Posted on 03/10/2016 6:00:35 PM PST by Sean_Anthony
If solar and wind were indeed catching up to other forms of electricity generation, they wouldn’t need current subsidies, much less ever-growing ones. Such are the incredible costs of producing energy with “free fuel"
While driving the mostly empty and flat 1,000 miles from Houston to Colorado Springs recently, I noticed something I hadn’t seen much just a few years ago—lots of wind farms dotting the landscape, but none anywhere near even small population centers. And another funny thing, though: Invariably, many of the turbines weren’t moving and one of the largest appeared to have about 100 turbines, yet I counted just three in action.
How can this be? Having paid for the land, the turbines, and those long transmission lines don’t providers want a maximum of the machines going? Nope. Because, you see, wind farms – and solar farms for the same reasons – don’t make their money by generating electricity. They do it by generating government subsidies.
Having just finished writing an article in the biomedical journal Inference, in which I surprised even myself by finding that wind and solar have no purpose other than lining the pockets of fat cats, this was no shocker. No purpose, really? Really.
Windmills and PV arrays don’t vote, so their subsidies won’t last long.
If you run your Turbines then you’ll have to pay for maintenance
this article is bs. Fact is the turbines in North Texas and Oklahoma could easily have (especially the low cost of commodities today) thick copper wires run to major cities therefore reducing the voltage drop. Wind and household solar could work but there must always be a backup electrical service to back them up.
There must be a national program where household solar power producers pay the utility for the convenience of getting power back at night.
Net metering should compensate homeowners the same as it cost the utility to produce themselves.
It’s the same as an electric vehicle uses the highway for free without paying federal gasoline taxes which keep up the highways.
Michael Fumento hit the nail on the noggin.
There is another problem: These forms of generation are unsuitable for power grid use because they vary their output faster than the traditional power plants can and they don’t generate 24/7. As a result, the traditional plants still have to run at full capacity anyway to back them up. This can also cause overcapacity surges that damage equipment.
How is any of this desirable?
DC blows enough to power every windmill in the US and most of Holland.
They also enrich the cronies of the politicians who make up uneconomical companies to sell the equipment to the utilities who are mandated by legislation to buy it.
we can’t continue to suck energy from the wind...this exercise with lead to climate change on a global scale....
Wind and Solar subsidies have bankrupted Spain.
Those who embrace these uneconomic, nonsensical electricity generation schemes seems to always forget: The sun don’t always shine and the wind don’t always blow.
Hence, ALL places where wind or solar are used to generate reliable power MUST have a backup generator that does not depend upon wind or solar. Because there is no reliable power otherwise.
Know what these backups run on? Natural Gas mostly.
Read those words NATURAL. This is the source of energy which God endowed upon us.
Really stupid to have to put two generation plants side by side when only one is needed.
This is what you could call “hot idle” and it by itself burns alot of natural gas on standby.
I remember reading a few years ago of the utilization rates of windmills in Texas for a whole year was only 5%-7%. Not much electricity for all the tax subsidies we pay.
This is a phenomenon known as "mining the investors". It is considered execrable in legitimate business circles, and is less common where government money is absent.
Wind turbines have problems between cold in winter, and wind speed.
When you need either most, they aren't available.
Yes, taking energy from the wind directly changes the climate. If you only have a few windmills, it's negligible, but if you have a significant number of windmills they'll change the climate much faster than burning fossil fuels. Sorry, you can't get something for nothing.
sorry dude, I don’t live in alaska
Me neither. North Dakota. Much of Alaska has nicer weather (as I have been told by Alaskans).
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