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2009-06-06 -Signs, Portents, and the Weather-

US Wind Energy Industry Installs Over 2,800 MW In First Quarter

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Posted by 3dc 2009-06-06 16:37|| || Front Page|| [1 views ] Top

#1 I noticed something a little funny about the figures.

If you take 28,206 MW and divide it among 8,000,000 homes you get 3.52 KW of "wind power" supplied per home.

The average usage per home based on typical consumers in the US is about 1.2 Kw . My electric bill averages to about 29 KW-HR per day.

What this means is that wind power has a duty cycle such that it delivers only 35% of peak plant capacity on average. Or put another way, you would need 3 times as many wind power plants all things being equal as you would need for conventional nuclear, gas or coal plants which typically operate near high capacity for the bulk of their lifetimes.

Oh, yes, and wind power has been subsidized in the past through various government tax incentives to the tune of about 19 cents on the dollar.

So wind is inefficient, unreliable, economically unsustainable but its the wave of the future?

Posted by WTF 2009-06-06 18:21|| 2009-06-06 18:21|| Front Page Top

#2 in San Diego County - the Indian Reservations have taken the lead - most are East-County Mountain-based, and they've been building wind towers like crazy along I-8 (the winds get high there)

Posted by Frank G">Frank G 2009-06-06 18:52|| 2009-06-06 18:52|| Front Page Top

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