From the “it’s OK, we used other people’s money” department and Andrew Follet at The Daily Caller:
Lake Land College recently announced plans to tear down broken wind turbines on campus, after the school got $987,697.20 in taxpayer support for wind power.
The turbines were funded by a $2.5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Labor, but the turbines lasted for less than four years and were incredibly costly to maintain.
“Since the installation in 2012, the college has spent $240,000 in parts and labor to maintain the turbines,” Kelly Allee, Director of Public Relations at Lake Land College, told The Daily Caller News Foundation.
The college estimates it would take another $100,000 in repairs to make the turbines function again after one of them was struck by lightning and likely suffered electrical damage last summer. School officials’ original estimates found the turbine would save it $44,000 in electricity annually, far more than the $8,500 they actually generated. Under the original optimistic scenario, the turbines would have to last for 22.5 years just to recoup the costs, not accounting for inflation. If viewed as an investment, the turbines had a return of negative 99.14 percent.
“While they have been an excellent teaching tool for students, they have only generated $8,500 in power in their lifetime,” she said. “One of the reasons for the lower than expected energy power is that the turbines often need to be repaired. They are not a good teaching tool if they are not working.”
The college estimates it would take another $100,000 in repairs to make the turbines function again after one of them was struck by lightning and likely suffered electrical damage last summer.
Even though the college wants to tear down one of the turbines, they are federal assets and “there is a process that has to be followed” according to Allee.
The turbines became operational in 2012 after a 5-year long building campaign intended to reduce the college’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions to fight global warming. Even though the turbines cost almost $1 million, but the college repeatedly claimed they’d save money in the long run.
“It is becoming more and more difficult for us financially to maintain the turbines,” Josh Bullock, the college’s president, told the Journal Gazette and Times-Courier last week. “I think it was an extremely worthy experiment when they were installed, but they just have not performed to our expectations to this point.”
Bullock states that the turbines simply haven’t been able to power the campus’ buildings and that most of the electricity wasn’t effectively used.
Lake Land plans to replace the two failed turbines with a solar power system paid for by a government grant. “[T]he photovoltaic panels are expected to save the college between $50,000 and $60,000 this year,”Allee told the DCNF.
Globally, less than 30 percent of total power wind capacity is actually utilized as the intermittent and irregular nature of wind power makes it hard to use.Power demand is relatively predictable, but the output of a wind turbine is quite variable over time and generally doesn’t coincide with the times when power is most needed. Thus, wind power systems require conventional backups to provide power during outages. Since the output of wind turbines cannot be predicted with high accuracy by forecasts, grid operators need to keep excess conventional power systems running.
Wind power accounted for only 4.4 percent of electricity generated in America in 2014, according to the Energy Information Administration.
Edgar County Watchdog adds:
Lake Land College (LLC) wind turbine history can be seen here:
2007-2010 COST BREAKDOWN:
2007: Wind feasibility study completed for $30,000
2010: LLC provided $500,000 from Illinois DCEO to “build one turbine.”
2010: LLC provided 18% of $2,542,762 from US Dept of Labor for “green job training program and related equipment including a 100 kW turbine.” (The turbine portion of this US DoL grant calculates to $457,697.20 per the small print details.)
WHAT DO WE HAVE TO SHOW FOR TAXPAYER $987,697.20 spent to build these boondoggles?https://www.lakelandcollege.edu/as/tec/sustain/documents/Sustainability%20Media%20Guide%202012.pdf
Operation date: 2012
(read the comments from “gringa”in 2012……totally good point about it never paying for themselves)
“No mention of payback periods in this article. Seems like LLC would include the economic effectiveness of this investment in any discussion of it. After all, isn’t this all about return on investment? Maybe not. Wind is free, but the land and equipment and maintenance to that equipment is NOT free. “
in 2014, another article was written touting the “savings”:
LLC should update their college website “infomercial” found here since the turbines no longer (if ever) actually saved $44,000 per year per the over-optimistic claims:
https://www.lakeland.cc.il.us/as/tec/green_jobs/documents/EAR%20INSERT%20LLC%20May%202013.pdf
Just for fun, IF the turbines saved $44,000 per year, these two junkers would have to last 22.5 years, but they only lasted a shameful FOUR YEARS!!!!!
The Lake Land College Newsletter was full of praise in 2012:
Despite the bad weather, the first of the college’s two 100 kW wind turbines has been installed. This project is made possible by American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funding via the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity and a Community-Based Job Training Grant from the U. S. Department of Labor.
The new turbines will offer students advanced training for large-scale turbine maintenance and energy production. They will also power buildings on campus with alternative energy, further reducing the cost of utilities for Lake Land College. Because Lake Land College officials and experts worked with the manufacturer to create customized turbines, it is projected that there will be a significant return on this investment of Class Two wind speeds, making these turbines a very affordable option for the college.
The two turbines are estimated to produce more than 220,000 kilowatt hours each year, thereby reducing the number of kilowatt hours of electricity needed by 440,000. The college estimates that the initial energy savings will be around $44,000 annually.
What exactly does this mean? Here’s a real-world example: the average Illinois home consumes 1,100 kilowatt hours each month. The two turbines should produce 36,667 kilowatt hours each month. Based on this information, the two turbines could produce enough energy to power the average Illinois home for just over 33 months, or 2.8 years!
Source: Laker Low Down eNewsletter published January 26, 2012
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
oh, but they’re sure that the new solar panels will save them even more!
Well I disagree with her assessment of their value as a teaching tool.
I think they clearly demonstrate the folly of trying something when you have no skin in the game.
When you simply are trying to spend ALL of the somebody else’s money, you can get, then you don’t actually need to make critical decisions, about what works and what doesn’t.
G
Big G
I am in full agreement, further more they are getting (if not already, then very soon they will) another $250,000 of taxpayers money to finance a study why the project has failed.
Colleges are places of learning and no money should be spared to augment the advancement of science.
I think they provide an excellent teaching tool and valuable lesson…just not in the way the college wants them to.
The claim of a “teaching tool” is very reminiscent of my kids’ arguments for video games when they were young.
“But Dad, they teach us hand-eye coordination!”
I figure you go to school to learn how to learn.
In many ways, it doesn’t even matter what the subject material is; if it works to teach you a process for learning any darn thing you want to learn later. Much of what you learn in school, in some of the sciences, anyhow, is already obsolete by the time you get out of school.
I had the very good fortune to get my first job in the USA at what was then one of the truly great engineering learning schools; Namely Tektronix in Cedar Hills, Oregon (was then). The other one of those great institutions was Hewlett Packard, and I was privileged to spend the last 23 years of my industrial career working there (including a double spin-off).
Tektronix had a (possibly unwritten) policy that as an engineer, if you were in a current limbo stage in your project; maybe it was in the post engineering / pre production phase, you should try and busy yourself learning something new, engineering wise; even to the point, of letting you use their components to design and build yourself a hi-fi solid state stereo amplifier for example. The rule was, while you were working on the design, experimentally, you could avail yourself of whatever components they had in stock, which at the plant I was at, was the whole aisle-ways of the engineering department. But once you had a design, they wanted you to give a complete parts list to a stock room clerk, and (s)he would gather up those parts, and bill you for them, at a very respectable price.
I used such a pause (excuse me; that’s ‘ hiatus ‘) in my first design project, to teach myself everything there was to know about high frequency magnetic core power circuits, and I ended up designing an SCR capacitor discharge ignition circuit for my Jaguar XK-140 hard top coupe.
That ignition instead of the Lucas standard would spark, even if the spark plug had the side electrode broken off. Almost didn’t need to use gasoline to get a power stroke. I’ve designed a whole lot of DC-DC or AC-DC switching power circuits since then.
Howard Vollum, and Jack Murdock, the Tek equivalents of H and P believed that anything you learned in such an unwritten program couldn’t help but become useful to Tektronix, in your job.
Yes some guys did design some incredible stereo amplifiers; that would rival anything you can buy today. Well in those days, they actually believed in high fidelity, rather than two inch cube boom boxes.
So yes, I’m a believer in teaching people how to learn.
So while common core believes that emphasis on the method is more important than just getting the right answer, they fail to understand, that the very definition of the “correct method” is that it is the method that ALWAYS gets the right answer, no matter who implements it.
Any other criterion of correctness in simply pretentious .edu-drivel.
G
Once upon a time went for a technical course to Tektronix up in Grass Valley, great place, great company, clever people.
I agree. A good teacher could make a lot of this failed experiment, as long as they are trying to teach and not just to preach AGW propaganda ( which was undoubtedly the real aim of the project ).
There is a lot more for the students to learn from such a situation than just having a wind tubine running and going : cool, it produce X amount of electricity last year.
They have not been a good teaching tool, because someone hasn’t learned their lesson yet.
it would only be a “good teaching tool” if they used it as a microcosm example of why wind is a failure, and they do not need $250,000 to teach that.
George – your observation and comment is 100% CORRECT!
There is no lessen. The Administration is hell bent to do away with fossil fuels and are incapable of being stopped by the numerous failures or listening to anyone who displays sanity on the subject. Besides it is subsidizing his “friends” and ensures votes in the fall.
It does not matter that alternative fuels have failures, they are the right thing to do .
Lesson
Yes, these people are incapable of learning any lessons of value in this context. And this in spite of the fact that they’re “educators”. The irony here is so thick , you could cut it with a knife.
lesseehere…College Campus in Mattoon, IL; maybe they could repair it “just enough” so it would blow snow off the solar panels.
It taught them that wind is not a viable energy source. Damn expensive lesson for everyone.
While they have been an excellent teaching tool…
Was the lesson “a fool and his money are soon parted”?
My thoughts precisely!
FIFY: “Was the lesson “a
fooltaxpayer and his money are soon parted”?”And they didn’t even learn the &$@ur momisugly#% lesson cause they are gonna exchange them for solar panels “which will save them 50K a year”……
Facepalm squared….
From my experience with that size wind turbines and their proximity to the buildings, the students learned that they could hear the Thump, thump, thump in their class room.
Was the lesson “a fool and his money are soon parted”?
No, the lessons was ‘forget working just get with the government program’
‘forget working just get with the government program’
That statement can be interpreted in more than one way…
“a fool and his money are soon parted”?
Well, they didn’t learn that when they borrowed the money for college, they probably won’t learn it while they are IN college, either.
I was unaware that one could get a PhD in Folly…
“[T]he photovoltaic panels are expected to save the college between $50,000 and $60,000 this year,”
…as long as you don’t count the cost of the system. As usual.
They were way-off on wind savings, but now solar will save even more.
Different verse, same as the first.
Different verse, same as the first.
A little bit louder, and a little bit worse.
“now solar will save even more.”
Well, that’s what I tell Mrs. Jones when she says that we’ll “save” 25% by buying something we don’t need on sale: we can FOUR times as much by NOT buying it…
“We’ll sell at a loss, but make it up in volume.” Post-modern, government-sponsored business math.
No they’re getting the solar panels for nothing silly. The $50-60k will be what’s left of the $100k in savings to repair the turbines, providing all goes to plan again.
They got the windmills for free also. Turned out they were a white elephant that cost more to maintain then they provided. Will the solar panels be any better?
That’s assuming that there is no snow in any given year and that dust never lands on the panels.
In reality, the cost to keep the panels clean will quite probably be greater than the value of any electricity generated.
Students will clean the panels as part of their “teaching”
I doubt it.
Unions will scream bloody murder.
Don’t forget they do not work well at night, and have to be cleaned of snow and ice in the winter
They also need to check int the OSHA requirements on roof top work, WPE, and the needed fall protection, ladders, fall-proof climbing apparatus for the ladders, railing along the roof, Union wages, etc, etc, etc.,
Actually, they ARE a good teaching tool. They teach that wind is a low density, intermittent energy source that cannot compete with conventional fossil fuels. They should save themselves the effort on solar. Its energy density is even lower than that of wind. Another good lesson in Economics 101 would be to not try to reinvent the wheel. Just check out the Yahoo failed renewable energy experiment before spending any money on this stuff.
Do you mean Google’s failed RE<C project, or did Yahoo also try something similar?
Would love a link to the Yahoo project, as I couldn't find it in a quick search.
Probably meant that those at Google are a bunch of yahoos. (yahoo: a person who is very rude, loud or stupid).
I was astonished by the maintenance costs of $240,000 since 2012 with another $100,000 needed to bring them up to proper working order. Part of that seems to be due to a lightning strike on one of the turbines.
Is this sort of excessive maintenance cost on land based turbines normal or have they just been unlucky?
Britain now has many off shore turbines and a recent BBC documentary showed repairs being carried out by helicopter so I can imagine these will have high costs, but land based turbines?
One of the links leads to a document whereby solar and geo thermal seem to be working for this organisation at present
tonyb
“Part of that seems to be due to a lightning strike on one of the turbines.”
Don’t they have insurance for such events?
No insurance company would be foolish enough to insurance a windmill from lightning strike without huge premiums that would make the insurance unaffordable. On the other hand, government ………
Last time I checked, insurance doesn’t come for free, and if your intent is to insure a mechanically finicky, tall metal spike against lightning strikes in Illinois, it would be horrifically expensive.
Maybe they can replace them with one of these
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2016/04/26/11/338BA23300000578-3548127-image-a-5_1461667731422.jpg
•Tunisian start up Saphon Energy has created a super efficient wind turbine
•Bladeless design uses a disc and is inspired by 2,000-year-old sail ships
•Firm claims it capture twice as much wind energy as traditional turbines
•Its makers say a wind farm of just 50 of the devices could power up to 1,000 homes in an ‘off grid’ village in developing countries
Surely they are having a laugh. The video is a must watch http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3548127/Revolutionary-turbines-inspired-BOATS-ancient-Carthage-spell-end-offshore-wind-farms.html#v-5827616155638805199
They claim 80% efficiency in collecting wind power. A joke?
How can it possibly be a joke? It was reported in the Daily Mail.
Just saying…
It is physically impossible to reach more than about 50% efficiency in collecting wind power. Reason: the air after passing the wind turbine must have enough energy left to get out of the way for the air following it.
Interesting concept, but they need to work out the asymmetric torques.
A feature – not a bug. Until maintenance time.
It surely gave me a great laugh 🙂
EricHa-
Thanks for posting this interesting news item!
The cross-sectional area of the turbine ‘sail’ determines the maximum power generated. Claiming that it collects twice as much energy as traditional turbines is meaningless without data on relative cross-sections.
The efficiency of a wind generator, irrespective of design, is limited by Betz’s law to 59.3%. The best blade turbines can reach 45% – 50% under lab testing.
The design in action reminds me of the radio dish antennas on the flying saucers in the movie Mars Attacks!
Who wouldn’t love to see a wobbling dish that was 117m (384 foot) in diameter on a 91.5m (300 foot) tower?
They also claim
http://www.saphonenergy.com/site/en/how-does-it-work.59.html
The efficiency of a propeller (ie: a turbine) is proportional to the drag it induces. Which is why aircraft propeller are crafted to produce very little drag. But this thing produces drag by the bucket load. Can you imagine reversing this into a propeller system, and powering an aircraft with it? It ain’t going to work. Not in a million years.
However, what will work is that they can bamboozle the liberal-left leaning NGO representatices, and government foreign aid representatives, and the high-tech foundation representatives. These are normally ex- right-on arts students with the technical expertise of a brown-back slug, and can be parted from their grant money allocations with remarkable ease. So just like this absurd college scheme, these enterprising snake-oil salesmen will come out of this experiment as Tunisian millionaires, without a single production turbine being built.
Ralph
Moving parts are always a source of engineering vulnerability. Of these rotating moving parts are the most reliable – torques and velocities are relatively steady. Whenever reciprocating motion is involved the accelerations amplify the wear on contacting surfaces and fatigue of connecting parts. This wobbler has more than it’s share of such weak spots.
It’s all explained here:
http://www.gizmag.com/dodgy-wind-turbines/27876/
indefatigablefrog
April 27, 2016 at 1:12 pm
Thanks for the link. Good stuff.
It looked like something had already worked loose.
Easy to see what part of hat will break a lot.
Lessons learned for the children: 1) It’s all in the grant writing and who you know for receiving the free stuff, 2) Advocacy claims of benefit and savings are often inflated by an order of magnitude, 3) Machinery breaks from time to time especially if the provider is not reputable in the industry and does not properly ground the equipment or buildings, and 4) Performance claims versus reality are important metrics to study when you get older and away from institutional learning facilities.
Wind turbines are the perfect government sponsored project. Hyperinflated costs, and negligible or negative return on investment. What we need is the department of wind turbines that will last in perpetuity. Like every other worthless agency.
Naysayers!
Just cherry-picking.
Why don’t you talk about this whopping success?!?
http://www.udel.edu/udaily/2016/aug/wind-turbine-083115.html
Read the glowing report! In five years, the 2 MW turbine generated 23.47 MILLION kWh. Why, that’s a fantastic capacity factor of…um-m-m-m…er-r-r-r…0.027.
Oh rats, and I thought it would be worth it to ruin the coastal view of Delaware’s largest resort area.
So the two examples given here today are Delaware and Illinois. The climate con continues.
My back-of-envelope calculation yields the capacity factor 0.27 – not bad.
I get 2.67E-4, I think you dropped a decimal point or two. 5*365*24*2E6 / 23.47E6 and then take the inverse of that.
oops, you’re right. I guess the ruined view IS worth it.
M Simon I think you missed the *mega* Watt (peak power production of 2MW) vs *kilo* Watt.hours. (energy generated)
5 years is 5*24*365 hours = 44e3 hours. If the energy was continuously 2 MW during this time, this makes 2e6*44e3 = 9e10 W.h
They have got 23e6 kW.h = 23e9 W.h, that makes a 0.27 efficiency (or 27%).
Am I correct? (there are some rounding in the process)
“Why, that’s a fantastic capacity factor of…um-m-m-m…er-r-r-r…0.027. ”
Are you sure? Check my math, but:
23.47 MILLION kWh is 23,470 MW/hrs.
Over 5 years that is 4,694 MWh per year.
8,760 hours per year, that’s 0.535 MWh per hour.
Cap factor of 0.27 (0.2677), no?
“According to a recent Department of Energy report, wind power is expected to contribute 35 percent of the nation’s energy by 2050, up from 5 percent today.”
Apparently journalists do not understand the difference between ‘could’ and ‘expected’. I expect wind will be less than 1% in 2050. The new occupational disease will wind tower knees.
I don’t think there is enough fossil fuel in the world to support 35% of US wind energy. When FF runs short how are they going to sustain -99% ROI?
I just looked outside (I live 3/4 of a mile from the UDEL turbine) and wonder of wonders it’s turning! I don’t know what the “duty cycle” is but more often than not I look over there and it’s still. Doesn’t really affect the view that much since it’s built on the edge of a large marsh but many days I can hear the blades so I’m glad I don’t live any closer.
Bear looks like a nice place to live and sail.
From Google maps it does not look like there is much potential for more than one wind turbine. One is interesting but if you want to build more where people live, there will be a loud out cry.
Been watching the output for a few minutes. Output is about 10% of rated at 11 mph. output changes with every computer update. No idea how this affects duty cycle.
http://www.ceoe.udel.edu/lewesturbine/index.shtml
My question they talk about the power generated but there are no cost factors in the report, In five years they did generate about 2.4 plus million dollars of electricity at retail of course at wholesale it would be half to a quarter of that. So again did the project pay for itself with out seeing the expense side we cannot know. Generally when someone shows you only half the ledger you begin to smell a dead rat somewhere in the numbers.
A long time ago I went to an independent Danish windmill maintenance company. They showed me a yard full of broken down 100kw windmills. They generally fail on main bearings and breaks.
I’ve still got two horrendously worn bearing I use as paper weights.
Because of the wind shear problem, the top blade (position) generates more torque, and axial thrust than the bottom blade (position). So the blades experience both a torsional and an axial oscillation at the rotation rate. So they literally shake themselves to bits.
I suppose in principle, you could feather the individual blades, as they rotate (even more bearings to wear out). BUT I believe that you can’t eliminate both the torsional and the axial thrust fluctuations at the same time.
If you change the angle of attack at the top of the circle to get the exact same torsional force as at the bottom of the circle in lower wind speed, then the axial thrust amplitude is even higher than without feathering, and if you vary the other way to keep the drag (axial thrust) constant over the circle, the amplitude of the torsional force is much higher.
So it’s a perfect nowin, nowin situation.
G
Exactly. Asymmetric torque tears stuff up.
just have one of these
http://www.remnet.com/Wind%20Energy/Hesperia1.jpg
Put that thing on it’s side, and the Kia hamsters would have a blast.
I was thinking one could hang the washing on it – but MarkW’s idea is much MUCH better. 🙂
Mark
these are large things, you know. Far too big for hamsters, it could easily accommodate half a dozen ‘renewable energy enthusiasts’, to keep it going when wind stops blowing.
According to the commercial, the Kia hamsters are about 6 feet tall.
Needs a helicopter style collective,.
No. It doesn’t. The whole concept needs scrapping. What AM I saying?
“……. the Kia hamsters are about 6 feet tall.”
so are many ‘greenes’, and as it happens they are surplus to requirement.
Does the blanking by the tower when the blade passes the down position create any noticeable vibration?
Translation: More Obama policy hot air and failed investment with you money
….The turbines were funded by a $2.5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Labor,..
No, they weren’t. They were funder by a $2.5 million grant from the U.S. taxpayer. Actually, given the costs of collecting that tax and then administering the grant, it was probably $3 million.
Topic for a University study group – ‘What is the best way to spend $3 million:
1 – to address climate change?
2 – provide other assistance to humanity?
A related question is…What is the cost of a $2.5 million federal grant that is actually money rolled onto national debt and never really paid off over many generations?
See Krugman if there are questions about how WW2 debt was paid.
One way or another they are all paid for with borrowed money. Another point of view is that each big wind turbine could have been half a dozen MRI scanners.
If you think the government’s tax collection system is 80% efficient, you are dreaming. And if you factor in the adder costs to the taxpayer, trying to comply with millions of individual tax laws, the system is even more inefficient.
If their system can beat 50% , I would be very surprised.
G
Topic for a University study group.
1- Learn something, that will enable you to get a paying job that can make you a lot of money.
2- Now that you are financially self sufficient; provide some assistance to other folks you might meet in your neighborhood.
“No, they weren’t. They were funder by a $2.5 million grant from the U.S. taxpayer. Actually, given the costs of collecting that tax and then administering the grant, it was probably $3 million.”
Actually, it’s more like 0.5 million from that grant. (plus another 0.5 million). It’s even written in the article (much further away that the 2.5 million reference) that the turbine funding is 18% of that grant, but the article is not very well written. (like this comment) I don’t know if the author is just bad, or if he wanted to mislead the readers on purpose.
You mean to tell me the US Department of Labor didn’t actually do any work on the turbines? How do they earn money then?
$2,500,000 grant wasted. That money could have paid for 250 scholarships of $20,000 each.
A negative return on investment – but I wonder how much carbon dioxide was generated producing these turbines, and how much will be generated tearing them down.
Solyndra got a lot of publicity. There are probably many of these smaller federal projects.
Tells you something about the econ department at a community college.
Ha Ha! Many, Many Moons ago, I attended school there for two semesters…
And even better, they’re going to continue to scam the taxpayers by replacing them with solar panels?
So they lost money on the Wind Turbines but will surely do better with solar voltaics? Delusional.
and i just sent in my taxes
I didn’t pay taxes this year, I got money back.
very big /sarc on that.
Excellent teaching tools indeed! There’s definitely a master’s thesis lurking in there somewhere. I would expect the same steep learning curve opportunity to be provided by the solar power system. Hopefully they will be as willing to lay the costs and benefits on the table for all to see.
Would have been funnier if the return was negative 97 percent.
I lived not far from there in 1999. The wind absolutely howls there, as there is no windbreak or even any trees for hundreds of miles to the west. The few trees that do grow frequently sustain wind damage to the windward branches. If wind turbines can’t work there, well…
At least it was an inefficient bird slicer system. Now it can be just your ordinary over promised solar efficiency lie involving silicon panels that lose efficiency in hot, humid conditions like on rooftops. Such rooftop systems are a minimum of 2x more costly than utility scale solar per kwh, but in this case it is government procurement so it my never be turned on. Or it may be up to 8x more costly depending on the installer and the lax procurement policy applied to renewables.
None of which was commercially viable.
I can’t remember the name but there is a paradox in economics. If my town is flattened by a tornado, it drives economic activity as people rebuild their houses and businesses. Using that logic, we should cancel the fire code to encourage conflagrations that will cause economic activity.
Using the above logic, it doesn’t matter how much electricity the wind turbines generate. The maintenance activity is good for the economy.
With the above in mind, here’s a story on how good wind power is for the Ontario economy.
commieBob,
It’s Bastiat’s ‘Broken Window Fallacy’.
Thanks, that was bugging me. 🙂
Parable of the broken window
commieBob and dbstealey. All improvements require maintenance and repair in this imperfect world of ours. The more improvements you make to a property the more maintenance and repairs there will be. If you improve a property to a level greater than you can maintain, you will be forced to endure the level of differed maintenance you cannot afford. This is kind of the essence of private enterprise.
If you haven’t figured it out yet, the more statist try to improve things, the worse it gets for the majority, whereas when private enterprise screws up, it is their loss not yours and mine, as it is with government subsidies or grants. The only beneficiaries now are those skimming from the public treasury. The company that sold these idiots the wind turbines. Since the companies are backed by the oligarchs see what happens when you try to sue them. Too many people still drinking the coolaid. Please review Venezuela’s current financial situation and the number of social polices they have implemented over the last 35 years starting with the nationalization of the oil and gas industry. The society is failing. Why? Very simple, all political jurisdiction rely on taxation and the greater the level of taxation the less well off the majority. By it’s nature government will continuously try to expand it taxing authority until it one day places it society into bankruptcy. To stay off bankruptcy they print more money until the day comes when that money rapidly becomes worthless as Venezuela is now experiencing. This is a common occurrence with every single nation state that has ever “graced” our world. Time and time again the Citizens of our world must endure the boom and bust cycles created by the poor economic policies of the national state. Isn’t it time to get off the marry-go-round and dispose of the nation state? Oh that’s right, the thieves within government will not allow that for fear of upsetting their oligarch masters.
hskiprob.
Venezuela is in an even worse position now because their local currency notes are printed offshore. The government must use foreign reserves to buy their own printed note currency. Since the government is running out of foreign reserves they cant even afford to have their own currency printed.
Of course the currency notes are of a low denomination – no government want’s to print notes of a higher value because this would admit there is inflation.
Currency notes have previously been printed and then sent to Venezuela in cargo 747’s.
hskiprob – April 27, 2016 at 3:54 pm
And here is the latest review, to wit:
hskiprob says:
Isn’t it time to get off the marry-go-round and dispose of the nation state?
I agree with a lot of what you wrote. But not that.
What makes you think the next step — a world government — wouldn’t be the same, but much worse? It would be a giant, worldwide bureaucracy of nameless, faceless, and unaccountable rulers. You want that??
What the US needs to do is get out of the UN, evict them from our shores, and deal fairly with the countries that support us. And to hell with the rest.
db – a nation state is a nation state. It does not matter if it is a one world government or the 230+/- we have now. They all fail to do what they are supposed to do and each cause great hardships for the majority most of the way through their cycles. The seldom if ever truly provide what is in the best interest of the majority. Taking away individual rights in order to protect them is not a rational objective or historical true. We have obviously been lied to but adjusting to a stateless society has only occurred when the various States from time to time actually fail. Of course the oligarchs are quick to reestablish them historically relying on enough people to be paid off to join them and start the theft and coercion all over again. Humans do not learn from history despite what they are led to believe.
hskiprob,
I agree that we don’t learn from history. But not all states are bad. It sounds like you think there can’t be good nations.
For most of our history the U.S. was good for the citizens. I don’t like the past few decades. But it’s not a lost cause yet.
The UN is a lost cause. Most countries are, too. But the whole world wants to flood into the US. Ever wonder why?
It’s because they know this place is so much better than their hellhole.
There’s nothing wrong with a country of reasonable laws. And that’s the problem right now: they pick and choose which laws to enforce, and which to turn a blind eye to.
If the same crowd gets into office here, after 8 years of dragging us down, then I’m all for the anarchy of a stateless society. But we’ll see, won’t we? I think folks are getting pretty tired of the status quo.
This needs to be repeated, repeated, repeated, …………
Donald Trump is America’s last great “White Hope” …… because 4 or 8 years of “more of the same” will prevent the socio-economic pendulum from ever swinging back from its leftist liberal position.
Bob
I have worked at many nuke plants. They are a boon to the economy because of the property taxes and the salaries of the highly skilled staff. Since nukes plant generating costs are low, ratepayers also benefit.
PNW communities with wind farms benefit in much the same way. If the ratepayers are in California, local ratepayers are not hurt.
It’s about your stuff/$ ratio. Your efficiency.
The issue is not that we are replacing energy, but that wind is replacing more efficient energy. In the case of a broken window, you are getting nothing for your money. It’s simply returning you to your prior setting. The glazier comes out ahead, but you come out behind, so the economic benefit is less than if you had spent the money on something you actually wanted..
In the case of a nuclear plant, you are providing more power for less money, so everyone wins.
Bob you will find the the higher the level of taxes in a society, the less the majority is well off. Taxes to not create a boon to society, just the opposite, free enterprise does. The lesser the taxes the higher the welfare of the majority. Taxes and regulations kill many incentives to the middle class and poor. I guess the question is how much poverty do you want in your society. 100 million now living at or near the poverty line. Keep all the taxes and regulations and that number will increase. It pretty simple math.
“community vibrancy funds” ??? new one to me
maybe should be “community vibrating funds”
Never heard of community vibrancy funds? Try Ontario wind developers provide additional money to local communities for local community projects. Santa Claus parades, fire trucks, money for school projects, hockey, and on and on.
Vibrancy funds supposed to make local communities feel better about putting up with wind turbines. Known locally as “bribrancy” funds.
Anyone who thinks the Compass analysis you quoted above makes sense has either (a) a financial stake or other connection to the wind industry, or (b) a Bernie Sanders sign on their front lawn.
PNW communities with wind farms benefit in much the same way. If the ratepayers are in California, local ratepayers are not hurt.
Exemplary govenment project 🙂
The conclusion is clear: It’s time to disband the Department of Labor.
Why stop there?
Yep get rid of most bureaucracy. Department of labor…. So Orwellian. They last thing they do is labor.