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Newspaper
Links for Letters
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Regulations.gov is your source
for all regulations or rulemakings issued by U.S. government
agencies including regulations that are both open and closed
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Legislators need to
know the other side of the story about wind farms, because
it is their dispensing of favors to the industry that keeps
it alive.
If legislators begin to hear from constituents that all is
not well with wind farms, and if they hear from enough of
them, they may be persuaded to rethink their support of these
welfare-dependent industrial wind plants.
Although unelected to office,
public utility commissions and any other government agencies
involved in the approval process and regulation of wind farms
are also likely to be responsive to persistent public input.
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Here are some "talking points"
for letter writing:
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Subsidized Survival -
Industrial scale "wind farms" cannot not make it
on their own in a market economy. They need the crutches of
tax breaks, production credits and legislatively mandated
and imposed market share to survive, forcing power companies
to include a certain percentage of renewables in the energy
supply
Not Clean & Green - There are a number of well-intentioned
organizations concerned with reducing air pollution that have
successfully lobbied government to retain and expand these
exclusive advantages originally passed in order to help an
infant industry get on its feet.
However, these advocates of industrial scale wind farms are
so enamored of its image as clean energy that they have failed
to come to terms with the reality of its failings. This has
put them in the position of relying on government to permanently
prop up an industry that could not make it on its own. Wind
turbines are too inefficient and unreliable to have any impact
on improving air quality.
The Future of Wind Power - Wind power has a place in cleaning
up the air, but its future is in home-scaled wind plants where
individual home owners run the meter backwards when the wind
blow and simultaneously reduce emissions from power plants
by lessening demand.
These decentralized inputs do not destabilize the power grid
the way industrial scale wind plants do. And they do not require
the back-up capacity and infrastructure needed to reliably
connect wind farms to the grid.
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Contact your West Virginia
Senators and Representatives
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Governor Joe Manchin, III
1900 Kanawha Blvd. East
Charleston, WV 25305
Senator Robert C. Byrd
SH-311 Hart SHOB
U.S. Senate
Washington, D.C. 20510
Tel 202-224-3954 • Fax 202-228-0002
Web Form
• Web
Site
Senator John D.
"Jay" Rockefeller
SH-531 HSOB
U.S. Senate
Washington, D.C. 20510
Tel 202-224-6472 • Fax 202-224-7665
E-Mail
• Web
Site
Senator Walt Helmick
Capitol Bldg. - Rm. 465-M
1900 Kanawha Blvd East
Charleston, WV 25305
Senator Clark Barnes
P. O. Box 2172
Elkins, WV 26241
E-mail •
Web
Form • Web
Site
Congresswoman Shelley
Moore Capito
Washington, DC Office:
1431 Longworth House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515
Tel 202-225-2711 • Fax 202-225-7856 Web
Form • Web
Site
Representative Alan
B. Mollohan
2302 Rayburn Building
U.S. House of Representative
Washington, D.C. 20515
Tel 202-225-4172 • Fax 202-225-7564
E-mail (none) • Web
Site
Representative Nick
Rahall
2307 Rayburn Building
U.S. House of Representatives
Washington, D.C. 20515
Tel 202-225-3452 • Fax 202-225-9061
Web
Form • Web
Site
Delegate Harold
K. Michael
West Virginia House of Delegates
Building 1, Room 450-M
Charleston, West Virginia 25305
E-Mail • Web Site
West Virginia Public Service Commission
Sandra Squire, Executive Secretary
P.O. Box 812
Charleston, WV 25323
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Government Web Sites
U.S.
Representatives
Write
your U.S. Representative
U.S.
Senators
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Speak up, write letters
& attend meetings . . . but most of all educate yourself
The usual things to do begin
with making your concerns known to those with their hands on the
levers of government — that making the way easy for these
private wind developers is not good public policy.
We need to educate our elected officials
because they have been misled by a massive sales campaign bankrolled
by turbine manufacturers and disguised as a clean-and-green solution
to the need for more energy resources.
Wind is such an unreliable energy
source that private wind developers have had to lobby governments
to provide special tax benefits available to no other energy producers,
and to create an artificial demand for their product by getting
governments to pass laws requiring its use.
Instead of wasting money to support
technology that can't deliver what it promises
Urge government to put its (our) money into incentives for
utilities to clean up the air coming out of fossil fuel power
plant smokestacks. |
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Urge government to get serious about vehicle emissions standards. |
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Urge government to establish incentives for home-scaled wind/solar/hydro
development as an alternative to industrial wind plants |
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Urge government to implement measures that reduce the level
of energy usage |
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And on your own you can practice energy conservation in your
home and business and urge others to do the same. |
This is what can happen when turbine vibrations
cause metal fatigue.
Part of the reason that energy consumption
in the US increases by 2% each year beyond the amount attributable
to population growth is that we have become profligate in its
use and have more ways to use it. If every household in the US
replaced just one 75-watt incandescent bulb with a compact florescent
bulb, the savings would be six million megawatt hours a year,
half the output of the Vepco plant at Mt. Storm and way more than
all of the existing and proposed industrial wind plants in the
region could ever produce.
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What You Can Do Today
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• According to the Energy
Information Administration the 2001 Residential Energy
Consumption Survey showed that the average annual household
consumption of electricity was 10,656 kWh (kilowatt-hours),
which is 888 kWh monthly.
The survey also showed that air conditioners accounted for
16%, refrigerators 13.7%, space heating 9.6%, water heaters
9.1% and lighting 8.8% of electricity consumed. 8.8% of
the total average monthly consumption works out to 78.144
kWh devoted to keeping the lights on. To simplify the math,
let’s call it an even 75 kWh a month for lighting.
Ten 75-watt incandescent bulbs on for 3 hours and 20 minutes
a day for 30 days will consume 75 kWh monthly [10 x 75 x
3.33 x 30]. If one replaced those ten bulbs with 15-watt
compact fluorescent bulbs, the electricity used would be
15 kWh a month, saving 60 kWh in the process.
• According to US
Census data, Pendleton County has 3,350 households.
If each household replaced ten bulbs, the savings for the
county would total 201,000 kWh monthly.
A 1.5-megawatt (MW) turbine at 100% efficiency generates
1,500 kWh in one hour. The best that the turbines on Backbone
Mountain can do is 27% efficiency because of the unreliability
of the wind and the turbines themselves. At 27% capacity
a 1.5-megawatt turbine can generate 291,000 kWh monthly
[1,500 x 27% x 24 hrs. x 30 days].
Putting a timer on an electric water heater and replacing
ten incandescent bulbs in county households would offset
far more electricity than can be produced by a two-million-dollar
turbine.
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New Fictional Book Chronicles
a Fictional Wind Energy Development Fight in Wisconsin
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Fond du Lac, WI - Dec. 08, 2007. Mike Winkler
has written a new book detailing the downside of wind energy
developments, aptly naming it “Wind Power . . . It
Blows!" Mr. Winkler utilized www.Lulu.com,
the online marketplace for digital content. The book discusses
the fictional battle against wind in Fondue Lake County,
more specifically in an area called the “UnHolyland.”
In the words of the author, “This book, although fictional,
it is as believable as fiction could be. One might think
it is an actual account of the fight against wind, and a
template for others to follow.”
The book itself was spawned by the idea
that Fond du Lac County has become a hotbed for wind power
development. Other counties in the state will likely refer
to Fond du Lac as the textbook example of how certain areas
are targeted because of the general ignorance of the public
regarding the less obvious facts of wind energy developments
as industrial installations.
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