Posted by
BLOGASSAULT on Tuesday, April 28, 2009 4:39:40 PM
Why are we ignoring things we know? We know that the sun doesn't always shine and that the wind doesn't always blow. That means that solar cells and wind energy systems don't always provide electric power. Nevertheless, solar and wind energy seem to have captured the public's support as potentially being the primary or total answer to our electric power needs.
We as americans want to feel good about what we are doing, sometimes to our own detriment.
Here is a good example. Driving from Denver, Colorado to Wichita, Kansas last weekend, you can't help but notice several
wind turbines running for several miles on the north side of I-70. The thing I noticed was only about a 1/3 of them were working. Now, considering only the ones facing in the correct direction to catch the wind were running, that would roughly leave 2/3 of them not working at any given time. There will also be times when the wind will not be blowing at all, although that is a rartiy in western Kansas.
Westar energy, who runs the wind farm says that one wind turbine can power three hundred homes. There are 100 turbines in that project and that would be enough to power 30,000 homes. Except that only 33 of those will be running at any given time, so move that down to 3,300 homes. Obviously, that is not very many homes.There were more homes in
foreclosure in Denver three years ago than the number of homes that could be powered by these things.
So what exactly has been gained besides some interesting things to look at while driving in western Kansas?