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Windmills for electricity
Frank, there are other reasons for them. I understand that they get DEC credits to offset polution in other areas.
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Windmills for electricity
I am on an adhoc committee to write the local ordinance for windmills. Much of the problem around the state is a result of companies building the mills and not compensating the communities for the intrusion. Locally, we are not going to let that occur.
We are working with Tom Gulisano's company, which will cut the municipality into the game to reduce either electric rates or property taxes or both.
Personally, I love the idea of the on-site mills for rural residential use. The issue now is with the environmental wackos that are protesting the death of the birds that fly into them. I truly believe these people are total fruitcake/socialists.
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Windmills for electricity
Cutter; I'm hoping not to show mu ignorance here but, I've heard the term "adhoc" a million times. What in the world does it mean? Frank.
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Windmills for electricity
Frank,
Ad hoc, or ad-hoc.......
(Webster may not agree with my definition.)
Informal, impromptu, or for a "one time" purpose.
When speaking in construction terms.......Often slapped together from scrap materials, to serve a specific purpose, then destroyed. "I constructed an ad-hoc brace to support to the concrete chute."
In general terms, the word(s) "ad hoc" simply means that the project or the committee (in this case) was slapped together for a special purpose, usually in response to some emergency or disaster --- where acting quickly takes priority over holding elections, or sorting through resumes to find qualified people.
Hope that helps.
Joel
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Windmills for electricity
Cut my taxes or light bill in half and you can put one in my back yard, well maybe not that close but we have to do something about our energy supply. There are eighty eight of them going up about 15 mils north of me. Every time I go past the two we have had for ten years I see it as at least a small middle finger pointing at opec. we can cut oil and gas with windmills and they don't pollute at all. It will lower demand for natural gas cause power plants are leaning towards natural gas and away from coal for pollution reasons. In time we will be making real clean syntheic diesel fuel with coal and it is not more expensive with coal if crude stays above 60 bucks. We have to get tough with these idiots that cutter is talking about cause it will mostly kill geese and there are too many anyways. They don't want wind power, nuclear, coal or natural gas. Problem is there ain't nothin else. They use just as much electricity as anyone.Cut their power off and they will be the first to scream to high heaven. Wind power all the way, depressed states hit hard will benefit. The midwest plains is nothing short of a wind storm some days. Wind mills are expensive but when the windmill is payed off the power is less than anyhting, with no pollution! One windmill powers 3,000 people by us and they are small compared to the new ones going up!
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Windmills for electricity
You guys explained it perfectly.
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Windmills for electricity
Ihookem,
These large wind generators are very, very expensive.
On a recent radio show, here in North Dakota, they had on several guests who specialize in this area of energy production.
The original cost to build a large wind turbine is in the millions of dollars. It will take nearly 10 years of constant electrical generation to pay for the cost of the purchase. The generator, itself, which sits at the top of the tower, has a life expectancy of 20 years. the cost to replace the worn out generator is about 1 million dollars.
The return on the investment is less than 10 percent. They are being constructed by big corporations only for the tax breaks, which tax breaks will disappear once Congress decides that they are losing too much revenue. In the short run, the tax breaks are very profitable.
Joel
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There are many factors that don't usually get factored into the calculations of what something costs.
The advocates (highly paid professional talking heads usually) of choices like coal or gas fired steam plants, or nuclear power, will often quote the fact that the "per KW" cost of a windmill is higher than 'their' method.
The big thing they don't like to talk about though is the cost of getting the power to the consumers. The cost to construct a transmission corridor is astronomical these days.
To complicate things further, in this day & age the NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) mentality is very prevalent.
All this together means that IF nukes or other generating plants are built, they must be located a long way from the consumers, and a VERY spendy transmission line built to get the power to those who need it.
With wind power the concept is to locate the rather innocuous wind mills near the demand and avoid the costs of transportation.
Wind power also offers a level scalability that is not possible with a nuke or most other options.
I'm not sure where the 20 year life expectancy comes from for a wind turbine, there was a show on the History Channel the other day on high performance lubricants, in it they were talking about windmills. The information they offered, and that I've read & heard elsewhere, was that with proper maintenance these things have a nearly infinite life span.
Best of luck.
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Windmills for electricity
Murf, you bring up a real important point that I hadn't thought of on the power line issue. I've been to a big hydro electric dam and drive past a nuke plant once and a while that is about 15 miles as the crow flies from us. Just to get those big lines over the horizon would be mega millions. I quizzed the son I speak of who is into the windmill thing about the lifespan of them. The basis of his job is to represent a mojor oil company as the service advisor to the power company that owns the windmills. His company has the contract to supervise, supply and monitor all lubrication aspects of those things. Yes they cost millions, so service and maintenence is very high priority. For example they pull an oil sample from the gearcases every month and have it analysed at their lab to check for any impuritys, traces of bearing metal, etc, etc. They change the filters, replace any additives that may be depleted and in 99% of even the oldest units the oil has never been changed, only monitored. According to their monitoring records on the oldest units the lifetime of the generators and gearboxes is almost infinite. I would have to wonder why anyone would back away from a 10% return, (acording to a recent poster) on a commodity that has no storage costs, has no input costs, can't be shut down by strikes, or labor shortages, can't be hoarded or returned for a refund, and has a guranteded endless market. I'll ignore the NYMBY thing, bring on the endless free energy source. Frank.
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Hardwood,
As you mentioned, most of these things are owned by oil companies and other large corporations.
Why? Well, mainly for the tax breaks. The tax breaks on renewable energy sources are extremely profitable. Neither you nor I owe enough money in taxes to make such an investment profitable to us.
There is an estimated 10% return on the wind will over a period of its life-expectancy. However, with inflation at about 4% per year, these profits quickly begin to disappear.
The real profit in these things comes in the form of tax breaks, which will also disappear in time. For the time being, however, Congress is being very generous.
Oil companies, who make billions of dollars per year at the current price of oil, are now able to keep millions upon millions of tax dollars that would otherwise end up in D.C., by investing a small portion of this money into renewable energy sources.
Believe me, those oil companies don't hire thousands of accountants and lawyers just to provide them with jobs.
They've got this all figured out. And when the tax incentives come to an end, so will the windmills.
Joel
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