Wind power is very dilute, and thus a large area of land is required to gather significant
energy. Wind energy needs a wide network of roads, transmission lines and turbines which
degrades any area containing wind farms. It has a huge land footprint.
The operating characteristics of turbine and generator mean that only a small part of wind
energy can be captured.
Wind power is also intermittent, unreliable and hard to predict. Therefore large backup or
storage systems are required. This adds to the capital and operating costs and increases the
instability of the network.
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Terrific piece.
One thing IF I had written it:
I wouldn’t use Daily Kos as a reference when you can get to the original story by using a cached version from Reuters.
To me that is sort of like using Reader’s Digest as a source, back in the day when it was published.
Seems sad that we have to go over and over this same ground about how expensive and unreliable wind power is.
But we are being led by imbeciles right now, so, go over it one more time.
Wind power is based on a false analogy.
Wind power has been used for centuries to pump water. Water, once pumped, can be stored until needed, on a local basis. Or, as in Holland, wind power can be used to pump infiltrated sea water back behind the dikes.
Electrical generation by wind power fails because it is not local and the electricity cannot be easily stored.
If you take the trouble to do the math: how much energy is available, how much does it cost to construct and maintain the towers, generators, and blade assemblies, and what the cost is to link the towers together and transport the electricity, to say nothing of the environmental cost in production, you end up with unsupportable costs.
You can transport a tank of water with virtually no loss. Electricity does not transport without loss. Sorry. That’s just the way it works.
Like ethanol, wind power is a green dream with no substance.
VERY GOOD REPORT! And the analogies of “water” vs Wind are spot on the money as well…. now, can a “Liberal mind” comprehend this???
The green fascists like to talk about “appropriate technology”. Well, that applies to wind. There are some places it makes sense… like for an isolated installation far off the grid – your typical survivalist gulch for example 😉 …. but for carrying the base load of civilization, no way.