The Real Cost of Wind and Solar
American Thinker,
by
Norman Rogers
Original Article
Posted By: DVC,
9/29/2020 12:51:30 PM
The main problem with either wind or solar is that they generate electricity erratically, depending on the wind or sunshine. In contrast, a fossil-fuel plant can generate electricity predictably upon request. Blackouts are very expensive for society, so grid operators and designers go to a lot of trouble to make sure that blackouts are rare. The electrical grid should have spare capacity sufficient to meet the largest demand peaks even when some plants are out of commission. Plants in spinning reserve status stand by ready to take over if a plant trips (breaks down).
Reply 1 - Posted by:
DVC 9/29/2020 12:52:32 PM (No. 556495)
I posted this earlier, and it disappeared. Is American Thinker no longer permitted here or something?
3 people like this.
Reply 2 - Posted by:
WV.Hillbilly 9/29/2020 1:32:10 PM (No. 556524)
The wind stops blowing, the sun stops shining.
Voodoo power will never meet baseload needs.
9 people like this.
Reply 3 - Posted by:
bad-hair 9/29/2020 1:32:56 PM (No. 556525)
Gosh boss, sorry I can't get to work today because my car didn't charge up last night. See you Wednesday.
10 people like this.
Reply 4 - Posted by:
aasilver 9/29/2020 1:44:42 PM (No. 556536)
This issue was discussed at the Board of Supervisors in Riverside County, CA in 1991. They didn't listen then and they won't listen now because wind and solar farms are one of the biggest financial scams in history. China benefits the most from this scam.
9 people like this.
Reply 5 - Posted by:
Ben Around 9/29/2020 1:57:50 PM (No. 556549)
It doesn't seem they go to any trouble to prevent black outs in Ca.
6 people like this.
Reply 6 - Posted by:
jeffkinnh 9/29/2020 2:37:07 PM (No. 556585)
All this has been well known for a long time. The arguments, based on reality, have been made before solar and wind plants have been built. The Left doesn't want to be confused by the facts.
There is only one important advantage to solar and wind and most other renewables. They are under the thumb of the government, requiring forced regulations and subsidies. That hands POWER to the government, which is the PRIMARY reason the government supports it, especially WORLD government agencies. It is not only CONTROL of what power sources may be used, it is CONTROL of the economies. Through such means, the world government can CONTROL the United States energy use, FORCING them to be less competitive and therefore less powerful. Other countries cannot compete with the US fairly so they use environmental controls to put them into better competitive position. When Trump dumped the Paris accords, most world governments had to rebalance their positions because they lost leverage to force the US to be uncompetitive.
The scientific realities and the economic realities simply do NOT matter. POWER and CONTROL for non US agents are why we are playing this game. It all is meant to weaken the US and THAT is all that matters. The sickening reality is that these foreign agencies can NOT win unless the US is a willing participant in it's own destruction. THAT is what BO/dems/media/Left delivered. THAT is what Trump upended.
7 people like this.
Reply 7 - Posted by:
DVC 9/29/2020 2:40:41 PM (No. 556589)
Wind and solar enrich the companies by directly taking huge amounts of money from taxpayers and ratepayers, by laws written to mandate these unreliable and super expensive power sources.
The money goes to the windmill companies and the solar panel makers. How many of those are in the USA, and how many are owned by US companies?
The top 10 wind turbine companies in 2019 by installed capacity:
1) Seimens the biggest.....German.
2) Vestas is the second biggest in terms of installed capacity ---- Danish.
3) GE has the third largest installed base. A "US" turbine maker...but
from a GE news release "global manufacturing footprint that includes blade factories
in Brazil, Canada, China, Denmark, India, Poland, Spain, France, Turkey and
the United States." But in April 2020 they announced the closing of the US
blade factory in Arkansas. GE isn't really a US company any more at all.
4) Fourth biggest is Enercon.....German.
5) Fifth biggest is Nordex --- German.
6) Part of Seimens.....Germany
7) Goldwind ----China
8) Sinovel --- China
9) Suzlon --- India
10) Vestas Offshore --- another Danish company
So, the rest of the world is using Greenie Weenie fear to have the government force American taxpayers and rate payers to fork over billions and billions and billions to fund companies outside the USA on this giant wind power scam so that we can have much more expensive and unreliable power.
What a deal. NOT.
8 people like this.
Reply 8 - Posted by:
Skinnydip 9/29/2020 2:57:56 PM (No. 556600)
Check out this story about LAPD's BMW i8 Police Cars: https://bimmerlife.com/2020/08/29/lapds-i3-fleet-up-for-sale/?utm_source=bimmerlife&utm_medium=email&utm_name=member
2 people like this.
Reply 9 - Posted by:
mathman 9/29/2020 4:21:37 PM (No. 556675)
The real cost of wind and solar should include all the mining costs for the rare earth elements used in the magnets, the water use in building the solar cells and all the parts of the wind turbines, the costs of electrical lines to connect them up, the cost of the disposal of all the hazmat compounds used in the manufacture of the devices, and the enormous burden of disposing of the devices once they don't work any more.
But most of those costs are hidden; indeed, many of those costs are unknown.
But you have to heart the planet, so mythical renewables will do it for you.
4 people like this.
Reply 10 - Posted by:
paral04 9/29/2020 4:26:46 PM (No. 556689)
The windmills are slaughtering thousands of birds. Nobody talks about this.
4 people like this.
Reply 11 - Posted by:
Proud Texan 9/29/2020 5:17:44 PM (No. 556742)
"Renewable energy" is mostly a way of renewing rich people's pockets at the expense of taxpayers.
It's biggest success in reducing carbon emissions is frying and clubbing to death all those CO2 spewing birds. #10 is correct. I normally see birds flying to and from roosting in town every day, and birds just living all around me. Now you see flashing lights from windmills all around, subsidized solar farms are being installed on rich people's land, and on many, and I do mean many days, there is not a bird of any variety to be seen at any time of the day. No sparrows, no hawks, no buzzards, no anything.
2 people like this.
Reply 12 - Posted by:
Folsomguy 9/29/2020 7:00:19 PM (No. 556857)
The cost of maintaining solar over a 15 year period more than wipes out any savings.
2 people like this.
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These are so heavily subsidized that they make no sense at all. We need to stop our tax dollars from being wasted on high cost, unreliable power.