We’ve seen it time after time. Wind farm owners will only keep them until the subsidies and tax breaks run out. Then they abandon them. Wind doesn’t pay.

I will add this, I’m no fan of the wind boondoggles but I’ve noticed that the pile of coal at the powerplant in my hometown has been a lot smaller throughout the year than it was before the massive, ugly, rural windfarms came online.

WeekendAtBernankes on May 8, 2012 at 12:15 PM

I don’t think that means what you think it does. A shrinking stockpile indicates that the plant is burning more coal than is coming in. There can be many reasons for this. Better indicators would be capacity factor and availability. Size of the stockpile is not indicative of either.

Make your own wind power. Eat at Taco Bell.
Rohall1215 on May 8, 2012 at 2:11 PM

HOT GAS!!!

One Megawatt of capacity of natural-gas generated power costs about $900,000 to build. One megawatt of (advertised peak) capacity of wind or solar costs between 7 and 9 Million dollars to build,from which you get, if you are lucky, 20% of that capacity on average.

Natural gas is cheap and abundant, not to mention cleaner that wind and solar (when you consider the chemicals and mining required to make them work). And we have the gas here and now, rather than buying raw materials from China. Duh.

One of the most distgusting videos ive seen is of a large bird being struck and falling to its death. Ive read this happens alot.

newportmike on May 8, 2012 at 12:36 PM

Birds die like flies, and flies are even worse.

The Tea Party has weakened the clout of the wind lobby, and imperiled the industry’s prized political possession — a billion-dollar “Production Tax Credit.” …

For a dead organization, this “Tea Party” thing sure gets blamed for a lot of stuff.

In other words: When people attack AWEA’s subsidies, AWEA might feed an unflattering story on that person to some ideological or partisan media outlet or activist group.

How is this not blackmail? Is it blackmail when Darlene Snow, Executive Director of this pile of trash, personalizes the threat against a specific lawmaker?

We need to break WIND!

jeffn21 on May 8, 2012 at 12:16 PM

But that would turn the earth into a dutch oven!

The “debt-strapped, partisan, and Tea Party-infused Congress is reflexively skeptical of subsidies …

Uhhhh… what’s wrong with that?

Thus the inescapble conclusion is that climate scientists cannot be considered an independent, unbiased, credible source of information… on climate.
anotherJoe

I couldn’t agree with you more. You’ll have some group called “Save our trees” or some such nonsense, and they’ll report that our trees are being decimated at an unprecedented rate. The press reports this as fact. It couldn’t be that they would skew the facts to support their arguments?
I would be happy if I could read just one news article from the national press that isn’t half fact and half commentary. Just REPORT the news. I don’t care about the opinion of the person who writes the story. I’ll form my own opinions, I don’t need the “protector of our hearts and minds” to do it for me.

Every time I’ve drive by a wind far, seems like 1/2 the windmills are not working. I don’t know if they break down a lot or if they just need a ton of maintenance. But either way, it’s very inefficient if 50% of your production is always down.

Many are frequently down due to mechanical breakdowns and required maintenance every 30 days. I’d imagine it is pretty difficult to get up in those things to service and fix ‘em.

Maintenance costs sometimes put off keeping many windmill from operating. And since most have been in operation fewer than 10 of the 20 year expected lifespan, we haven’t seen much reported yet of malfunctions bound to occur, such as electrical fires within the turbine and separation of blades breaking off and shooting off into the distance.

Every time I’ve drive by a wind far, seems like 1/2 the windmills are not working. I don’t know if they break down a lot or if they just need a ton of maintenance. But either way, it’s very inefficient if 50% of your production is always down.

angryed on May 8, 2012 at 11:33 AM

What happens (as I understand it) is the plant is running under capacity so they have to shut down the turbines because they don’t have the ability yet to efficiently store the mechanical energy generated by the wind turbines.

In Britain, and I suspect many municipalities here in the U.S., actually have to pay the plants for the wind turbine downtime.

dont want to work at a union shop,dont apply!!!!

Minnesotans for Global Warming report that in the last 30 years, the United States has had 14,000 wind turbines abandoned. Apparently, once the subsidies and the wind run out, these 20-story high Cuisinarts are de-bladed and retired. This means more bats and migratory birds will live.