Let’s talk windmills. Oops, sorry. I meant “wind turbines”---as the wind brigade calls them (so that we numbskulls won’t confuse them with tulip fields and people running around in wooden boots). There’s a lot wrong with them---the turbines, not the Dutch.
First, they’re ugly. Put a wind turbine of practical size in your yard, and your neighbors will love you for it. Put a few hundred together in a (small) wind farm and the visual pollution is nauseating. Especially as these farms are usually built out in the open countryside, where the winds are unobstructed by man-made structures. And there goes your landscape. In addition, lonely people who have the misfortune to live close to wind farms have reported that when the turbines are in full cry, the noise is intolerable. And there goes your real estate nest-egg.
Second, wildlife killers. Revolving wind turbine blades kill birds. Mostly, though not exclusively, the bigger species, as typified by the raptor class: eagles, hawks, vultures, owls, etc. Nobody knows, with any degree of certainty, how many birds are killed by U.S. wind farms. A so-called “scientific” study (in reality, it was a cross referenced literature search) held in high regard, came up with a range of U.S. bird turbine deaths of 140,000 to 328,000 per year. Dividing the higher number by the number of wind turbines in the U.S. reveals that the average annual number of birds killed per turbine is a little less than seven. That is to say one bird death every 52 days per turbine. It doesn’t even sound plausible, especially when you mess with the numbers in the name of plausibility. For example set up a model based on the known average fraction of a year that turbines are actually operating and on the known number of turbines in the U.S. Then assume that the average kill rate is one bird per turbine per operating day (based on limited amounts of anecdotal evidence, this rate is probably very conservative). Using this simple model, the number of birds killed computes out to be around one million.
The federal government sets limits on the number of protected species that can be killed by wind farms. The program, run by the Interior Department, requires wind farms to report their kill rates on a voluntary basis! The Department does not release this information. This May, the government raised the limit by a draconian factor of four. According to the gobble-de-gook-speak of the Fish and Wildlife Service’s head honcho, ratcheting up the massacre “will provide a path forward for maintaining eagle populations(!), while spurring development of a pollution free energy source”(!), and, “there’s a lot of good news in here (the planned increase); it’s a great tool to work with to further (the) conservation of two iconic species”(!). The species he’s talking about are the bald and golden eagles. So, we’re conserving the national bird by killing more of them off. Heck, if this Alice-in-Wonderland logic had prevailed back in the 70’s, we’d still have DDT and be up to our butts in bald eagles!
Third, they lied. When you read about, say, a new wind farm bringing on 100 MW (a megawatt is one million watts of electrical power), “enough to supply umpty-ump homes,” you are almost certain to be served up with a nameplate capacity figure based on turbines operating under some sort of ideal conditions. There is no “ideal.” Most turbines only operate when wind speeds are between 25 and 50 mph. Less than 25 mph, no usable amounts of electricity are produced; above 50 mph, the blades can be torn off, thereby polluting the sky with a new generation of drone-like vehicles. The average fraction of capacity that U.S. turbines use to actually produce electricity is around 27%. The wind turbine industry and its acolytes boastingly trumpet that wind constitutes 4.4% of U.S. electricity generating capacity. They coyly omit telling you that the actual amount of electricity from wind is an almost irrelevant 1.2% of total U.S. production.
Fourth, the unpredictability. Cheap talk among wind fans (deliberate pun), is that turbine energy is there just for the taking. Clearly, we have seen that it’s a very inefficient “taking” and not at all that simple. But there is another dimension to unreliability that is also based on our inability to control the wind itself. Thus, when the wind blows at the most optimal speeds, electrical output from wind farms is high. So high, in fact, that it can---and has---overloaded the grid that it feeds. When this occurs, some other generating plant has to be shut down. This, together with restarting it, can be expensive. Conversely, when the wind drops, the wind farm does not meet its commitments and the grid is short-changed, creating yet another problem.
Sixth is the matter of the true cost of wind turbine electricity. Lazard, a major financial advisory firm, estimates the delivered cost of wind farm electricity to be in the range of $37 to $81 per MWh (megawatt hour is a million watts multiplied by the length of time that they were generated). A number of independent studies have investigated various inputs to a full cost analysis, including the necessary new infrastructure costs for wind farms, and the many federal subsidies and state mandates. Consolidating these data, the average cost of wind generated electricity comes out at about $150/MWh; around 25% of this total is due to subsidies and mandates.
To calibrate readers on what this full cost means, start with your electricity bill. Locally, your PG&E fees are tiered---as are those of many power companies; the more you use, the more you pay. The lowest tier on your bill should be 18.2 cents/KWh (kilowatt hour: one thousand watts running for one hour)---the same rate as the California average. The full cost estimate, above, works out to be 15 cents/KWh. The power company has a strong incentive to keep its contractual electricity purchase price below its lowest tier retail price so that it is not operating at a loss at that level. Which leaves little or no profit margin for the producer---especially when transmission losses are factored in. To a first approximation, this means that the producer’s entire profit margin is provided by what it can siphon off in subsidies.
Bottom line on windmills---and I use the word disparagingly---and on everything else in Parts 1, 2, and 3 of this tome is CAVEAT EMPTOR. Buyer beware. Not just of the financials but also, equally important, of the accompanying baloney.
