month to be connected to their system. No one assists me with this payment either. In the event that there is a net surplus at the time I terminate my utility service, they will only pay me the current wholesale rate or what they pay to the power plant - which at this time is around 2 cents per kwh. They charge their customers around 8 cents per kwh and the difference is not shared with me. With a finite supply of fossil fuels, the growth in alternative energy sources can only help our fossil fuels last longer and hopefully hold down price increases that would be an inevitability due to shortages and the law of supply and demand. I have had a career that has included employment in chemical plants, refineries, utility power plants, retail stores, civil service, energy conservation and management. The advances in drilling technology has led to increased production of oil and natural gas. The ability of refineries to operate more efficiently and extract greater amounts of product from each barrel of oil is a tremendous benefit. More efficient turbine technology enables power plants to produce more electricity from each cubic foot of steam which is generated by boilers that extract more btu's of heat from whatever feedstock is used. Wind energy has been used to power windmills for years in west Texas to pump water out of the ground for ranchers and others. Solar energy is becoming more and more affordable for individual homeowners as technology advances. Panels today generate approximately 30% more than the ones I installed just 3 years ago. That is a tremendous improvement in performance - and the cost has come down. Air conditioning is a large portion of our utility bills here in the South. Just 20 years ago, a typical home a/c central unit had an EER of 10 or 11. The new minimum standard is EER 13 which is also a great improvement. The company I work for has installed some experimental earth coupled heat pump central units that have an EER of over 40, which is phenomenal. I was also able to upgrade my central system to an earth coupled heat pump that has an EER of 22. Whether we add insulation to our attics, upgrade our appliances, drive a vehicle that gets better mileage than the one we had 10 years ago or even install solar panels at our home, we all can benefit from advances in technology. Each energy type can provide a vital service and a diversified mix will help us all to have a more stable supply in our homes and businesses. Perhaps if we all would get out of our own self imposed corners and look with an open mind at the options that technological advances offer all of us, I truly believe that we could solve the energy challenges that we are going to encounter in the coming years. Know that I have been kind of long winded, but I firmly believe that being able to utilize ALL of our resources in an efficient way should be the backbone of our long term energy policy.

 

[MossRoad]

Could you please point us to something that substantiates that assertion? I was under the impression that it is actually a very cheap generation method, but it would be great to have it proven otherwise.

Thanks.

Wind Energy and Examining Cost | The Energy Collective

Read the entire article....

A quote from the article:

CONCLUSIONS

According to the Taylor/Tanton report, there are numerous hidden costs to wind power, including the cost of back-up power, the cost of extra transmission, and the cost of favorable tax benefits. And, the assumption of a 30-year life used in government calculations for wind power is optimistic, based on reports from European countries regarding the useful service lives of their wind turbines.

Including these hidden costs in calculating the cost of wind energy increases its cost by a factor of 1.5 or 2, depending on the power system that is used as back-up. Taylor/Tanton calculates
ratepayers are paying an extra $8.5 to $10 billion a year for wind energy compared to natural gas-fired generation, and this will only increase as more capacity is added.

Add to this the more than $12 billion that the American taxpayer is paying for the one-year extension for the PTC, and one can see that the wind industry is a boondoggle at the expense of taxpayers and ratepayers, that is, slowly but surely, making the US economy less competitive.

 

[Sodo]

They wouldnt print it if it wasnt true!

Suffice it to say that whenever an alternate energy de-values petroleum, a large marketing effort is necessary to prevent people making changes in acceptance of the new method. In the past, big energy could purchase and scuttle the technology, but with these rich folks like Musk (who want to change the world) they cant. So they have to discredit it, or cause legislation to prevent its acceptance.

 

[LAFarm]

Thank you Sodo.
There are so many subsidies that no one thinks of and there just isn't enough room here to even begin listing them. One little one to think about - when a person works full time for a billion dollar corporation that boasts of the lowest prices and yet that employee is eligible for food assistance. This is an indirect subsidy provided by the taxpayers to that corporation. Just a thought... By the way, you live in some beautiful country. Have family in Longview/Kelso area. Wife was visiting there when St Helens erupted.

 

[LAFarm]

He didn't pay for any of it? Really? Not one penny?

Thanks Tom. It was much more than a penny!!!!

 

[LAFarm]

Most electricity infrastructure is owned by private utility companies, not government, not public expense. Its paid for by consumers, not public. Interstates are a completely different thing.

Agreed. However, around here the utilities are permitted to use the existing public road rights of way to run their phone, electricity and cable tv lines - thankfully! If they had to purchase those rights of way, we couldn't afford the service. So, government does provide a subsidy of sorts to these utilities. Then again, that right of way is being paid for by the consumers (taxpayers) either way!

 

[MossRoad]

Agreed. However, around here the utilities are permitted to use the existing public road rights of way to run their phone, electricity and cable tv lines - thankfully! If they had to purchase those rights of way, we couldn't afford the service. So, government does provide a subsidy of sorts to these utilities. Then again, that right of way is being paid for by the consumers (taxpayers) either way!

The roads were going to be there even if there was no electricity.

 

[breadtrk]

All the output from all the windmills still don't add up to one nuke plant.

Regulate the **** out of them, build them as safe as you can, prepare for the worst. Still the most bang for the buck.

 

[TomSeller]

Most electricity infrastructure is owned by private utility companies, not government, not public expense. Its paid for by consumers, not public. .

I believe most are either public or publicly regulated private. I guess we could say quasi public. Not what I would call "private" with some exceptions.