This man is crazy

[dgriffin]

The trouble with windpower, to some extent, is not the technology, but rather the utilities. I don't have the facts at hand (always convenient!), but the few windmillers I've spoken to or read about say they get a lousy deal from the power company for the electricity they put on the local grid. If they're paying 15 cents per kwh, they earn less than half of that from what they produce over their own needs. That ratio may have improved in recent years. If the two amounts were closer to parity, you'd see more people putting up windmills.
As for the giant commercial wind electric generators, it's hard for me to understand why anyone is against them for aesthetic reasons, when our highways are littered with a gazillion telephone poles of all sizes and condition. The answer probably is that no one notices telephone poles anymore, until the power company wants to put one in your front yard.

[clarencebunsen]

Dave,

I think your windmillers are mixing generation costs with generation/transmission/distribution costs along with taxes, regulatory fees, labor costs, interest on debt, payments to shareholders...

If one builds a generation facility, whether is is a windmill or a nuclear power plant, one cannot reasonably expect your local utility to donate everything else necesssary to get your power to an end user.

As for aesthetics, even my wife is coming around. This might have something to do with seeing the wind generators on TV immediately after doing a bill pay session. I wonder if I could convince my neighbors?

[dgriffin]

That is true, CB. I guess the windmillers figure that if they're paying the fair market price to the utility, they should be getting the same back. They have also made investments, of course. And they know that the price they're paying the utility may be more "market value" than mark up over cost. At any rate, a "equal price" is not practical, but a higher price paid to home generators would possibly encourage more homeowners to install windmills and other sources, such as solar. Alternative power is not power on demand, so the the bank-like function of the grid is a necessary component of the total home generation system. But if the value of banked power shrinks due to small payback, the value of the total system shrinks with it.

Re your neighbors, that may be the next brouhaha for home generated energy. When windmills, for example, become fairly common, neighbors will begin to complain. This has already happened in the case of the Outdoor Wood Furnaces that are becoming popular in rural and semi rural areas.
www.northlanddistrib.com/outdoor-wood-furnaces/outdoor-wood-furnaces.php
Homeowners place them in the backyard. A couple of towns nearby have banned them. Because they're a little building all their own, the smokestack height can be short, only enough to support proper draft. But such puts a lot of smoke down low in the neighborhood. And when owners also use them as trash burners, the arguments really flare up. On owner reportedly used his outdoor furnace to burn old tires, rather than pay $5 to take them to the landfill.
That was a visible problem; people worry that neighbors may be burning invisible noxious chemicals without realizing it. In fact, the state DEC lists as a reason for the outright ban on the burning of trash ... open burning in a old barrel or otherwise ... inadvertent release of harmful chemicals from household goods.

[dan]

"Their website claims to have an upstate New York dealer but no mention of where"

Clarence,

Take a look at a new design right in our back yard. In the industrial park in Frankfort, across from the fairgrounds is a new design with a "mixer" style windcatcher. It's a small mock-up of what could be a much larger, but smaller footprint wind generator. Sorry, but I can't remember the name on the building, but there's also a small photovoltaic generator on a pole next to it.

[clarencebunsen]

Fiberdyne, maybe?

I will look the next time I'm in the area.

[frankcor]

Here's an energy position paper from the Heritage Foundation.

www.heritage.org/Research/EnergyandEnvironment/wm2004.cfm

I think this paragraph pretty much says it all:

"Then, as now, good energy policy is easy to distinguish from bad energy policy: Good policy leads to more supplies of affordable energy; bad policy leads to less. Chief among the good policies is expansion of domestic oil production, and chief among the bad are windfall profits taxes, price controls, and federal subsidies and mandates for alternative energy sources. These bad ideas were tried before and backfired, and they will do no better this time around."

It's pretty hard to argue with that. Unless you're Harry Reid.

[frankcor]

Dave, I believe the utilities pay the same rate for wind-generated electriciy that they pay for PASNY-generated (oil, hydro, nuke, etc.): about 6-cents a kwh.

[dgriffin]

Jul 28, 2008 15:54:05 GMT -5 frankcor said:

Dave, I believe the utilities pay the same rate for wind-generated electriciy that they pay for PASNY-generated (oil, hydro, nuke, etc.): about 6-cents a kwh.

That sounds about right. My last bill cost me a bit over 15 cents per kwh. I imagine the utilities argument would be that they are charging the cost of transporting it out from the producer and incurring expense moving it from the home generator back on to the grid.

[frankcor]

My National Grid electric bill is broken down into two portions. Approximately half is NG's charge to deliver the electricity to my house. The other half is for the actual electric power that I consume -- I purchase electricity from a 3rd party, National Grid bills for them.

The delivery charge includes the cost of installing and maintaining transmission lines, transformers, sub-stations as well as maintenance crews and equipment.

[dgriffin]

Jul 29, 2008 13:28:59 GMT -5 frankcor said:

My National Grid electric bill is broken down into two portions. .

Yes, mine too. And the producer gets a bit less than NatGrid, I suppose.