Wind Turbines-Are they really benefiting us?

[PlanetGreen101]

In a town not far from Utica, New York there are acres and acres of wind turbines for as far as the eye can see. An you would think that the energy they create is actually going to the town there in...right? NO! MORE than 70% of the power the turbines create is going to New York City! So in the small little town that I live in, Albany County, NY they are debating to put up wind turbines. this has been going on for a few months now and I am starting to think, Are the wind turbines that they put up,going to benefit us, or is it all just going to New York City also. I was all for this until that question came into my mind.

NOV. 22, 2008--I am glad to see my post was put up on the main website, because this is a big issue! More than half of you think that I am wrong and think that i hate wind energy, well I don't! All I am saying is that if the small town I live in were to put up turbines will it benefiting US, as in the people in our town. Will the energy we produce help lower our energy coasts or will it all go to New York City? Many people think that they are very quiet...right? Well in Prince Edward Island in Canada, there are acres and acres of turbines also. It was a calm day and yet my parents, sisters, aunt could hear then and they weren't quiet! Now remember...it was a CALM DAY! ON a windy day they are even LOUDER! So is that what you would call RELAXING?

[greenteadrinker]

It may be small comfort, but that happens all across America. Water is distributed to far away fields too.

[David Balch]

If it stops more power plants being built, then Yes

[charadeur]

With the line loss involved I wonder why they would not use the power locally? Is it because they can get more for it by sending it to a grid where people will pay more for "green" energy? If that is the case I wonder how green that energy really is.

[eugene]

thats exactly it, ebergy in NY costs more so if a company in a rural area will sell them power there is more $ there than locally. Thats one of the main reasons I'm not a fan of the grid tied wind/solar, too easy for people to distribute it as they see fit.

[GreenNorthFL]

In a town not far from Utica, New York there are acres and acres of wind turbines for as far as the eye can see. An you would think that the energy they create is actually going to the town there in...right? NO! More than half the power the turbines create is going to New York City!

Unfortunately you, or the turbines, are part of "the grid" which contributes to areas all over. You'd have to construct a private wind farm with power going to your county only. Sharing and being part of the grid happens everywhere.

[vboring]

The foundation of your question is wrong.

Electricity is the ultimate fungible product, if you can even call it a product. The power from the wind plant doesn't "go" to New York or anywhere else. Customers in New York have signed on to contracts to pay extra for their power to "come" from a wind plant. Conceptually this is very clean and understandable, but wrong.

What those customers have actually done is agree to get exactly the same electricity as everyone else, but pay more for it in order to subsidize a wind plant in Utica.

You should be writing them a thank you note for their generosity to humanity.

If you want to "buy" local wind power for yourself, all you have to do is send a check to whoever owns your local wind plant. Just like the customers in New York, you'll being paying a bit extra to get exactly the same electricity as everyone else. Or donate $25 a year or so to CO2 offsets. Functionally, it is the same thing as buying local wind power.

[Hydrotopia]

Rooftop solar doesn't destroy viewscapes with industrial wind power pylons everywhere.


This isn't "green".

[hlouie]

vboring is correct. The electrical power produced by wind turbines is shared universally throughout the electrical grid. The portion of your electricity that comes from wind power depends on many factors, but it is strongly related to how close you are to the wind turbines (electricity follows the path or least resistance).

[Hydrotopia]

(electricity follows the path of least resistance).

So does sprawl...

[I'm not giving my name to a machine]

Rooftop solar doesn't destroy viewscapes with industrial wind power pylons everywhere.


This isn't "green".

Care to explore this a little more?
because you see wind turbines they are not green? Is this some reverse of out of site out of mind mentality?

I agree that wind power is not a perfect environmental solution to carbon driven energy but but favorite argument 'better is the enemy of good' seems to apply. If not wind, what? you give solar as an example but that has bigger supply chain issues, questionable environmental practices at the manufacturing end and means we would online have power when the sun was out.

Yes, wind turbines are really benefitting us. All of us.

[stevejust]

Of course they benefit you. Would you rather be sucking down mercury in particulate emissions from coal plants which could just as easily be built in Utica with the intent to supply NYC? Would you rather be suffering from acid rain deposition from the old dirty coal plants in the Ohio Valley that are polluting YOUR streams and rivers in Utica?

Sorry for saying this so bluntly, but regardless of where the electrons "go" that are generated by those wind turbines, wind turbines benefit everyone. Except maybe bats.

If you don't like the fact that you have wind turbines in your backyard that might be supplying NYC electricty, put up your own wind turbine. Buy solar panels for your roof. Install a geothermal heating system. Unless you own the means of your electricity production, except for the miniscule amount you personally use, but that logic ALMOST NO ELECTRCITY PRODUCTION BENEFITS YOU.

[Whatever!]

As GreennorthFL and Vboring explained electricity on a grid just doens't work that way. It's analagous to poring a bottle of water into a water main, then going home and filling the bottle up from your tap and expecting to get that same water back into the bottle. The probability of even getting molecules of the water you put into the water main back into the bottle you filled up at home is going to be dependent on how close the input and extraction points are and whether or not you are even connected to that main's grid.

Electricity is a path of least resistance opportunist. To get a better feel for where the power from those turbines really goes you would need to trace the trasmission lines from the turbines to the grid and see how it is all connected. Then looking at how much is drawn from each distribution grid starting at the nearest input point from the turbines. In a sense, any excess will stay in the grid and move outward from there. Depending on how the transmission lines are running some of that electricity may find its way to NYC. But once in the grid it goes, in a sense, everywhere within that power grid. Chances are good that very few volts are making there way from Utica to NYC. This is way simplistic and not completely correct but provides a visual for better understanding (I hope). Basically generated electricy it is just going into the grid and waiting for a path to open to go down. You would really need to get into physics to really understand how the electrons are moving about.

Any energy expended to create more electicity than the things connected to the grid consume is waste, and to ensure there is enough in the grid there is almost always waste. That's where you get into the talk about smart grids and the talk about charging electric cars at night. Plants keep running because it is not small feet to shutdown/start a generation plant, turbines keep turning if the wind is blowing, but demand may be down so the generation goes nowhere and is not stored. The storage medium is the fossile fuel burned by the plant, the kinetic energy of the wind, the radiation from the sun, maybe the batteries of electric cars to support demand during the day (again back to that smart grid thing)... Turn a hand generator connected to a light without a storage medium (battery, capacitor) and when you stop turning the light goes out. Disconnect the light and turn the crank and you are still generating electricity, it's just doens't have any place useful to go so it gets discharged into the surroundings with no befit to you other than some exercise.

With that, yes the turbines they are debating putting up near your home will benefit you and all of us as hopefully that will keep another fossil fuel plant from being constructed. If we get enough renewable energy being generated maybe we can start shutting some of the fossil fuel plants down. Chances are you'll get more of the "actual" electricity generated by those turbines than anyone in NYC. And if you really want to support green electricity you should support them by checking your electric bill/company and figure out agree to pay a portion of your bill directly to clean electricity generation, and little more for you usuage.

[alex_guy_CA]

It sounds to me like you have a limited definition of what the word "us" means.

[Uncle Mike]

Like any business that exports the majority of its product, You get benefits from the tax revenue and the jobs this business generates, and the money spent at your local businesses.
The same would be true for a local slaughter house, or grain storage or any other product produced in abundance in a rural area. The majority of it will be intended for the population centers.