Twenty percent of our electricity from wind requires 10,000-plus turbines on a land mass of 42,000 square miles. Spread evenly across Ohio, we'd see two to nine industrial turbines everywhere we looked. Twice the height of a large radio tower, their enormous blades cast disturbing repetitive flickering shadows across everything up to .75 miles away, and can be noisy enough to disturb sleep in hilly regions. Wind energy costs $2 million per megawatt (MW), and 20 percent of our state's electricity today would require over 20,000 MW of wind. That's a $40 billion dollar investment with no electricity when we need it most - on windless summer days. Do we want to foot the bill for this inefficiency?
Twenty percent of our electricity from wind requires 10,000-plus turbines on a land mass of 42,000 square miles. Spread evenly across Ohio, we'd see two to nine industrial turbines everywhere we looked. Twice the height of a large radio tower, their enormous blades cast disturbing repetitive flickering shadows across everything up to .75 miles away, and can be noisy enough to disturb sleep in hilly regions. Wind energy costs $2 million per megawatt (MW), and 20 percent of our state's electricity today would require over 20,000 MW of wind. That's a $40 billion dollar investment with no electricity when we need it most - on windless summer days. Do we want to foot the bill for this inefficiency?
Wind developers craft elegant, but exaggerated tales of clean air and reduced reliance on traditional fuels. But look to France's National Academy of Medicine, the Frey & Hadden report, United Kingdom Noise Association, and the World Health Organization and you'll discover wind turbines don't belong anywhere near homes. So is the picture as rosy and simple as Environment Ohio makes it sound?
Their study mirrors a National Renewable Energy Laboratory report - a narrowly focused and understandably biased branch of the Department of Energy. The DOE has another division - the Energy Information Administration, which catalogs energy sources to predict our energy future. Their outlook (www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/aeo/pdf/appendixes.pdf) forecasts …
... more [truncated due to possible copyright]Wind developers craft elegant, but exaggerated tales of clean air and reduced reliance on traditional fuels. But look to France's National Academy of Medicine, the Frey & Hadden report, United Kingdom Noise Association, and the World Health Organization and you'll discover wind turbines don't belong anywhere near homes. So is the picture as rosy and simple as Environment Ohio makes it sound?
Their study mirrors a National Renewable Energy Laboratory report - a narrowly focused and understandably biased branch of the Department of Energy. The DOE has another division - the Energy Information Administration, which catalogs energy sources to predict our energy future. Their outlook (www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/aeo/pdf/appendixes.pdf) forecasts wind still below 1 percent of supply by 2030. Our energy needs grow by twice that amount every year. Since EIA evaluates all energies they harbor no bias for any one source. We can believe them before wind developers.
Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland should disregard spins like "other states are competing to bring in wind development." Instead, know the difference between nameplate capacity and actual annual production, and that wind supply and electricity demand rarely coincide. Utility scale power cannot be stored for later use, so wind can't actually replace any traditional power plants. And when it stops blowing, dispatchable sources must be available or blackouts result. Still developers claim a simple solution to a complex problem while the media tells voters to "go with green." What's a governor to do?
Twenty percent of our electricity from wind requires 10,000-plus turbines on a land mass of 42,000 square miles. Spread evenly across Ohio, we'd see two to nine industrial turbines everywhere we looked. Twice the height of a large radio tower, their enormous blades cast disturbing repetitive flickering shadows across everything up to .75 miles away, and can be noisy enough to disturb sleep in hilly regions.
Wind energy costs $2 million per megawatt (MW), and 20 percent of our state's electricity today would require over 20,000 MW of wind. That's a $40 billion dollar investment with no electricity when we need it most - on windless summer days. Do we want to foot the bill for this inefficiency?
Environment Ohio says gross state product can be increased by $8.2 billion. Now electricity wholesales for between 4 and 8 cents per kilowatt-hour, and a 2MW turbine in Ohio produces about 20 percent of its rating, or 3.5 million kilowatts per year. That's just over $200,000 a year per turbine. With 10,000 turbines we'd generate a product worth $2 billion. That's $6.2 billion less than Environment Ohio's report claims. Is this discrepancy reconciled from mandated pricing structures, special surcharges on utility bills or from renewable portfolio standards that disrupt supply and demand pricing in a fair marketplace?
Let's take time to look at the true value received from this financial commitment compared with benefits from other programs for Ohioans. Targeted education incentives, transportation infrastructure improvements and manufacturing investment inducements all hold promise for greater employment opportunities without scarring landscapes, disrupting natural habitats or raising our utility bills. Rich with coal, Ohio would do well to funnel clean energy dollars toward reducing the emissions from this abundant resource.
Ask your legislators to be studious, selective and patient with this decision. And not to fall for the hype and pressure the wind industry is feeding them. The truth is, wind turbines don't belong near people's homes, and Champaign and Logan counties have more than 30 homes per square mile in much of the high ground targeted. Farmers sold a "piece of country life" to homeowners and now wish to profit further by changing that countryside to an industrial skyscape.
Geoff Greenfield of Third Solar and Wind summed up the mentality of the wind industry. To paraphrase him: "What I hear is, 'When Ohio pays me off enough to make my inefficient gizmos profitable, I'll be back. Until then I am moving to where entitlement is a foregone conclusion.' "
Tom Stacy, who founded the group Save Western Ohio, is a plastics machinery sales rep resentative who graduated from Ohio State University with a bachelor's degree in industrial marketing in 1989.