Wind Watch is a registered educational charity, founded in 2005. |
Please note that opinion pieces (including letters, editorials, and blogs), reflect the viewpoints of their authors; National Wind Watch does not necessarily agree with them in their entirety or endorse them in any way.
Wind power not worth the price
Credit: Las Vegas Sun | April 29, 2013 | www.lasvegassun.com ~~
Translate: FROM English | TO English
Translate: FROM English | TO English
Regarding the letter “Wind energy is a win-win for all”: There is nothing further from the truth.
Wind energy is expensive. My latest copy of Wind Power Engineering states the lowest cost at 11 cents per kilowatt. That is much higher than the base cost of any other resource NV Energy uses.
Further, what that doesn’t state is the utility is required to have back-up power, as the wind doesn’t blow every day. So we need that cost added in. And we all know that has been the reason for recent price increases.
Further, wind power has no surge capabilities. This is a hard thing for the layman to understand, but for instance, your air conditioner unit turns on, it will need 20 amps for a few microseconds, which of course the windmill cannot provide. So the surge power is off-loaded onto the base energy source. This is all fine, until the harmonics caused by more than a 15 percent unresponsive load creates an outage. The solution is simple: have a battery backup.
So let’s get this straight. A windmill produces electrical energy at 11 cents per kilowatt, then we need battery backups, which aren’t cheap, and we need to keep the gas turbines running. Wow, I cannot wait for the true cost of wind energy to hit my bill, but it will be disguised as plant expansions, etc.
William Tarasen, Las Vegas
This article is the work of the source indicated. Any opinions expressed in it are not necessarily those of National Wind Watch.
The copyright of this article resides with the author or publisher indicated. As part of its noncommercial educational effort to present the environmental, social, scientific, and economic issues of large-scale wind power development to a global audience seeking such information, National Wind Watch endeavors to observe “fair use” as provided for in section 107 of U.S. Copyright Law and similar “fair dealing” provisions of the copyright laws of other nations. Send requests to excerpt, general inquiries, and comments via e-mail.
Wind Watch relies entirely on User Contributions |
![]() (via Stripe) |
![]() (via Paypal) |
Share: