Tag: wind power

More on the economic damage from wind power

Germany’s push to rely on wind power and dump nuclear is hurting the economy. A few of the posts I’ve read on point:

4/22/14 – Stop These Things – Wind Power Costs send Germans back to the Stone Age – Skyrocketing electricity costs are seriously hurting poor people in Germany. Article points out 800,000 homes in Germany are off the grid because they can’t afford electricity. Article also says around 7 million households are in a place called “fuel poverty”, having to choose either heating or eating.

Continue reading “More on the economic damage from wind power”

How much of our electricity comes from solar? Rounded to nearest percent, that would be zero.

I’ve seen comments that rounded to the nearest whole percent, solar power provides 0% of our electricity.

Finally found a way to test that data.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration has an Short-Term Energy Outlook report which has a data tab.

Figure 25 shows the sources of electricity generation. In thousands of megawatt hours (that would be gigawatt hours) for 2014 and 2015: Continue reading “How much of our electricity comes from solar? Rounded to nearest percent, that would be zero.”

More on the morality of renewable energy

Fossil fuels create tremendous prosperity. Renewables can’t. Maybe somewhere someday something will be invented that can do so, but not today.

3/27 – Prof. Don Boudreaux (of Cafe Hayek) at Wall Street Journal – Fossil Fuel Free Is No Country for the Poor – Article points out a number of filthy rich people want a zero carbon emission world in 35 years. Currently all renewable energy provides around 10% of what we use in the US. Dropping the 90% of energy provided by fossil fuels would collapse the economy.

I have seen subsistence agriculture in operation during my very brief visits to Africa and Indonesia. I do not want to go there.

My father and his siblings grew up chopping wood to heat the house. Grandma used wood to cook food. My grandparents used a couple chunks of coal in the stove at night so a tiny fire would remain in the morning to get the wood started.  I do not want to go there either.

Yet that is what the superrich want for the poor of the world.

Look at what these self-appointed experts wish for: Continue reading “More on the morality of renewable energy”

More on the economic damage caused by solar and wind power

Still have more catching up to do on describing the damage caused by wind and solar power. Here are two articles on the economic disruption involved.

11/29 – Forbes – Levelized Cost of Electricity: Renewable Energy’s Ticking Time Bomb? – I don’t quite understand the whole concept, but apparently there is a new technique in circulation that cooks the cost of renewable energy.

The core error is based on the idea that there are several times a year when the cost of electricity goes skyhigh for a short time. Those peaks in prices are what makes the power plants profitable. If the electricity is not available at those minutes, the bottom line for the year suffers.

Continue reading “More on the economic damage caused by solar and wind power”

More good stuff on the Bakken – two perspectives on the local economy – 3/24

Here’s a few quick notes on interesting news from the northern side of Cowboyistan:

3/19 – Reuters Media at Dickinson Press – Some come late to the oil party: Companies more selective after low prices slows boom – Article tells story of a guy and gal who drove to Williston.

Arrived with no skills, no money, no housing, and no job.

Continue reading “More good stuff on the Bakken – two perspectives on the local economy – 3/24”

Risk of harm is bad. Certainty of harm is good. The disconnect in assessing risks of getting the energy we need.

Sometimes you just have to scratch your head wondering about the fantasmagorical world inhabited by some regulators. A good dose of ridicule might bring them back to earth, but the chances are small. I’ll give it a try anyway.

1/14 – ReWire – Report: Fracking Imperils Southern California Residents, Wildlife – A report from the California Department of Oil, Gas & Geothermal Resources concluded that any fracking in three specific oil fields in the state would have

“significant and unavoidable” environmental damage”.

There would be significant risk of damage to:

  • Air quality
  • Wildlife
  • Public and worker safety
  • Increased greenhouse emissions
  • recreational use of surrounding lands
  • transportation and traffic problems

This, in a state that is building wind turbines as fast as the rare earth minerals can be mined and the concrete can be poured to get the slice-and-dice blades spinning.

This, in a state that has a huge solar plant that is killing unknown and intentionally undercounted numbers of protected & migratory birds and wants to build many more such wing-toaster facilities.

Continue reading “Risk of harm is bad. Certainty of harm is good. The disconnect in assessing risks of getting the energy we need.”

Wind and solar not viable without massive direct subsidies

The only way that wing-toaster and slice-and-dice power plants are economically viable is with massive federal subsidies. They just can’t proceed without heavy taxpayer funding.  Here are a few of the recent articles I’ve seen making that point:

1/23 – ReWire – Developer Won’t Build Controversial Solar Plant Without Tax Incentives–

Continue reading “Wind and solar not viable without massive direct subsidies”

Wind farm owner settles criminal charges for killing 38 golden eagles and 298 other protected birds over 6 years

There was another settlement last week for a wind farm owner killing a bunch of birds.

The slaughter of eagles and other protected birds is the reason wind turbines have the well-earned title of slice-and-dicer. One pundit calls them Cuisinarts.

The Associated Press reports: Wind farm operator PacifiCorp Energy pleads guilty in bird deaths at wind farms in Wyoming.

The Seven Mile Hill and Glenrock/Rolling Hills projects in Wyoming are owned and run by PacifiCorp Energy. The owner has entered a guilty plea to two counts of breaking the Migratory Bird Treaty Act.

Officials have counted the dead birds at those two facilities since 2009. How high is the count of shredded birds? The article says:

  • 38 golden eagles
  • 336 other protected birds

I think that count is incorrect. According to the criminal information complaint filed in the case, which is available in the federal PACER system, the total bird count at the two facilities is 336, which includes the 38 golden eagles. The two counts consist of one count for each facility.

Continue reading “Wind farm owner settles criminal charges for killing 38 golden eagles and 298 other protected birds over 6 years”

Update on wind and solar plants in California and North Dakota – solar #34

A few updates on a few slice/dice/fry projects, as one observer calls them:

California

11/4 – ReWire – “Dead” Solar Plant May Rise From Grave – The joint owners of the Palen Solar Electric Generating System pulled their plan recently. One of the owners (Abengoa Solar) will buy out the other (Brightstar), revise the design, and resubmit their plan. That is the announced goal. The wing-toasting facility will be redesigned with one tower and the ability to store electricity using molten salt.

This would be Palen plan #3. The first was parabolic solar. The second was 3 warming towers. This will be only one solar collecting tower plus storage capacity.

10/30 – ReWire – Wind Project Pulled from San Bernardino Mountains – Continue reading “Update on wind and solar plants in California and North Dakota – solar #34”

Update on wind power (solar #33)

More on the economic, environmental, and ecological devastation caused by solar and wind.

Today let’s look at two articles on the economic damage from wind power: massive tax subsidies which look likely for another year and cost of wind-provided electricity rising.

11/30 – Tim Phillips in Wall Street Journal – Wind Power is Intermittent, But Subsidies Are Eternal – Check out the article for a brief overview of the massive corporate welfare found in wind power subsidies.

The Production Tax Credit provides slice-and-dice farms a 2.3 cent tax credit for each kilowatt-hour produced.

Continue reading “Update on wind power (solar #33)”

Update on solar and wind power – solar #33

More on the economic, environmental, and ecological devastation caused by solar and wind power. This post discusses flaws in the master plan to develop wind and solar in the California desert.

Update 11/18: Chris Clarke informs us that You Have More Time to Comment on That Desert Energy Plan. The deadline for comment has been extended from January 9 to February 23, which is an additional six weeks. He points out you better get started. At 8,000 pages, you need to get through 800 pages a day to make sure your comment is thorough and responsive enough that the regulators can’t just throw away your letter.

10/23 – ReWire – California’s Renewable Energy Plan Misses the Point of Renewable Energy – Chris Clarke shreds what logic and rational thought went into the plans to develop the California desert into a massive solar and wind farm.

The 6,000+ page Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan is essentially an EIR to develop the desert starting from east of LA and San Diego all the way to the Nevada border. Previously mentioned this plan here.

Mr. Clarke explains the goal of the plan is to develop 20,000 MW of renewable energy in the desert by 2020.

Mr. Clarke says that is equivalent to an additional Continue reading “Update on solar and wind power – solar #33”

Update on solar power – #31

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(Photo by James Ulvog; one of three towers is in operation.)

Here are a few articles on the down side of solar energy: more categories of environmental damage / bulldozer moving forward a 6,000+ page plan for desert use / late coverage of cancelling another environmental disaster.

9/29 – PA Pundits International – Deroy Murdock – Earth-Friendly Energy Is Anything But – Article surveys the devastation caused by wind and solar power. In addition to many issues I’ve discussed on this blog, the article points out two more.

Continue reading “Update on solar power – #31”

Update on solar and wind power – solar #30

Here are a few articles on the economic problems and environmental damage from wind energy: survey of broad issues, intermittency, & pushback.

10/1 – Why Not Wind – Brief summary of the shortcomings of wind plants – Check out the full article for detail comments on each of the following key points:

It’s energy from the weather.

Turbines kill birds and bats.

Wind industrializes open space.

Such and such a country got 85% of its electricity from wind.

That would be Germany and that stat is only true at whatever peak of the day the wind is blowing strongest. Average production is a small percent of that artificial stat. Continue reading “Update on solar and wind power – solar #30”

Update on wind power – (solar #29)

Here are a few articles on the environmental damage from wind energy: reclamation of wind farms, damage from Germany’s enegiewende program, and research on taller wind turbines.

9/3 – Dickinson Press – PSC orders financial pledge for cost of reclaiming wind farms – Two wind farms in North Dakota have reached the 10 year point in their operation. That is the time when the corporate shells that operate the slice-and-dicers must post a financial guarantee from their corporate parents to cover the costs of removing the blades, towers, foundations, and transmission lines at the end of their estimated 35 year life.

Why are guarantees necessary?

Continue reading “Update on wind power – (solar #29)”

Saving a few hundred sparrows doesn’t make up for killing a brown pelican. Solar #25

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(Photo by James Ulvog)

(Update: this is actually solar #27. Oops.)

One of the entertainingly deceptive arguments defending the number of birds killed by wind turbines and solar farms is that cats kill far more birds every year.

Various reports suggest upwards of a billion birds nationwide are taken out by cats each year. The intentionally misleading argument is essentially that the tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of birds taken out by renewable energy don’t count because outside cats are responsible for so much more damage in the avian world.

Funding spay & neuter clinics as mitigation for dead migratory birds

So that you don’t think I’m making this up, check out the AP’s Big Story report: Emerging Solar Plants Scorch Birds in Mid-Air.

This major AP report discusses the thousands of birds killed at the Ivanpah facility south of the Nevada-California border on the way to Las Vegas.

Over 300,000 heliostats focus sunlight on three towers 400 feet in the air. The temperature around the towers reportedly hits 700 degrees.

Nobody knows how many birds are killed by the towers and die on site. Current methodology for tallying those fatalities is seriously undercounting the number.

Nobody has the foggiest clue how many birds are mortally wounded and land outside the perimeter of the site since there is zero effort to count them.

Nobody understands the causality of why so many birds are dying.

Scroll down to the last six paragraphs of the article. Some key comments:

Biologists don’t know of any way to reduce the number of birds that get their wings toasted.

The project owner is offering to pay $1.8 million to compensate for the expected bird deaths. The net impact of that settlement would be issuing a kill-all-you-want permit that gets them off the hook for all future birds that die at the site.

The company is also offering to fund projects to spay and neuter domesticated cats.

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(Photo by James Ulvog of a threat to pelicans and migratory ducks that is every bit as serious as a couple of heliostats in the desert. Also as much of a threat to the golden eagle and California condor populations as any wind turbine. Check out the vicious eyes, fangs, and claws of a deadly bird killer.)

Continue reading “Saving a few hundred sparrows doesn’t make up for killing a brown pelican. Solar #25”