3days
Your overlooking the economics. It will take a lot of concrete, copper and land to rigup that kind of power not to mention getting rite of way. The life span of those wind turbines is 20 years. The average yield has been a measly 20% and the windmill farms will be located far from the locations that need it most.
Then there’s the facts of the wind country of Denmark, king of windmills. It’s true windpower in Denmark accounts for 20% of Danish electrical production. However, Denmark does not ‘get’ 20% of it’s electricity form wind power. The windpower electricity is all exported to Sweden and Germany. It is not used because…it is unreliable. So when the Danes get some juice it is exported, unused and at a economic loss, to Sweden where it is used to pump water up into damns, in a way a battery bank. In Germany, it is dumped into the German power grid because Germany is so large, so electrical consuming that the half of Danish wind power it gets isn’t hardly notable. In a phrase, it is dumped, again at a loss to the Danes into the German grid.
The Danes get their electricity like the rest of us, by powerplants. That is what they keep and use. So to be more accurate, the 20% generated in Denmark is folded into the Danish/Swedish/German grid where that amount looks large in little Denmark but is tiny in Sweden and Germany. It’s like under 1%. All this is done at a loss.
Also, Denmark is the most perfect place in the world to put turbines. Again a unique environment. And the Danes themselves do not use this electricity. It is too costly, too unreliable so they pay the Swedes and Germans to take the electricity that they ‘dump’ into their electrical generation schemes. The Danes do not and can not use windpower in a modern economy. Neither can we. We can build it. We can do it, but we will have to pay to dump it. So, what is the point of this other than feeling good and burning money?
And much of Europe is building coal plants, not solar of wind farms as their consumers can’t subsidize all their power needs. Go to windaction-dot-org to read all the articles and letters against windfarms from everywhere. You talk more like an investor than an engineer. Wind is subsidized 14x+ the subsidy paid for nuclear and a whopping 53x that of coal. The same goes for solar, it can’t stand on it own.
Subsidies Paid
Coal $.44 per MWh
Nat. Gas $.25 per MWh
Nuclear $1.59 per MWh
Biomass $.89 per MWh
Geothermal $.92 MWh
Hydro $.67 per MWh
Solar $24.34 per MWh
Landfill gas $1.37 per MWh
Wind $23.37 per MWh
Wind energy would be better implemented on a smaller, local scale without heavy subsidization. Same with solar. Wind and solar farms would be best implemented on a research, prototype level till they become viable. Right now it’s and investors scam, like corn ethanol. Pickens already admitted that it was profit motivated and without government subsidization, with tax breaks, his proposal is ‘blowen in the wind’. So much for his pea pickens heart.
