Enviro-nitwit alert: DNC funds broken turbine
Well, this pretty much sums up the Democrat energy policy: Expensive and empty eco-gestures signifying nothing.
Via Face the State (hat tip – M.S.):
The eastern Colorado wind turbine tapped for the Democratic National Convention’s carbon-offset program has one problem: It doesn’t generate any electricity. Convention organizers are now being questioned for their eagerness to market those credits to delegates.
The DNC has contracted with Vermont-based NativeEnergy to offer delegates “Green challenge” carbon offsets to soften the environmental impact of convention travel. That money is then invested in carbon-free “green” energy sources around the country, including a wind turbine installed this year by the Wray School District RD-2. But a Face The State investigation reveals the district’s turbine has never produced marketable energy due to massive equipment malfunctions.
The school district held a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the wind turbine February 15th. Officials soon discovered, however, that the turbine was incapable of producing its intended output. “We flipped it back off and on about 10 times since then,” said Superintendent Ron Howard. “It has run, it will run, but it won’t ramp itself up to full capacity.”
In the meantime, the project has been touted by Gov. Bill Ritter’s administration as an example of government innovation in clean energy, with district officials still attempting to reassure residents of the technology’s long-term potential. Area residents tell Face The State the blades do turn some days, even though the turbine is not producing electricity. The district Web site reads, “As you note the blades turning evenly in the wind…this ‘dream turned into reality’ is providing an environmentally safe source of power to our community.”
In a feature story in Saturday’s Rocky Mountain News, reporter Jerd Smith claimed that 20 percent of Wray’s power is generated by what it calls “a windmill that toils day and night producing clean electricity.” Smith’s report professed that the Wray project is “at the heart” of the DNC’s carbon-credit program.
The Rocky report also described the school wind turbine as “a project that generates thousands of dollars for the region’s cash-strapped schools,” but provided no financial data regarding any energy sales to date.
Howard says the turbine requires replacement equipment, which is scheduled to be installed this month. “It’s a new technology, so they don’t have the bugs out of it,” he said. “Since there’s so many people watching [the turbine], they might be better served to go to a more reliable model.”
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Categories: 2008 campaign, Democrats, Enviro-nitwits
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This story, carbon credits is sounding so familiar to the way Bugsy Siegal went around selling shares to the Flamingo Hotel to dupes and crooks.
This, in a nutshell, sums up the entire Democratic Energy policy.
You can’t make this stuff up!
With all the fertilizer they’re spreading around, maybe they should re-name it the “Brown challenge”.
And indeed it is. This is something that might have come right out of Atlas Shrugged, had the late, great Ayn Rand possessed a truly bizarre and wicked sense of humor. As it stands, no writer of satire could come up with this stuff. Only real life + Democrats could come up with something so insanely stupid. I am in awe.
This is so funny. Mabye a gerbal would make the blades turn by running on his little wheel.
L
Can we just stop wasting time and money and get on with drilling? At least we know THAT works.
Wind turbine? Sound more like they are whizzing in the wind.
The problem with that particular turbine is that, in typical liberal fashion, no thought was put into the location. The windmill is too big for the amount and pattern of airflow in that location.
We have hundreds of windmills on the farms and ranches around my farm, which is about 75 miles from Wray. However, the power company did extensive airflow research prior to deciding where to put them up.
Those dingbat liberals, as usual, just figured you could put a windmill anywhere, and of course, since it was a school run by liberals, they got more money than they needed for the project. So, why not buy the biggest damned windmill you can find. Problem is they didn’t realize that the wind in their area can’t support the turbine.
I dont see the problem.
This is working like pretty much every other government controlled project, so from here, it looks like its running perfectly.
/sarc off
We need to find a way to harness the energy in all the hot air Al Gore, et al. are sprewing about “Alternative Energy Sources.” That’s the TRUE renewable energy source!
You saying the Democrat party is a scam? Who knew.
That’s funny, I don’t care who you are. That’s funny.
Let’s get the Senate and House to move behind it, that kind of hot air would get it moving!!
“Hah skrulls” wonder why they get attacked for wasting tax payers money… if this wasn’t a serious issue over all, it’d be funny.
Oxymoron.
Is there any possibilty we could strike a compromise and have liberals use alternative energy sources and conservatives use hydrocarbons? We could have red energy and blue energy. Heck, conservatives could even subsidize them by buying carbon credits just to calm them down a bit. But at least they would only be able to communicate their moronic ideas when they have enough power to run their phones, faxes, computers, radios etc… This would work for me as it would get liberals off the airwaves about 80% of the time.
ooh, lookie here. a gov’t subsidized project that doesn’t work as advertised. shocked…simply shocked.
and people want more of this. unreal.
Brilliant idea.
DNC ..what a joke.
I can hear some say, “well, it’s way too early in the Green Movement to be counting and holding all of these bugs in its system against the virtue of the movement as a whole.”
But with non-credible leaders like AlGore and Bobby Kennedy Jr., (who continually prove themselves capable of the most egregious examples of hypocrisy and untruths) stories like these, and assailable creeds like “there is no more debate,” there is total scientific consensus,” as well as others…I predict that this Alternative Sources of Energy/Green Movement will be far more disastrous for all of America than the Great Society was for the black community as a whole.
Say it aint so!!!!
The carbon-offset program, in my opinion sounds like a huge sham. It’s a way of justifying the lifestyles of the rich, and liberal elite. They can use this program as a cover for all the energy wasting hypocrisy they are guilty of. Al Capone would be proud of their work. I wonder if there were any carbon credits in that vault?
D.A.T.S.N.A.T.D.
The guerilla
The dnc “energy” plan included taxes on farms based on methane output from the animals on each farm. This would have literaly been a tax on thier farts. That one was missed by almost everyone.
The answer, my friends, is blowin’ in the wind.
OH what a gem!
Do you think this idgit knows why it won’t ramp itself up?
BWAHAHAHAHAHA![Inhale]HAHAHAHAHA
I’m sorry folks but sometimes you just have to laugh at them.
How do I get in on this carbon credits racket? I’m a little short of cash, think I could set up a windmill too?
Actually, I have a plan. Every time I have a big steak and a few beers, I produce lots of another powerful greenhouse gas. I was thinking of collecting all that methane in a big, green garbage bag then compressing it with my $59 Chinese-built WalMart compressor. When I want to light the grill, I’ll use that compressed methane instead of the hydrocarbon fuel I usually use, thereby saving the environment by reducing the amount of my emissions released into the atmosphere and not buying oil-based lighter fluid! Now if I could only get a few million from the government, (or maybe Al Gore) that would help support the supply of beer and steak, thereby ensuring a virtuous enviro-circle for years to come.
Who knows, maybe I could start a new movement. I’ll call it “BrownPiece”. I already have the logo designed, but can’t include graphics here, so I’ll let you infer it.
Hmmm. An empty shell that looks like it’s working, but isn’t and that the press touts as the next great thing. Kinda sounds like Obama.
Possible title for the DNC and their energy plan:
1. Hope and failure. (Same as their chances during the next election.)
2. Brake like the wind. (May need a copyright permission from Spinal Tap producers.)
While I am no expert, I tried once to make heads or tails over wind energy technology. This is what I came up with.
Wind technology is only around 33% efficient while the pushers of the technology use the 100% figures to estimate cost/output ratio. Plug in your $20k wind turbine and you can run your air conditioner on a hot day. You’ll still need a feed from the power grid to make up the difference. You can install a bank of submarine batteries to store that wind power. Purchase the $50K wind turbine that will run provide you with 200 amp service and you become a utility, and you fall under government regulation. That opens up a new can of worms. I havent even factored in the cost of maintenance yet.
Wind energy still costs more than $150 a barrel oil.
Not thanks, start drilling, build nuclear power plants.
I have the solution! Put a bunch of rats on a tread mill and feed them a few energy bars
Fixed it for ya!
BM,
Just when I think you cannot get any better PS’s, you go and do it again. That was just great!
Does this foolishness fit the hallmarks of liberal thinking?
- Born of ignorance
- Steeped in wishful thinking
- Focused on irrelevancy
You bet it does.
When I think of donkeys and windmills, my first thought isn’t energy policy but Don Quixote.
Paging Michael Milken! Sorry Mike, this carbon credit scam puts your little ditty completely to shame – not even close. Junk bonds are nothing compared to creating your own new monetary system that’s backed up by idiots in Congress, underwritten by the UN and all based on the same thing the Jerry Seinfeld show was based on … nothing! (Isn’t it illegal to establish an alternate form of currency in the USA? ..just askin?)
Officials soon discovered, however, that the turbine was incapable of producing its intended output. “We flipped it back off and on about 10 times since then,” said Superintendent Ron Howard. “It has run, it will run, but it won’t ramp itself up to full capacity.”
This wind generator made lots of promises which it was incapable of delivering?
Hmmmmm. Why does that sound familiar?
I think you mean $2500.00…
Really though, coming from someone in the power industry… Every power producer out there knows that ‘renewable energy concepts’ like wind turbines and solar power just don’t have the capacity at the current level of technology to replace our Nuclear and Coal plants.
They’re all putting research and money into wind farms, etc. but it’s just for show and political smiles.
It would take a wind farm of something like 20 square miles to produce the output in Megawatts that one fair sized coal plant does, and can you imagine the taxes on that kind of property? Not to mention that all of those huge wind turbines need maintenance and repair parts as well as upkeep. And guess what happens when the wind decides to quit blowing?
You also don’t get more power in a hurricane or tornado, etc. All of those turbines have maximum rated output. If the wind picks up to speeds past what it’s rated for they shut them down. In high winds what you get is damaged equipment.
I wish the Wray School Distric the best of luck with that thing…they’ll need it.
This whole green revolution is looking sinister. Devalue the dollar, devalue citizenship, create a bogus universal “higher cause”, then use it as a stick to beat people into submission. We are walking over a precipice.
This is what we conservatives in CO have had to put up with. As I’ve said here before on these various pages, the disturbing thing about the last several elections (national and local), there is a consistent nearly 50/50 split btw the “left” and the “right” and too many of the “right” crossed over and gave us Billy Jeff…twice. Nearly gave us Algore and John F’n Kerry. In CO, which was a consistently “Red” state until recent years, conservatives gave both state legislatures over to the Dems in ‘04. Then, if that wasn’t enough, in ‘06, they gave over the governor’s office to them. Now we have stories such as this BS on a consistent basis. Well, we asked for it. And may ask for it again on a national basis. I repeat what I heard in this last year or so, someone said the left’s biggest weapon is an ignorant electorate. Man, have we got it big time. As I said, CO used to be solidly red but for the usual exception of the generationally union steel town and the Denver Democrat strongholds. Now those blue areas have a solid blue line snaking through the mountains via the “beautiful people” areas (i. e. Hollywood types) of Aspen and Vail. God help us. We apparently can’t. Not until those “teetering” on the right side stop voting with their emotions and start actually THINKING AND REASONING with their God-given intelligence. Thinking and reasoning people see Obama and others of the left for who they are, empty suits of raging incompetence. Oh, did I mention Pelosi and Reid?
Reason 9,999,999 why liberals suck.
Actually, here are the real numbers.
The Wildorado Wind Farm ranch is (will be) one of the biggest in the country when it’s completed.
It covers 16,000 acres (25 square miles). It has 70 Siemens turbines capable of producing 2.3 MW each. That means that the whole farm, if everything is running, and nothing is broke down, will generate 161 Megawatts.
My coal plant covers maybe 2 or 3 square miles. It generates over 1300 Megawatts, and it’s just average size.
My earlier estimate of 20 square miles to equal a coal plant was a little low. Based on those numbers you’d need a wind farm of approx. 202 square miles to generate the same output that a 2 square mile coal plant does.
Here’s a link to the Wildorado info.
http://www.cielowind.com/DevComplete.htm
Remember, these aren’t little backyard windmills either. Here’s the stats on the ones in Wildorado:
Tower Height: 226 feet
Blade Length: 88 feet
Rotor Diameter: 184 feet
Swept Area: 8,070 feet
Turbine Weight: 208-250 tons
And I wonder how many prairie rats they had to displace to install those monsters….
MrVIBEMAN, well said, both posts. Here in southern CO, Xcel Energy has Comanche Power Plant, just SE of Pueblo. It’s been there since ‘73 with 2 generators, about 750 MW. They are on their way to finishing an addition of another generator that by itself will generate another 700 MW. All coal fired. Great stuff. I don’t remember if it’s Xcel or another company, but someone wants to build another coal fired plant down the Arkansas valley in Holly. Recently, they mentioned, to the horror of the Sierra Clubbers, that they weren’t “ruling out” the possibility of nuclear power. What a concept! I’m all for technology, always have been. I can see that wind generators have their place, but you’re right, the current level of technology has its limits. For now, at least. Driving up to Cheyenne WY last year, we saw the wind farm just east of I-25 across the state line. A facinating site, indeed, all those spinning blades. Would like to see them up close, someday. From what I hear, a good source of new jobs for their maintenance.
There are a huge number of turbines located in the Altamont Pass area of California.
I remember when they went up.
For the record, they now produce 125MW of electricity. . .which based on 2001 EIA numbers, is right around 1% of US household energy usage for the whole nation (ignores industrial electricity consumption).
Even though it’s a truly huge windmill farm, covering dozens of square miles, that’s still pretty impressive.
Now, I also recall that when they first started up this windmill farm, they had substantial issues with the turbines. It took years to reach the output rate they are currently sustaining. But reach it they did.
Of course, now they have a new problem. Many of the same ‘greenies’ who wanted this wind power farm created in the first place, are now protesting it because the turbines kill hundreds of birds of prey every year.
Not to mention the occasional errant spotted owl.
Seriously, owls in general will fly right into these things if they’re homed in on one of those praire rats. They have virtually zero peripheral vision and just won’t notice the fast blade that’s about to intersect their flight path and bisect them.
Btw, here’s a link to a CO website that has photos of the wind farm I mentioned, up near the Wyoming border, the Ponnequin Wind Farm of Xcel Energy. He has some great aerial photos of it and another just to the east, even bigger:
http://www.k0lee.com/blog/2007/07/colorados-wind-farms.html
From Prairie State Outdoors:
Residential Sector Energy Consumption Estimates, 2005
http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/states/sep_sum/html/sum_btu_res.html
US Total (from all sources) =21,743 TRILLION BTUs/yr
1 Megawatt/hr= 3,415,179 BTUs/hr
So, 21,743,000,000,000,000 BTUs/yr divided by 3,415,179 BTUs/MW
= 6,466,576,978 MW’s/yr of residential use in the United States.
So, 1% of that would be 64,665,769.78 MW
64.6 Million Megawatts is a far cry from the 125 MW you quote. Your numbers are waaaayyyyyy off.
Sorry, I think that should have been 63.6 Million Megawatts, but what’s a million Megawatts between friends, eh?
Anyway, your 125 MW wind farm produces about 0.00000196% of the nations ‘residential’ power per year.
said Superintendent Ron Howard. “It has run, it will run, but it won’t ramp itself up to full capacity.”
Well have they turned the wind all the way up? I can’t believe they installed a weather based energy source and then they won’t turn the weather up enough for it to work right.
/snark
didn’t they do an acceptance test with the manufacturer and installer? They should have a derating curve that shows what it will produce with a given amount of wind. If it fails then don’t accept it and pay for it until they make it work. Of course if they were spending their own money they would do that, but since it is free federal money (MINE!) then they don’t give a darn.
More boring numbers from an Engineer.
On a national level, during 2004, the retail price of electricity averaged 7.57 cents per Kwh. (which I’m sure is WAY low compared to today’s prices)
That means 75.7 cents per Megawatt hour. As per my numbers above, you can see that:
0.757/MWh x 6.366 Billion Megawatts = $4.8 Billion dollars (residential alone)
Note: Commercial and Industrial usage dwarfs residential usage annually.
The Energy policy of our next President is a very big deal…
Just sayin’..
Worse than I imagined… Frequency of bird and bat species killed between March 1998-February 1999 at 685 turbine towers in the Altamont Wind Resource Area.
74 Red-tailed Hawk
45 Rock Dove
29 Western Meadowlark
26 Burrowing Owl
17 Barn Owl
13 American Kestrel
11 European Starling
10 Horned Lark
5 Golden Eagle
5 Mallard
3 Hoary Bat
3 Cliff Swallow
3 House Finch
3 Brewer’s Blackbird
2 Passerine
2 Northern Harrier Circus
2 California Gull
1 Red-winged Blackbird
1 Loggerhead Shrike
1 Prairie Falcon
1 Violet-green Swallow
1 Great Horned Owl Bubo
1 Mourning Dove
Total birds murdered by ecofascism in one year at one wind farm = 259
Does anyone have the numbers killed by coal fired power plants? (And trying to say that the CO2 from the coal stations produced more plant life and thus ultimately yielded more food for the birds and thus made them too fat and slow to dodge the turbine blades doesn’t count..)
Hey America,
Here is a perfect example of how the Guv’ment will provide universal healthcare. Imagine the wind turbine is your pacemaker. Politician: “We decreased the cost of pacemakers with an innovative new design!”
‘beep…beep..beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee…
– MrVIBEMAN
Uh, I think you mis-read my post. The windmill farm on the Altamont produces 125MW. That’s not the figure for national consumption.
http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/recs/recs2001/enduse2001/enduse2001.html
Total household consumption (as I said, I ignored industrial/commercial use, as it wasn’t present in the numbers I found) = 1,139.9 billion kWh
So 1.14 billion MW Hours.
However, going back and checking my numbers, I realize now that trying to do the calculation at 7am in my head, I failed to notice the exponential behind the number. . .so you’re right, my numbers were off by several orders of magnitude.
And for the record, I’m an engineer too
Yashmak & Vibeman – Let’s get it straight between MW and MWH. One is power output and the other is work.
Danceswithdachshuds,
Indeed. But in this case, the distinction isn’t all that relevant, since the output level for these wind farms (at least the Altamont one) is averaged out for a continuous output value, meaning that you can consider an hour of output from the farm as 125MWH.
Sorry for the multiple post. . .but.
Indirectly, Danceswithdachshunds #56 does bring up something important about these wind farms.
Even if you average the output to provide a continuous number (i.e. 125MW for the Altamont farm, the current largest windfarm), that doesn’t paint the real picture.
These farms aren’t ‘power on demand’. Some days, the Altamont field runs at 20% (OR LESS!) of the average, some days it runs double or more the 125MW number. Output level changes based on a variety of reason. . .weather being the primary reason. No wind, no wind power. That’s pretty obvious, but it deserves stating again.
Yashmak, I know the feeling of 7am bleary-eyed posts (I’m at work at 6am) so think nothin’ of it.
Coal plants average for continuous output value also. The price can change from minute to minute, but most tracking data is measured in MWH’s.
As conservatives, can’t we at least see a partial benefit to wind power? For every megawatt that comes from wind turbines, that’s how many tons of coal or cubic feet of natural gas that wasn’t consumed? Doesn’t that count for something? I’m not for supporting environmentalists but the wind, when it blows, and it blows a lot in Colorado believe me, is free. The labor, land and materials for wind generators obviously are not. But there is some benefit in getting power w/o burning something. Is there not?
Frankly Floyd, no I don’t see much advantage at all. Wind doesn’t seem to offer any huge cost advantage over coal but seems to have more real problems than coal with the biggest being random output variability that just adds to the overall extra cost to install power lines able to handle the peak output that doesn’t happen very often. (They’d be a LOT more useful if they wound up giant clock springs to store the energy but right now they’re at the mercy of the wind.)
Technology already conquered pollution from coal combustion, (and CO2 is simply NOT pollution), plus we have a LOT of coal to burn. So why not use it and keep our country going strong and give us more time to figure out how to harness the ultimate power source – hydrogen fusion? Windmills are ugly too unless we’re talkin something more like these..
Better get that news flash off to gore!!!!
Yeah, but they all taste like chicken.
Can you imagine the bloody avian slaughter than would result from a farm of that size? The Sandhill Crane really would go extinct. How can we possibly think about doing anything but CONFISCATING political power from these rubes. They’re dangerous.
Did they try smacking the turbine on its side?
How about unplugging it then plugging it back in?
This might be why Teddy Kennedy didn’t want the turbines by his house. He knew this would happen.
Well, honestly, an environmental assessment of the damage to the birds of prey for the Altamont farm indicated that even though the numbers sound shocking, they are a miniscule portion of the population of birds of prey for the area. That’s not that big an issue, except to environmental extremists. The farm hasn’t been shown to have had a substantial impact on the population of ANY avian species. At least, not that I am aware.
As far as the wind farms using large tracts of land when compared to coal or other power sources. . .you have to ask “What was that land being used for before?”
In the case of the Altamont farm, the answer is NOTHING. Cows grazed there, and cows still graze there. All that’s been done, is that what once was simply grazing area, now also produces electricity.
Short of harnessing the tides, wind and solar power are the ultimate renewable resources. There is definitely an advantage to utilizing them, if done wisely. Cost should not be the only object here.
Remember, the idea is to reduce our reliance on foreign petroleum. We shouldn’t rule out ANY way of doing that.
Exactly.
Government innovation? Umm…two words that never belong together.
To convert the KWH price into MWH price multiply by 1000. Therefore 7.57 cents is .0757 dollars X 1000 = 75.70 dollars. Not the 75.7 cents you listed above.
Before we come down too hard on the engineers who designed this wind turbine; maybe they made a similar mistake.
Um, does this mean we shouldn’t rule out “ways” which consume more energy than they produce?
Do you know how much energy was used to make this turbine? Do you know how much energy was used to mine the metals, transport all the raw materials, forge the steel, fabricate the system, fabricate the grid cables, transport the turbine to the buyer, transport the maintenance workers,…..????
Is it possible that this turbine will end up being a huge waste of ENERGY? Could it really be that ironic?
If so, then I’m pretty sure we should rule out this “way.”
Don’t joke about things like that some moonbat will use it has proof that bush is evil. Sorry for putting you guys thru this but you only need to listen to the first 1 1/2 minute to get the joke.
I still think seeing Dingy Harry makes me think the boy with the banjo in Deliverance grew up and went to Washington.
His policies make me believe it more.
This may not be the exact post for this question, but can anyone tell me how much I can get for a carbon credit? I am single and travel for work most of the time. I would think that I should be able to sell carbon credits for all of the days of not running the AC or heat and all of the water saved!
So would this be an actual count? I can see it now, and entire bureaucracy of enviro-wackos in a pasture in lawn chairs and a clip board counting how many times Bessie farts…
…and leaving a bill in the door on their way to the next farm.
Republicanvet, would the cost differ based on type? i.e SBD, Echo, Dart Bullet etc.
Absolutely! It would also differ based on the type of food eaten by the animal, all to be properly recorded in triplicate and forwarded on to the nearest, newly created bureaucrat…the Fartocrat.
Republicanvet, excellent name for the new job. Fair warning, I will be using it for a few family and friends. I will give you your due whenever possible.
Can you imagine THAT on a resume? I bet we would have college courses as prolific as ethnic studies departments.
…an MF degree…Major of Farting.
I may not put it on my resume, but how many of us would automatically qualify for a secondary degree if it came true? The steller college diet, seconded by the late night taco or burger runs! Double majors for all!!
…and the PhD candidates eating hard boiled eggs and drinking Grain Belt beer.
The west has an over-abundance of Prarie Dogs. They just need to harness those little buggers and then strap a tube to their bums to collect all that methane.
And a Partridge in a Pear tree……..
On a more serious note.. Sometimes I wonder what the cost/benefit is. Have you actually driven through the turbine fields of Eastern Colorado? Just when you think you have reached BFE, you actually need to keep driving for another 50 miles. It takes a convoy of serveral trucks and support vehicles to deliver the parts for each and every turbine. And it is so far out there, that I wonder how much fuel it takes to maintain each one.
Im actually in favor of EVERY house and every business in the US having its own tubine sitting on top of it. We’re all in this together.
I have plenty carbon credits to sell too; I built the Hoover dam and planted all the trees in Yellowstone National Park. Yeah! That’s the ticket!
Hey, I’m just trying get my prespective onto the same astroplane as those who would sit in a tree for weeks to save a spotted owl – the same people who worship Al Gore…
And we thought just having all the utility poles with power lines strung up all over the place was ugly enough…
Good point. I didnt think to describe it like Organic Architecture (yes thats a real style) – more on the order of cell towers made to look like trees or church steeples. Utility poles are so retro…
then again it wasnt so long ago that we all had TV antennas and satellite dishes on our roofs