blog.environmentalchemistry.com — Maine currently produces 175 megawatts of wind power, with an additional 202.5 megawatts under construction and up to 229.5 megawatts now in the permitting process. All told, Maine's short range wind generating capacity is over 600 megawatts or 1.6 billion kWh/yr. This is 2/3 the capacity of the decommissioned Maine Yankee nuclear power plant.
Mar 4, 2010 View in Crawl 4
envirochemMar 4, 2010Submitter
It won't actually lower our electric bills, unless you live in one of the towns next to the wind farm and part of the deal for approving the wind farm included discounted electric rates for towns folk (I know this is the case with at least one of the wind farms). Everyone else still pays market rates, but at least more of the money stays in Maine, the wind farms help add property tax revenues for local governments and we can reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. In the long run the goal is to produce a surplus of renewable energy so that it can be exported to other states thus creating good paying sustainable green jobs here in Maine.
Closed AccountMar 5, 2010
Hate to bring this up, but have they solved the "no wind" problem yet?This is an example of realtime power production from a very large wind generation system in action in Washington State; the blue line is the power generated by the wind, the red line is the customer demand:<a class="user" href="http://transmission.bpa.gov/business/operations/Wind/baltwg.aspx" rel="nofollow">http://transmission.bpa.gov/business/operations/Wi ...</a>As you can see, wind generates power only like 10% to 20% of the time. The rest of the time, it serves as a facade to the coal and gas power plants hidden behind the wind turbines and solar panels.
envirochemMar 5, 2010Submitter
How much wind is generated, what percentage of the time varies from wind farm to wind farm. With wind farms scattered out in geographically diverse areas you get a reliable and predictable average of production. Also wind CAN'T be the sole solution to our energy needs. It has to be part of a mix of energies. For instance Maine is also vigorously pursuing solar, hydro, geo-thermal and tidal energies as well as energy conservation. We also have a growing wood pellet industry. Wood pellets are compressed waste sawdust that looks kind of like pellet feed you might give to an animal. These pellets are then burned in special high efficiency pellet stoves to provide heat much like a wood stove.Each energy source has its limitations and disadvantages, but a good mix of all the energies helps to mitigate the shortcomings of any one energy source. Hydro and tidal power can make good all weather energy sources. Solar's max production peaks out when electrical demand is at its peak (hot sunny summer days).Finding solutions to our energy needs requires incremental steps using a wide variety of energy sources.
Closed AccountMar 5, 2010
Or, of course, you can just skip the renewables and move - back, in Maine's case - to zero-carbon nuclear power. Far cheaper, vastly more reliable, and actually safer than renewables; generates a tremendous amount of high-paying jobs, too. There's probably even some uranium or thorium in Maine, if you look hard enough.By the way, nuclear works, works very well, and it has 500,000 years of fuel with recycling and breeding.