Comment...
Wind generated electricity gets a lot of attention. This leads many people to believe it's the silver bullet that will solve American energy issues. But nothing could be further from the truth. Even the most optimistic wind experts see wind supplying only 20% of America's electricity demand. In my opinion, wind energy will never exceed 5% regardless of the subsidies we pour into it.

Frankly, there just are too many problems with wind energy: Wind zealots guild the lilly when they discuss productivity, wind farms have huge real estate requirements and the national electrical grid needs to be rebuilt for wind energy to grow much beyond its present 1%. Moreover, Europe is just now discovering their wind farms failed to replace emissions-belching coal generation plants – which of course is the primary purpose of green energy.

On the good side: Wind energy emits nothing. When backed-up by natural gas generation – not coal – wind can decrease overall CO2 emissions. Plus, wind energy while may be intermittent, it isn’t volatile. The electricity generated by wind farms is generally sold at fixed prices in long-term contracts to utilities and other big users. Natural gas and to some extent coal have the opposite problem: They provide a constant source of power, but prices can fluctuate wildly.

Intermittant Nature of Wind
Wind blows only part of the time, so wind generates electricity only part of the time. For instance, Texas wind farms on average produce at only 9% of their capacity when electricity demand is the highest. Yet, wind advocates tend to avoid discussing the intermittant nature of wind. And when they do, they tend to be about 50% too optimistic.

We have only to look at Europe. There, pushed by the Green Party, Denmark and Germany have operated vast windfarms for a decade. What's their experience? According to their government reports their wind farms produce at only 20% of capacity. That means a 1,000 MW windfarm produces on average only 200 MW. Because peak generation comes at night, in some years only 5% of Danish wind generated electricity actually is used by Danish consumers.

Wind Cannot Replace Coal
Wind energy needs a backup for those days when there is not wind. Unfortunately, that task often falls to coal generation plants. The problem is that coal generation plants always emit CO2 because they cannot be readily turned-on or -off. Maybe wind energy lessens the tonnage of CO2 emitted, but to call wind energy carbon-free misses an important point.

It's my understanding that not a single coal plant has been retired by wind energy in Denmark or Germany. Since reducing CO2 was the stated goal that set them to install thousands of wind turbines over the past couple decades, one cannot say that wind energy has been successful for Europe.

Huge Real Estate requirements
The wind may be free but real estate isn't. Wind farms require huge amounts of real estate – the DOE says that if wind were to deliver 20% of the country's electricity, wind farms would require more real estate than New Jersey, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Delaware and Washington DC combined.

                                                — Robert Moen
                                                    rmoen@energyplanUSA.com

Wind energy stimulus dollars spent overseasd
Financial Times 2009
More than eight out of 10 US stimulus dollars spent on wind energy farms have gone to foreign companies, according to a report by the Washington-based Investigative Report Workshop, a non-profit journalist group. Officials in Barack Obama's administration say the $22bn set aside in the $787bn stimulus for alternative energy funding is designed to create or retain jobs and stimulate economic activity. But the report shows the majority of jobs are likely to have been created overseas. The 11 US-based wind farms that received cash grants from the US Treasury have imported 695 of the 982 wind turbines that are to be installed. Since the manufacture of turbines is by far the largest employment generator in wind energy, it is estimated to have created 4,500 jobs overseas - far in excess of the jobs created in the US from these grants.

Beware windpower’s "homes served" claims
MasterResource Energy Blog 2009
False statements about “homes served” by wind developers and their lobbyists are bad enough, but it is discouraging to hear politicians, reporters, and others adopt and regurgitate them. The concept is always misleading since residential users of electricity account for only 37% of all U.S. electricity use. Using “homes served” when talking about wind turbines and “wind farms” is both false and misleading for several reasons.

Recession, oil prices undercutting costly wind generators
Building Design & Contruction 2009
Between 2006 and 2008, generation of electricity from wind in the United States more than doubled to 21,000 megawatts, according to the American Wind Energy Association. But today wind-power projects nationwide are being delayed or put on the backburner due to economic turmoil.

The potential delays to some wind farm projects also have to do with the transmission lines than lining up financial backers. In one Maine project the developer must resolve an issue about how much it should contribute toward a $600 million transmission line connecting northern Maine to the New England power grid. The utilities also warn that an abrupt interruption of wind power feeding into the grid from from a single county could disrupt the entire system and cause widespread blackouts.

Denmark's 20% Wind Stats Mislead
National Wind Watch 2008
Wind proponents often claim 20% of Denmark's electricity is produced by wind power. This statistic does not stand up to scrutiny, however.

Denmark has the world’s highest concentration of wind turbines in the world. Its 5,267 turbines (2005) produce the 'equivalent' of about a fifth of its annual demand for electricity. However, almost half of that generation is exported, often at dumping prices. Moreover, in 2005 as much as 9% of its electricity consumption was satisfied by nuclear-based energy produced elsewhere.

Despite its ‘green’ reputation, Denmark remains amongst the world’s biggest consumers of coal and producers of carbon dioxide per capita. Moreover, many Danes feel that the proliferation of these large machines and supporting facilities has restricted public access to many parts of the countryside, detracted seriously from the former charm, beauty and peace of their landscapes and coastlines, and impacted badly on many home environments and wildlife habitats.

China's wind farms come with a catch: coal plants
Wall Street Journal 2009
China's ambition to create "green cities" powered by huge wind farms comes with a dirty little secret: Dozens of new coal-fired power plants need to be installed as well. Officials want enough new coal-fired capacity in reserve so that they can meet demand whenever the wind doesn't blow. This is important because wind is less reliable as an energy source than coal, which fuels two-thirds of China's electricity output. Wind energy ultimately depends on wind strength and direction, unlike coal, which can be stockpiled at generators in advance.

Wind power: expensive and unreliable
Energy Tribune 2008
Wind has been the cornerstone of almost all environmentalist and social engineering proclamations for more than three decades. But Europe, getting a head start, has had to cope with the reality borne by experience and it is a pretty ugly picture: an industry plagued by high construction and maintenance costs, highly volatile reliability and a voracious appetite for taxpayer subsidies.

The U.K.'s wind operation provides the ideal case study. In fiscal year 2007-08 U.K. electricity customers were forced to pay a total of over $1 billion to the owners of wind turbines. That figure is due to rise to over $6 billion a year by 2020 given the government's plan to build 25 gigawatts of wind capacity, in a bid to shift away from fossil fuel use. But for all the public investment, wind produces a mere 1.3 percent of the U.K.'s energy needs.

In the journal Energy Policy gas turbine expert Jim Oswald, offered a series of damning conclusions: not only is wind power far more expensive and unreliable than previously thought, it cannot avoid using high levels of natural gas as old-style gas turbines back-up the wind turbines.

In 2006, according to U.K. government statistics, the average load factor for wind turbines across the U.K. was 27.4 percent. Thus a typical 2 megawatt turbine actually produced only 0.54 MW of power on an average day. Worse still, says Oswald, long periods of calm over recent decades occurred in the dead of winter when electricity demand is highest.

Texas wind farms produce at 8.7% of capacity at peak demand
ERCOT Press Release 2007
Wind energy is good, clean energy and should be used to the fullest of its capability. At the same time, wind does not blow at a constant level, and in Texas is often at a low level at the time of the peak electrical demand during summer afternoons. ERCOT studies the availability of wind generation using its historical wind generation data. Using 2006 data, ERCOT has determined that 8.7% of the installed wind capability can be counted as dependable capacity during the peak demand period for the next year.

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) manages the flow of electric power to 22 million Texas customers – representing 85 percent of the state’s electric load and 75 percent of the Texas land area.

Ill winds blow for wind and clean energy
Wall Street Journal 2009
While problems plague all kinds of green-energy efforts, wind power has been hit especially hard. Growth in wind-power capacity this year is expected to be three-quarters of the increase in a record 2008, according to the American Wind Energy Association.

One reason for the pullbacks is the plunge in natural-gas prices. Natural-gas futures on the New York Mercantile Exchange have fallen 72% from a year ago. Power plants that burn natural gas become even cheaper to operate when gas prices are low. Other clean-energy technologies, such as solar power, are even more expensive than wind.

And that is without the credit crunch, which has been even more of a problem for clean-energy projects than some other sectors.

Another problem is electricity transmission. Wind farms and other forms of clean energy are usually located in remote locations and require huge new transmission lines to carry the electricity to cities. The U.S. Department of Energy last year cited transmission as the biggest hurdle to full-scale wind-power development in the U.S.

Wind power is a complete disaster
Financial Post 2009
There is no evidence that industrial wind power is likely to have a significant impact on carbon emissions. The European experience is instructive. Denmark, the world’s most wind-intensive nation, with more than 6,000 turbines generating the equivalent of 19% of its electricity, has yet to close a single fossil-fuel plant. It requires 50% more coal-generated electricity to cover wind power’s unpredictability, and pollution and carbon dioxide emissions have risen (by 36% in 2006 alone).

Lawyers advise taking care in wind-turbine contracts
NewsOK 2009
Wind farm leasing in Oklahoma is a little like the Wild West. Experts say there’s virtually no regulation and lots of opportunity for landowners to either profit or make deals they’ll later regret. A typical Oklahoma lease might start out with a 4% royalty payment and escalate by a half percent every few years through the term of the lease, he said. That allows a developer to recover upfront costs before having to pay higher lease payments. Sometimes a developer will guarantee the landowner a certain amount per wind turbine but pay a royalty, instead, if the royalty amount exceeds the guaranteed fee, Ferrell said. Other leases call for a landowner to be paid a fee for each wind turbine plus a royalty — but the royalty is usually a lower percentage on those lease.

UK parliament pegs wind 'capacity factor' at 10-20%
The Economics of Renewable Energy 11.25.2008 -- See Paragraph 109

Promoters overstated environmental benefit of wind farms
Telegraph UK 12.21.2008
The UK wind farm industry admits that the environmental benefit of wind power in reducing carbon emissions is only half as big as it had previously claimed. Twice as many wind turbines as previously calculated will be needed to provide the same degree of reduction in Britain's carbon emissions.

Wind energy obstacles and potential
Gerson Lehrman Group 2009
If our renewable energy plans are to be achieved, massive numbers of wind energy installations are on the way. Getting wind where it currently stands today (producing just 1% of U.S. annual electricity) required a $25 billion investment. It will take an estimated $500 billion to be invested in wind energy to reach that 20% target in the U.S. alone. To be able to leverage the wind resources, a series of new high-voltage transmission lines is needed to transmit electricity from wind plants to population centers.

However, many wind developers have scaled back their plans. In recent years, wind energy development has hinged on Production Tax Credits. Tax equity financing of wind projects maximizes tax efficiency and provide institutional tax investors a preferred rate of return. However, even at the height of the market the tax equity participants were not many and due to the economic factors of recent months, there numbers are smaller still.