Wind Power: No Hoopla, Just Jobs, and an Approach to Energy that Isn’t Ruining the Planet
With all the banter about arctic drilling, tar sands, shale oil, the construction of the Dakota Access and Keystone XL pipelines, returning jobs in coal, and Exxon’s (coincidental?) request of the lifting of sanctions on Russia, it’s good to keep a few things stably in mind. There are now over 100K jobs in the U.S. wind industry, and this number is growing nine times faster than the economy as a whole.
Clean energy is offsetting fossil fuels at a remarkable rate, and the U.S. economy is gaining strength as a direct result.
Craig despite the Trumpet s claims that Wind is weak energy – the private sector investment continues to Grow.
Deployments are characterized by these critical factors.
1. Decreased costs
2. Increased production and reliability over first and second generation technology
3. UK and Netherlands and Germany off Shore wind is now deploying at 6 and 8 megawatt Turbines increasing capacity factor and lowering LCOE . They are closing in on 50 % and topping it .
4. In 2 or 3 years maybe less Turbines of 12 megawatts per Pole go in lowering LCOE more and crossing the 55 5 plus Capacity factor.
This puts these off shore wind power sources in the league with a large part of the Gas Turbine fleet and when decreased base load needs are factored in , wind becomes a more reliable part of the MIX.
The business case is becoming so attractive that legacy OIl companys Shell, Statoil of Noraway, Enie , BP and others are moving more investment into the North Sea. They want to leverage their off shore oil drilling experince into off shore Wind and have decided that it is a good bet. Electric Vehicle are going to reduce demand for gasoline and diesel.
Putin does not control the Wind. Nor does the Trumpet. So expensive royalties can be avoided.
Back in the American Heartland – the combination of jobs, lower wholesale costs for power in many states, tax revenues to state treasury depts. replacing long ago hallowed out industrial revenues as well as providing income streams to the challenged agricultural sector. The combination of these positive market forces make Wind robust and more likely to withstand any irrational gomer like attacks from the Carbon forces under the false clarion calls of one carbon funded Trumpet or his terminally ill codependent coal lepers.
There will be various legislative attempts with inversely economic impacts on revenues made. Some will gain footholds as there is no shortage of Ignorance in certain sections of the country.
AKa Oklahoma example in the other Post.
But the Universal attraction of Green Money and its convergence with Green energy will withstand the Red herring attacks on wind.
Warren Buffet has served notice to Wyoming and Utah that his utility co Rocky Mtn Power will begin phasing out long and leaky in the Boiler dirty coal plants beginning in 2030 and 2035 as he builds up more than 3,000 megs of wind with some sprinkles of
sun thrown in to the Mix.
In Central NM and Eastern NM the power lines are now built to transship NM wind power all the way to Florida and West to California. They are signing PPA s for $ 25 to $ 35 per mega watt Hr.
They are in the money.
Wind has grown a long way since the 1980’s when it costs over $ .38 to .$ 45 cents per Kwhr and capacity factors strained to exceed 20 %
All that is milestones on the Road to progress , cost and production performance .
There will be some sort of hybrid storage systems for boutique applications and load needs so in some cases Wind will have more capability.
Its lowered the Whole sale costs of electricity in Texas and California, Iowa ,Okl, ND, SD., Neb. Kansas, Colorado , Illinois, Minn., and to some degree in NY state.
The naysayers will speak out against it but when its done right. However Using proper LIDAR ( laser) siting studies on wind resource now or if it is going back to original locations and Up rating old technology wind turbines and replacing them with modern units that have 3 or 4 times the capacity output the economic curves are pointed in the right direction.
Wind has created lots of US domestic manufacturing blue collar jobs which are needed more than ever nowadays. the job creation and revenues to States make it a hard target for Trumpet Battle Axes.
We shall see what others say.
sure there are some projects out there that were tax deals and that is rampant in the entire development sector no matter what the resource is or location. Greed has no boundaries nor limits it seems. But the scales are tipped heavily in winds corner delivering more than it gets.
last but not least and this is to drive home the business case for wind. In Texas ERCOT grid they dont want to export power into other grids so they avoid Federal regulation – this is also a holdover from War Conditions during W War 2 when there were numerous military ammunition plants in Texas, especially Central Texas. Being that the Grid was fragile etc.in those days the authorities decided to isolate Texas Grid for reliability reasons.
Now in so Tex. there is excess Coastal wind , so they ran lines East to Louisiana and created the Southern Cross Power Exchange so now 3,000 megs of Tx wind into La, Mississippi and Ala.
So one would have to be a hard core ideologue not to see the business case in wind. It has Earned its place in the Power MIX.
The East Coast is forecasted to build out 88,000 megawatts of wind disrupting coal whats left of it over the next 25 years. Most of the load is close to the coast all along the Eastern shores so the infrastructure costs and transmission issues will be reduced versus the interior of the US. So the building block continues for our clean future. Gomerism interference should be a non factor!
At the end of the day at the end of the Trail somewhere , I would bet on people liking green money over ignorant red ideology or carbon black ashes , take your pick!
later