Beam me to Planet Gore !
Posted on 11/28/2010 12:55:47 PM PST by Graybeard58
It turns out the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., was right in opposing a wind-energy project in Nantucket Sound, but for all the wrong reasons. There's a lot of that going around — so much, in fact, that it increasingly appears there is no wrong reason for opposing wind-energy projects.
Sen. Kennedy, a lifelong Hyannisport, Mass., resident, professed to be a supporter of so-called green energy. But when a 130-turbine wind-power proposal turned up in his watery playground off the Kennedy family's Cape Cod compound, he balked.
With Sen. Kennedy safely in his grave and the remaining Kennedys apparently a spent force, the Massachusetts Department of Public Utilities quietly approved Cape Wind on Nov. 22. Only now are Cape Cod and Nantucket residents beginning to discern the dimensions of this boondoggle.
According to a Bloomberg News account, the British company National Grid Plc will pay 18.7 cents per kilowatt-hour for half of the wind farm's output. Under terms of the 15-year contract, the price will increase 3.5 percent a year, to a staggering 30.27 cents per kilowatt-hour. The initial rate "is more than three times the average wholesale power price in the region," Bloomberg reported.
A group called the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound estimates the project will cost ratepayers $4 billion more over the next 15 years than they would pay if the wind farm were never built. Of course, it could be argued Massachusetts voters inflicted this wound on themselves by electing a governor and legislature that enacted a mandate that 15 percent of the state's energy come from renewable sources by 2020.
It also could be argued that placing windmills in shallow offshore waters makes more sense than attempting to build them on land, since Nantucket Sound and other offshore sites are uninhabitable. That distinguishes them from sites such as 178 New Haven Road in Prospect, where BNE Energy Inc. of West Hartford wants to build a pair of 328-foot-tall wind turbines. More than 200 residents attended a rally this month in opposition to the project.
They warned of the effect noise and "shadow flicker" from the spinning turbine blades would have on property values and quality of life of nearby residents. An East Falmouth, Mass., resident who lives near a windmill told The Sunday Republican, "The sound that it puts out, it's as though a plane is going overhead continuously." Land-based windmills also have been known to kill large numbers of wild birds, and even have been called "Cuisinarts of the air."
Rep. Vickie Nardello, D-Prospect, and Mayor Robert J. Chatfield asked the state Siting Council to stage a hearing on the windmills in town. They expect the request to be accommodated.
Wind power can be environmentally damaging, wildly expensive to consumers, and harmful to quality of life in residential and commercial districts. It even causes pollution by forcing fossil-fuel plants to cycle up and down more radically and more often, reducing their efficiency. One can only wonder why so many in government are so invested in a strategy that increasingly is giving the term "renewable energy" a black eye.
Ping to a Republican-American Editorial.
If you want on or off this ping list, let me know.
Ping.
But it's for the general good. You must give up any perceived rights. Liberalism is great.(/idiocy off)
I confess to wanting the Cape Wind project to be built just to piss off Kennedy. Until, of course, I found out recenty how much it was going to cost me as a National Grid customer. Ouch!
The maintenance on these things is staggering!
We have a windmill forest “near” us. Replacement parts, propellers and such come through town on big oversize trailers. They must be, guessing, 150ft long. I’m try to visualize these monsters pulling through little seaside communities.
Replacing propellers on towers standing in the water would be a sight!
What a scam.
....yeah....and what they found out in China is that big wind farms adversely affect local precipitation (rain for those in Rio Vinda).
FOLLOW THE MONEY!!!
I don’t know anything about it , but it would seem to me that any Windmills coming to Nantucket sound would be shipped by barge.
Now as for the wisdom of these things I cant see it. Winter storms sea water and electricity, the cost difference, it would appear one small nuclear plant would be a much better investment.
"Turbine noise" and "wind flicker" are appropriate concerns to add to the liberal evolution of politically generated concerns that will need a politically driven solution at a cost.
Yep, they are smooth in their means of sucking our hard earned labor away from us for the good of all.
The end justifys the means.
Large-scale wind-power projects have plenty of problems and downsides.
But this crap about killing large numbers of birds is just the same tired hallucination as always. No one has ever produced so much as a verified picture of these "large numbers" of dead bird carcasses killed by the props, much less the carcasses themselves. The number of birds estimated to be killed in collisions with props -- by even the most anti-wind-power bird lovers -- is a few tens of thousands, a completely negligible number compared to the bird populations.
American Bird Conservancy cites studies that indicate that about 10,000 - 40,000 birds die each year from collisions with wind turbines in the U.S. and say that number may rise substantially as wind capacity increases in the absence of mandatory guidelines. However, studies show that the number of birds killed by wind turbines is very low compared to the number of those that die as a result of certain other ways of generating electricity and especially of the environmental impacts of using non-clean power sources. Fossil fuel generation kills around twenty times as many birds per unit of energy produced than wind-farms.*
There are plenty of arguments against large-scale wind power. But the "bird killer" argument is, with the pun fully intended, a "canard".
* Quote from Wikipedia
And then there’s the corn for ethanol scam....
...and the solar cell scam...whose receptors get snowed / iced over in the north and covered in dust in the south.
I’m a grandma, not an engineer. The first time I saw one propeller riding on a semi it looked like an oversized whale from horror movie.
In the motor, in the head of the windmill is a brake. If the brake breaks the turbine spins out of control. Big repair job. Sometimes, instead of repairing, “they” load the gearbox with grease or whatever, and leave the windmill to turn off power, so we the taxpayers believe the windmill is working. It’s so like the government. A black hole for tax dollars that produces nothing.
This is a primitive, imperfect explaination, but it’s close to what I’ve heard.
Of course, a nuclear plant would be cheaper, and more efficient.
The notorious white house memo on the cost of govt subsidies in renewable energy and wind power. Read the last page and stay close to the vomit bag.
http://www.ascension-publishing.com/BIZ/WH-loan-guarantee.pdf
Land-based wind doesn't have to be expensive so long as it's installed in windier areas (mostly the midwest), but Connecticut has lousy wind for generating electricity. Any turbines in CT will be a "feel good" cost-ineffective activity.
“One can only wonder why so many in government are so invested in a strategy that increasingly is giving the term “renewable energy” a black eye.”
Because they are invested in it, and stand to make lots of money from it.
Thanks for the ping Graybeard.
I don’t buy into the whole bird chopping thing, but neither do I trust any estimate like “twenty times” fossil fuels, because I have no idea how they generate that statistic. That is just as meaningless to me.
I would be willing to bet the methodology of counting bird deaths from fossil fuels is a computer generated estimate, based on lost habitat, food sources, etc.
I would actually trust windmill estimates, because I bet they are at least extrapolated from bird carcass counts in the vicinity of windmills in a given area. But even with that, look at the numbers...10,000 to 40,000. That indicates to me they simply don’t know and are just making it up.
I agree there are better arguments against it than bird deaths, but if you want to turn liberals against it, an emotional argument like that will probably work wonders. Throw in polar bear deaths, and you are probably on to something...:)
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