Posted on 04/15/2009 6:51:53 AM PDT by Graybeard58
It sounds so wonderful. Instead of dirty old coal-fired plants spewing polar-bear-slaying carbon dioxide while producing half of America's electricity, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar envisions a Great East Coast Wind Farm of whirling turbines generating 1 million megawatts, or the equivalent of 3,000 coal plants.
This scheme is impractical on its face, but calculations based on the proposed Cape Wind project off Cape Cod reveal the extent of this lunacy. Cape Wind plans 130 turbines, arranged in rows of three per mile, with rows set a half-mile apart. Each 440-foot-tall turbine would produce 3.6 megawatts when the wind blows.
Never mind that litigious NIMBYs and greens led by Sen. Ted Kennedy are up in arms that Cape Wind might damage sea beds, ruin vistas or obstruct navigation. Using the best technology and counting constant wind, one turbine produces 5 megawatts, so 1 million megawatts requires at least 200,000 windmills. The Atlantic seaboard measures 2,069 miles, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says, so Mr. Salazar is talking about an average of 97 turbines per mile. Arranged on Cape Wind's grid, there would be 33 rows of windmills extending some combination of 16.5 miles — the distance between Torrington and Southbury — inland and out to sea.
For every mile up and down the entire East Coast. Picture a 440-foot turbine beside the 456-foot Statue of Liberty. And based on Cape Wind's $1 billion cost projection, Mr. Salazar's Great East Coast Wind Farm would cost a mere $1.54 trillion. Chump change for the Obama administration.
Ping to a Republican-American Editorial.
If you want on or off this list, let me know.
Uhhhhh.... what happens when there is no wind, or enough wind for peak power?
Hasn’t been built, the engineering for the long-term reliability of the system hasn’t been worked out, can’t get Ted Kennedy or his staff to agree to the construction of these structures within his line of sight, and cannot be counted upon for producing a reliable 24-hour, 7-days-a-week, 365-day level of power, unless a standby natural-gas or coal-fired power plant is there to take up the slack.
Or they could just go to the nuclear power plants, using a method of recycling the power rods until the last erg of energy has been drained from them, and the only left-over is depleted uranium, a most excellent high-density element that can replace the lead in ammunition projectiles.
There is one other option they could use, plasma trash reduction.
http://www.theplasmasolution.com/
The cost/benefit ratio for producing electricity by this process is vastly better than any other suggested “green” technology, and it is already well demonstrated. Plus it has several other side benefits, such as being able to produce an abundance of elemental hydrogen (for this “hydrogen economy” so beloved of the greenies), reducing landfills, much more efficient recycling of plastics, including those which must be disposed of because of biohazards, a side benefit that includes desalination of water, and an excellent building material or aggregate that may be used in road building or other construction.
This process makes a positive out of several negatives, and yields altogether, a better, richer, fuller life for EVERYBODY. In short, this process would generate not just electricity, but wealth.
But if wealth is the enemy, then maybe it might never be applied.
This sounds like a pirates dream. Pay us off or we will take our little boats out there and vandalize your big spinning thingies.
How could we ever secure this size of project, let alone interconnect them all. We can’t even put cables under the long island sound anymore without the enviroweenies going crazy and lawyering up to stall any project for 5 years.
This plan will never happen.
On the Off shore Wind power. How do you get the power to the grid? Miles of copper wire connecting 200,000 wind turbine to the power grid.
"The federal government has to subsidize windmill production through production tax credits of about 1.8¢ per kilowatt. Wind Farms also receive an accelerated depreciation. Wind farms are also land intensive. They produce a fraction of the energy of a traditional power plant but they require 100 times the acreage.
From the National Center for Policy Analysis: to produce a 1000 megawatt power plant a wind farm would require 192,000 acres or 300 square miles. A nuclear plant would need about 1700 acres (or 2.65 mi2), and about 3 mi2 for a coal fired power plant. The transmission lines for the wind turbines would be massive, 12,000 miles just for the array."
Kenny is an idiot.
With all those fans blowing wouldn’t that cool the earth? My gosh the deserts might shrink, think of the cactus.
You will have to triple or quadruple that number of windmills. Wind power has an average capacity factor of 25%-30%, while coal fired baseload plants average 95%+ CF. TO replace each MW of installed coal fired geenration will require 3 or 4 MW of wind generation. Also, during peak demand times, wind speed has a nasty habit of falling, so you will need to keep an equivalent amount of gas turbines ready to go when the wind power starts dropping as the temperature goes up.
Wind power is only a money-maker because it receives $23.37 per MWhr in subsidies; nuclear receives $1.59, predominantly as insurance guarantees.
http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/servicerpt/subsidy2/pdf/chap5.pdf
Most states have laws REQUIRING the purchase of all the green power that is generated. So not only do you get $23.37 per MWhr generated, but the Government will guarantee the purchase of everything you can generate.
It’s even worse in some places - in California, power from “green sources” must be purchased at the highest rate available. Meaning not only a good subsidy, and a guaranteed market, but a market that guarantees a price equal to the highest charged by any other source.
Thanks for the ping Graybeard.
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