Painful Lessons for Wind Power

Human Events ^ | 3/24/2011 | Brian Sussman

[detective]

Wind energy took another blow—this time in Massachusetts.

Wind One is the 400-foot-tall wind turbine owned by the town of Falmouth, on the southwestern tip of Cape Cod. The residents of Falmouth initially welcomed Wind One as a symbol of green energy and a handy way to keep local taxes down. Electricity generated by the turbine would be used to power the municipality’s infrastructure, thus shaving about $400,000 a year off its utility costs.

Installed in the spring of 2010 at a cost of $5.1 million (with some $3 million derived through grants, government kickbacks, and credits), the huge turbine cranks out 1.65 megawatts of electricity during optimum conditions.

[detective]

Wind energy is extremely expensive and very unreliable. It can only be built if developers are given huge taxpayer subsidies, utility customers are forced to pay above market rates to purchase the electricity and conventional plants are kept ready to back up the wind turbines when they do not operate.

And they are also extremely noisy. They can either be shut off when the wind is blowing like in the article or they must be built far from populated areas which necessitates expensive transmission systems and line loss.

One more way that the liberals and the government are screwing up our country.

[Big Horn]

I agree 100% they are a energy loser and will be removed in 10 years.

[org.whodat]

Posted yesterday, the thing must have a design flaw, the large three bladed ones make no noise. They only rotate about one revolution, every four seconds.

[SouthTexas]

Can’t use grease on the bearings, not very green. ;)

[pnh102]

I am so sick of having my ever increasing utility bill paying for this kind of crap. If these enviro-nuts want to play with their wind turbine toy, let them do it on their own dime and not mine!

[Da Coyote]

Learn the lessons:

Science is not a friend of liberals.

Math is not a friend of liberals.

Truth is not a friend of liberals.

Logic is not a friend of liberals.

And I - most assuredly - am not a friend of liberals.

[RatRipper]

The root problem is that greenies/eco-freaks/libtard/progressive/ socialist/commies are fundamentally MALCONTENTS.

No matter what they say they want, or what they get, they will NEVER, EVER be happy or satisfied.

[org.whodat]

Grease, LOL, they had a show on tv showing them making the three propeller design, bearings run in motor oil, I think there is a built in pump in the transmission at the front.

[org.whodat]

Friend, every electrical generating type plant ever build has been tax payer subdized. It would take years to investigate the amount of money that TVA and the army corps of so called engineers have pissed away.

[SouthTexas]

Couldn’t resist.

We have hundreds of them down here and I’ve never heard any type of noise from them and as slow as they turn, birds would have to be pretty stupid to fly into them.

They sure screw up the skyline though.

[maddog55]

And this they say is better then drilling for oil:

[musicman]

"They (Wind turbines) can either be shut off when the wind is blowing like in the article or they must be built far from populated areas which necessitates expensive transmission systems and line loss."

[wolfpat]

I feel sorry for the birds in that area.

[org.whodat]

There is several of them in a very, very, very, large area on I65 in Indiana, I stopped to look at them and count the revolutions once, they made no sound. Could not even hear the amps talking to each other.

[Graybeard58]

Can’t use grease on the bearings, not very green. ;)

That brought back memories of when I was a teen ager, climbing up wind mills with a grease gun in hand. Back in the day, farmers got water to their live stock with those things and they had to be lubricated on a regular basis.

[org.whodat]

Friend, those large ones behind bird brain in the picture have rotating props just like a plane, the pitch of the propeller changes to adjust the speed, no matter how hard the wind blows the prop speed stays the same. The twenty++ year old design in the other picture of a field of little mills were useless the day they were built.

[DungeonMaster]

Friend, every electrical generating type plant ever build has been tax payer subdized. It would take years to investigate the amount of money that TVA and the army corps of so called engineers have pissed away.

And we all know that nuclear power is perfectly safe. /sarc

[SouthTexas]

Were they plugged in?

[chimera]

I understand the technology has improved from the days of Altamont Pass, but no matter how good the technology, the Achilles’ Heel will always be availability of the primary energy source. The numbers I have seen for wind farm capacity factors range from 7 to 30 percent. That is absolutely unacceptable for baseload capacity. The LOLP for a grid-based system (what most of us use, and I don't see that changing anytime soon) goes through the roof. The existing grid has a major outage about once every 10 years or so. If you've got generating assets with capacity factors between 7 and 30 percent, you're looking at a major outage every month or so, probably with daily reductions like voltage dips, and rotating blackouts.

[SouthTexas]

I have a slight recollection of those days from a time long ago, in a land far away.

Actually was about five miles south of here. :)