The Springwater Preservation Committee

Springwater Preservation Committee

A letter to the editor…

By Kerry Lipp, Prattsburg, NY - written September 17, 2005…re-printed here with permission from the author

The industrial wind complexes being built in New York state and elsewhere are being promoted as clean and safe. We are led to believe that this is "green energy". Good for us, and good for our planet, right? I decided to do some research to see if they were really "clean and safe".

There are two very different types of wind energy: residential and utility scale or industrial. In a residential (12V or 24V) system, excess or unused power is stored in a battery bank for use at times when the turbine is unproductive (e.g. when there's no wind) making efficient use of all electricity produced. All power produced gets used. Therefore, a residential system requires no backup power source.

Industrial wind power is completely different. It is produced at such a high voltage (24,900V), that there is no known way to store the extra power for times when the towers can't generate electricity. There isn't a big enough "battery". As far as I know, there are four situations when the turbines don't produce any electricity, and these are all intermittent and unpredictable. They are: 1. When there's too little wind. 2. When there's too much wind. 3. When there's any ice build up. and 4. When they break down (and many already have). Therefore, industrial wind power must be backed up 24/7 by conventional power generation plants. In fact, no power plant has ever been shut down or decommissioned as a result of wind power installations. This makes utility scale wind power only as "clean" as the power plants that back them up (nuclear, coal, gas, etc.). They are even dirtier, as it turns out, since it takes more energy to manufacture, install, and maintain a wind turbine, than it will produce in its lifetime, for a net loss in power. Even if we built enough towers to power all of New York state (that's 72,470 of them), supplying 31,000 megawatts of electricity, we would still need an additional 31,000 megawatts of on-line backup from other sources, called "spinning reserve", in case the towers can't generate any power. In other words, we would have to produce much more power than we need in case the wind stops blowing. There's nothing clean or green about that.

So what happens when the turbines do produce power? It is sold into the grid at a premium where it simply becomes part of the reserve power (the "installed reserve margin"). This surplus reserve (currently 5.8%) must increase by an amount equal to all the wind generated power, in case the turbines suddenly stop generating. This is superfluous, wasted energy that never gets used. Do we need superfluous power? And at what cost? The utility grid, by law, has to pay the corporate owners for any electricity produced, meaning higher electric bills for all of us. This is simply not sustainable. The owners of the turbines also receive green energy tax credits which they are then able to sell to the highest bidder. Usually this is a multinational corporate polluter who desperately needs a green tax umbrella. It's not surprising that the only people who support industrial wind development are the few who will benefit monetarily, and the uneducated. It frustrates and angers me to see wasted tax revenues and corporate/political greed and corruption being shoved down our throats as "safe green energy". I question the intelligence, moral integrity and maturity level of the bandwagon developers and the politicians that feed them our money.

The dictionary defines terrorism as "trying to dominate by coercion and/or intimidation". The terror alert level in New York state is on "red". This old enemy with a new face must be stopped before it further lowers our quality of life. It's already too late for the beautiful Tug Hill region on the Adirondack border. There, construction has already begun on a 180-turbine industrial wind complex. Our small towns are not for sale at any price. There are much better uses for our tax dollars. The National Academy of Science is doing a twenty month study on industrial wind power to see if it's the right thing for our country. Let's wait for the results of this study before we do any more harm.

-Kerry Lipp, Prattsburgh

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