Against The Wind

RENEWABLE ENERGY: STILL BREAKING WIND - Power Line Blog

The federal budget is not the only thing looking at dropping off a fiscal cliff. One of the loose ends caught in the whole mess is the renewal of the “production tax credit” (PTC) for wind power, a supposedly “temporary” measure to help the industry get on its feet, but which, like wartime rent control, somehow becomes a permanent necessity to “save jobs” now.

Even the Washington Post has come out against renewing the PTC. Here’s my suggestion: the American Wind Energy Association should change its name to the Fatuous Attempt to Rob Taxpayers, or FART for short.

The reasons for the observed declines in normalised load factors cannot be fully assessed using the data available but outages due to mechanical breakdowns appear to be a contributory factor.

Translation: wind mills wear out faster than you think. Dr John Constable, director of Renewable Energy Foundation, commented: “This study confirms suspicions that decades of generous subsidies to the wind industry have failed to encourage the innovation needed to make the sector competitive. Bluntly, wind turbines onshore and offshore still cost too much and wear out far too quickly to offer the developing world a realistic alternative to coal.”