Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Oh children - this is going to be funny.

First let me start out by saying - there is no one on earth who wants the alternative energy folks to be right. No one! Not because of some stupid love for mother earth. What egos. Mother Earth does what she wants, and she'll kick your ass if she feels like it.

I want them to be right, because with mass production - prices come down. The Snarkolepsy household runs right out and gets solar panels for the house so we can run a 25 foot television. Well, if I had the money and I wanted to. Then I can tell Pacific Gas and Electric to bite me. See! Pretty selfish and greedy. But green. If you want to call it that.

I have this silly notion that the modern world will take more electricity. Not less. Just like Japan.

Having said that - the alternative energy people push my buttons like no one else. After all, if you can't make solar and wind work in California. Where the hell can you get it to work? Well, plus there is a wind farm not too far from me.

It's pretty hard getting any kind of real data from that place. You'd think it was area 51 or something. I don't think any of the locals know where the power goes, or how much power it actually produces. I've heard people say that none of the power from the wind farms goes to my town at all. I only hear about the enviro's bitching about the birds getting killed.

So, when the new administration started touring windmill manufacturing plants, I decided to poke around again. Hoping to plug in the magic key words to find out once and for all how much good those spinny turbines were doing.

Oh wait. Lets talk about those birds again.

In 2004 people started getting unhappy about the birds getting killed from the turbines. So the greenies put pressure on the county to get the companies who own the windmills to replace old turbines that were alleged to kill the birds. Funny thing is, if they replace the turbines - the companies get less revenue. I know that motivates me to do stuff.
Full story here.


"Wind-power electricity prices have dropped sharply, from 80 cents a kilowatt hour in 1980, to 10 cents in 1991, to between 3 cents and 9 cents a kilowatt hour today, excluding subsidies, meaning potentially lower revenues for operators. "


Additionally, the state doesn't just let you do the right thing and swap out the old turbines in theory making the greenies happy. They have to undertake an environmental impact report. Which is known to take years. So why bother. Just let the birds die for shits sakes. What do you want? Green energy or birds? You can't have both. But, it gets oh so much better.

A few companies have been swapping out their turbines. Yet the bird deaths have continued. Even said to increase. But wait! The new turbines were suppose to be taller, making it so birds couldn't fly into them.

I'm not a bird-ol-ogist, but I'm guessing birds still fly at 200-250 feet in the air. Maybe their little carcases disintegrate before they fall to the ground huh? No.. no such luck.

So the Audubon Society now wants half of the turbines idled during bird migration times. Or a complete 4 month winter shutdown. I can't tell which. Full story here.

Four months! What will we do till then?

Well, we can get our power from natural gas peaker plants. No one who has lived through rolling blackouts knows anything about that.

Namely that peaker plants are there for "peak" times. Basically power emergencies. And thus electricity costs more. Or! We can put up a commiserate amount of solar panels to compensate. Which completes the cycle People.

Requiring an environmental impact report! Which Greg Miller of the Bureau of Land Management admits will be close to two years for those goofy solar panels in the desert. Story here.

Oh yeah. Green jobs. So cute!

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