Barack Obama has invested and lost some 90 Billion dollars of Tax Payer money in the promoting of “green” energy companies. However, if we stand back and look at the truth behind the use of wind or solar power, we will see that both of them are much more costly than just a single small natural gas or fossil fuel fired generator. Now many are going to state that the carbon footprint is not the same, but if one begins to understand that the building of the wind mills and solar panels use the very carbon dioxide producing vehicles to build them, then it is realized that very little carbon dioxide is being saved. By the way, Australia has been using the so-called “cap and trade” ideology and the savings of emissions when calculated comes to .000006 percent of emissions saved, which is so very little that it really has no effect at all and is costing billions to pursue!
Most electrical generators are measured in watts and when the use of large generators is used, they are measured in Megawatts, which means millions of watts. The Megawatts produced by any of these sources is where we receive our electricity from. The huge problem is that the windmills and solar panels produce far less energy than any one fossil-fuel generator can. It is here that the load factor comes into play but first we must look at the way the Windmills and solar panels are built. Both use electricity to be made, and the base of both are made of concrete, which is produced by the use of fuel fired furnaces. Then more energy is used to bring that concrete to site. Still more of that energy is used to build them on site. Now the same can be said for the natural gas or fossil fuel fired plant, but the difference here begins to show with space used and amount of energy produced.
Stanford and Delaware scientists both say that wind holds enough energy to exceed the world’s demand, they go on to say that four million turbines 100 meters high (approximately 300 to 400 feet high) could supply well over half the world’s power demand. What these scientists do not inform the people about is the lack of efficiency that these wind mills and solar panels have. If we measure watt for watt, it becomes very clear that in the United States with the 600+ years of natural gas our nation has on hand, that is known, natural gas generators out produce any other source of power generation and with an efficiency rate nearly 70% higher than any wind mills or solar panels!
Let us begin by describing the load factor since this is where the windmills and solar panels lack any real efficiency at all compared to the load factor of natural gas or fossil fuel. Now you must be asking what is this load factor? Simply put, the load factor, is the fraction of the rated capacity of an energy source that can be expected to deliver over a typical period under normal operating conditions. Now already Wind and solar are at a disadvantage since wind depends upon the movement of wind and if the wind is still the windmills do not turn. Solar is even worse since they depend upon the sun so if it is cloudy the output is less than during a full sunny day, not to mention that they provide no power at night and have to have batteries as backup. Having stated this we now will get into the load factors of these devices. If we consider these load factors of these different devices we shall see that of the varied sources, wind only has a power load factor of .24, while solar has a load factor of .18, but the load factor of Fossil fuel whether it be from Natural Gas or other fuel, it is .95. Already we can see a huge difference of at least .71 less load factor for wind and some .77 load factor for solar power. Now that is a real inefficient way to develop power since it would take a Huge amount of solar panels to equal just one fossil-fuel generator. Wind is not much better at all.
Let us take a look at one project in Texas, about 21 miles west of Corpus Christi. They state it is located entirely within Nueces County, so we already know this project will take a lot of land for use as wind power. The project size is just 300 megawatts and the amount of turbines cannot be determined since they need more than just one to develop this amount of power. This project will use some 25,000 acres just to produce 300 megawatts. They say that 25,000 acres will produce enough energy for just 80,000 homes. Now just for a comparison, just one Natural Gas fired plant would produce 500 Megawatts and it would use less than 100 acres of land, if that much. The natural gas generator would supply some 135,00 homes for a lot cheaper cost and a lot less land usage, not to mention that Texas is a state that produces a lot of clean burning natural gas!
Let us take a look at solar panels and see the huge discrepancy of these compared to just a single natural gas fired 500 megawatt generator. At noon when the sun is at peak performance for solar panels, it can produce 1 kilowatt of radiant energy on one square meter, (approximately 3 feet square). Even at this peak of power source, the solar panel will develop a mere 18% efficiency and the rated capacity would be about 180 watts per square meter of panels. Now here we already start with a huge disadvantage since the one panel can only produce 180 watts, given this fact, to develop just 180 kilowatts, it would take 100 solar panels, or some 100 square meters (this would be equivalent to one football field of solar panels just at the noon time) for only enough energy to power just a few homes.
Look at a very simple fact. Since the sun is out for only about half the time, the load factor is already cut in half. Now let us consider that not every day would be sunny so the output would be low or not at all. Given that along with what to do to maintain power during the night by using batteries, it becomes apparent that solar power is not efficient at all since the load factor after doing the calculations comes to a mere .18. Now let us explore just how much land would have to be used for just 500 megawatts from a single small natural gas fired generator. About 25 square yards would give us about 1 kilowatt. Now to increase this would mean that some 25,000 square yards would give us just 1 megawatt. Now to produce 500 megawatts, we would need some 12,500,000 square yards of surface area!
It would seem to indicate that with our nation having a huge amount of natural gas at the ready and some of it really unknown as to how much our nation really has. Would it not be better to run our power generators off of natural gas, which is clean burning? Why do we need to use wind, which is only a mere 25% of the power that one natural gas generator could produce?
Considering these load factors and what the difference between these types of power are, it becomes clear that windmills and solar power are far behind the power derived by natural gas or fossil fuel. Since this is so evident and conclusive, why do we as a nation with an abundant supply of Natural Gas, oil and coal even bother to consider the use of other forms of power generation that fall extremely short of cost when they match up to what our nation has on hand? It is due to the present administration in power that these faulty sources of power generation are even considered since the present Obama administration has given huge tax breaks and other incentives to these inefficient sources of power generation. At the same time they are shutting down the very sources of power generation that is the most economical to our nation!
And even more concerning is the amount of birds killed by these windmills, numbering into the thousands and some are protected species! We have not heard of any birds being killed by a natural gas generator. In Altamont Pass, California, about 9,300 birds each year are killed by the wind mills. Some of the species that are killed by the windmills are protected by federal laws and carry a huge fine if an individual killed them, but these wind mills kill them and no action is taken. Birds like the Golden Eagle, Red-tailed Hawk, American Kestrel, and Burrowing Owl are killed by the hundreds each year and the power companies that are killing them with their windmills are not fined at all! None of these windmill companies will do any type of studies because should they do them they would find out just how many of the protected species are being killed each year by the windmills and this will injure the environment more than any natural gas generator since none of these type of birds have been killed by the single generator that should be used instead of all those windmills.
In closing, it is very clear that the ideology of this so-called “renewable energy’ has not and will not ever be able to replace the power our nation can generate from far fewer and less damaging sources of energy. Why should we even look at these other sources when it can be shown that they fall short of the needed output that we can obtain from our resources we have a great abundance of such as natural gas, coal, and oil? Given the recent advances in drilling and ways to do this safely, our nation has enough resources with these 3 types of energy alone to use them for the next 600+ years, if not more! Wind and solar are two of the most costly types of energy producers our nation now has. The cheapest and most environmental friendly is natural gas and this source alone has enough supply for well over the next 500+ years and this is from what our geologists know about. Unexplored areas may well have much more. Just recently India has discovered an unlimited amount of natural gas just off their shore. The area they claim to have natural gas in is some 1200 kilometers by 1400 kilometers. This is the largest natural gas field in the world and it was just discovered! The United States may have as much, if not more. The Obama Administration with all their regulations and ways to stop exploration is holding our nation from the possibility of discovering more of these fuels. The United States does not need any other source for oil, natural gas or coal, and yet we go to foreign nations which hate us to obtain what we have under our feet. What sense is that?
