Reader comments
Windmills on the horizon

The turbines are hideous, and no amount of editorial sugar-coating will alter that fact.

(They're also an enormous waste of taxpayer dollars, decimate raptor populations, and destroy property values. But never mind that, in the eyes of the Deseret News' editorial writers, they are "symbols" of all we should strive for.)

Give me a break.

Yes, you may have to learn to live with the turbines within your view shed, but recognize them for what they are -- clean, price stable electricity. For all the love of coal and natural gas in this state, those fossil fuels are going up in price due to impending carbon taxes (for coal-fired electricity) and natural gas (now that T. Boone wants everyone to drive their cars with it, on top of heating, electicity, and agricultural uses). Bottom line is that wind is a free resource that doesn't change in price and will not be subject to carbon taxes or global price pressured triggered by war, terrorism, or demand. The wind out of Spanish Fork is priced under contract that is predictable and "locked in" for the next 20 years. What will coal and natural gas cost? No one knows! Wind, solar, and geothermal are the future -- live with it!

Ipecac; if they are decimating raptor populations, why oh why then does the Audubon Society support them? Perhaps you know something that these die-hard birders don't? Please share some factual data with them.

As much as you can say about turbines, I'd rather be downwind of them than any coal or nuclear plant. In fact, I am downwind of a whole bunch of them. I don't find them hideous, and no taxpayers dollars went into them. And, they pay the land owners way more than farming.

I guess beauty really is in the eye of the beholder. I think wind turbines are stunning to look at. They're one of the few modern man-made structures I can stand. If I had a large ranch, I'd have them on the property. Interesting how some people think they're ugly.

Wind mills are great, wind is free, sorry birds, stay out of the way. I would be all for banning windmills if we could get a program going to build nuclear power plants, but generally speaking the bird lover types are the nuclear hater types.

You sound intelligent, but to say that wind will not be taxed or go up in price is a fictional fantasy! Never trust a politition. You did with your 401K's and your Roth IRA's and look where that got you.

I lived near one of the early wind farms in California- I thought they were interesting and the self sufficiency they represent is satisfying. I would MUCH rather live near a wind farm than the stinky oil refineries of Long Beach.

For every kilowatt from wind power, there must be a kilowatt from coal, gas, or nuclear to back it up when the wind doesn't blow.

Wind Power -- why settle for one plant when you can have two?

Wind power is great, but overrated. All you who think it is so great, make it a point for the next week to go to your circuit breaker panel and throw the main breaker to OFF whenever the wind is not blowing hard. Having your power off for most of the week will give you a clue that wind is very irregular.

Of course, none of you will do this.

The picture with the article has a funny history.

It appeared a couple of years ago in the Deseret News with a caption, "Waiting for a stiff breeze". The article with it noted that Evanston, where the windmills in the picture are located, was socked is under an inversion. The windmills were not turning!

Like I said, you who like to be boosters of something you will not take the time to understand, can do more harm than good in our technically sophisticated world.

The Deseret News needs to take this to heart and stop embarrassing themselves.

To all the doubters and haters: I'm amazed at how American technological optimism in every realm, from the turnover in computing power to advances in science, turns to pessimism when oil-drunk republicans start complaining about wind farms. There's new technology coming online all the time, including recent research from MIT that promises mass storage capabilities for energy from solar and wind. In other words, we will soon be able to store wind and solar energy from the daytime to use in the night.

Also, Anonymous @ 10:37:
The electricity from the wind farm goes directly into the grid along with all the power from coal/natural gas/etc. So every contribution of a kilowatt to the grid means one less kilowatt from coal or other non-renewables.

I'm proud of the Spanish Fork wind farm. The only disappointing thing about it is that because our country was so SLOW to get our renewable-energy act together that we don't have an industry set up. (Bush spends more in 1 month in Iraq than he's spent on renewable energy during his entire presidency.) As a result, nearly every nut and bolt of the wind farm had to be imported.

Every bit of power made from wind is energy that doesn't deplete our already dwindling resources of fossel fuels, they won't last forever, we need to use as much of renuable resources as we can.

I disagree with people who think windmills are ugly, to me they are beautiful, not to mention that they provide valuable electricity.

"For every kilowatt from wind power, there must be a kilowatt from coal, gas, or nuclear to back it up when the wind doesn't blow"

This isn't necessarily true.

1) Wind power can be used to create hydrogen that can be then sold to power future cars.

2) wind power can be used to compress air that can then be used during peak electrical use times, making it un-necessary to have natural gas fired plants to provide peak electricity.

Use your imagionation, Wind energy in the USA is in an infantcy, there are many great used it can be used for.

Enron jump-started the US wind industry; we now are the world�s fastest growing wind industry. The tax subsidies (80%) have created a gold-rush mentality. Last year our taxes paid $16.6 billion in direct subsidies to the wind industry.

Idaho Power studied wind energy integration and found that it was more costly; this cost will be passed on to the consumer. Wind energy is 30 % efficient at best. Because of this many power generating plants cannot be taken off line. Denmark has 20 % of total power production coming from wind but 84 % was exported because of the variability of wind and costly nature of integration. France�s president has placed a moratorium on further wind turbines because of the destruction of France�s landscape.

The inconvenient reality is that our nation cannot replace fossil fuel energy with renewable energy. What happens when the subsidies expire or when it becomes too costly to integrate wind or when our politicians finally decide that more nuclear power plants need to come on line to meet our demands? Are we to have a graveyard landscape of these massive wind turbines lining our mountain ridges and forever change what we have loved of our environment?

The public is misinformed about wind turbines. First, it will not decrease your energy bill. In fact, Rocky Mountain Power will charge an additional $1.95/month if you decide to use wind energy. Why will your power bill increase if wind is free? It is the infrastructure that is necessary to erect these massive wind turbines and the purchase of the wind energy generated from the companies erecting the wind turbines. It is a huge windfall to the companies erecting the structures as they receive subsidies and tax breaks to do so. The subsidies come from you as the taxpayer. At the federal level, the production tax credit and accelerated depreciation can pay for 66 % of a wind power project. Additional state incentives can pay for an additional 10 %. In essence, it is you, the taxpayers that are subsidizing the wind industry.

Can we at some point convert from fossil fuels to wind energy to help decrease global warming? This can never be as wind energy is very inconsistent at best. According to the Federal Energy Information Agency, the actual experience of industrial wind power in the US is only 25 % of its capacity, or 500 kilowatts.

I'm sure that coal power plants are much more prettier to look at.......

I like wind, however from what I have read, geothermal is an even better alternative. It works all the time, it is not off and on as is wind power.

As a nation we need all sources wind, geothermal, nuclear if we are ever going to not be so dependent on foreign sources.

Lets get working.

Hey, anonymous, can you give a link or a URL for the Idaho Power study on wind integration?

While, as an engineer, I recognize the weaknesses in wind energy, I also think the most promising scenario for integrating wind produced energy onto the grid is to couple it with nuclear power plants to provide the baseload.

RE: Grimble: Besides the massive subsidies wind power is already receiving, the props needed to make wind assessable for daily use, WHEN WANTED, will make it much more expensive than other sources.

A Deseret News article on the Spanish Fork wind projects noted this wind power would sell for 3.8 cents per kWh whole the power from a totally flexible Payson, gas fired power plant would sell for 4.5 cents per kWh. However, remember wind-power's massive subsidies.

As I said earlier, try educating yourself a little about the inconvenient realities of wind energy, (to borrow that excellent phrase). Try my circuit breaker experiment to find out how you like the irregularity of wind energy. If you won't try it for a week, try it for ten seconds... at least.

BTW: The goofy picture for this article appeared in DN on Nov 06, 2004.

Utah Transport:

I have educated myself on this issue, thank you very much.

Maybe YOU should educate yourself a bit so that you can rebut the points of my earlier comment instead of ignoring them and hoping that your condescending tone will make it seem like you addressed them.

We will have storage capabilities for wind and solar within a few years, and in the mean time every minute they're feeding energy into the system is that much less coal and smog. And if we'd get on the ball in the manufacturing sector we could make it even more cost effective; but as it is, most technology and parts are imported from Denmark; in the near future China, India, and Germany will have competitors in the marketplace. But because we listened for too long to technological pessimists like Dick Cheney, we never got in the game.

It's not too late.

I just can't make any sense of your effort to paint wind energy as a bad thing.