ScoMo knows windmills are just blowing dollars away in the wind and a drop in subsidies is inevitable.COSTLY WIND POWER MENACES MAN AND NATUREMAY 21, 2019 By Tom Harris, Jay Lehr
The true costs of wind energy are too often (deliberately?) ignored or underestimated.Wind energy can never replace fossil fuels, despite claims of environmentalists and advocates of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal (GND).
It’s not environment-friendly either. Indeed, wind power is hampered by many limitations, including:
Its intermittent and inefficient nature
Insufficient sites with adequate, reliable wind
Acreage required to erect turbines and harness wind
Excessive expenses, many of them rarely mentioned
Dangers to bird and bat populations
Dangers to human health from light flicker and low frequency throbbing noise (infrasound).
Costs, limitations, and health and environmental impacts of batteries and other back-up systems
Wind turbines are highly inefficient. Large industrial wind turbines (IWT) typically produce about 2.5 megawatts of power when wind speed is between about 8 and 25 miles per hour. However, most of the time it’s not, even at the best locations.
Today’s wind farms have a 30–40% average “capacity factor.” That means their average annual output is only 30–40% of “nameplate” capacity, or what they would produce if the wind were blowing 8–25 mph 24/7/365. As we erect more turbines, they must be placed in less optimal locations, and capacity numbers will drop, perhaps dramatically. And no one can predict when they will generate electricity.
When the wind isn’t blowing, the electricity grid cannot provide the energy we need to operate and maintain our standard of living. Today fossil fuels stand ready to step in when wind speeds decline. But under the GND, virtually all fossil fuels would be eliminated, making it impossible to keep the lights on without a major increase in nuclear power, which environmental activists hate even more than fossil fuels.
To generate significant wind energy, facilities must be located where there is steady wind most of the time. Such areas exist along the West Coast of the United States and a strip of the Midwest from the Dakotas to Texas. But 75% of the conterminous 48 states have only half the wind of these locations. Offshore areas have higher wind potential but are be at least three times more expensive to develop.
Perhaps the biggest drawback to relying on wind power is the immense amount of land required. IWTs must be placed far apart so they don’t interfere with each turbine’s “wind capture area.”
In his keynote address at the 2018 America First Energy Conference , Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry explained that generating enough electricity to power just the Houston metropolitan area would require almost 900 square miles of wind turbines. This is six-times more land than an equivalent solar farm of photovoltaic cells, assuming they operate at full efficiency 24/7/365; dozens of times the land required for an equivalent nuclear power plant; and 16 times the size of Washington, DC.
Wind is also much more expensive than existing conventional energy sources.
The US Energy Information Administration (EIA) claims that wind power can generate electricity for 8˘ per kilowatt-hour (kWh). However, this is based on poor assumptions and glossing over important realities.
It assumes average wind turbine lifetime is 30 years, the same as a conventional fossil fuel power plant. In reality, most turbines last only 15 years, and less offshore. It ignores the cost of backup power. It includes no cost for transmission lines from wind farms to distant cities. Most significantly, it omits subsidies.
A 2016 Utah State University study shows the following extra costs omitted or miscalculated by the EIA for wind power: 15-years not 30-year life expectancies (US 7˘ per kWh), backup power (at least 2.3˘ cents if the back-up is natural gas), transmission costs (2.7˘), government subsidies (23˘). All that means the real cost of wind power is a staggering 43˘ per kilowatt hour! That’s seven times the cost of natural gas-generated electricity! What family, factory, hospital, office, church or school can afford this?
GND promoters would like wind farms everywhere, but even the most supposedly environmentally friendly communities often do not want wind turbines in their own neighborhoods: they spoil the landscape and cause serious environmental impacts, such as killing many birds and bats each year.
In 2013, Loss, Will and Marra estimated that 140,000 to 328,000 birds are killed each year in the contiguous United States by wind turbines. The Audubon Society says that makes wind “the most threatening form of green energy.” Other sources say the death tolls are far higher.
Read the depressing rest herehttps://www.heartland.org/news-opinion/news/costly-wind-power-menaces-man-and-na...