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
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Hopefully, they learned that government should not be giving out grants for anything. Nope, they’re are going to do solar pv next, again on the taxpayers tab. Is it the quality of our education system or are people getting degrees that shouldn’t? or both?
What they actually learned was that if you fail with one government grant you can always get another. Consider the logic: the government will give you a grant for a product that will try to make up for the other product that failed to produce what the government said it would because otherwise the other grant would be money wasted. And you thought there was no such thing as perpetual motion.
Hey Tom, I was just looking through some of the data from the Department of Energy seeing how much money is being doled out by just that agency and the long list of small departments under it. No wonder this country is near bankruptcy and 100 million people are living at or near the poverty line. A while back I found one consulting company in CN with some 4,500 current funded government contracts. All the do is consulting. Can you imagine how much money the people involved in that company dole back out to the politicians and major political parties each election cycle. When people tell me they can determine which candidates are lying to them the least, I start looking for their glass of Kool Aid.
You know the old saying: “How do you know when a politician is lying? They are speaking”.
The poverty line is defined as a fraction of average income.
No matter how wealthy or poor the country is, there will always be about 100 million living near the poverty line.
MarkW = that must be socialist logic. What you need to do Mark is take a 30 to 40 year old person and see what it costs for them to actually live in the majority of communities in America. Then see what the weighted average income in America really is. The first thing you will find out is that the government doesn’t publish the weighted average income, only the average which is of course heavily skewed by millionaires and billionaires. The second thing you will find is that what most people would call the poverty line is much higher than what the government publishes, so likely there are even more people living at or near poverty in this country.
The government will always try to either make themselves look better if they are trying to make it look like their policies are working and make the stats look bad, if they are trying to get people to believe that more government policies are needed. Conclusion, Government statistics are generally as bad as their performance at solving our social problems. That is why are military budget is now higher then the next 11 highest military budgets of all other countries combined. Even China with the second largest defense budget and a population and geographic size multiples times larger than ours, spends only about 15% of our budget. That’s just one reason why there are more people living at or near the poverty line today, then ever in U.S. history. We are the largest debtor nation in the world and the Federal Reserve is having to buy our own Treasuries because we can’t pawn them off on anyone else. What most people also don’t know is that we have started making U.S. member Banks and Corporations also buy our Treasuries to sure up their balance sheets, even thought Treasuries are declining internationally in value. At one time a bank would give you a high loan to value if you used a Treasury as collateral for the loan. That is no longer true.
Not all things are wonderful in paradise my fiend. Remember, don’t drink the Kool Aide and please try to get others to stop drinking it.
Solar is also getting a bad rap – see this academic report from Utah University:
http://www.usu.edu/ipe/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Reliability-Solar-Full-Report.pdf
“academic report”
Another useless report written by amateurs who know nothing about generating electricity. Part of being skeptical is checking references.
The Rocky Mountain Institute, Really!
I am not defending solar but I am criticizing academic reports.
The report is by the Institute of Political Economy, Utah State University. It may (or may not) also be called the Rocky Mountains Institute.
That by itself, mixed with condescending snobbery, is not a reason to dismiss the report. It contains factual information and analysis which would require detailed rebuttal from would-be faux skeptic critics.
@Phil Salmon
Footnote 58 is RMI.
“would require detailed rebuttal from would-be faux skeptic critics”
Be happy too. Since you posted the link, pick what you think the most significant ‘analysis’. Tell me why and the page number. You may want to check the reference first.
An example would be from page 10, “Photovoltaic and concentrated solar power have some of the lowest capacity factors of any major energy source. Their low capacity factors indicate that solar resources rarely produce near their full capacity. ”
Full design capacity is a 20% CF for fixed PV. If the assumptions the business plan are valid, it does not matter what CF of a nuke or coal is. Amatures!
As far a good analysis goes, how many fixed PV systems get the expected 20% and for how long. The same panel will get 14% in New Jersey. The best I have seen 19% near Tucson. The panel on Google roof in Sunnyvale was very poor. It has to do with the marine layer.
So reference footnote 40 comes from government data of ‘reported expected performance’ not actual data. Wrong, wrong, wrong!
There is a reason wind and solar does not work. The purpose is to get your picture taken so you can brag about how ‘green’ you are. If they produced enough electricity to pay someone to fix them they would work.
Lesson learned? Spend ALL of your budget in order to get MORE. Quite the learning tool.
Didn’t the fools buy the turbines with a warranty? You’d think a minimum bumper-to-bumper of five years would be standard practice, longer on non-consumables/non-ware parts.
Maybe they just didn’t read the fine print about their LIMITED warranty.
Many decades ago when I when to University, they also had a windmill. It never worked from the day I got there to the day I left. From that I learnt that wind doesn’t work.
Perhaps some of the more enlightened students will learn the same lesson?
Are we learning yet ??
I did find the ‘expected savings’ for the new solar panels blithely stated to be one of the most amusing statements of the day. It is classic, now that their last boondoggle failed to ‘save’ money, why, it’s replacement surely will save them even more.
The rules of economics change depending on the funding sources. In 2010, each turbine was worth 500,000 USD/OPM (US Dollars – Other Peoples’ Money). Today, two aren’t worth 100,000 USD.
In addition an unrealistic capacity factor, they used an overstated avoided cost of power. They used $0.10/kWh rather then the actual commercial rate for that area of $0.06/kWh. Didn’t they look at their electric bills? Or is 67% too high, considered “close enough for government work”?
$2,542,762 from US Dept of Labor for “green job training program”; isn’t learning how to fix these stupid things considered a “Green Job”? Or are “Green Jobs” strictly limited to rent seeking? What are the classes? Grant Writing (English 101), Cost/Benefit Analysis for Government (Business 202), Green Public Relations (Communications 205), Blame Shifting (Communications 208), Climate Science (Religion 102), “Crédit Mobilier a 19th Century Inspiration” (US History 203)?
“Since the output of wind turbines cannot be predicted with high accuracy by forecasts, grid operators need to keep excess conventional power systems running.”
So, actually, their wind power didn’t save a dime. They still had to keep conventional power systems running at all times in case the unpredictable wind decided to stop.
Stupid, stupid, stupid!
Louis you might want to ask yourself what idiot wrote what you quoted and what the source is. The link is too some really absurd modeling study. The statement is wrong, wrong, wrong.
I supported the production tax credit under Bush. At the time, we were building new facilities to import LNG because existing LNG import facilities were at capacity.
Every MWh generated by wind reduced the amount of very expensive LNG imported. This saved every US taxpayer money either directly or indirectly.
The US grid operators are not having a problem with wind.
“Not having a problem with wind”
Apart from these eleven?
http://dailycaller.com/2015/12/25/top-11-problems-plaguing-solar-and-wind-power/
For every MW generated by wind we have to maintain highly inefficient combustion-based gas turbine to handle sudden changes in power output. Those generators need to spin all the time. Even if they don’t produce power, they have to spin. And in order to spin they do require LNG. Maybe not as much as to produce power, but they do require that.
Normal high-efficiency power generators would probably consume similar overall amount of fuel as wind turbines and low-efficiency fast combustion turbines. You would get some positive return here, fuel wise, but lot less than what is being claimed, so the statement is not wrong at all. And if you count actual installation and operating costs, the wind turbines are much more expensive even without accounting for spinning reserve.
It has nothing to do with modeling – it’s a real world.
Not only does it not save a dime, it doesn’t prevent any CO2 generation.
This is like Roosevelt’s New Deal initiative that created jobs by government investing in expanding infrastructure. The only difference being that the jobs Roosevelt created actually resulted in something useful (like roads and bridges) in helping the economy and the country to grow. Wind and solar government funded projects not so much.
Alx – Resent research by those such as Amity Shaels “The Forgotten Man” showed that FDRs policies exacerbated the length and debt of the depression and caused a number of the existing businesses and utility companies to go bankrupt having to compete against such entities as the Tennessee Valley Authority. Some were employee owned companies which caused many of the employee shareholders to lose their life savings.
All enacted social policies have negative ramifications. Statists just don’t like to talk about them, only trying to beef up the alleged intentions. However, what I have found through my research and reading over the years, that most of the social policies enacted, are disguised as a common good, but behind the legislation there are special interest trying to obtain benefits at the expense of everyone else. FDR was a part of the ruling oligrachy with strong family ties to banking. Just think about the Federal Reserve Act of 1913. Within 16 years of the enactment, the banksters put this country and much of the world into one of the longest and deepest depressions in world history. It is a simply formula. Expand the money supply, then contract it, watch some major businesses go bankrupt, than have your cronies buy them up for pennies on the dollar. The Washington Post is my favorite example, but their are many more. The Washington Post went bankrupt in 1933 and was purchased by the then Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank, Board of Govenors who was also the former President of the World Bank, Eugene Meyer. That was Katherine Grahams father who had married Phillipe Graham, who not only ended up running the newspaper, but owned WPLG TV Miami and numerous other TV and radio stations in Florida. Ex- Governor and Senator Bob Graham of Florida, is their nephew. I could tell you how a group of Banksters in Tampa Florida, ended up owning half of the utility companies in such countries as Dominica, Nevis and Granada but that is a story for another day. The book “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by John Perkins tells the similar stories of numerous countries in south and central America which is basically to what happened to many Islands in the Caribbean. One of the banksters in Tampa just so happens to be the son of one of the largest Caterpillar dealers in the south, and low and behold, the islands referenced above are all using Caterpillar Diesel Generators to provide electrical power to their grids. Before the economic hit men came in to Dominica, the electrical utility was fully owned by the government employees pension fund. They were forced to sell off half of it for pennies on the dollar, because the country had defaulted on their IMF loan. It’s always about the money. Finding the truth about it is not always easy, but there is always one there. Even honest Abe Lincoln has some pretty pathetic stories behind his Republican protected legacy. Lincoln Unmasked by DiLorenzo is my favorite book so far.
“The new turbines will offer students advanced training for large-scale turbine maintenance”
Well they certainly got their monies worth there.
“They are not a good teaching tool if they are not working.”
Sure they are if your teachers are smart enough and honest enough to forward to their students the lessons the turbines are teaching… doing the wrong thing is equally destructive whether the action is driven by good or bad intent.
The college should leave the towers in place as a monument to poor judgement and make every new student study their history during orientation. Graduates will be wiser for it.
There is no way the PV system is saving $40k – $50k the first year. From what I could find online the PV system is planned to be 100kW system. Assuming a total install cost of 3.30 $/wdc and a utility cost of $0.09/kWh, I get a savings of $10700 with a cost of $0.23/kWh. If they get a commercial rate for electricity then the savings is about half that and the cost per kWh is about half. The only way they are getting more than that is by recieving a rebate from the DCEO solar and wind energy rebate program. Il has a $0.20 kWh solar energy incentive program too.
“I think it was an extremely worthy experiment when they were installed, but they just have not performed to our expectations to this point.”
How can any sensible person attend a learning institution that has this to say? I wonder how Donald Trump would have phrased this disappointment? You folks need a polar bear like him for president to start the pyramid building effort of cleaning up political correctness pollution. It was effusive political correctness by the time he got to the word “expectations” but to then add “to this point” because, after all, he didn’t want to sound too critical was, just too much! They learned something indeed about windmills as sources of energy and it wasn’t anything to do with learning to become wind technicians.
So hey, they were only going to save 44,000 with the windmills, but it’s basically win-win what happened…..they are now going to save 50,000 with solar panels. So let’s get started – black side up, students, and facing the sun.
And guess what? Once they pull them down they still won’t perform to their expectations. So before and after the point.
The carefully crafted lie of the day award goes to Ptolemy2.
““Not having a problem with wind”
Apart from these eleven?”
Add in the context of ‘The US grid operators are’ and it changes things.
Thanks for the dire predictions about the future of some journalist with an agenda.
In any case, Ptolemy2 reading skill are a little off. No current problems for US grid operators dealing with wind and solar.
No impending doom, the sky is not falling.
“Illinois s**cks. I pay over $500 a month in property tax…”
Thanks Marty, I forgot. Worked at two different nuke plants in Illinois as a consultant. Both places offered me a good job. I did not think they could stay in business so I would not move the family.
Last two places I lived had good schools, low taxes, and no crime, and hardly any snow.
This example isn’t even the frost on the tip of the iceberg of the failures yet to come on a global scale. building infrastructure before the engineering (robust) is proven leads to this. History is full of similar examples.
It’s even worse than claimed. Traditional electric/utility rates have been driven significantly north to raise money for all of these silly renewable projects. Electricity would be substantially cheaper had we not proceeded down this ridiculous and slippery slope.
Lightning causing electrical damage to a wind turbine? I think that means poor electrical design. Lightning would hit a turbine blade, then the current would flow through the shaft, the shaft bearings, the housings of the shaft bearings, and from there through the fixture’s structure to ground. This would cause pitting of the bearings, which should be replaceable wear items, which is mechanical damage (probably bearable before bearing replacement) and not damage to electrical parts of the wind turbine. Assuming the bearings are metallic – which I consider preferable so that lightning current would pass through them. Otherwise, put a contacting brush where it will contact the shaft so as to be part of a conductive path for lightning current. Electrical damage would be to associated electronics and maybe generator windings that did not have simple and easily available protection against the effects of lightning current passing by nearby.
Lightening didn’t actually strike the wind turbine. It struck the government money-pot sitting along side it that fueled the wind turbine. That turbine died from fuel starvation. I figure burning money directly in a conventional, money-fired boiler plant would have produced more power than the money-fired wind rig did over its useful lifetime. Now there’s a “learning experience” students can take home and put to good use.
No path to ground.
There is always a path to ground. Sometimes it’s not the path you intended.
‘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.’
in short ‘Because Lake Land College officials and experts improved the turbines.’
‘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.’
This time ‘Lake Land College officials and experts’ should withstand from improvements.
“While they have been an excellent teaching tool for students,…. They are not a good teaching tool if they are not working.”
On the contrary, this installation is an excellent tool for teaching the folly of reliance on wind energy.
The two turbines are estimated to produce more than 220,000 kilowatt hours each year
So one windmill will be 110,000 Kilowatt hours per year and at at 8766 hours per year that comes to 12,500 watts per hour divided by 745.7 watts per horse power. That’s less than 17 horsepower.
LLC provided $500,000 from Illinois DCEO to “build one turbine.”
Comes to nearly $30,000 per horse power.
“HORSE” power??? Wow. A real blast from the archives.
And by the way – ‘watts per hour’ is meaningless.
“‘watts per hour’ is meaningless” unless you’re describing the time variability of power generation.
Last Paragraph in the Article: “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!”
Does this make sense to anyone? If so, please explain.
I think I can help you out there. It absolutely doesn’t make sense!
I suppose it’s unkind to mock them, but then they are some sort of educational establishment, so you’d expect them to get some elementary facts right.
What they are trying to say is that they can produce electricity at 33 times the rate at which the average home could use it. Fair enough. So you could connect 33 homes, and provided they all used electricity at the same modest rate throughout the 24 hours, you would have enough power.
But they then show their utter confusion about the difference between power (watts) and energy (watt-hours, or kWh, when talking about electricity consumption – or joules when talking about mechanical work), by suggesting that you could leave your wind turbine running for 1 month and then power one home for the next 33 months
From the article: “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.”
That’s funny. Seems to me like they’ve been an excellent teaching tool throughout, if one understands the lesson(s), that is.