Re: Dollars and cents.

alt.tv.prisoner removed.

"Spectator." <richardcheswardiine2@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:dc8603$ro5$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>I was listening to the radio the other day and they mentioned the total
>
> cost (in dollars, not lives) of the war in Iraq being around $170B so
> far. Previously I had been listening to Air Americas ecotalk and had
> heard about a company (MGE) that sells wind power so I decided to pull
> some data together and this is what I found.
>
>
> MGE pays about $850,000 per windmill

The cost to grid connect them?

> The US has spent $170,000,000,000 protecting our oil interests in Iraq
>
>
> The US could purchase about 200,000 wind turbines for that money.
>
>
> Each turbine puts out about 660KW

At a US average of around 23% capacity factor.

> The average power draw of a US home is about 1.2KW

> According to the US Census Bureau there are about 116,000,000 homes in
> the US
>
>
> 200,000 turbines * 660 KW is about 133,000,000 KW

Multiply by the capacity factor now.

> 133,000,000KW / 1.2KW per home is about 109,000,000

A assumption of 25% makes the math easy.

> 109,000,000 is about 94% of the homes in the US powered polution free
> for what we have spent in Iraq to date.

While I'm a fan of wind energy, no energy source is pollution free.

"The excesses found in California--the huge gullies gouged into
Tehachapi's
hillsides, the derelict turbines, the oil pouring down the towers, the
glaring road cuts in erodible soils, the piles of industrial detritus,
the
massive jumble of machines scattered willy-nilly across the
landscape--will
all come back to haunt the wind industry in the years to come unless it
learns to clean up after itself. " Paul Gipe, Time to Clean Up the Mess
in
Kern County http://www.chelseagreen.com/Wind/articles/Cleanup.htm

"Thus, the costs to remove the 1,200 MW of first generation turbines
still standing in
California could exceed $100 million."
http://www.chelseagreen.com/Wind/articles/Removal.htm

Karl Johanson


.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: growining interest/potential in biofuels.....
    ... also will mean considerable cost increase.... ... expensive than wind turbines - the market will sort it out if there is ... there are no real problems with wind. ... a conventional power station and be cheaper or less resource ...
    (uk.politics.misc)
  • Re: Wild life must pay the rice for dreams
    ... The latter two have considerable hydropower resources, which can rapidly reduce their generation whenever wind farms are generating surplus power, saving water for later. ... this is a cheap way for northern Europe to store wind power until it is needed – an opportunity which is not generally available for wind power generators. ...
    (uk.politics.misc)
  • Re: Know your listener/market
    ... Radio is in the business of selling the tails. ... Advertisers buy the tails by their feel, and turn that feel into experiences then sold to listeners. ... But if, say Wendy's want's to boost sales in Decatur, buying WLS, WGN and WBBM aren't the cost effective way to do it. ... Since a station out of market has so little local reach in Decatur, getting back to the original point of this thread, WGN, WBBM and soon WLS can turn on the IBOC hash blowing away all the out of market listening, and do so without a care. ...
    (rec.radio.shortwave)
  • Re: Winging it - so to speak...
    ... I was in west Texas a few weeks ago where the SLOW wind for the weekend was ... pieces (outrunner, ESC, battery, nano servos, fancy charger and etc) are ... mean I will change to electric, rather I have added electric flight to my ... I looked at the cost, and knew they cost WAY too much ...
    (rec.models.rc.air)
  • Re: Alternative Energy sources for Farmers
    ... which way the wind is coming. ... type which cost almost 1 million $s, and which farmer can afford that? ... there is not enough energy in a "gentle breeze" to bother extracting. ... Windmills need to be up high, away from solid matter, to extract ...
    (soc.senior.issues)