Useless and Costly – IOTW Report

Useless and Costly

 MyNorthWest- At the new Port Angeles Waterfront Park, the City Council unanimously approved the $107,516 price tag to install three “windmill-like turbines” to generate electricity. Their monthly energy production? Just $1.50 worth of savings. Wow.

According to the Peninsula Daily:

‘The turbines will power the 31 lights that illuminate the park,’ Deputy Power Systems Manager Shailesh Shere said last week.

‘They can generate up to 3 kilowatts an hour but under normal conditions will generate a quarter of that,’ Shere said.

Shere said they are expected to generate $1.50 worth of electricity a month, based on current retail Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) rates.

The Peninsula Daily News has since updated the story with more accurate information. Though still low savings, they now say it’s $1.39 worth of savings a day.

 

Of course, this is quite embarrassing but, according to the City Councilmember Sissi Bruch, the turbines “… were also meant to educate folks about wind power.” Something tells me she doesn’t think the lesson that “wind power is useless and costly” was the education she had in mind. She now regrets the expenditure.  more

22 Comments on Useless and Costly

  1. Sadly I doubt that was the worst local investment ever. I’m sure if they actually calculated all the associated costs involved with maintenance and ownership they’d be far more disgusted. Local tax payers should be revolting over crap like this.

  2. According to my calculations, at a buck and a half per month they should recover their original investment in just over 5,973 years, not including maintenance costs.

    Still a better plan than Obamacare, though.

    🙂

  3. The best part? If you read the article from the local paper, many of those who voted for this waste of money do not regret their votes, even after learning the numbers.

    Ladies and gentlemen–this is your money. This is progressives with your money. Any questions?

  4. They updated the article to reflect about $42 per month, or about $500 per year. Also in the article, that’s a quarter of the capacity of the turbines. So they knew, before funding this, that the best possible case was about $2,000 per year on an investment of over $100k. and they still did it. It’s one thing when you actually think it could save money, another when you absolutely know it won’t but do it anyway.

  5. The only reason that “Sissi” regrets her decision is that the numbers have come out and she and the council look like dicks even in a lefty state like Washington. Hell, the populace is probably getting mad at them for such an obvious screwup on these wind turbines when the money could have been far better spent creating mobile safe zones that could be called to wherever a snowflake was experiencing a breakthrough of reality in their own little world.

  6. “Symbolism over substance” has always been the liberal motto. Same with “good intentions always trump results”.

    With OPM these kinds of investments are “no-brainers” – literally – as the left demonstrates daily.

  7. Try explaining a “break-even” point to your run-of-the-mill voting morons, or their elected officials. We (our county) installed a heating system in the High School with a 56 year “break-even” point. Even though the County Council knew that the “break-even” point was far beyond the life expectancy of the heating system, they justified it by fact that it was financed by a Dept. of Education “grant.” The fact that the “grant” money was coerced, through taxation, from people whose children will NEVER benefit from the heating system was considered poor taste to bring up. And bear in mind that this is a county that can boast only 750 Demonrats out of a population of 10,000.

    And the beat goes on …

    izlamo delenda est …

  8. The Northwest is infested with Libstains. They’re destroying everything. In Thurston County They partnered with psychopaths at the EPA to declare a common species of gopher “endangered”. Then, they set about shutting down all construction they can in defense of gopher holes. If you buy a lot, intending to build your dream home… you first need an EPA inspection that can ONLY OCCUR in the last few months of summer. If they find a rodent, your property is then worthless. But if you were hoping to start building mid summer? Forget it. You could end up waiting until the following year before you can even get an okay to build. This is another of the many economy destroying tricks of the Obutthole administration.

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