We Don't Need No Stinking Giant Fans

Wind power - a rent seeking scam foisted on the scientifically challenged by fraudsters closely
aligned with the private financial interests of those with the ear of the government of the day.

The German experience would send anyone with the least bit of
honesty running like mad to get away from such a boondoggle..

Forget about $4-20 trillion or more cost to build the wind turbines (real costs can easily be 2-10 times higher than estimates - see gun registry, The Big Dig, e-health). Ignore the cost of transmission, wind turbines short life-cycle, storm/security risks, the difficulty of maintenance and repair. Pretend that windmills pop out of the ground fully formed and do not require massive amounts of rare earth metals and produce tonnes of carbon dioxide during manufacturing and require tonnes of cement to hold them in place in the seabed.

But, but what about all of the endangered species that live in the Atlantic Ocean along the eastern seaboard? Don't the carbon rationers care about the cod, the rare turtles or threatened whales. Are these the same people that worry about animal conservation islands, polar bears and re-wilding large expanses of land? What do they think of the environmental impact due to huge banks of windmills stretching a couple thousand miles long and a few miles deep?

I got an email from the wind resistance folks in Ontario this morning. Apparently the OPP now accompanies turbine workers out in the countryside, because they're afraid the peasants might get all worked up and give them the stink eye, or something equally terrifying.
I guess it's all that training they got at Caledonia - you can't turn your back on them rural folks, who knows what rights they think they have!
Our formerly proud provincial force is now reduced to acting as dalton's political enforcers.

And many days there will still be no wind. And most of those will be in the middle of summer or the middle of winter.

The answer from the wind power lobbyists and the government is "Scr*w the local fauna, we've got to save world from Climate Change(TM)". Oh, and make bucketloads of money, in the process.

Environmentalists inside the loop will agree; those outside the loop will protest the destruction of wildlife habitat but will be largely ignored because a) they will be widely viewed as anti-every-kind-of-power-generation activists, and b) they would interfere with the "green" of insiders and their political cronies.

So please, let's have no tallying the numbers of deaths caused by these avian cuisinarts; no mention of changes to local wind patterns and pollen dispersion; no mention of the effect of sub-sonics on wildlife - let alone on people. But heaven forbid that a single duck should get covered in oil! That's just evil!

Just wondering out loud-

How many of those devalued homes have dead birds all over the roof?

Soon we will have a new bird in North America,

'The Canadian Wall Whopper.'

Ont AG report stated that about 86% of wind power
was generated while already in a surplus situation. Like today, excess electricity is 1095 MW, wind generated is 759, or 69% of that. The excess can be exported, as McGuinty is given to crow, but the price is only about 3.4c/kwh while the subsidy for the wind companies is 13.5c kwh.
Some days US is paid to take the surplus.
Ont ratepayers are actually partially subsidizing
electricity for NY and Michigan customers.
How exactly are these transactions helping to save the planet?

The more wind farms McScumbag and the the greenies build, the faster Ontario will go bankrupt. The Ontario voters that keep McLiar in office deserve every bit of financial pain that will soon be upon them.

5 years from now every windmill will be out of use, rusting, an ugly eyesore that will stand for decades because there won't be any money to take them down.

You know, the Wolfe Island ferry is a very nice ferry.

Martin- The Ontario government has legislated that any electricity that is to be exported must first be that generated by hydro-electric and/or nuclear.
We are giving away our cheapest and forcing domestic users to pay for the higher priced product.

From the Kingston website:
We welcome you to tour beautiful Wolfe Island - through gently rolling farmland and by the 86 majestic wind turbines of the Wolfe Island Wind Farm.
While touring the facility, remember that all wind turbines are located on private land.

Does that mean the owners willingly sold their land for these monstrosities?

$100,000 loss, who cares, Stinky McLiars offshore bank account must be squeaking it's so full of Green green.

Rick: I was unaware of such legislation; I thought that once on grid, no distinction was possible among the different generation sources. Still the result is the same cheap, green hydro electricity is being replaced by expensive wind generated power, all for the benefit of foreign consumers.
It cannot be overstated, the only beneficiaries of Ont wind energy scam are the wind companies; follow the money trail, Mike Crawley, David Peterson, George Smitherman and other Liberal enablers.

There is some hope.

In the U.K., "environmentalists" are beside themselves at the appointment to cabinet of Owen Paterson who has openly questioned the wisdom of windfarms.

The blogosphere is full of stories about studies that show windfarms to be a very poor costly source of reliable power and the fact that they probably do ZERO to lower greenhouse gas emissions if one takes into account the havoc they wreak on the grid and the need to provide back-up sources to make up for the intermittancy.

When Salazar, a few years back, announced that the Obama Administration's goal was to generate all US electricity using offshore wind farms, I crunched a few numbers.

The US currently generates about 11.5 TWh/day.

(Back-check: according to EIA.GOV, in June 2012 the US generated 361 TWh from all sources. That comes to 10.7 TWh/day on average. In 2011 the US generated 4105 TWh, which comes to 11.2 TWh/day on average.)

There are 24 hours in a day. That means the US needs an installed generation capacity of around 500 GW. Of course, power consumption is highly cyclical and varies greatly throughout the day. Say peak capacity demand is around 1000 GW.

The capacity factor for offshore wind turbines in Denmark (and Jutland is an incredibly windy place) is about 22%. Let's be generous and assume 25% (Ontario's wind generators are managing about 8% these days). That means you need to install 4000 GW of nameplate capacity.

The big Vestas turbines used at offshore sites in Denmark have a nameplate capacity of 2 MW. You need 2,000,000 of them. Siting restrictions specify a minimum of 500 m between turbines. The US coastline from Grand Manaan to Miami is about 2500 km. So north-to-south, you can squeeze in 5,000 turbines. So you'll need 400 rows of 5,000 turbines. Those rows will stretch from the beach to about 200 km out to sea.

The installation cost for a 2 MW offshore turbine in Denmark is about $5M USD. So we're talking $10T just to install all of these turbines. Of course, that's in water 14 metres deep in the North Sea. 90 km from Cape Hatteras, the ocean floor - which is already 200 m deep - plunges to between 1800 and 2500 metres in depth.

Now see if you can find a company to install and maintain wind turbines in the North Atlantic. Next, you should ask the Captain of your average VLCC or car carrier (or for that matter, the USS RONALD REAGAN) how much he's going to enjoy running a 200 km gauntlet of spinning 80-metre turbine blades in order to put into Norfolk...

Donald, you are right. Southerners may think back to the Civil War blockade, and shiver, but at Stanford, Unicorn Living means you never have to say you're sorry.

I found the rapture of wind turbines proposal belly-convulsingly funny. The proposal essentially destroys a good chunk of the economy, shuts down all the ports, and of course, won't actually work. We would still need a lot of backup power.

But hey, what does feasibility matter to the Lords of the Ivory Tower? Furthermore, there seems to be no one in DC that is equipped to figure out what "feasability" means.

I bet the subsonic pulse comming of those montrosities will even kill fish in the area.

It's a good thing that green/sustainability tech has built in obsolescence and self destruct.

In other words sustainability technology is unsustainable

Sorry, are these the same eco-loons who object to bottom trawling because of its destructive effect on the sea bed? I guess lobsters, halibut etc are unaffected by having tons of concrete poured or dropped all over their habitat. Interesting!

Donald, the numbers are even worse than you describe. If the capacity factor of 25% derives from the fact that the wind speed is suitable for the turbines only 25% of the time, it follows, then that huge swathes of turbines will sit idle, if one does.

If the capacity factor were unrelated to wind availability, then simply having a vast excess of turbines would solve the problem, albeit at great expense. But because the capacity factor is directly related to the unreliability of wind itself, multiplying the number of turbines simply multiplies the number of idle fans during a calm spell.

Now, if the vast excess of turbines were to be widely spread across the continent, and off both shores, the ones in Oregon might run at full output while the ones in Florida were idle. Transmitting power from Oregon to Florida is not practical.

Wind power is fundamentally incompatible with a stable power grid, although on a small scale, like solar, it can be useful to users in remote areas.

Rick, Martin, that's not quite right. The Ontario government has given dispatch orders to the IESO (Independent Electicity System Operator). The dispatch orders state that the first electricity moved onto the grid is solar and wind. That means that all other forms of generation, nuclear, hydro, fossil are added on only afterwards.

This poses a problem at night. Demand drops from daytime peaks. Ontario has 18 operating nuclear reactors (plus two permanently shut at Pickering).

Nuclear reactors are intended to run non-stop at full capacity. So, if there's too much wind on the grid, nuclear reactors have to be either idled back, and there's limits as to how much of that you can do, or exported to the US for whatever you can get for it. With hydro, it's just as bad. Sell it for fractions of a penny to the US, or spill the water through the dam.

So there's a double loss. All of the excess costs for renewable energy that customers have to pay for. And all of the low cost electricity that isn't delivered to customers because of the green crap cluttering up the grid.

Gellen, no the land is leased. The owners will be stuck with the hulk at the end of its useful life.

Cdn Bacon, there's no money for decommissioning now. The lease agreements don't require the wind operators to set aside funds for decommissioning. If they go broke or walk away, the land owner is stuck with it.

It should be evident by now that the infeasibility of these wind farms can't be explained by mere incompetence anymore. Same as the gun registry, its just stealing.

Feds ignore rules and use stimulus cash to buy Chinese solar panels

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/sep/17/lambasted-chinese-solar-panels-placed-on-governmen/

cgh said: "The lease agreements don't require the wind operators to set aside funds for decommissioning. If they go broke or walk away, the land owner is stuck with it."

Good thing really tall towers come down a lot easier than they go up, eh? ~|:)

These wind farm nut cases are everywhere. The other day I was driving through Halkirk AB. They have a big wind development going on there east of town. The local ranchers must be thrilled.

Prediction: 20 years from now these things will be rusting hulks. Dominating the landscape soviet style. Monuments to stuipidity.

I realize the AGW true believers are suckers for a good con so I wonder if the same types would fall for a windmills are slowing the rotation of the earth con. Could be a money maker maybe even a Nobel prize or two.....
Well the next thing you know old Joe's a millionaire,
Kin folk said Joe move away from there,
Said some warm tropical island is the place you otta be

Phantom, the hard and costly part is getting the foundation out. Think of a chunk of concrete about the size of four school buses.

Saw a video on youtube taken by a resident on Wolfe Island showing all the trucks driving by their place on a gravel road (think clouds of dust) at the beginning of the process of building those foundations. Truckload after truckload after truckload. Even if the towers come down, that concrete will be there forever.

OK - so expensive (probably ridiculously expensive) resort properties lose value between 2008 (before the insanity that was the credit melt-down) and today, and you blame one thing that isn't the credit melt down.

Not saying wind farms help. But in the land of "all things being equal" I think you are missing a few variables.

Zendo Deb;

I haven't seen any property values drop 100K anywhere in Ontario due to the 'credit meltdown'. Believe me, I'm watching and waiting.

I have can offer a unique 'aerial perspective' as I have a job that allows me to see Wolfe island for about 45 minutes a year for the last 6 or 7 years. In that time it went from an island with beautiful beaches, farms and waterfront property to a place you can't get any farther than 1/2 mile from a 300 ft diameter bird/bat chopper. The first time I flew over it I actually thought 'Wow, put this on the short list of places to retire." I've had some second thoughts since then.

If you're looking for a land where "all things are equal", Deb, you better inhale a little deeper.

I can offer, not 'have can'.

"But in the land of "all things being equal" I think you are missing a few variables."

A quick look at cottage prices will put the lie to your assumption here. I've been waiting for the economy to affect those prices, and I'm still waiting. They haven't budged. Except apparently on Wolfe Island.

CGH, once the eyesore tower is down the foundation would make a nice base for a barn or shop building, don't you think? They're big enough, for sure.

ahhh good Ole McGuintys Green plan. Having lived in Barrie for a cpl years and read the articles in the NP (Ontario's Power Trip), & being fully aware of the financial disasters these have been in places like Spain...ther is only one place Ontario is going and that is down...too bad, but much blame can be laid on the 10m idiots that live there for voting Dolton back time and again.

Phantom: Possibly they would serve as a granary foundation, except that most operators want their buildings grouped together, not scattered in the fields. They would not have the need for 4 or 5 such foundations. Most foundations will be their permanently, I believe.