Awwww...c'mon now......they blend into the landscape so well, you can hardly tell they're there
Posted on 01/26/2010 5:09:33 PM PST by Kaslin
Energy: The government says wind power could supply the eastern half of the U.S. with a fifth of its electricity by 2024. Just don't try building wind farms where someone might see them.
A claim is contained in a new study released by the Energy Department's National Renewable Energy Laboratory, and technically it might be true. But we've heard these overblown predictions before, and experience around the world with heavily subsidized alternative energy has not worked out well.
The area in question, called the Eastern Interconnection, is a grid extending roughly from the western borders of the Plains states through to the Atlantic Coast, excluding most of Texas. It includes Nantucket, where supporters of the Cape Wind project have been tilting at windmills for years.
The Cape Wind project proposes erecting 130 wind turbines that would generate electricity equivalent to about 75% of Cape Cod's energy needs.
The best site is Horseshoe Shoal in Nantucket Sound. Unfortunately, this body of water sits between the Kerry home on Nantucket Island and the Kennedy compound at Hyannis Port on the Cape and might spoil the view.
Considering the resistance this one project has had, one wonders how you build the wind farms and the 22,697 miles of EHV (electric high voltage) transmission lines to service the Eastern Interconnection. The time frame is short: 14 years. The cost is exorbitant: $93 billion just for the transmission lines. And the question is a big one: Where do you put them for proper power reach?
(Excerpt) Read more at investors.com ...
That's too modern.
I suggest the government offer tax credits for "green technology" firepits in caves.
Oh, wait...!
“Environmentalists” used to oppose the erection of large electricity transmission pylons & cell phone towers, on the basis that they were an ugly blight on the landscape. Now, they want to erect tens of thousands of much larger, noisier, and more intrusive wind turbines. Go figure.
Surely there must be some other ancient technology we can use. Maybe oxen.
Plus they are proven to kill birds and bats who happen to collide with the blades. Libtards just don’t see the double standard that their ideology pushes. I think it is “quaint” that the progressives want wind turbines but nuclear is taboo.
Still too modern for the Greens.
I'm waiting for the push for Komodo Dragon-driven plows.
BM
I don’t want windmills across the horizon. I want a nice compact coal or gas fired plant hidden behind a grove of trees where I don’t have to look at it.
It took more than 8 years to approve ONE HV electric line from eastern PA through West Virgina into Virgina.
More than 8 years of government paperwork and environmental reviews, and that for a little 280 mile SINGLE LINE.
But they are going to accept this bunch of hot air for a massive ten million acre wind farm + power line birdnest of wires and towers. That - apparently - kill thousands of birds. Per windmill.
I pointed out to an anti-fossil fuels greenie that these turbines were also killing migratory birds, particularly raptors. I think scientists are investigating the impact on bats, too. Her response—”The birds will just have to learn to fly somewhere else.” These people are beyond belief.
Of all the lib groups, only the Audubon Society has the common sense to oppose wind power. That makes the first time that the Audubon Society has ever been right about anything. (I would know.)
As a side note, in addition to killing birds by the tens of thousands, wind power has to be -- hands down -- the ugliest blight on the land. Why the treehuggers should desire the gorgeous American landscape to be covered from mountain top to coastal plain with 200 ft. humming monstrosities escapes me, but pretty much everything they advocate escapes me.
Thanks for your post.
I want three. But I'm greedy.
Denmark, the world’s most wind-intensive nation, with more than 6,000 turbines generating 19% of its electricity, has yet to close a single fossil-fuel plant. It requires 50% more coal-generated electricity to cover wind power’s unpredictability, and pollution and carbon dioxide emissions have risen (by 36% in 2006 alone).
Good lord. 6000 turbines in a country the size of Denmark makes them completely inescapable.
Not to mention the fact that it takes 50% more coal to run the grid with them on.
That's a net efficiency of -50%, without even taking into account that wind-generated electricity is orders-of-magnitude more expensive than coal-generated electricity.
Awwww...c'mon now......they blend into the landscape so well, you can hardly tell they're there
I want a nice compact coal or gas fired plant hidden behind a grove of trees where I don’t have to look at it.
I want one of those new micro nuke plants hidden behind some shrubs.
Looks like a Maginot Line up in the air.
Ugh!
Even the Cape Cod Times!
The Real Cost of Wind
...National Grid currently pays 9.2 cents a kilowatt-hour for electricity from coal, natural gas and nuclear generators, which it distributes in Rhode Island. It will pay Deepwater Wind 24.4 cents in the first year of the contract, plus an escalation of 3.5 percent a year for the 20-year term....
http://www.capecodonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20091213/OPINION/912130334/-1/NEWSMAP
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