What experts not selling turbines say
The Journal | October 1, 2013 | www.nujournal.com
Travis Clendenen’s September 27 letter to the editor saddens me. He claims by placing 500-foot-tall industrial wind turbines all around my neighbors home’s we will all benefit. A growing body of research by individuals not employed by a wind turbine manufacturer, like Travis, has found the exact opposite.
Willem Post writes, “Wind power does not produce all of the claimed benefits of reductions in fossil fuel consumption and CO2 emissions when the fuel consumption and related emissions of the shadow grid of gas-fired resourced are taken into account. For some years wind turbines were presented to the public as renewable energy producers that would reduce the CO2 emissions from fossil plants, because less fossil fuels would be burnt, which would make the US less dependent on energy imports from unstable regions, even though about 1 percent of US electric energy is from oil, even less from imported oil. Instead the reality was more fuel consumption in order to back up the intermittent nature of wind which is neither reliable nor dispatchable.”
A study of Colorado and Texas wind energy based on measured hourly (in case of Colorado) and 1/4-hourly (in case of Texas) power plant operations data of fuel consumption and CO2, NOx, and SOx emissions, proved that wind energy on the grid needs to be balanced with energy from other plants, preferably quick ramping CCGTs” (combined cycle gas turbine)” and OCGTs” (open-cycle gas turbine), “to ensure grid stability and, that this balancing produces more CO2/KWh, more NOx/KWh, and more SOx/KWh (from coal plants on the grid), and uses more fuel/KWh with wind energy on the grid than without.”
The Minnesota Public Utilities Commission knows that the State Industrial Noise Standard used to site wind turbines does not measure low-frequency turbine noise, and therefore fails to protect the health of people living where wind projects are built. Wind turbines daily prove their devastating effect on birds and bats necessary for a robust eco-system. Please help us protect our homes and children from out of state wind farm developers.
Willem Post’s full article and profile is at theenergycollective.com/willem-post/64492/wind-energy-reduces-co2-emissions-few-percent.
Kevin and Barb Wenninger
Winthrop
URL to article: https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2013/10/01/what-experts-not-selling-turbines-say/