# Wind Power makes a difference



## SPS-1 (Oct 21, 2008)

I thought some of you might be interested in seeing how much power the wind can make. Its a nice windy day today, and Ontario's wind turbines are making 1106 MegaWatts (see the pie chart). Thats almost 2 nuclear power plants worth of electricity. You can argue the cost effectiveness of wind power, but you can put up quite a few wind mills for the cost of two nuclear power plants. 
This web site http://www.ieso.ca/ shows how much electricity Ontario is using, and where it comes from, in real time.


----------



## awdblazer (Dec 30, 2010)

i am sure someone is going to chime in but here is what i am going to say
i work for the local utility and we use hydro, but we have some leased wind turbines
well in the winter here we have to supply them power to warm bearings, and what not
when it is too windy we either have to disconnect it from the grid or put on the brakes
so really it isnt too economical
but we had to have them for the tree huggers here


----------



## SPS-1 (Oct 21, 2008)

awdblazer said:


> in the winter here we have to supply them power to warm bearings, and what not
> when it is too windy we either have to disconnect it from the grid or put on the brakes


You write that as if you have to send out a serviceman to do that. Surely that is all handled automatically.


----------



## awdblazer (Dec 30, 2010)

it is automatic, but it eats up power


----------



## joasis (May 28, 2006)

There are terms to describe input costs and output of wind power. ROEI I believe, but anyway, it is a red herring to say how many turbines can be installed versus the cost of a nuclear power plant. 

Without tax and government subsidies, wind power is not a paying proposition, and the capacity of the grid cannot depend on the wind...in other words, you have to maintain generating capacity without counting wind.....and if the government would let private interests rule, with the new technology in nuclear, we would have secure energy future. 

Any of you get sucked into the idea of buying a turbine, keep this in mind: I have a client we are building for, and the lot next door has a turbine.....residential model...probably 2000 watts...and the guy was telling me it cost him nearly $20k after tax credits, and he gets a check from the electric coop every month.....the check amount? $7. Now...do the math and decide if a turbine is for you.....oh yeah, the life of the wind turbine is probably less then 10 years.


----------



## Ironlight (Apr 13, 2011)

It's a relatively new technology to be deployed into commercial production. But then again every new energy technology has been villified by established corporate energy interests when it first emerged.

Wind power is far from ideal and will never meet all of our energy needs, but I for one am damn glad that people are working hard to find and exploit alternative means of meeting our escalating energy needs than burning coal and oil.


----------



## gma2rjc (Nov 21, 2008)

In Altamont Pass, California, the wind powered turbines are killing about 67 Golden Eagles a year - since the *1980's*. 

If a person SHOOTS *1* Golden Eagle - they get jail time for it. 

http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jun/06/local/la-me-adv-wind-eagles-20110606


----------



## Daniel Holzman (Mar 10, 2009)

This is of course an interesting thread, but there is an enormous gap between prevailing belief and actual knowledge of the energy industry. Too much to get into, but one crucial point generally overlooked is that EVERY SINGLE FORM of energy production currently in use has either explicit or buried government subsidies, making it essentially impossible to compare the "true" cost of production. Some examples.

In the nuclear industry, the only reason there are any nuclear plants in the United States is that the federal government, via the Price Anderson act, limits liability for an accident to approximately $600 million, making the plants insurable. This is an explicit subsidy. Without this subsidy, there isn't an insurance company on earth that would insure a plant (what do you think the cost of the Three Mile Island accident was?). There are other, more complex subsidies in the nuclear industry, including the fact that plants are not required to dispose of their waste because the government cannot develop a repository for it. I could go on.

Natural gas is exempt from the clean water act and the clean air act, thanks to Dick Cheney. This is an implicit subsidy, as without this exemption their would be no fracking without an Environmental Impact Statement and regulatory legislation. Most of the gas in the U.S. comes from fracking, so what is the value of a blanket exemption from regulations that everyone else has to adhere to?

Wind turbines get an effective rebate of at least 2 cents per kilowatt hour from the government, and benefit from "clean energy" regulations requiring utilities to obtain a fixed percentage of power from "clean" sources. An explicit subsidy, but there are other subsidies in the form of government intervention in the wind turbine market via low cost loans. Same argument applies to solar power, check out the recent debacle with the DOE loan to the California solar company Solindra that went bankrupt, taking half a billion taxpayer dollars with it.

Oil companies get the oil depletion tax credit. They also get very low cost leases of federal land. Plus the benefit of the taxpayer funded strategic petroleum reserve. Hard to put a handle on the value of oil subsidies.

I could go on with examples of subsidies to hydropower, coal, wood burning plants etc. Gives me a headache. As an investor seeking to make an honest profit from energy, it is frustrating that the actual value of subsidies is impossible to determine, so I have no real idea what the true cost of any particular form of power is. Makes it hard to select a good investment.


----------



## SPS-1 (Oct 21, 2008)

But coal mining alone is killing thousands of *humans* each year. Typically, about 30-50 people each year will die in US coal mining deaths. China has countless small coal mines, and lower safety standards. Coal mining deaths each year in China are measured in the thousands. Plus the reduced lifetimes due to the air pollution. No energy source is perfect.
http://frankwarner.typepad.com/free_frank_warner/2006/01/us_coal_mining_.html 
` or go to Wikipedia for the numbers if you are interested.


----------

