He's Dumb, but Maybe Not Alone

        The Dunce from DC told his bitch, Sean Hannity, yesterday that “Wind energy won’t work because the wind only blows sometimes.” As a science nerd, I could go into some detail about why this is bat shit crazy, but I’d rather have a frank discussion about why the “Green New Dealers” also need to do more homework. I’m reminded of the stoner, interviewed at Woodstock who opined that Woodstock was a “model for the world, man.” It was a great concert, but hardly a model for urban planning, living or, (definitely not) sanitation.

        Idealism, untempered by a grasp on the possible, rather than the Utopian, is a lousy framework for getting meaningful things done. This is certainly true in the case of exclusively wind power as part of a nationwide electrical grid. In furtherance of the goal of “all wind all the time,” Green New Dealers almost always (I only add “almost” because someone, somewhere may have stated factual data but we have yet to see it) grossly understate the true cost of wind in several ways.  Understand this, before I begin, I loathe fossil fuel’s negative effects on the environment and public health. What I am referring to here is the amazingly lo-ball numbers we are being fed re: wind as opposed to other possibilities.

        To begin with, energy storage in a “situational” power source situation (Solar, Wind) is critical to maintaining unbroken power supplies to consumers. “Peak” energy consumption across the nation is after dark much of the year. Clearly, solar must overproduce during the day and store energy for the dark hours. This battery technology, while burgeoning (thanks, Elon Musk) is grossly expensive and in its infancy.  Solar has the advantage of no moving parts, ergo lesser maintenance, however, it also is easy to damage (hail, normal wear and tear) It also wears out.

        Wind, of which the dunce in chief knows little, has more, and more expensive, concerns. These, alas, are generally glossed over by the naïfs who tout the Green New Deal (GND) as a panacea.

       The two major disadvantages of wind power include initial cost and technology immaturity. First: constructing turbines and wind facilities is extremely expensive for the amount of power generated by each unit- an average about 2.5 to 3 KW per, with 5 KW as a probable maximum. Secondarily, at the current state of technology, maintenance, such as changing oil in rotor bearings at the top of the tower weekly, is periodic. essential, frequent and expensive. (Ask the Danes!) It is even costlier in off-shore installations.  We, too frequently, see cost per kwh listed as production cost, not cost to consumer, which is extremely equivocal. As an example, most cost per kwh numbers we see are misleading because they frequently omit the initial cost of hardware. This “total” cost, which is passed along to consumers is known as levelized cost. What GND’ers cite (in the vicinity of 3.1 cents per kwh) is like citing the cost of a car wash considering only the water, soap and minimum wage imbecile who reminds you to “put the window up!” without adding the cost of the machines, the building, the electricity, etc. This is about like bragging about how many miles per gallon your hybrid gets without considering the initial cost of the vehicle (still a good investment by the way!)

        Moreover, it almost always fails to consider energy storage costs for the periods when demand exceeds supply. This seems minor, but in a nationwide grid it is critical. Just to power New York City alone (this is just households, not the far more energy hungry hotels and businesses) would require the installation and constant operation of about  5,700 more, new wind turbines, not to mention energy storage capacity. The cost of the turbines alone, at an average $3.5 million apiece, would run to well over 20 billion dollars. That cost, passed on to consumers, would be almost punitive. This does not include the far, far higher energy demands of industrial operations.

        In the real world, the cost to non-industrial consumers of electricity fluctuates over the entire nation, from a low of 8 cents per kwh in Idaho, to 18.1 cents per kwh in NY and CT, to a whopping 33.2 cents per kwh in Hawaii. Idaho is relatively cheap because most of the electricity produced and consumed there is generated by the cleanest source on the planet – hydro-electric plants. According to the Federal Energy Information Administration, the "levelized cost" of new wind power (including capital and operating costs) is 8.2 cents per kwh, essentially in a dead heat with Nuclear. Advanced “clean-coal” (bullshit!) plants cost about 11 cents per kwh but advanced natural gas-burning plants come in at just 6.3 cents per kwh.  Without regard to the environment, this makes gas even cheaper than wind and solar. Of course, there’s than nasty little carbon footprint thingy which remains relatively high. Coal is filthy in all ways and constitutes a well-documented public health hazard.

        What is being overlooked is that there is another “zero footprint” technology, its reputation damaged by a film and a “no harm/no foul” accident within weeks of each other in 1979. Three Mile Island and “The China Syndrome” Scared the hell out of many Americans, the more ignorant, the more scared. The nuclear power industry in the US has never really recovered, despite the fact that perhaps the most rigorous public health effort ever, concluded in the US after 40 years, announced the total casualties either direct or indirect from the TMI incident as “zero.”  Nuclear power emits no exhausts, discharges no pollutants into streams, has a zero-fatality record over about 70 years of operation, land based and seaborne, yet we shun it because we fail to understand it.

        Want to be truly “Green?”  China and India obviously do. They are pioneering liquid salt reactor technology which the US gave up in the late 1960s. Why? because although they had a record of over 6000 effective full power hours of incident free operation at the Oak Ridge, TN, facility, it was not capable of producing weapons grade Plutonium, ergo it was scrapped in favor of high-pressure fast breeders (like Chernobyl). 

Liquid salt reactors can use Thorium, of which we have literally thousands of years’ worth, and are inherently stable and safe. They even produce fewer waste products to be handled than current pressurized water designs, of which, by the way, I have more than a passing operational knowledge, at sea, submerged. A wind farm would need 235 square miles to produce the same amount of electricity as a 1,000-megawatt nuclear power plant. The nuclear power plan can operate at constant power day night/wind or calm requiring no massive (and, as yet, non-existent battery) banks.  

        We love to cite Denmark when we discuss Utopian social models which we have been conned into believing. One such is the fact that the Danes are wind powered for all electricity, much of it sea-borne (off shore). So, they must get really cheap electricity, right? Not so much. They pay more (34.72 cents per kwh) than even Hawaii!  apparently the “green” in Green New Deal doesn’t refer to the color of money! I failed to mention the estimated half-million birds of all sorts killed annually in the US with existing wind turbines. Finally, what would all these new turbines cost? Assuming all current non-wind energy production became “wind based” and at today’s prices, merely (roughly) about 15% of the current total national debt! This of course excludes land costs (astronomical) and, yet to be invented storage capabilities. National bankruptcy, anyone?