Cost of wind power too high
Stratford Gazette, www.stratfordgazette.com 29 September 2011
Re: Ignore the hyperbole, letter to the editor, Sept. 15
It is just too easy to begin refuting the letter Mr. Rickett wrote regarding industrial wind turbines.
Land leases come with gag orders so no one can complain. Strange that he hadn’t mentioned that.
And there are thousands of anti wind organizations around the world complaining about the same issue those in Ontario are doing.
I don’t know why people make assertions that are so easily refuted; it’s the age of the Internet … Google it … it’s that simple.
There are other directions than for profit privatization of our electricity system that locks consumers into paying three times more for wind and up to 15 times more for solar than conventional rates.
Massive taxpayer subsidies are going into this business because the Liberals are bent towards privatization. And are willing to give away your financial future to do so.
There could have been grants and good subsidies provided to you to adopt solar or geothermal with this money, for example. It lowers demand, lowers your hydro costs, and in a very small part may lower emissions. But not much in reality.
Small scale solar could have provided real long term local jobs in manufacturing, sales, installation and service to the hundreds of thousands of homes, businesses and farms. But the Liberals haven’t been interested in anything other than entrenching for profit privatization.
Because wind and solar must be partnered with full time conventional power to ensure reliability, the actual power costs are very, very high.
Wind costs three times conventional rates plus the cost of gas power generation. Solar costs are 15 times conventional rates plus the cost of gas power generation.
So the more large scale wind and solar, the higher your bills get. And as electricity begins to soar so do your jobs .. out of the country.
What you have here is an industry trying desperately to protect itself from losing the enormous profits to be made, hoping you don’t take time to notice it.
I am against any political party that feels it has the right to take the say away from the community I have built a life, home and raised a family in. The Liberals have done this.
This is supposed to be a free and democratic society, not a dictatorship.
Ernest Horvath
Meaford
URL to article: https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2011/09/29/cost-of-wind-power-too-high/