Gome with the Wind
March 7, 2012 7 Comments
Image via Wikipedia
Well, we really need that wind power that Obama talks about don’t? We need it so badly that the Bonneville Power Administration paid a wind farm $50 million last year to shut down their windmills. I’m sure you remember what I’ve said all along: Wind power is peaking power, if you don’t have the base power (that is dependable 24/7) all the peaking power in the world may not help. A good bit of BPA’s hydro is base power unless the Bonneville dam falls down (or the Columbia Nuclear Station goes down) but still unlimited peaking power is not the answer.
Incidentally, BPA is a Federal Agency, from Wikipedia:
The Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) is an American federal agency based in the Pacific Northwest. BPA was created by an act of Congress in 1937 to market electric power from the Bonneville Dam located on the Columbia River and to construct facilities necessary to transmit that power. Congress has since designated Bonneville to be the marketing agent for power from all of the federally owned hydroelectric projects in the Pacific Northwest. Bonneville, whose headquarters are located in Portland, Oregon, is one of four regional Federal power marketing agencies within the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE).
Presumably this $50 million will come from the ratepayers but, since this is the DOE I wouldn’t bet much on it.
From Fox News:
But hey, at least they aren’t killing bald eagles when the windmills are shut down.
Hattip to Sara at American Freedom for calling my attention to this.
Related articles
- Windfall: Keep Your Damn Windmills out of My Backyard! (seattleweekly.com)
- A Look at How Wind Turbines Work (txu.com)
- Green electricity finds few customers (junkscience.com)
- There’s a reason the modern age moved on from windmills (wattsupwiththat.com)
- Bonneville Power Administration files plan to deal with wind farm shutdowns (oregonlive.com)
About NEO
JessicaHof
NEO
The real untapped source of energy is the amount of hot air coming from the green enthusiasts who want to wish their program all the way to the finish line. These next few months cannot go fast enough for me.
It sure is, and no they can’t. Glad to see you back, Bob, sorry for the loss of your shipmate.
Thanks for that. He is certainly missed by a lot of good folks.
This story infuriated me. Tax dollars were spent to construct the windmill farms, then tax payers are stiffed again when the region has too much electricity that can’t be stored so we “pay” the operators for their losses when they shut the blades off. It takes a special kind of talent to waste money on the scale that they do in Washington.
That was very much my reaction, right after huh? what? I sort of heard this story on Fox, it didn’t really register till Sarah sent it over. Just unbelievable.
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