Bay State ratepayers and taxpayers - already footing the $2 billion-plus bill to plant 130 Cape Wind turbines in Nantucket Sound - will have to cough up an additional $66 million to dismantle the structures when they eventually break down, newly revealed state filings show.
The controversial project, strongly back by Gov. Deval Patrick and inching ever closer to final government approval, will probably last only about 25 years before they need to be torn down.
This is one of those things that I'm really torn on. On the one hand, that champion of the environment himself, Ted Kennedy, wanted no part of the Cape Wind project, fearing that it would decrease the property values on his multi-million dollar Hyannis compound. The tireless voice of the common man opposed an alternative to coal or nuclear energy based solely on "sight pollution" - that he might be able to catch a glimpse of the turbines from his palatial estate. On the other hand, just as a matter of principle, if "Cadillac Deval" supports it, there's got to be something wrong with it.
The project itself has been in and out of court, with the strangest assortment of foes and friends to come down the pike since, well, forever. The usual ivory tower leftists oppose it for the same reasons as our late
But I think the surest sign that this is a bad idea is that it needs such heavy subsidies - if wind power truly were the way to go, surely private enterprise would have wind turbines over ever rise and valley.
That is all.
8 comments:
Bingo. If wind power was such a great idea, it wouldn't cost three times what alternative sources cost (we'll be paying thirty-something cents per kWH).
Plus the tear-down fee.
PLUS the overcapacity, for when the wind doesn't blow very hard. Or at all. Or too much, and the mills have to be shut down.
Why do Leftists hate the poor so much? It's a mystery.
Visited the wind farm at the tip of Nova Scotia Last year.
You need to get up close to truly apprecate the size of these things. They're huge....Blade lengh is ~ 80 ft. Very little noise, just a whoosh as the blade goes by. Rotation speed is maybe 10 RPM......but the speed of the tip of the blade can approach 300 mph.
The smaller units have variable pitch blades, but the forces are too great to do that on the bigger units, so instead they install different pitch blades on groups of units.......as a result, only 1/3 of the units can be used for each specfic range of wind speeds. As the wind speed increases they shut down some units and bring others on line. ....and if the wind speed is too high they need to shut them all down.
Catastophic failure happens at too high a rotational speed.
......But the biggest problem is that the wind blows when it wants to instead of when the electic grid needs more power. .....so it adds power randomly, instead of on demand, causing the grid managers to adjust other power sources to compensate, makeing thoose sources less effecient. It's hard to sockpile electricy.
Basicly.....wind power - Free Fuel - Great idea
Implementation -- Not so much
I can't wait to get on the bow of my Whaler and go swing my sword at them.
It's not what it cost now it's what it will cost then fossil fuel gets more expensive and it will.
The power industry is trying to solve the problem of rising demand, NIMBY,
and costs to create new sources (of any type).
One of the cost creators is Not In My Back Yard (NIMBY). By fobbing the problem on others the poor lose, the generation is moved further from where it's needed incurring transmission losses and oh yes lawyers
to work through it.
All power construction has tear down cost, lest we forget the really old nuke plant that was decommissioned.
Yankee Rowe for those that forget.
Then there were the ones like
Shoreham LI NY that cost 6 billion to build and was stopped before generating one commercial watt of power (NIMBY) then decommissioned in 1994 and will take how much to scrap?
The green huggy types have points but at some point we have to say BUT, is it really that bad? Is the sky really raining dead birds?
Same crap as cell towers, Everyone wants their Iphone/android/cellphone whatever to work but NIMBY.
Unfortunately it's not only here in MA.
Eck!
$66M for disassembly ? In another 25 years we should be set to handle it. Stuffed animals on the blades and we stage the blogshoot on a partyboat offshore....
My husband and I just bought a house, and right away started looking at the cost of installing a small wind turbine and/or solar panels so we can tell the power company to GTH (we're in upstate NY not MA, but we still have National Greed, er, Grid). The costs of the currently available units though are out of this world, even for smaller residential units, you need a commercial budget to even be able to consider it. There's hope on the horizon though for the private home owner, there's a couple companies that will (hopefully!) have products on the market next year that will be easier on the budget for the average home owner.
One of my Favorite movies is "Cast a Giant Shadow". I love the scene where, when faced with the dilemma of building a back road into Jerusalem, Kirk Douglas picks up a rock, throws it off the edge of the trail, and says to the Scottish Engineer, "I've started, now you finish it".
What's that got to do with Wind Turbines, you ask? Follow along and I'll explain.
1) Build lots of Wind Turbines near the Coasts.
2) Add a pump to them to move Sea Water to the Shore.
3) Run the Sea Water to the Osmosis Filtration Plant, (like Perth, Australia has), and use the Electricity to power it.
4) Salt can be stored for use later, the Fresh water moves into the drinking supply/agricultural supply.
5) Tap off some of the Fresh water to an Electrolysis Unit (like we used to use on the Nuke Subs), separate into Oxygen and Hydrogen using the electricity from the Turbine.
6) Vent the Oxygen into the Air ( or save it for Industrial /Medical uses) and ship the Hydrogen to a Storage Farm.
7) Fill Hydrogen Powered trucks with the Fuel to take to your local filling station, where you purchase it to run a Honda Clarity.
8) Multiply 10,000 times along all the coasts.
9) Tell OPEC to Screw themselves, because we just saved our oil supply for our uses several hundred year into the future, and tell the Tree Huggers to Screw themselves because huge windmills have been used in Holland for hundreds of years, and the birds seem to do okay over there.
10) If you need juice when the wind is down in that area, take it from a clean coal plant in Ohio (500 year supply within the U.S. borders), otherwise use what you generate.
That's my plan. ALL the Capital Equipment is available off the shelf right now, or we could put Americans back to work in American Factories building any extra stuff that is needed.
I've thrown the first rock, someone out there finish it.
Wait. If I had a summer home* on the cape I would WANT the wind turbines there to REDUCE my property values. Less value means less property tax. It's not like I would ever sell the family mansion, thats unfathomable.
* I wouldn't. My life goal is to be eccentric (instead of merely weird). I would have a winter home on the Cape.
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