Wind power saves money

Michael Keller (3/24, Letters) writes that including a requirement for renewable energy in the Kansas Comprehensive Energy Plan is a bad idea because it will increase costs. The Texas Public Utilities Commission has stated that wind power is now its lowest-cost source of electricity. Their other primary source of electricity, natural gas plants, has produced steadily increasing prices for years as supplies of natural gas decline.

Kansas, and other states, need new sources of power. Your choices are new coal plants, new nuclear plants or wind plants. Numerous studies show that of those choices wind plants provide the lowest-cost electricity.

Don’t compare the cost of new wind power to fully amortized, 30- to 40-year-old coal plants. Compare fully amortized wind plants to fully amortized coal plants. What is the cost of the fuel for wind plants in 10 years when the turbines have paid for themselves?

Wind is free, while coal costs increase. The damage to the economy of climate change, caused by coal power, is in the trillions of dollars. Wind is the low-cost choice for power in Kansas.

Joe Spease
CEO, WindSoHy, LLC
Lenexa

Comments

[NoMoreMrNiceGuy]

Wind is not cheaper.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/chg_str_fuel/html/chapter5.html

[NoMoreMrNiceGuy]

We have the resources readily available.

http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/ng/ng_enr_sum_a_EPG0_R11_BCF_a.htm

This is 3 years old but the latest available.

One of the problems is that the clowns in Washongton can not add or subtract.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/st_profiles/e_profiles_sum.html

[NoMoreMrNiceGuy]

http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/states/sep_sum/html/sum_btu_tot.html

[NoMoreMrNiceGuy]

Some more questions for Joe (and Joe Biden).

What is the current demand for electricity on the grid on a national level? How much is that projected to increase over the next 5,10 and 20 years? Have you considred how much more demand will be required once elecrtic vehicles become more common place?

I hate to tell you this Joe and the clowns in Washingotn, this is measurable and finite. I doubt Joe Biden even knows how to figure Khw useage or what baseload is.

[NoMoreMrNiceGuy]

This is not something Al Gore, John Travolta or U2 would share with the public.

http://www.livescience.com/environment/060906_methane_bubbles.html

[NoMoreMrNiceGuy]

Joe is going to hold some bias, he is in that industry and going to lobby for handouts like any other lobbyists.
Joe fails to inform in his rant of just how many jobs will be lost when the coal industry is bankrupted. You do not see the UNION pipefitters, boilermakers, etc on wind farm jobsites, so who will Joe and Democrats blame when those skill trades are sitting on the bench with no work to do?
Of course we need to continue implemneting wind but by no means attempt to LIE about coal. Methane gas releases are the biggest contributor to the so called global warming, with us getting possibly 12" of snow I hardly believe the theory discovered by an ambulance chaser anyhow.
Wind is NOT the cheapest form unless it is subsidized and it is not efficient enough to be self sustained and the ONLY energy source. Since 2000, the nation has implemented in excess of 100,000Mw additional to the grid in just wind power with much more slated and currently in progess. This all happened long before Obama was even a Senator, so do not be quick to give that lawyer the credit is is trying to steal from Bush. There are many other sources, geo-thermal, hydro, nuke, etc. Nuke is the best and clean. Wind will continue to be an augmented source and rightfully so but to claim that coal is antiquated is grossly short sighted and misinforming the public. Every coal fired plant in the country is under an AQCS mandate to be compliant by specific time frames. The new units that have been built or expaned are CCT and capture nearly all CO2 and SO2 emmissions. The "smoke" you see soming from coal plants is not smoke, it's steam.

[Kee]

You are in the right business Joe, you are pretty windy. Wind is one of the most unreliable and inefficient sources of energy. It doesn't all blow 24/7 365 days a year, there is no way to store the energy created, and finally the grid has no source on national transmission.

To put 20% of energy needs in wind power would require so many windmills in the country that you would never be out of sight of them anywhere.

Let's rely on the most efficient and abundant sources of power, nuclear, oil, and coal and develop a real alternate source as time allows.