Wind-Turbine Maker That Obama Praised Files for BK

[AgeOfEnlightenmentSCP]

"Renewable energy isn't something pie in the sky," Obama said during a speech at Cardinal. "It's not part of a far-off future. It's happening all across America right now.

" ... It can create millions of new jobs and entire new industries if we act right now."

Jeff Grabner, vice president and head of the company's wind business, told the Plain Dealer earlier in the week that Cardinal had been losing business to European suppliers who had underbid Cardinal, forcing the company to trim its workforce by 15 employees a year ago.

[Deleted]

Boy how strange is this. A company that makes a product that is inefficient, is inefficient at making that product & losing business to a company that's located overseas.

My suggestion is that 1. They wait for a technology breakthrough & make a product that is energy efficient, which will increase demand enough that they can compete or 2. They make buggy whips. There's not a lot of competition in making buggy whips because the demand is so small.

Only our government has proven that it can & will keep running at a loss. Businesses that try that go BK (belly up).

[deziloooooo]

Inefficient Industry or just a American company which can't compete in the manufacturing area because of costs..
There is a big difference in the two, IMHO.

Large company out of Spain who is doing work here , Wind Farms, and the world as well as China doing a lot with wind /energy ...

[safeharbor37]

Inefficient Industry or just a American company which can't compete in the manufacturing area because of costs..
There is a big difference in the two, IMHO.

It's statements like that which make me wonder what you mean by "efficient."
Trying not to beat a dead horse, but that kind of thinking explains, to some degree, the government's typical attitude toward business. That is; a business needs subsidies to be successful [That makes me wonder what they mean by "successful."].
That said, can you really say that a business is "efficient" or "successful" if it can't survive without outside help?
In terms of business, efficiency is not the measure of success. An efficient company cannot be successful if no one wants their product [unless of course the government or some other coercive agency (the mob perhaps?] requires that people patronize the business. Can a business really be considered "successful" if it cannot make a profit?
I understand that "profit" is a synonym for evil amongst some of the collectivist left, but, short of a purely socialist society, how does a culture create wealth without profit?
Think.

[deziloooooo]

In new Industries , especially something like this..some research $ are needed and even the old industry's, are you saying that oil and Coal industries don't get government help and these have been with us since forever..subsidies to industries are not just common to the States , though we seem to do a lot of it, farm subsidies for example, dairy, cheese, fishing, mining, and other country's as they strive to have their industries competitive in the world economy..done every day...

[Apple]

Problem is, with wind, they all lose money. Technology just isn't there yet to make them work. Government gives a company money to build a wind farm. It will take over 10 years before that windfarm can actually "make" money. The lifespan of the generator is 10 years. The only people really benefitting from wind power are the owners getting the federal money. They know a good deal (for them) when they see it. They can start a business being subsidized for almost all cost, keep any profit, and close down when it is no longer worth the effort. Wind generation also wreaks havoc on the grid since you can't generate power without wind and you can't control or schedule wind. It requires the reducing the efficency of other generation sources (such as hydro) by starting and stopping those to make up for the instability.

Wind might be a good up-and-coming thing for other areas, but in the PNW, where we already have reliable "green" energy through hydro, it just doesn't make sense--talk to almost anyone in power generation, transmission or distribution and they'll tell you that (except those who are working for wind).

And no, you can't store the electricity from either one to use later during peak times. Right now, the only possible way to store electricity is with a pump generation plant. You'd think they'd come up with more places to put those in, but somehow they've been ignored.

ETA: Yes, hydro was created using government funds and subsidies, but hydro dams are built to last (unless made in the 70's when they touted "value engineering") so many if not most of those debts have been repaid and they now generate enough money to maintain themselves. Their life expectancy/span is comparitively better than windmills. How many of those windmills will still be generating electricity 80 years from now?

[Savoir Faire-Demogague in NJ]

Inefficient Industry or just a American company which can't compete in the manufacturing area because of costs..
There is a big difference in the two, IMHO.
Probably a unionizd work force...just a guess.

[safeharbor37]

... are you saying that oil and Coal industries don't get government help....

You don't have to ask what I'm saying if you read what I said. I didn't mention any industry at all.
But since you ask, and I suspect that others may have the same question, I'll further explain:
When a business [or individual] makes less than it [he/she] spends, It [he /she] is a failure.
That's not to say that there aren't times when expenses exceed revenues, but long term you either pay your own way or someone else has to. After all is said and done, someone has to pay and, in order to pay, something has to produce a profit [or theoretically, break even].
The so called subsidies that the left complain about, in most cases are exceeded by the revenue the government receives from the industries being "subsidized," That is: the industries pay for their own subsidies. That's where the difference is.

[deziloooooo]

www.nytimes.com/2010/01/31/business/energy-environment/31renew.html
-------------------------------------------------
.China Leading Global Race to Make Clean Energy

Shiho Fukada for The New York Times
As China takes the lead on wind turbines, above, and solar panels, President Obama is calling for American industry to step up.
By KEITH BRADSHER
Published: January 30, 2010


. .TIANJIN, China —

China vaulted past competitors in Denmark, Germany, Spain and the United States last year to become the world’s largest maker of wind turbines, and is poised to expand even further this year.



China has also leapfrogged the West in the last two years to emerge as the world’s largest manufacturer of solar panels. And the country is pushing equally hard to build nuclear reactors and the most efficient types of coal power plants.

These efforts to dominate renewable energy technologies raise the prospect that the West may someday trade its dependence on oil from the Mideast for a reliance on solar panels, wind turbines and other gear manufactured in China.

“Most of the energy equipment will carry a brass plate, ‘Made in China,’ ” said K. K. Chan, the chief executive of Nature Elements Capital, a private equity fund in Beijing that focuses on renewable energy.

President Obama, in his State of the Union speech last week, sounded an alarm that the United States was falling behind other countries, especially China, on energy. “I do not accept a future where the jobs and industries of tomorrow take root beyond our borders — and I know you don’t either,” he told Congress.

The United States and other countries are offering incentives to develop their own renewable energy industries, and Mr. Obama called for redoubling American efforts. Yet many Western and Chinese executives expect China to prevail in the energy-technology race.

Multinational corporations are responding to the rapid growth of China’s market by building big, state-of-the-art factories in China. Vestas of Denmark has just erected the world’s biggest wind turbine manufacturing complex here in northeastern China, and transferred the technology to build the latest electronic controls and generators.

“You have to move fast with the market,” said Jens Tommerup, the president of Vestas China. “Nobody has ever seen such fast development in a wind market.”

Renewable energy industries here are adding jobs rapidly, reaching 1.12 million in 2008 and climbing by 100,000 a year, according to the government-backed Chinese Renewable Energy Industries Association.

Yet renewable energy may be doing more for China’s economy than for the environment. Total power generation in China is on track to pass the United States in 2012 — and most of the added capacity will still be from coal.

China intends for wind, solar and biomass energy to represent 8 percent of its electricity generation capacity by 2020. That compares with less than 4 percent now in China and the United States. Coal will still represent two-thirds of China’s capacity in 2020, and nuclear and hydropower most of the rest.

As China seeks to dominate energy-equipment exports, it has the advantage of being the world’s largest market for power equipment. The government spends heavily to upgrade the electricity grid, committing $45 billion in 2009 alone. State-owned banks provide generous financing.

China’s top leaders are intensely focused on energy policy: on Wednesday, the government announced the creation of a National Energy Commission composed of cabinet ministers as a “superministry” led by Prime Minister Wen Jiabao himself.

Regulators have set mandates for power generation companies to use more renewable energy. Generous subsidies for consumers to install their own solar panels or solar water heaters have produced flurries of activity on rooftops across China.

China’s biggest advantage may be its domestic demand for electricity, rising 15 percent a year. To meet demand in the coming decade, according to statistics from the International Energy Agency, China will need to add nearly nine times as much electricity generation capacity as the United States will.

So while Americans are used to thinking of themselves as having the world’s largest market in many industries, China’s market for power equipment dwarfs that of the United States, even though the American market is more mature. That means Chinese producers enjoy enormous efficiencies from large-scale production.

In the United States, power companies frequently face a choice between buying renewable energy equipment or continuing to operate fossil-fuel-fired power plants that have already been built and paid for. In China, power companies have to buy lots of new equipment anyway, and alternative energy, particularly wind and nuclear, is increasingly priced competitively.

Interest rates as low as 2 percent for bank loans — the result of a savings rate of 40 percent and a government policy of steering loans to renewable energy — have also made a big difference.

As in many other industries, China’s low labor costs are an advantage in energy. Although Chinese wages have risen sharply in the last five years, Vestas still pays assembly line workers here only $4,100 a year.

China’s commitment to renewable energy is expensive. Although costs are falling steeply through mass production, wind energy is still 20 to 40 percent more expensive than coal-fired power. Solar power is still at least twice as expensive as coal.

The Chinese government charges a renewable energy fee to all electricity users. The fee increases residential electricity bills by 0.25 percent to 0.4 percent. For industrial users of electricity, the fee doubled in November to roughly 0.8 percent of the electricity bill.

The fee revenue goes to companies that operate the electricity grid, to make up the cost difference between renewable energy and coal-fired power.

Renewable energy fees are not yet high enough to affect China’s competitiveness even in energy-intensive industries, said the chairman of a Chinese industrial company, who asked not to be identified because of the political sensitivity of electricity rates in China.

Grid operators are unhappy. They are reimbursed for the extra cost of buying renewable energy instead of coal-fired power, but not for the formidable cost of building power lines to wind turbines and other renewable energy producers, many of them in remote, windswept areas. Transmission losses are high for sending power over long distances to cities, and nearly a third of China’s wind turbines are not yet connected to the national grid.

Most of these turbines were built only in the last year, however, and grid construction has not caught up. Under legislation passed by the Chinese legislature on Dec. 26, a grid operator that does not connect a renewable energy operation to the grid must pay that operation twice the value of the electricity that cannot be distributed.

With prices tumbling, China’s wind and solar industries are increasingly looking to sell equipment abroad — and facing complaints by Western companies that they have unfair advantages. When a Chinese company reached a deal in November to supply turbines for a big wind farm in Texas, there were calls in Congress to halt federal spending on imported equipment.

“Every country, including the United States and in Europe, wants a low cost of renewable energy,” said Ma Lingjuan, deputy managing director of China’s renewable energy association. “Now China has reached that level, but it gets criticized by the rest of the world.”

[safeharbor37]

The world looks to Germany to be a leader in Green Energy.

There’s been a great deal of hype surrounding Chancellor Angela Merkel’s very ambitious goals of dramatically reducing the county’s emissions by 2020.
Yet the German experience should also provide some pause to President Obama and others proposing such changes in the United States. It turns out that goals are potentially unrealistic, perhaps even dangerous, for numerous reasons. One reason that makes them so unrealistic is that they are seriously hamstrung by effectively cutting off the single largest source of CO2-free energy available anywhere in the world right now: Nuclear Power [by 2022].
www.newgeography.com/content/00766-germanys-green-energy-goals-are-potentially-unrealistic

And this from the home of socialism, Germany

[handyman2]

Wind turbines have a place but also have their limitations. For years the windmill was mainly the source in farm settings to drive well pumps to water homes and cattle.
The modern concept of being a major source to provide electricity does have it's limitations. many areas do not have consistant wind sources to make them feaseable. on top of that zoning issues limit the use of them even more.
Do they have a place? yes but it will never assume a major place of electric power. They will be most effective as a rural source of power. They can supply a single home and out buildings but to supply power to major demands the windmill cannot meet the demand.

[deziloooooo]

According to the reports of the wind farms being constructed, to replace all Coal, Gas, your correct but a lot more then just individual homes..

If they can supply 10/15% of the power needs.. that is impressive and it seems that is what is being hoped..China seems to be spending a lot of money with this idea in mind, we are starting to do the same, and in time, in China , for example, they will build the power lines infrastructure to tie into their national grid..

They have a billion ansd a half people tghere, they need the power..it seems they realize the importance of that and are having a national policy to solve that problem..why not us ?

[BeenThere...DoneThat...]

>>> They have a billion ansd a half people tghere, they need the power..it seems they realize the importance of that and are having a national policy to solve that problem..why not us ? <<<

...are you asking why the USA does not have the same power needs or are you asking why the USA does not have the same national policy?

[djAdvocate]

Jul 2, 2011 8:33:00 GMT -5 AgeOfEnlightenmentSCP said:

"Renewable energy isn't something pie in the sky," Obama said during a speech at Cardinal. "It's not part of a far-off future. It's happening all across America right now.

" ... It can create millions of new jobs and entire new industries if we act right now."

Jeff Grabner, vice president and head of the company's wind business, told the Plain Dealer earlier in the week that Cardinal had been losing business to European suppliers who had underbid Cardinal, forcing the company to trim its workforce by 15 employees a year ago.

at least he didn't drive the business into bankrupsy himself, like his predecessor did. repeatedly.

[AgeOfEnlightenmentSCP]

Jul 2, 2011 20:31:52 GMT -5 djAdvocate said:

Jul 2, 2011 8:33:00 GMT -5 AgeOfEnlightenmentSCP said:

at least he didn't drive the business into bankrupsy himself, like his predecessor did. repeatedly.

I've failed in business three times. There's no shame in trying. What has Obama ever attempted-- besides being president. And that's not going so well...

[djAdvocate]

Jul 2, 2011 21:25:20 GMT -5 AgeOfEnlightenmentSCP said:

Jul 2, 2011 20:31:52 GMT -5 djAdvocate said:

at least he didn't drive the business into bankrupsy himself, like his predecessor did. repeatedly.

I've failed in business three times. There's no shame in trying. What has Obama ever attempted-- besides being president. And that's not going so well...

LOL! ok, paul. point conceded.

[Deleted]

It's statements like that which make me wonder what you mean by "efficient."

Safeharbor I'll explain. Right now wind energy production cost more than energy can be produced by other means. If you want to cool your house using wind energy it will cost you MORE than if you use something else. For a true break through it should cost less. Right now I would call wind energy a fad (btw we have 2 wind farms located in this part of Texas. We have a lot of wind here....of course .

If the government wanted to put funding into developing a natural energy source wind would be one of the last things that I would fund. You need something dependable & a lot of it. I would have thought that funding research on tides would have been a lot more productive. We have a huge coast & tides are much more dependable. My guess is that wind energy got the green light because it's been around forever & everybody is familiar with it (who hasn't seen a wind mill). I look at it totally opposite in that wind mills have been around forever & yet they still aren't as cost effective as other sources of power. If you haven't made a break through after 3 or 4 hundred years then maybe it's time to look in another direction.

[handyman2]

As some have found out the windmills cannot produce the large mega-watt requirements that are needed to power major transmision lines. keep in mind the electricity from a wind generator must be converted to make it compatable with heavy transmission. There is a a certain amount of loss in that process. True large windmill fields can produce enough but is it cost effective? To do this and keep costs down is the challange. For major transmission you need for the supply to be constantly stable and wind power is not always so.

[deziloooooo]

I thought that Britain was doing something with tides..energy, turbines..not sure if it is a test area or a ongoing major project...

[cereb]

Jul 2, 2011 8:33:00 GMT -5 AgeOfEnlightenmentSCP said:

"Renewable energy isn't something pie in the sky," Obama said during a speech at Cardinal. "It's not part of a far-off future. It's happening all across America right now.

" ... It can create millions of new jobs and entire new industries if we act right now."

Jeff Grabner, vice president and head of the company's wind business, told the Plain Dealer earlier in the week that Cardinal had been losing business to European suppliers who had underbid Cardinal, forcing the company to trim its workforce by 15 employees a year ago.

Do you happen to have a link for this?

[Politically_Incorrect12]

I have mixed feelings on this one. The truth is that most newer types of energy or ideas are not profitable when they start. It is only after tweaking them and working with them that they usually become profitable at some point and the initial investment makes it well worth it. How many think the space agency was profitable, especially when it was started? How much have we gained from that investment? Right now alternative energy sources most likely are not going to be profitable IMO, but down the road they will be an investment we will be glad was made. I am not saying that wind turbines are the answer, just making the general statement that investment in R&D may take time to pay off in this area, just as pretty much every other area.

[safeharbor37]

What's missing in most discussions of Green or Alternative energy sources is common sense. Windmills make sense in the desert on on the coast but not necessarily in the mountains or near dense population centers. The small capacity of some alternative sources is not a disadvantage where demand is low such as in a low population density area.
One of the big problems is the proximity of supply and demand. The problem with government subsidies is that they operate too much like a sledge hammer rather than a finish hammer ~ a great deal of energy, little of which is delivered to the target ~ wasteful.
Government subsidy or its equivalent has been around since the beginning of the nation. Land agents were used to develop the "west" [of the original 13 States] and the government was essential in the development of the rail roads which made possible the development of the "west" [to the Pacific Ocean]. Both were inefficient and corrupt of course, but generally both are seen now as having been helpful in expanding the Nation [Manifest Destiny]. The stimulus of war spending is well known.
In the current circumstances, the question is whether we [the government] can afford to subsidize certain endeavors or cannot afford not to subsidize them. There is a [critical I believe] balance between public and private investment. Public investment tends to be corrupt because it is driven by vote buying while private spending is based on the desire for profit which mean that it must actually meet some recognized need.
Another thing is that public spending tends to become permanent even if its original intent was to be temporary so that it encourages dependency on the government, which of course is in line with the desires of "certain" politicians.
A complaint recently is the "subsidy" of industries which already make a profit. The question is: is it better to reward efficiency or to encourage industry which cannot turn a profit without public assistance? Conservatives believe that, in most circumstances, industry should sink or swim on its own merits, getting protection and assistance only temporarily under limited circumstances.
There is only so much "other peoples" money to go around because, if you take too much away from those who actually produce, the "other people" will not have enough to pay the bill any longer.

[safeharbor37]

How many think the space agency was profitable, especially when it was started? How much have we gained from that investment?

There is a critical distinction to be made here. The purpose of the investment in space exploration was based on national defense which is a legitimate government function. The critical difference here is that the benefits [and other consequences] of the investment in space exploration were not based on the government's desire to affect competition in the private sector. Most of the benefits we enjoy as a consequence of space exploration is a result of initiatives in the private sector to meet the challenge set by the space program. In other words, most of the space program money wasn't spent in the form of subsidy, but was spent to purchase products and services from a competitive private sector. The benefits of the space program, in other words, are a result of free market competition ~ not direct subsidy.

[AgeOfEnlightenmentSCP]

Here's all you really need to know about wind and solar power, and it's something that thankfully this businesses creditors, or prospective creditors realize: There's no market demand for wind and solar power. Without subsidies, set asides, credits from the taxpayers, and/or mandates by the government, this stuff dries up and goes away overnight. T. Boone Pickens saw the handwriting on the wall a few years back and divested himself of all of it.

[deziloooooo]

On this one I haven't a clue as to what the problem is..to much electricity available, from Hydro, to much water this year, and wind power..not needed right now, manana? Maybe, but today, right now..and it seems they can't even give it away...
---------------------------------------------------
www.npr.org/2011/07/03/137589667/when-water-overpowers-wind-farms-get-steamed?ps=cprs
----------------------------------------------------

When Water Overpowers, Wind Farms Get Steamed
by Martin Kaste

July 3, 2011

Rick Bowmer/AP

Five wind power companies asked federal regulators June 13 to stop the region's main transmission utility from shutting them down at night.


Five wind power companies asked federal regulators June 13 to stop the region's main transmission utility from shutting them down at night.

July 3, 2011

The Pacific Northwest is suffering from too much of a good thing — electricity. It was a snowy winter and a wet spring, and there's lots of water behind the dams on the Columbia River, creating an oversupply of hydropower.

As a result, the region's new wind farms are being ordered to throttle back — and they're not happy.

It seems like a simple problem to fix: If there's too much water behind the dams, why not just some of it? Just bypass the power generators and spill it?

Would that we could, says Doug Johnson, spokesman for the Bonneville Power Authority. When you spill water over a dam, he says, it gets mixed with nitrogen from the air — and that's not good for the salmon.

"What it can do is give the juvenile fish a condition similar to the bends, similar to what scuba divers experience," he says.

So Bonneville — a federal agency that runs the power transmission system in the region — has been ordering wind farms offline, usually in the middle of the night when demand is lowest. Wind-farm companies are crying foul.

Another Option

"This is not about fish protection, this is strictly about economics," says Jan Johnson, a spokeswoman for Iberdrola Renewables, which has 722 wind turbines in the Pacific Northwest.

"There's options," she says. "In other parts of the country — in fact in every other region — these types of transmission providers will just go into a negative pricing situation."

Negative pricing means paying people to take your surplus power. The wind-farm companies say the dams could run at full tilt and Bonneville could pay customers in other regions — like California or British Columbia — to take the surplus.

Five wind power companies have filed a complaint with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to force Bonneville to start doing so.

Bonneville would prefer not to have to pay to get rid of power, Johnson says, because that cost would be a burden to power customers in the Northwest.

"What we've said is no.

We're willing to give away energy — we give away energy to a whole lot of people when we're faced with the situation — but if we were going to just pay negative prices, and incorporate that into our wholesale power rate, and this is the only set of customers that are affected, we just aren't prepared to do that," he says.

A Challenge For Wind Power

Complicating matters is the fact that wind-farm generators make much of their income from federal tax credits. The government pays them per megawatt hour, so they really don't like it when those blades stop turning.

They also say Bonneville is forcing them to break contracts with utilities in places like California, which are required to buy a certain amount of renewable energy.

Wind farms have encountered similar problems around the country.

Mark Bolinger studies renewable energy markets for the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

"Transmission is probably one of the largest issues facing wind development in the U.S.," he says. "In 2010, roughly 5 percent of all wind generation that could have happened was actually curtailed due to transmission constraints."

Sometimes the reason is infrastructure — lack of room in the grid — and sometimes it's financial, as in the case of Bonneville's reluctance to pay other regions to take the surplus. Finally, there's the economy.

Until customer demand for power picks up some more, the tricky problem of too much power isn't likely to go away."
--------------------------------------------------

If the summer stays hot in California for example , wouldn't the demand for A/C , electricity, be high too..

I just don't don't understand this one actually...

[Apple]

Hydro constantly has to make adjustments for wind, for a few short weeks wind is just going to have to deal with what that is like. Water is very high right now, hydro generators are running at full load, scheduled maintenance has already been delayed because those generators need to be online to keep moving the water. Don't know if anyone remembers the "flood of '96" but water levels seen now haven't been this high since then. California already benifits from Oregon's cheap power through a DC line ran directly to them--you can only put so many amps through a piece of buswork though. Yes, I AM in a position where I know exactly what I'm talking about...
As I was catching up on the stack of newspapers on the coffee table, I saw this recent cartoon and thought of this thread.

ETA:cartoon in next post since it wouldn't show up here...

What the politicians are forgetting is that hydro IS green energy, the idiots in Washington state tried to say it wasn't during the last few years when they made their goal to have a large percent of their electricity "green". What they ignored was that they ALREADY had that percentage and then some from the abundance of hydro. I get to see and enjoy the benefits of cheap power (hydro) myself. I can run my central air full time in the summer (it gets, and stays, over 100 degrees for weeks on end where I live) for my 2300+ sq foot house. My highest electric bill in the last year has been about $55. Most of the PNW simply doesn't need wind, it's being forced on us.

[Apple]

cartoon didn't post

Attachments:

[Apple]

If the summer stays hot in California for example , wouldn't the demand for A/C , electricity, be high too..

This power surplus problem isn't in California, it's in Oregon and Washington. Like I said, we already have a direct "pipeline" to California (I've driven by the converter station that sends it there). Part of the issue is the grid. It's rated to carry a certain number of amps, you can't put more electricity on it or you'll burn up the lines. Wind isn't connected to the grid as well as established hydro systems. We can generate all this power in the NW but it can't really go anywhere. You can't store it. BPA and our utilities are refusing to raise our rates to try to send it elsewhere, and I say good for them. If the other states were willing to PAY for this surplus, and it's physically possible to get it there, perfect. But they aren't offering to pay to take it from us, they want US to pay to send it to them. No thanks, we'll just cut generation as needed. Also, it's not their taxes paying to keep these wind generators in operation, it's ours. They are allowed to operate at the minimum required to keep their turbines in good running order, but they've been told they can't produce more than that. Again, wind has been doing this to hydro since they came on line, now they just have to wait their turn to be "priority" again.

[deziloooooo]

Jul 3, 2011 19:32:11 GMT -5 Apple said:

Hydro constantly has to make adjustments for wind, for a few short weeks wind is just going to have to deal with what that is like. Water is very high right now, hydro generators are running at full load, scheduled maintenance has already been delayed because those generators need to be on line to keep moving the water. Don't know if anyone remembers the "flood of '96" but water levels seen now haven't been this high since then. California already benefits from Oregon's cheap power through a DC line ran directly to them--you can only put so many amps through a piece of buswork though. Yes, I AM in a position where I know exactly what I'm talking about...
As I was catching up on the stack of newspapers on the coffee table, I saw this recent cartoon and thought of this thread.

ETA:cartoon in next post since it wouldn't show up here...

What the politicians are forgetting is that hydro IS green energy, the idiots in Washington state tried to say it wasn't during the last few years when they made their goal to have a large percent of their electricity "green". What they ignored was that they ALREADY had that percentage and then some from the abundance of hydro. I get to see and enjoy the benefits of cheap power (hydro) myself. I can run my central air full time in the summer (it gets, and stays, over 100 degrees for weeks on end where I live) for my 2300+ sq foot house. My highest electric bill in the last year has been about $55. Most of the PNW simply doesn't need wind, it's being forced on us.

I hate you...my bill for my Condo..averages $125 per month..I am on the FPL average plan so I don't get killed in the summer..

So they put the wind in the PNW because of the good wind..but most of that has to go south..but they don't have the infrastructure , the transmissions lines there , either yet or they are not planning ion putting them there, to get this electricity into the grid ??

I am surprised they didn't figure the hydro into the equation as a green ..all know that. what I thought that we are basically hydro outed in the States..between the impact on the environment of dams, the cost to build, ..plus not that many places left were free running rivers are left, thus they are looking at wind as the next big green power source.
Then this is a short term problem, that once the water goes down it won't become a problem.

Wasn't there a problem a few years ago, not enough snow melt in the mountains, thus not enough water for the farmers in California..they were all concerned about that?

apple, "Yes, I AM in a position where I know exactly what I'm talking about..."

you sound very knowledgeable about this, thanks for the input, information, your not getting arguments from me on this one..

[Apple]

Lol, I you too Another reason prices are so low here though is that most of the generation and transmission is run by the government so they aren't allowed to make a profit, keeping prices to utilities low.

Yes, the big surplus of water is temporary, they expect it to go back down over the next few weeks (it peaked in mid-June). The lack of infastructure ("the grid") is definitely a big problem. The government is providing funding to build the windfarms, but not to add to the grid. So here we have these new windfarms that companies are building because the government pays them to do so, but they don't want to pay for the transmission lines to take the power away from the farm because they aren't getting subsidies for that. Just another case of the government pushing an agenda but not thinking things through. We've grown so much from original expectations of electricity reliance (don't know how to word that better). The dams were built not expecting to ever be fully loaded. Bonneville Dam built the last powerhouse on the lower Columbia in the 80s and except for times of high water all the generators don't run all the time. John Day (the third dam up the river) has 3 "skeleton bays" where the concrete was poured for future generators, but those were never installed.

The big argument with hydro is the fish deal. And with the dams that operate, fish are given priority over power. I do wish they'd look into pump storage though, those are doable in areas with mountains.