Cheap Wind Power

Friday, July 18, 2008

I recently saw a TV story on about a town in Kansas that uses wind power for the entire town. I was very interested and then I heard a wind expert in this radio interview.

The wind expert said that the town was saving money on their electric bills and being friendly to the environment at the same time. Below is the interview.

Q: How much money do the people actually save with wind power generation?
A: Well it depends on the wind.
Q: What happens when the wind dies down or stops?
A: There is always a backup coal fired generator running at the local electric company.
Q: Why is there always a coal fired generator running?
A: When the wind is not blowing, the users would have no electricity otherwise.
Q: OK, then when the wind dies, the generators are started. Is that right?
A: No, it takes 4 to 6 hours to get up steam and get the generators running at full speed.
Q: What do the power users do, go without electricity for 6 hours?
A: Oh no, the generators running 24 hours a day at peak performance to prevent any loss of power to the customers.
Q: How does that help pollution and cost less to the customers?
A: The extra power generated by the wind is added to the power grid and the coal fired generators don't use quite as much coal when the wind is blowing hard.
Q: Let me get this straight, You still use coal to generate most of the power and then add a small amount from the windmills after you spend millions building them and then say it saves money?
A: Well, yes. but someday it may be cheaper if the technology gets better.
Q: Will we always need a fossil burning generator running constantly in order to use wind generation?
A: Yes, there is no way, at the present time, to store wind generated electricity.

End of interview.

I was under the impression , from the TV story, that wind power generated all of the electricity at little cost. Why didn't they even mention that a coal fired generator actually supplied most of the power in the TV story? They forgot to add that little fact.
There are many lies told by the media just by omitting important parts of the story. This a perfect example.

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