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Invisible Structures
With our eyes wide shut
Even with our eyes open, we don't really see what's around us. As we drive down the highways we just don't register the parade of cellphone towers that intrude on our peripheral vision with amazing frequency. Nor do we take notice of the ubiquitous telephone poles, transmission lines, or water tanks, even when they are in plain sight. When we do notice them, we excuse their intrusion into the natural landscape because although they are not pretty, they are very useful to us.
With the much discussed wind turbines, it is a different matter. We notice them because they aren't yet commonplace. Many (but not all) of us see them as beautiful kinetic modern sculpture as well as being functional. They would give us pollution-free electricity. They would help us forestall climate change with it's coming sea rise. We
would breathe healthier air. Our rain would be less acidic. Fish, birds, and plant life would suffer less toxicity. Those turbines obviously pass the utility test.
When they become commonplace structures we will hardly notice them. We'll just pay little or no attention to them. They will be as invisible to us as radio transmission towers are now. All the carping about aesthetics will be ancient history. Bloggers will discover some new hot button issue. Better days are coming.
Richard C. Bartlett
Cotuit
18 comments
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"Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil." Ah, "No thanks." The status quo and regulators' approach regarding environmental concerns has not been effective to date, actually, the depreciation of our assets, enviromental and monetary, continues.
Blight by fright is ongoing. We are engaged in meaningless practices that compound our problems, and this must change in order so that we may rectify our damage to the environment using antidotes that actually produce positive results.
I am so very glad that you and others recognize that it is at our own peril that we stick our heads in the sand.
Thank you, Capri.
I was at a meeting and spoke to the folks who run the URI Oceanography School. None of them had anything negative to say about the Cape Wind project.
Richard Bartlett has it exactly right. We are used to the conditions we have now and wind turbines are definitely a change.
Don't get used to cheap gas and inexpensive home heating oil and natural gas...
Prices are out of your control. You have no control over how your energy is delivered. (or not delivered as was the case with the most recent Buzzards Bay / Bouchard oil spill)
It’s good to know that you, the folks at URI Oceanography School, and Richard Bartlett are blissful.
Many of us have our eyes and ears wide open, and understand that the placebo, Cape Wind, would only increase prices for electricity by approximately $400.00 per year per Cape Cod resident household. And, THAT would be only IF this marketing company, Cape Wind, could deliver on promises that many recognize are too good to be true.
You are certainly welcome to your own opinion. But not welcome to make up “facts”.
Can you substantiate how Cape Wind will increase our electric bill by $400 a year?
Especially in the face of the fact that Cape Wind, like any merchant power plant, can’t sell their power at a price greater than the clearing price for most expensive electricity bid into the open market stack at ISO NE.
Regards,
Chuck Kleekamp
In answer to your question/allegation:
“You are certainly welcome to your own opinion. But not welcome to make up “facts.
Can you substantiate how Cape Wind will increase our electric bill by $400 a year?”
The Wall Street Journal is my source/substantiation. But it’s $440.00 as the calculated household electric bill increase, rounded down you may note.
Bill Koch, whom Jim Gordon approached to invest in Cape Wind, has 23 years in the energy business owning and operating a number of alternative power plants. Is the world's largest seller of "petroleum coke," an alternative fuel, and produce a super-compliance coal and coal-bed methane, an alternative for natural gas examined the economics and risks of the Cape Wind project.
Jim Gordon wouldn’t share his economic model, so Bill Koch created his own to determine viability.
Construction Cost: $800 million for production of 1.5 billion kW hrs annual
Operating Cost: $27.5 million per year
Federal Tax Credits: $37 million per year
Subsidy by Tax payers: $72 million per year, passed on to the consumer at as higher electricity rates “…Cape Cod residents’ electricity bills would go up by $440.00 per year.”
Clean Power Now suggests that Cape Wind would lower the aggregate cost of electricity to all consumers.
Would you care to substantiate this Clean Power Now claim by estimation of financial benefit per Cape Cod Household, monthly?
"Since the fuel cost of wind energy will always be zero, the resulting price of electrical energy from this source will bump highest bidders from the accepted hourly clearing price in the ISO New England market thereby lowering the aggregate cost to all consumers..."
The fuel, wind, may be free, but capturing the fuel and converting it to energy would be very costly, in both economic and environmental terms.
Regardless of the generating plant's costs (like the wind farm or a hydro plant), bidders above the clearing price don’t get dispatched by ISO NE. Therefore, the price to all retail electrical sellers will be less when anybody underbids the clearing price.
From ISO NE: “The ISO dispatches generators in the region starting from the lowest-priced bids (this includes generators that bid $0, such as hydro units and nuclear units) and progressing to higher-priced bids (i.e., gas-fired generating units), until New England has enough generation to meet consumers’ demand for electricity.”
Wind, like hydro will be bid in at $0. Therefore it cannot possibly increase the cost to the retail distributor.
As for Koch comment on subsidies, there are no federal subsidies to construct wind farms. The production tax credit incentive expires in 2007.
And without sufficient renewable energy available, the retail sellers must make alternative payments of some $53 per MWh that IS passed on to you. The wind farm will lower these REC costs, a savings for you and I.
Chuck K.
Please translate your response to provide an answer to my question.
What amount of savings on electric bills will Cape Cod residents' realize, approximately, per year, if Cape Wind is constructed?
Bill Koch states that there will be an approximate increase of $440.00 annually reflected in Cape Cod residents' electric bills if Cape Wind is permitted.
I would appreciate an apples to apples comparison of your allegation of direct savings to Cape Cod residents' reflected in their electric bills.
Thank You,
Barbara
Regarding your comment:
"As for Koch comment on subsidies, there are no federal subsidies to construct wind farms. The production tax credit incentive expires in 2007."
I did not note that Bill Koch said that there were "subsidies" for "construction."
Okay, we can play semantics Ala Bill Clinton, but for the record:
Subsidy: “A direct pecuniary (monetary) aid furnished by a government to a private industrial undertaking.” Random House
The PTC is a nonrefundable credit against federal income tax liability that is available for electricity produced from certain qualified renewable resources, including wind, and sold to unrelated parties. It serves to reduce their Federal tax burden to levels where only the Alternative Minimum Tax applies. The PTC shifts the burden of the high cost of wind energy generation away from the owners and investors to the taxpayers.
I'm certain that the forces are working very hard to keep the developers' and wind investors'"subsidy," the PTC.
No one, not even Jim Gordon, can predict exactly what the lowered price will be when the wind farm is constructed in the future. It depends on world events, meaning the price of steel for the monopoles, the price of the turbines, price of labor to install, the price of competitive oil and gas generated electricity, etc, etc. Do you have such a crystal ball? If you do, you ought to be a millionaire!
In any case, Cape Wind will ALWAYS be cheaper than the wholesale clearing price at ISO NE or it won’t get dispatched (sold). Thus it will always lower the price to the consumer presuming the middleman retailer (who buys the wind power like NStar) passes along the savings to the end user.
That’s the way the system works. Period. Furthermore, wind power will tend to stabilize that wholesale price because the cost of fuel is zero, unlike oil and natural gas.
And there is no PTC for wind after Dec. 31, 2007 (see the energy bill). No way can it be built by then. Hence there is no PTC incentive for Cape Wind.
Regards,
Chuck K.
I note that you state that no one can predict what the lowered price will be, (electric bills on the Cape if Cape Wind is permitted). So, your answer is that Cape Wind would reduce electricity pricing to consumers.
While...Bill Koch responded to Jim Gordon's request that he invest in this project with a "No," based on an economic model he created that failed to demonstrate to his satisfaction the economic benefits of Cape Wind.
And, Bill Koch stated that based on this economic model, Cape Cod residents' would see an annual increase if Cape Wind is constructed of approximately $440.00 per year in their electric bills.
The PTC credit extention beyond December 31, 2007 must be a full time focus for wind interests.
I'd venture to conclude that if Bill Koch accepted Jim Gordon's offer to invest in Cape Wind, you'd be quoting Koch as Gospel, despite his $billions.
It’s important to note that Jim Gordon has no wind energy experience.
Koch is an engineer and graduate of MIT, and the founder of Koch Industries, the empire of oil refining that became the largest privately owned company in America. He also founded Oxbow, whose focus is on energy development, including alternative energy.
Jim Gordon, on the other hand, wants to get his “feet wet” in Nantucket Sound, and it’s important to note that he has never built so much as a land based wind turbine. His grandiose plan is to capture Nantucket Sound, and install an experimental industrial scale wind facility so that he can gain this experience with wind energy. His incentives include tax sheltering, accelerated depreciation, generous production tax credits, and possession of our marine resource, and our money.
Koch sees Cape Wind as a risky business, “a giant boondoggle for the benefit of one developer.”
The pubic is in a state of hysteria; a condition fueled by energy interests and the budgetary needs of the Department of Energy. I think that the “food chain” that exists to piggy back tax payers would shock Cape Wind supporters, detractors, and the American public. It would be a true revelation if a financial diagram was available that tracked the assets and debits in this regard.
Gordon built power plants and does understand electricity. I was quaoting Kock and his lack of knowledge about the wind industry, I will say I think he's smarter than Jay Cashman who choose the worst site for turbines imaginable.
What makes Buzzards Bay the worst site for turbines imaginable in your opinion?
Neither Gordon nor Koch has built a wind turbine before. Gordon is the one who wants to build 130, in a hostile marine environment, despite his lack of experience. Koch turned Jim Gordon down as he sees Cape Wind, after his own cost benefit analysis of the project, as a giant Boondoggle.
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Fortunately, many will not "hear it" or "see it," as not all are so apathetic, indifferent, defeated or resigned.