The More Wind Farms They Build the Less Energy They Seem to Get – IOTW Report

The More Wind Farms They Build the Less Energy They Seem to Get

Just the News

The U.S. Energy Information Administration released a report this week showing that installing more wind farms doesn’t necessarily mean generating more electricity. The U.S. tripled its wind energy capacity, according to the report, from 47 gigawatts in 2010 to 147.5 gigawatts at the end of 2023. While that may sound impressive, generation from all those wind farms dropped 2.1% over 2022.

Much of that drop was during the first six months of 2023, when wind generation fell by 14% compared to the same period in 2022.

The capacity factor for the nation’s wind energy fleet, the EIA explained in its report, dropped to an eight-year low of 33.5%. This is the ratio of the amount of power produced compared to the total it could have produced if it were running continuously. More

26 Comments on The More Wind Farms They Build the Less Energy They Seem to Get

  1. But the wind farms are very successful at killing raptors who eat pests who eat the crops farmers grow. Why don’t the enviromentalists ever do anything to stop this?!

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  2. Generating Power, transmitting generated power to power brokers who sell to REAs and other regional transmitters before Billing end users.
    They have the ability to interrupt power locally, regionally and Nationally to allow everything or nothing. Now that’s POWER.

    Reminds me, I need to find my slide ruler.

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  3. @Conservative Cowgirl:

    Why don’t the environmentalists ever do anything to stop this?!

    Because they’re not really environmentalists. They’re “environmentalists”. But I know you knew that!

    Those aren’t really scare quotes, but rather faker quotes.

    6
  4. Hope Achmed didn’t read my comment. Not to exclude the other terrorists, and supporters from the the UAE, Saudis, Iranians, Iraqis, Afghanis, Lebanese, Turkey. Egyptians. Yeminis, Muslim African Nations, China, Russia and some eastern Europeans. Biden’s foreign Policy by the nunbers.

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  5. One thing about these wind turbines I’ve never seen is an attempted analysis of how they might affect weather. You take energy away from ANY system, the system changes.

    The Earth’s Climate contains energy, which impacts what the weather is at any given point on the planet. So, what happens when this energy is taken away from the wind? One could assume, at a minimum, that it slows the movement of storms (less wind, less movement.)

    If that was the case, wouldn’t this increase damage from strong storms? Maybe they did find this out through an unpublished/buried study, and thought ‘Yay – We can make weather more destructive by creating “clean” energy from the wind!’

    It’s a Twofer, as long as “we” make the right investments…

    3
  6. Brad. I read that the turbines interfere with whale’s sonar location, which ends up causing them to beach themselves.

    The left seems to have found ways to silence both women’s rights orgs and ‘save the whales’…

    3
  7. fullmetal256

    I remember reading about ten years ago how they shifted an international shipping lane out in the middle of the Pacific because the sounds of the rotating props we confusing the whales during migration. I guess the whales are just collateral damage when it comes to something as important as saving the planet.

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  8. The politicians don’t care if it’s a valid way to generate electricity or or not. All they care about is getting re-elected. So for them, the real question is: does this help me get elected? And if the answer is yes, they are for it.

    1
  9. Couple thoughts…

    1. They extract energy from a moving fluid. At some point its valid to ask if the energy extraction is actually slowing the wind down, interrupting the transfer of heat from the equator to the poles and causing localized global warming.

    2. During the Enron debacle out in Kali, I lived in the far east bay, Tri-Valley area. Had a great view of the windmills on Altamont pass east of Livermore. Rolling blackouts were underway, the grid was falling apart, and there was this one windmill that never turned off. Not once. Not even on the worst no wind dog days of summer.

    KR

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  10. Google: u.s. electrical power consumption

    Result: 4E15 Watt hours in 2022

    Divide by 365.25 days in 2022 then by 24 hours per day

    Result: 456 GigaWatts (average) power flow.

    Google: S8G PWR nuclear reactor

    Result: 45 MW (shaft power)

    Divide 456 GW by 45 MW

    Result: ~10,000 Ohio class submarine nuclear reactors could provide the average power required by the U.S.

    If a PotUS, (e.g. Trump 47,) could convince Congress to foot the bill for about one S8G reactor per day for his last three years, sprinkle them around military bases, and connect them to the grid; then the U.S. could benefit from an energy “commons” of about ten percent of average demand.

    Atoms for,
    Peace

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