HCA seeks to create its own power
|
| Posted
:
Wed, 10 Jan 2007 01:35:01 GMT |
| By
:
Energy News Editor |
| Category
:
Environment |
| News Alerts by
Email ( click
here ) |
|
|
|
|
|
HAZLETON, Pa., Jan. 9 PennFutures' wind capacity testing at Hazleton City Authority's treatment plant in Pennsylvania is almost completed, the Standard Speaker reported. Randy Cahalan, HCA manager said that as the tests are finished the capacity is better than expected. More wind power would mean cheaper electric bills for residents. PennFuture is in the process now of analyzing the information collected at the wind-testing tower site. The testing, which began in August, is being done to see if there is enough wind to generate some of HCA's energy on-site. Robert Markee, of Community Energy, said that in the best-case scenario, turbines would provide electricity at a lower rate than PPL Electric Utilities and in the worst case, the turbine was expected to provide electricity at the same rate. Under a proposed plan, HCA would pay a fixed rate for 10 years for the turbine electricity. That rate would not be affected by other energy costs and the turbine energy would be used in combination with electricity provided by PPL. Copyright 2007 by UPI
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
Wind comes in last
By:
kent beuchert ,
Wed, 10 Jan 2007 14:51:52 GMT
|
|
Wind power comes in last when judging the most
effective way to spend money to improve the energy situation. Sites like renewableenergyaccess.com
that accept large sums of advertising money and then publish nothing but positive articles about wind are speading a false picture of the technology, which is crude and which produces far and away the least valued electricity. Wind gives you power when it wants to and in the amounts that it wants to. You are a slave to wind power, needing extra fuel fired capacity to ensure peak demand can be met, because wind has this nasty, but very characteristic habit of never being around when demand peaks - as on a hot summer afternoon. Estimates of the cost of wind, most often by wind proponents or wind turbine companies, totally ignore ancillery costs
as well as the fact that in virtually no case
has wind produced what it was supposed to produce.
Wind will neither eliminate the need for, nor forestall the new construction of controllable energy capacity. This adds greatly to costs and is the result solely of adding wind.
Last year the U.S. added 16,000 megawatts of additional capacity of gas fired power plants. Wind added 2700 MW nominal capacity. What those new turbines can ACTUALLY produce will be less than 900 average megawatts, or les than 5% of new capacity. The massive amounts of wind being added can't even keep up with just the new demand.
The dirty little secret of wind is that capacities of wimd installations are quoted in terms of nameplate capacity - what could be produced if winds were driving the turbine blades at their ultimate velocity. That seldom happens, and never happens for any length of time. The typical output capacities reported for U.S. onshore wind
turbines are less than 30%. This fact doesn't inhibit the wind industry and wind proponents from falsely claiming that each new facility will produce its nominal capacity and power X number of homes and eliminate y tons of CO2. All those claims are exaggerated by at least a factor of 3, usually by a factor of 4. You can make the case that just about every claim made by wind proponents is fraudulent : 1) The wind is free.
That may be, but the land that those turbines sit in is anything but free. 2) Wind produces clean
energy. True, but there are negative effects on the soil surrounding wind sites because of the affect the turbin has in redirecting higher level winds against the ground, removing moisture and
creating a small dust bowl. 3) Wind turbines occupy small parcels of land - true, but there is considerable land lost in order to create rods to service those turbines. And the turbines stretch
over miles of countryside because wind is not a
|
|
|
|
|
