Gov't Report: Wind Energy Needs Taxpayer Support To Survive

Capitol Confidential ^ | 8/21/2012 | Tom Gantert

[DungeonMaster]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_Iowa

We have as big a percentage of wind power as Denmark and I'm not hearing any complaints. It's not a disaster here. When wind power produces a predictable 50gwhr of wind on a windy day, that much energy is not produced by some other source. Numbers don't lie.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

When wind power produces a predictable 50gwhr of wind on a windy day, that much energy is not produced by some other source. Numbers don't lie.

Where did you get your engineering degree, Skippy?

Don't have one?!

Gee, you're just like Ubama! You know everything without knowing anything!

You don't just dump an erratic power supply onto the grid at will, unless you want to bring the whole thing down.

Here's the deal, and it's the same in Io-way as it is in Denmark: You don't turn a coal plant on and off at the flip of a switch. It takes days to get it powered up, and days to get it powered down. All that powering-up and powering down burns coal without producing energy.

My bet is you love wind energy because you're getting a government subsidy out of it somewhere.

I'm right, aren't I?

And if you want to tell everybody else how power should be generated, GO GET A G-D D----D ENGINEERING DEGREE.

[DungeonMaster]

Ditto Skippy.

Where’d you learn to be a heathen?

[E. Pluribus Unum]

So how much government money are you collecting on your windmills?

[Lakeshark]

Here's the problem, stated in a different way:

Our grid is designed to need a consistent amount of power in the grid at all times in order to deliver energy to those who use it. Wind turbines have an undetermined output of energy, not only every day, but virtually every hour because wind is not predictable. There is no way to store the energy a wind turbine puts out, no way to tell how much energy it will put out tomorrow, therefore it never adds to the grid in any substantial way, nor can it save any of the main fuel burned to supply the grid.

If someone actually comes up with a method of storing that energy that is cost effective, then the game will change, but right now it's just a waste of energy to use wind power in any practical manner in our normal grid use.