Wind farm problems.

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O4L

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Wind power is a joke. I worked for OG&E for years and watched them online while generating and when not generating. Wind power was forced on OGE by the Corporation Commision. Guess where some of the Corporation Commissioners went to work when their terms expired. T Boon Pickins is a huge advocate of wind power in Oklahoma. His lobby is partially responsible.
We were approached by a wind company to put towers on our property in Grant County. The land man gave us an offer that was as he said what your neighbor got and produced the contracts to prove it.
What we saw was no clause to cover environmental spills, additional easement encroachments like additional lines ran into their easements and so on. Our Lawyer looked at the documents and just shook his head. No wording for removal after delisting from the grid because of obsolescence and no wording for returning the land to its original purpose which is farming.
Lawyer entered the wording into the contract and we took it back to the land man. He took it and returned it signed a week later with no issues. The wind companies will leave monuments on the prairie if the land owners don't protect their rights.
So you went ahead with the wind towers?

How has the experience been?
 

TwoForFlinching

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I’m not anti-wind or solar, just don’t think the technology is there yet.

I'm with you on that. It'll get there one day. I can't imagine if we'd ever gotten clean coal or natural gas facilities online if they treated oil and gas the same. The power guys talk about throwing away wind and solar this early as if clean coal didn't take 135-ish years to evolve.

I think municipalities should allow individual wind turbines. Not the huge fan looking ones, obviously, but there are several attractive and quiet models that would fit right in. If only the local gov would grant that permit.
 

Poke78

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I had always heard that too. So one night, bored, I googled the crap out of it. I read, consistently in peer reviewed studies, that on average, the output generates, on average, enough electricity to pay back the carbon offset is anywhere from 2-8 months, depending on the location. That's the energy it produces compared to the actual energy that was used to produce the physical turbine and installation. Actual cost recouperation takes much longer and depends entirely on the average steady-wind in any particular location. In windy areas - ie - plains states, coastal regions, seaborne wind farms obtain that cost payback is 5-6 years. In lesser steady-wind areas, the consistent locales mentioned across articles referred the interior non-coastal Northeast where the cost payback can take up to that 20 years.

My cousin put a 3kw wind turbine in his back yard in SWOK. Took him 13 months to recoup that investment. He still has to pay the electric company during Summer, but in Fall and Winter, he did get a check. While energy producers in Oklahoma are, by law, no longer required to pay you for generating electric back to the grid, his municipal power coop still does for now, sort of. His average billing is $16/month.

Just curious if your trip down Google Lane included information on the tax subsidies being part of the fully burdened cost and how that affects the ROI. My experience in getting the manufacturing industry to invest in a cost-saving project is that a 2-year payback is about the maximum the bean-counters will sign off.

Two key words I bet weren't part of your discoveries: energy density.
 

Shadowrider

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Wind power is a joke. I worked for OG&E for years and watched them online while generating and when not generating. Wind power was forced on OGE by the Corporation Commision. Guess where some of the Corporation Commissioners went to work when their terms expired. T Boon Pickins is a huge advocate of wind power in Oklahoma. His lobby is partially responsible.
We were approached by a wind company to put towers on our property in Grant County. The land man gave us an offer that was as he said what your neighbor got and produced the contracts to prove it.
What we saw was no clause to cover environmental spills, additional easement encroachments like additional lines ran into their easements and so on. Our Lawyer looked at the documents and just shook his head. No wording for removal after delisting from the grid because of obsolescence and no wording for returning the land to its original purpose which is farming.
Lawyer entered the wording into the contract and we took it back to the land man. He took it and returned it signed a week later with no issues. The wind companies will leave monuments on the prairie if the land owners don't protect their rights.
There's a ton of maintenance with them too, that's something that never gets discussed.

Even with good maintenance the transmissions only last 3-5 years, and sometimes less depending on location and they have to be rebuilt. It costs about $500,000 to swap one out.
 

Dale00

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I propose giving the environmentalist activitsts and advocates a moderately sized island somewhere. Allow them to come up with their best ideas and implement them fully on their island paradise. Only after their perfect planning is implemented and working well should they give advice to the rest of the world.... It should work out at least as well as your typical reality TV program.
 

TerryMiller

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According to this site, www.c2es.org, all the renewable energy sources add up to around 24% of the energy generated globally. Of that number, about 17% is from hydroelectric generation. That doesn't leave much for solar and wind with regards to generation capacity.

I've always said that if something isn't a good enough investment for people to put their own money into, then it probably won't be a good investment at all.

I remember some years back, we were at the state fair and OG&E (I think) was offering to allow people to sign up for fully wind power electricity. Sadly, some folks were signing up for it, even though it would cost them more than just regular old generated power. Also, I was told that there was no way that the customers could be assured that their power was all wind generated since there were no special power lines supplied to their homes.
 

Aries

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My neighbor at one time had a windmill. He said it cost him $10,000 to put up, and if he lived to be 100 years old, there was no way he would save enough money to recover the cost. And this was probably back in the 80's.
 

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