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Wind power fallacy
Credit: Carteret County News-Times | March 30, 2013 | www.carolinacoastonline.com ~~
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Bills in the General Assembly, H298 in the House and S365 in the Senate, would repeal the renewable mandate, a requirement of SB3, mistakenly passed by the 2007 General Assembly that would raise electricity prices in North Carolina.
SB3 would do this through a Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Portfolio Standard (RPS), requiring North Carolina utility companies, i.e., Duke Energy, to supply all its customers with a percentage of renewable energy.
Renewable energy pleases environmentalists, but it would mean we all pay more because it would be in the form of wind turbines – which are inefficient and thus would raise prices.
Advocates of wind energy should be aware of an analysis of wind energy supplied to the United Kingdom National Grid that showed wind farms produce significantly less electricity than had been thought and cause more problems for the grid than had been believed.
Stories in the British press detailing an examination of electricity generation from all U.K. wind farms metered by the National Grid over 26 months, November 2008 to December 2010 commissioned by a conservation charity, the John Muir Trust, showed that assertions made by the wind industry and government representatives and agencies were greatly exaggerated.
When wind power frequently drops to almost nothing, the study said, it often happens just when demand is at its early evening peak. One third of the time, wind output was less than 10% of capacity, and at other times was significantly less. For 124 days when generation fell below 20MW, there were 51 days when generation was 10MW or less, and any time it fell below 20MW the wind contribution was effectively zero.
Very low wind events, as well as very high wind events, could and did occur at any time of year.
Those who tout wind energy should consider, says Jon Sanders with the John Locke Foundation, that to produce 1,000 megawatts, wind power would require more land than the cities of Raleigh, Wilmington and Fayetteville combined.
Under the fantasy of eco-environmentalism, the reality is industrial wind power is a delusion. Study after study shows industrial wind power, promoted by legislation written principally to enrich large business concerns that delight in feeding at the government trough, causes more harm than benefit to the environment and humans, and has no consequential environmental benefit whatsoever. Those who think wind power is the answer are sadly mistaken.
Obviously H298 and S365 should be passed, and the sooner the better.
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