Is the answer blowin' in the wind?

   The idea of generating your own electricity from the freely blowing wind has an inherent appeal. And anyone who has observed a full round of seasons in Western New York knows that the wind is a powerful and relentless force during the months when energy bills rise.

   A new generation of home-sized turbines, subsidized with government energy credits, has put the dream of wind power within reach for many. A miniature version of the giant Steelwinds towers on Lake Erie can provide enough electricity for a typical home. Every watt generated by the wind is one less that has to come from burning coal, gas or oil.

   But harnessing the wind has its own problems. Manufacturers insist that they have reduced the noise from the spinning blades, but there's no getting around their visibility. To be effective, towers must rise above obstructions like trees and roofs - making them prominent by design.

   An application for two towers in Hamburg is pending, and more "small wind" projects are likely waiting in the wings. Should wind continue to be restricted to rural areas and to special utility projects like Steelwinds, or is there a place for turbines in the areas where most people live?

  --- Fred O. Williams

Comments

[Barton Keyes]

Is windpower the answer? Is it cost effective? A quick look at the article raises some tough questions.
The Article indicates the total cost of the wind tower was $70,000 with $28,000 being subsidized by the government, etc. The average power cost for the homeowner is $130 to $140 a month. Even at $150 per month it would take 38.9 years to recover the construction cost of the tower. And the article says the life span of the tower is 20 years. That suggests additional costs to keep the tower going to meet the return-on-cost time period of 38.9 years.
All that suggests that the current cost benefit of the wind tower is marginal at best.

[Camino Reality]

However what is the cost to the health of people living downwind from the Huntley Plant? Coal or nuclear power prodution is in the long term risky to the public's health.

Perhaps it is time to move from energy dependency, lack of efficency, and away from power generation systems that risk or harm human beings to a Marshall Energy Plan for the USA.

I'm tired of being told that we live at the end of an oil pipeline by people who fly around in corporate jets. I'm sickened that we have higher electric costs with a giant hydro plant in our backyard, while we pollute the air of WNY with cancer causing agents to make electricity for Buffalo.

What really gets me burning is to know that we paid with our taxes to build the Niagara Power generation plant in the Falls and to understand we have an established middle man to resell us our electricity. Solar and wind power producion offers us the end to energy servitude for terrorists, middle eastern shieks, and to corporate heads who have dithered away our way of life for their greed.

Take U.S. tax money from being invested into coal burning and nuclear plants and instead put solar panals and wind turbines on our homes and property and the cost per unit will come down and we won't be paying for electricity and we won't be sewing cancer in the winds.

[Frank Brutus]

Here's the actual answer: check out buffaloruse.com for the real deal on hot air in Buffalo!

[Don H]

It's a false energy solution that makes no sense just like ethanol.

[PGR88]

Throw all the taxpayer money and green-guilt you want at it - if it is not economical, it will never be more than a curiousity.

New technologies must be clearly dominant over old ways to cause radical change. What did the auto replace? the horse! What did Rockefeller's Standard Oil replace? Whale Blubber!

[Camino Reality]

False economis to whom? The oil, coal, and nuclear lobbist, status quo that is who. Overcast Germany has solar panals going up everywhere.

Hey look at how much has to be spent to clean up West Valley. If you have family living in Tonawanda under the vail of the Huntley Plant benzene smoke, than wind and solar and other new technologies might be worth the risk.

Invest first in making every home and building in WNY energy efficient and we won't have to create so much electricity. There are some people that cannot change and it's time for them to get out of the way for progress that does little harm to people or the environment or requires monitoring of air, or ground water for thousands of years.

[Mulligan]

I concur with Mr. Brutus. The place to find info on the hot air in Western New York is buffaloruse.com