I find it the pinnacle of nitpicking to assume that $1.85/month more for clean power is somehow a unbearable burden. Calling it a 140 increase is attempting to make it look bigger than it really is.

So large industrial customers might have to pay $200/month more? Take that drop in the bucket out of the millions of $ in excessive overcompensation to upper management and stop whining.

Your article stated "Wind power developers could easily time the addition of still more wind power capacity in the region to match the expansion of transmission capacity."

I'm afraid I agree with Steven Chu, "Coal is very, very bad" and support every effort to help break our addiction to it.

Actually, the net effect on consumers of wind is to _lower_ prices for them, as, when wind blows, the marginal price is much lower and applies to all the power generated. The savings to consumers from lower prices when wind blows are already larger than the gross amount of the subsidy given to wind in countries like Denmark, Germany or Spain (and of course, even larger than the net subsidy which is the feed-in tariff minus the market price). So focusing only on the tariff while ignoring the simultaneous effect on market prices is silly.

Ironically, this means that wind will always require a regulated tariff as, the more wind you put in the system, the lower market prices will be (when wind reaches 50-100% of system needs as is already happening in Denmark or Spain, prices come down to almost zero) and wind can never be profitable under "pure" market conditions. So you need wind farms to keep on getting a steady revenue in order to be built; the good thing is that the tariff reuired can be quite low (in the same range as market prices are today) and never needs to be increased.

@ignorant

To be consistent one should also ban buildings, electric power lines and cars because all these kill birds at three times the magnitude then wind mills do. Maybe we should ban cats as well as they also kill birds....

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/05/04/MNG9SPKPT...

I don't know anything about the bat issue.

There has been a ridiculous amount of hand wringing over the Altamont Pass "Eagle Chopper". I stuck some pins in the idea that turbines are a significant cause of bird mortality a while back.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/3/3/2321/01755/236/467602

Not so long ago someone sent me this link - the first genuine bird mortality report I've ever seen.

http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/story?id=48900

Resolving the putative bat mortality problem should be fairly simple - We use ultrasonic whistles on car bumpers now to discourage deer and something similar should be built into the turbine blades. These will be tiny devices and retrofitting will be easily accomplished on existing blades where bat mortality is a concern.

And thusly one more favorite NIMBY fact will be consigned to the dustbin :-)

Where are the huge piles of dead bats?

Bats generally fly below 50 feet and the bottom of a windmill blade rotation looks a lot higher. Are you certain of your facts? If so, how many bats died before they learned to avoid the windmills?

OMGlikeWTF writes:

[I]t would seem me that a wind farm is a pretty safe bet ...

Only with government backing, at least in France. France's primary source of electric power is nuclear and until the day 'peak uranium' arrives wind power doesn't really stand a chance, except as a kind of cosmetic exercise. I reckon a growing number of French citizens are likely to view wind energy as a luxury that their country cannot really afford in a time of crisis. For the time being, it's probably a political non-starter.

1. Project wasn't in France.

2. Really doubt you could get the financing for a new nuke plant either. France's power is cheap because they put the investment in over 20 years ago.

If the project had sound economics it would not require government support.

1) there is the short term argument that the credit crunch is killing economic activity that would be profitable because banks don't lend right now, even for profitable stuff, beause they simply cannot spare the cash to do so. So government support here cures the (hopefully temporary) liquidity problem;

2) there is the structural issue that wind costs (like those of nuclear) are borne upfront and thus market price variations over the next 15 years can seriously damage a project even if the average is higher than the cost of wind electricity - it's like swimming: it does not matter that your average altitude is +10cm if that means spending several minutes at -10cm and the same at +20cm: you die). Gas-fired plants, which tend to have costs that follow (or indeed drive) market prices do not take that risk and are thus seen as less risky to finance. Government support in the form of price stability is therefore a worthwhile goal, and as I noted in a comment above, somethign that actually costs the public nothing (it might be provided by the markets if markets were willing to provide 15 year hedging instruments, but they are not)

In the USA nearly every capital equipment investment has a government subsidy in the form of depreciation allowances. Many businesses have additional tax benefits peculiar to the industry and even to that specific business. Think of that maker of toy wooden arrows that benefited from TARP legislation. At the local level it is common to give a property tax abatement for a new factory. That subsidies for renewable energy producers are upfront and obvious is why they are commonly debated here while the abatements for energy consuming businesses are ignored.

Says Carolus Obscurus
"If the project had sound economics it would not require government support."

O.K., I've had all I can stand. Let us remind the folks out there who never really liked history classes that there was NO nuclear fission program in the civilian world at the birth of nuclear energy. Nuclear power was created, planned, and funded for the purpose of making a weapon. The U.S. military was the sole and only nuclear power producer at the birth of the nuclear industry and EVERY CENT THAT BIRTHED THE NUCLEAR INDUSTRY CAME FROM THE MILITARY. That's one hell of a head start to give any industry, a head start from the federal government that the airplane, the automobile, the radio nor the television was ever given. With these industries the government did join in the rationalization and assistance to them later, but the nuclear industry is somewhat unique in that it was birthed entirely by "government support".

RC

Carolus, wind and other renewable energies are only being undercut by taking no account of the negative externalities of fossil fuels (e.g. CO2, pollutants). Huge numbers of scientists think that climate change is being caused/accelerated... by releasing the CO2 that had been successfully sequestered over eons to create our current climate. How can we object to an increase in the price of electricity against the likely destruction of civilisation??? ( yes i know we are short term thinkers who value the present above the future...:-)

Whilst probaly better than nothing cap and trade are still a complicated answer that is open to abuse, lobbying etc. IMHO a better simpler system would be to tax all fossil fuels and give this money back to everybody possiblyin the form of vouchers with an expiry date. Any country that did not want to follow these rules would have an import tax applied to its goods.

Of course this stands no chance of being adopted since there are millions of dollars being spent to lobby in favour of coal, oil, nat gas, traders...

There are a couple of us here in DC :-).

We were in Bonaire about a year ago (same island chain), and the wind was impressive. Just constantly blowing, and it was strong. We only saw one medium-sized turbine on that island, and I believe they also use oil for the bulk of their electricity. The population of that island is far lower than in Aruba (maybe only 10K inhabitants).

Whatever the problems are with financing wind right now, nuclear must have the same problem x10. Then again, I was talking with a guy I know who is a mechanical engineer, and they were working on a couple of new nuclear plant projects in the U.S.

At the airport in Bonaire, they report average wind speeds between 12 and 17 knots. But the airport is on the leeward side of the island.

http://www.windfinder.com/windstats/windstatistic_bonaire.htm#

The other side of the island reports

Lac Bay, the windsurfing site, is an 8 sq. km. lagoon that is protected from the sea by a barrier reef, creating ideal flat-water windsurfing conditions. But the enclosed, safe lagoon is not sheltered from the Caribbean trade winds, producing perfect side onshore wind that averages 15-25 knots from December to August and 10-20 knots from September to November.

Fee! Fie! Foe! Fum!
I smell the blood of an Austrian.
Be he 'live, or be he dead,
I'll grind his bones to make my bread

:-)

I second what msbpodcast said, and then some! As of yesterday, per stories in Bloomberg and CNN Fortune, the bankers for the most part are still flying in private jets, still taking exotic vacations and still living in psuedo palaces (except when the are living in real ones). There is no shortage of money, it has just been shifted under a different shell in the eternal shell game ("watch my hands ladies and gents, watch my hands, under which shell is the pea now...be a man and place your bets..."

For a great working model of how wind and solar could be funded one need look no further than the history of the Tennessee Valley Authority in the U.S.
Once the system was set up and the bonds were sold, the government was required to spend no more money. This would be even safer and truer if renewable power were used, since the volatile fuel cost would be completely removed from the equation.

As a brief aside, let us look at what we can see from an extraction, this from a book called "The Crash and it's Aftermath" by Barry A. Wigmore, a book about the Great Depression (I would LOVE to have this book, but Barnes and Noble has it priced at $196.95, you see, the rich protect their information with a hefty price tag :-)

"http://books.google.com/books?id=HjeMj1DB6w8C&pg=PA507&lpg=PA507&dq=TVA+Bond+Yields&source=web&ots=uJbnSdJuA_&sig=C3KWnYhU-cqiK_65GO4mLX0Cdis&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=6&ct=result

This book gives an extraordinary statistic from the great depression period of the 1930’s:
“Not a single large utility bond issue had its rating reduced by Moody’s, and no significant operating electric utility defaulted during the depression.”

Another one: “Based on their ratings at the end of this period, utility bond prices at their high in 1933 compared with their highs in 1929…”

I was raised in the U.S. south, and still live there. I personally know of old families who derived almost their entire income from TVA bonds. In the 1990's us younger guys scoffed at the yield. Why didn't these guys jump into the stock market and make some real money?" we asked.

Now, with people taking a 1/4% per year after tax penelty to buy Treasury Bills, while the yield on TVA bonds has historically been at least 4% to 5% compounded.

We should have statistical information to prove how much the sun will shine or the wind will blow over the long term. There has now been enough windmills built to demonstrate maintanence costs and life cycle.

With concentrating mirror solar, we should know even more. Installations built in the late 1970's are still producing power to this day (the one issue has been some of the molten sodium storage systems, which in some cases have caught fire, thus destroying the storage ability of the system, but not stoppng the plant from producing electric power. Another good thing...unlike a nuclear accident, an accident at a solar plant is not normally a national emergency). The life cycle costs of these plants should be easy to calculate. Bonds could be sold for the construction of the plant using normal actuarial practices, and investors would enjoy one of the most stable investments in history, exceeding even the TVA which since the 1930's has been as solid as a rock.

So, why isn't it done? You tell me. Hey President Obama, are you listening? :-)

RC

I second what msbpodcast said, and then some! As of yesterday, per stories in Bloomberg and CNN Fortune, the bankers for the most part are still flying in private jets, still taking exotic vacations and still living in psuedo palaces (except when the are living in real ones). There is no shortage of money, it has just been shifted under a different shell in the eternal shell game ("watch my hands ladies and gents, watch my hands, under which shell is the pea now...be a man and place your bets..."

For a great working model of how wind and solar could be funded one need look no further than the history of the Tennessee Valley Authority in the U.S.
Once the system was set up and the bonds were sold, the government was required to spend no more money. This would be even safer and truer if renewable power were used, since the volatile fuel cost would be completely removed from the equation.

As a brief aside, let us look at what we can see from an extraction, this from a book called "The Crash and it's Aftermath" by Barry A. Wigmore, a book about the Great Depression (I would LOVE to have this book, but Barnes and Noble has it priced at $196.95, you see, the rich protect their information with a hefty price tag :-)

"http://books.google.com/books?id=HjeMj1DB6w8C&pg=PA507&lpg=PA507&dq=TVA+Bond+Yields&source=web&ots=uJbnSdJuA_&sig=C3KWnYhU-cqiK_65GO4mLX0Cdis&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=6&ct=result

This book gives an extraordinary statistic from the great depression period of the 1930’s:
“Not a single large utility bond issue had its rating reduced by Moody’s, and no significant operating electric utility defaulted during the depression.”

Another one: “Based on their ratings at the end of this period, utility bond prices at their high in 1933 compared with their highs in 1929…”

I was raised in the U.S. south, and still live there. I personally know of old families who derived almost their entire income from TVA bonds. In the 1990's us younger guys scoffed at the yield. Why didn't these guys jump into the stock market and make some real money?" we asked.

Now, with people taking a 1/4% per year after tax penelty to buy Treasury Bills, while the yield on TVA bonds has historically been at least 4% to 5% compounded.

We should have statistical information to prove how much the sun will shine or the wind will blow over the long term. There has now been enough windmills built to demonstrate maintanence costs and life cycle.

With concentrating mirror solar, we should know even more. Installations built in the late 1970's are still producing power to this day (the one issue has been some of the molten sodium storage systems, which in some cases have caught fire, thus destroying the storage ability of the system, but not stoppng the plant from producing electric power. Another good thing...unlike a nuclear accident, an accident at a solar plant is not normally a national emergency). The life cycle costs of these plants should be easy to calculate. Bonds could be sold for the construction of the plant using normal actuarial practices, and investors would enjoy one of the most stable investments in history, exceeding even the TVA which since the 1930's has been as solid as a rock.

So, why isn't it done? You tell me. Hey President Obama, are you listening? :-)

RC