yes with windpower handling basicly 1% of the base load and all windpower requiring by law 100% redundancy plus add the subsidies and the usual government research money. failures like this will be routine. only NAmerica is going to hobble themselves with this kind of stupid decrees whilst China pops in a dirty coal plant every week.

Whats amazing is,that as we add MILLIONS of (imported)people to our populations every few years,we're getting more and more brownouts,blackouts and power failures but no real concrete solutions.

Ted Kennedy has only himself to blame for the lack of wind available for power generation:

He personally sucked out all the moving air with his impassioned (but sober?) solo in support of Barak Hussein Obama:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sdl86KNkt_M

Even if you think he sings better than he could swim in Chappaquiddick, he still rates an F-.

I drove through California to Arizona a few years ago and saw the large wind power "farm" near the east border of that state. I was awe struck at the expanse of it. You could not help but notice that over 50% of the fans or sails were still?
An article in one of the local papers described the tremendous loss of bird life the sails or fans caused. Remove brackets ().
(http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5j9I4Fmi5IkQBKu0MkaUV8SF_BQ7AD8V37JVO0)

Wind power sucks and blows at the same time. Too much wind bad, too little wind bad, and then there are the failures, accidents and deaths that the media seems to overlook, plus wind power isn't very reliable.
http://www.windaction.org/documents/6362

Denmark faces similar problems. They have a lot of generating capacity turned over to wind turbines. Unfortunately when there is no wind they have to import power from Germany. When there is too much they have to export it. A time will come when either they have no wind and the Germans have no spare capacity or they have too much wind and no one else wants their power. The sooner this wind turbine fad ends the better in my book.

a windy day without power

http://youtube.com/watch?v=c3FZtmlHwcA

Yeah, civilization runs on reliable baseload power not wind-driven, bird killing, noisy, unreliable fans.

The only place that wind is intelligent is
A. You don't need much power
B. You are too far from a real powerplant to interconnect.
C. Oil/Coal/Gas is too expensive.
D. You have so much wind you can't stand up.

"as we add MILLIONS of (imported)people to our populations every few years,we're getting more and more brownouts,blackouts and power failures...

Posted by: Mr.g at February 29, 2008 12:32 AM

We're also getting whiteouts. Let's not be racist.

He can drink to that! [hic]

"only NAmerica is going to hobble themselves with this kind of stupid decrees whilst China pops in a dirty coal plant every week."

Europe has far more than we do (they build the things.)

As usual, the cure is worse than the desease. Just like rainforest depleting "bio-diesel" and poor people-starving "ethanol."

Not being a native Texan, I would describe large areas of the state as "bleak". The addition of the bird blenders actually improves the landscape.

Wind turbines are without doubt the ugliest blights you could possibly put on the landscape.

I think they are absolutely hideous, and the larger they get, the uglier they become.

Once pristine vistas are being completely spoiled by these things. I hate em!

On topic: Although I'm generally opposed to Eco-nuts, I would very much prefer to live near the wind turbines rather than a coal mine. One of the little secrets nobody wants to talk about (because Sen. Grand-Kleagle Robert Byrd will cut off U.S. federal funds if you do) is the fact that coalmine trailings are radioactive.

Off topic: I love your blog. I enjoy your rants against your Orwellian Human Rights Commissions, and hope that you and your countrymen succeed in ridding Canada of these monstrousities.

>

why dont you check out the nearest rock...or your basement..
the entire earth is radioactive...some more than others..

The word is "tailings"

As with everything else in life wind power has it's advantages and disadvantages. Those of us who live in Manitoba enjoy a relative wealth of cheap hydro electric power on a per capita basis. We don't really need wind generation other than as a political gimmick for our not so green provincial govt. By the same token we do have one state of the art wind farm and I have to admit the towers are impressive technology to behold.

When the Doer govt decided to go ahead with it's wind power program they called for plans to develop 300 mega watts. Or in other words 3 separate fields of 60 odd towers. There were over 80 applicants and the three fields have now been given the power purchase agreements and are in the pre-construction stage. The future stratagem is to develop 6 more fields subject to export demand.

As frequent visitors to California the wife and I have been through the fields at Palm Springs and on the Tehachapi Pass east of Bakersfield many times. Those fields don't bear any resemblance to the Manitoba field and most of the equipment is totally different. For one thing the Manitoba towers turn at only 14rpm and the old lattice work towers which made perfect bird habitat are gone. The Manitoba towers have rotational ability and although they are strategically situated to capture the prevailing winds they can turn in any direction required. The whole field can be shut down remotely in seconds. I toured the field a year ago as a member of the provincial planning association and stood below the turning blades chatting with an elderly reeve. Our conversation was normal with a slight whooshing in the background. The field operates on an average of 41% efficiency.

One of the major national wind farm developers has about 60,000 acres under 40 year lease in our area. Speaking as a municipal councillor confronted with the many and assorted challenges that the office presents I have to admit that of all the developments that could come to your jurisdiction, (hog barns,10,000 head feedlots, etc.) wind farms are one of the more desirable ones. These are 300 million dollar developments and the resulting tax base alone almost matches the farmland assessment. Small wonder that any of the wind farm workshops that I have attended at either the municipal or zoning level its been standing room only.

I don't make the claim that wind power is some sort of miracle solution. Any Hydro man will tell you that they are only an auxiliary power source and a somewhat gimmicky one at that. However, on the other hand they are here and here to stay.

" ... a somewhat gimmicky one at that. "

mmmm, and just who put up the money to build the WF ? Man Hydro ?

Has a clean up bond been posted if/when the subsidies stop ?

I too, have just witnessed the Palm Springs WP fields -- periodically seeing them during Feb. Never were they all turning. Never were even most turning. Sometimes they were all stopped. Mostly, just a few were turning.

I wonder how small a percentage were in phase even when they were turning ? 60hz

About 8 years ago I also witnessed a delapitated, run-down, non functional WF in Hawaii (Lands End, Big Island) Hope the land owner had a decommission-clean up bond in hand.

All they would have needed is to solve the problem is the windbaggery from one speech each by Ted Kennedy, John Kerry, Barack Hussein Obama and Hillary Clinton. That ought to power all the turbines in the Lone Star State!

(BTW, did you guys know there's a brigade of Canajun troops training in Texas at the Army base near El Paso? Apparently the terrain is pretty much a clone of that in Af-stan where the Canadian troops will go going shortly. No doubt, they'll do some serious Taliban butt-kicking when they get there! Check out that topic at the milblog The Torch, at http://toyoufromfailinghands.blogspot.com/ )

Wind power; the fuel of moonbats. Except in very limited circumstances, wind generation is nothing more than politically correct, government subsidized, envirobabble. What value is it if it isn't there when you need it unless it's backed up by something else? If you can store that something else cheaply (e.g. in hydro dam forebay), you might be able to make use of a little wind. Inevitably, though, politically correct governments and regulators want otherwise sensible power producers and distributors to develop much more wind than the forebays can back up. Much of the time this stuff is worth nothing to anybody except rabid environmentalists who simultaneously and irrationally hate both carbon dioxide and birds.

Have you ever wondered why sometimes wholesale power markets have negative prices for spot energy transfers? Transmission congestion can be one reason, but sometimes it's just because the wind is blowing but it costs money to turn down baseload nukes and coal plants. Enviro-nuts think this is a good thing because it will encourage you folks out there to run your clothes washers at three o'clock in the morning and justify further development of this moonbat fuel.

RE: Wind Power. Once again, I'm not a wind power rep so I'm looking at things from an arms length position but here's what I think I know after many meetings, presentations and workshops, etc.

The existing wind farm at St. Leon, Manitoba was built with private funds by the co-developers and landowners. The province was not involved in the actual construction or development. (although they like to ride along on the coat tails of others) However, due to the fact that Manitoba Hydro occupies a monopoly position to issue "power purchase agreements" to buy power from wind farms, developers are strictly at their mercy and by extention that of the provincial govt.

I can't see things from the perspective of the monopoly purchaser, only from the perspective of the captive supplier. The St.Leon farm was the test bed for Manitoba and the leases that followed on for other wind projects were substantially different. I have heard plenty of criticism about the St. Leon leases and in particularly the possible decommissioning of the field in 25-40 years. Our particular proposed local project carries a specific clause in the 26 page lease covering the decommissioning of the field.(Removal to at least 4 feet below grade}. Not so at St. Leon and I can't speak for other projects since they are all different

Our local wind developer (Greenwing Energy) was one of the co-developers at St. Leon. In addition to our project they also are developing a similar farm at Stanley, North Dakota. I've had discussions with the landowners group there and they advise that they have 3 energy suppliers to compete for their power. Whether the wind power purchased in ND is subsidized by taxpayers or not, I can not say. Ditto in Manitoba.

The local Greenwing reps who staged a townhall meeting (which was packed to the rafters btw)are all retired crusty old Manitoba Hydro linemen. They are much more qualified than I to speak to the technical issues of wind power and hydro generation.

Is wind power the fuel of moonbats? I don't share that view and as I mentioned before I don't consider it a miracle cure. It doesn't pollute the air we breathe and is provided free of charge by Mother Nature and best of all we own it.In the years to come we'll need all of the power sources that we can find.

mr g, we haven't built a power plant in years and we just keep building homes and offices etc. power failures will have to be accepted, especially by our green liberal socialist politians. when their families die in hospital as a result of no power, things will change.

Notice that I did not say that wind has no place anywhere at any time. Where it can be backed up economically (and hydro power is the best possible backup); it may have a place. But back up is not free, it has an opportunity cost. The ability of hydro generated power to follow load is in demand from lots of folks, including those in interconnected utilities who have a range of other fuels including wind, coal and nuke. I don't know what Manitoba Hydro is giving up to be able to shape the intermittent wind power at St. Leon, but it is something. Further, the more wind you add to a system, the less the ability of the hydro stations to back it up. Politicians and regulators love to look green, so they will always want to add more wind than is optimal.

Also, my understanding is that the federal government also subsidizes wind power although the intent is that it not be subsidized ad infinitum.

Wind power in North Dakota and Minnesota may also be backed up by hydro in Manitoba or, more likely, by natural gas turbines, which are the next most flexible sources of backup. Once upon a time, adding natural gas fired generators made sense. That was when gas was cheap and we thought we had lots of it. Today, it makes more sense to use natural gas to heat homes and businesses at 90% efficiency than to generate power at 40% efficiency. However, coal and nuke are good baseload energies for power generation, but they are not good for load following. So, natural gas is the choice for backup where hydro is not available. The more wind you add, the more gas turbines you have to build. I'm not sure that this makes sense. And even if you can back up indefinitely, wind generation is not without its own environmental issues. Like Kate, I'm in the Ted Kennedy camp on this one; I see these towers as a blight on the countryside. Apparently a lot of folks in Europe do as well. http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/04/04/1081017039062.html

Hey felis, your points are all highly informative and well taken. You obviously know a lot more about maintaining power grids than I do. The theory that was presented to our town hall meeting by the Greenwing reps was simply put: by day hydro electric would maintain the grid during peak load. By night wind power would maintain the grid while the dams replenished their supply of water.

Maybe these old hydro linemen were hucksters but they seemed to know their onions. As a municipal rep I don't have a big stake in the technical minutiae of these matters. On the other hand I have to be pragmatic and do what I consider best for the ratepayers. I do this by contacting various sources and trying to make informed decisions on subjects that I may or may not know much about. Being a railroad engineer this is a pretty steep learning curve for me! On the other hand, any of the information that I have been able to gather is that the previous project has been highly successful. In fact, the only naysayers that I have come across were a contrarian farmer and the aerial applicators association.

I don't know if you're familiar with the St. Leon field. I've had the opportunity to travel through it both by day and by night. The towers are spread out in clusters of 4 or 5 with 1/4 mile spacings between towers. The 63 tower field is spread out over 2 municipalities so you don't get the hedgerow effect that I've seen elsewhere. I guess the average density would be about 1 per square mile. Their height and lazy 14rpm movement give them a sort of easy grace and whether or not they are ugly is in the eye of the beholder. I've discussed the development with municipal reps from that area and they state that it's the best thing that ever happened.

We attended a presentation made to the zoning reps in St. Leon by the Algonquin field boss. I asked him point blank what was the main complaint he had received from local residents vis a vis the wind farm. Without hesitation he remarked that the main complaint came from landowners didn't have any towers on their property but wanted some.