Turbines Not as Efficient as Believed

From The Daily Observer


The reality of wind turbines is not as efficient as lobbyists would like the public to believe


Editor:

The article in the Thursday, Oct. 27 edition of The Daily Observer, 'Energy solution blowing in the wind,' is an example of alternative energy propaganda funded by wind farm companies and promoted by environmental lobby groups.

Mr. Berton has nothing but praise for Spain and its supposedly 13 per cent production figure, but what he doesn't tell you is that although the wind is free, the means to produce power from it is twice as expensive as conventional power plants. Furthermore, Spain is now realizing how inefficient wind power is.

England is on the brink of a blackout in about seven years because of its commitment to wind power. The British have spent billions of pounds installing 2,000 wind turbines that barely produce one per cent of the power needed.

They signed on to Kyoto and are legally obligated to produce 32 per cent of their power from alternative energy sources by 2010. Let's do the math: If 2,000 wind turbines barely produce one per cent of need, then 32 times 2,000 means it would take

64,000 turbines to meet the

target. Each turbine needs about four

acres, four times 64,000 amounts to 256,000 acres and England would be hard-pressed to find room for 10,000 turbines. Prime Minister Brown and his group of

environmental dreamers are in fantasy land.

They are proposing to close their coal and oil-fired power plants and eight of their nine nuclear plants are so old that they will be forced to shut down, amounting to approximately 65 per cent of their power production.

The government is now reluctantly proposing to build a new generation of nuclear

power plants, but it has

waited too long and will not have them in place before the county runs out of

power. Britain sold its world class nuclear construction company, Westinghouse, to the Japanese for a fire sale price.

Germany has installed more than 3,000 wind turbines and are in the process of building 40 more clean coal-fired plants, because they now realize how inefficient and expensive wind power is.

In Ontario, Mr. McGuinty and his group of socialist comrades are travelling down the same road, and if not stopped, WE will be looking at power shortfalls in 10 years. I suggest rather than wasting our tax dollars on wind power, we should be refurbishing or building new nuclear power plants and also clean coal power plants.

The notion that wind power can replace conventional and nuclear power production is ridiculous and just a means for extracting our tax dollars from naive political leaders by the use of alarmism.

The sad reality is there is a lot of money behind wind power promoted by environmental lobby groups, and I would love to follow that paper trail to see who is getting it.

Mack Thrasher,

Laurentian Valley