Not what you'd expect to find in the woods, is it?
More like an airplane moment.

Are industrial wind farms good for the environment?

Industrial wind turbines are not the clean, green power source they purport to be, but a massive public relations campaign and extensive lobbying of federal and state legislatures has paved the way for an uncritical acceptance of the supposed benefits of these turbines to be built and then for legislatively creating tax breaks and captive markets to keep them financially afloat.

Denmark, the Netherlands and Germany were early adopters of the technology and their years of experience with wind turbines has brought them to some unexpected realizations.

No more wind turbines are being erected in Denmark and none on land in the Netherlands. Germany will effectively halt further wind farms by knocking out the subsidies. Promotion of conservation is cheaper than building more power plants. Output is only 25% of capacity. Equipment failure is high. Adding more windmills required adding more conventional power supply to serve as a backup.

While the European countries, the early adopters, are having second thoughts, the European manufacturers of these turbines are successfully selling their wares to a gullible public and public officials in the United States, who have not done their homework.

If the money and incentives that will be required to keep these inefficient wind power systems going were to be spent on pollution upgrades and end-user conservation credits, the net effect would be cleaner air. Even if there were no pollution upgrades and the wind plants were just disconnected from the grid, the net effect would be cleaner air because we would not have conventional power generation units cycling on and off to make up for the fluctuations in wind power inputs. The most pollution occurs when a plant fires up. With homeowner targeted credits for conservation and home-based generator facilities, we could also slow or reduce our overall need for more energy.

What makes large-scale wind power unreliable?

For starters, it's the wind that makes it unreliable. It doesn't blow all the time. In a conventional power plant, you burn coal, heat water, create steam and then spin a turbine with a steady blast of steam. It doesn't fluctuate a bit and is extremely reliable. Power companies can count on its output.

The wind turbines on Backbone Mtn. have a rated capacity of 1.5 megawatts. The rotors start to turn when wind speed reaches 8 mph. At that speed the turbine is actually putting out 0.1 megawatts. The turbine doesn't hit 1.5 megawatts until the wind speed reaches 33 mph. Higher wind speeds don't increase output because the vanes feather to protect the generator, generator bearings and structural components. It's windy on Backbone Mtn., but sustained winds of 33 mph, 24 hours a day don't happen. In a conventional power plant they do - all day, every day, with a steady blast of steam.

This brings us to another realization that the early adopters have had to face. When you factor in the days the wind doesn't blow at all, the days when there's just a light breeze, and the days when these high-tech machines are down for repairs (6 out of the 44 turbines on Backbone Mtn. were shut down when we visited Dec. 18, 2004) it shouldn't be a surprise to anyone that actual annual output is around 25% of rated capacity. The 44 turbines on Backbone Mtn., rated at 1.5 MW, have a capacity to generate 66 MW. Florida Power & Light, the utility that runs them won't say what the actual output was for 2004, claiming it to be proprietary information. It's probably embarrassing information as well. Fifteen MW is probably closer to the truth. By comparison the Vepco plant at Mt. Storm generates 1,600 MW.

The unreliability of wind power, particularly its variableness, has another unfortunate consequence that the European early adopters have had to face: the issue of power grid instability when a wind facility ties into the grid.

Power grids are amazing creations. There is a constant balancing act going on as power plants, transmission lines and distribution centers are all tied together to shunt energy around to meet demand. Because steam generation is so reliable, power companies can closely match their output capacity to anticipated customer demand. When a wind generating facility ties into the grid and makes its power available, the grid requires extensive redundancy to protect itself from a sudden surge or loss of that power. Wind requires more backups added to the system, than does steam. Thus, ironically, the more wind power generation is added to the grid, the more conventional power has to be added to back up the wind power in the event of an "anomaly," as the grid managers call them.