June 12, 2008
Letters, Maryland

Investing in wind creates little power

The Sun’s editorial “Plugging into a windfall” (June 8) does justice to the complaint filed by Maryland’s Public Service Commission and a coalition of regulators and consumer groups regarding charges (which could be up to $12 billion by 2011) for power capacity that may never be produced.

Here’s one reason that capacity may never be built.

Last year, Maryland’s General Assembly passed legislation requiring utilities to purchase 20 percent of their future electricity power from renewable sources, knowing that 75 percent to 90 percent of that energy would come from wind technology.

But 1,000 megawatts of installed wind capacity, at a capital cost of about $2 billion (much of which will be subsidized by taxpayers), would actually produce less than 300 megawatts of sporadic energy.

Wishful thinking is no substitute for power on demand.

Jon Boone

Oakland

Baltimore Sun

12 June 2008


URL to article:  https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2008/06/12/investing-in-wind-creates-little-power/