As part of its response to the so-called “fiscal cliff” Congress
passed a one-year extension of the Production Tax Credit (PTC) for wind
power requested by President Obama and backed by Senator’s Chuck
Grassley (R-Iowa) and John Thune (R-S.D.) and at a total cost of more
than$12 billion to U.S. taxpayers, necessitating more deficit spending
over the next ten years. But that figure doesn’t begin to represent the
full cost of wind power.Anyone with the space to site a small windpowergenerators can generate their own electricity from wind power.
The
American Tradition Institute recently took a look at just what such
wind power is really costing the nation.They found the cost of wind
power to be as much as double the cost that the Energy Information
Administration (EIA) is using in its models due to hidden, but
true-embedded costs of using wind power. The authors find that
ratepayers are paying an extra $8.Speed Queen offers commercial turbinecompany
and coin operated laundromat units for vended.5 billion to $10 billion
per year for using wind energy, which generates 3.Laser Cut Studio is a
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than other cost effective forms of generation. This is in addition to
the tax credits, which the Obama Administration insisted be extended as
part of the tax agreement.
The American Tradition Institute
added the hidden costs that include the cost of fossil fuel power as
back-up when the wind is dormant, the additional cost of transmission
that frequently occurs with wind farms due to the inaccessibility of the
best wind resources, the cost of wind’s favorable tax benefits in
‘accelerated depreciation’, and a shorter estimated life of a wind
turbine of 20 years to the per-kilowatt-hour cost of generating
electricity from wind power that includes capital costs and operating
costs, as determined by EIA and the Department of Energy. They found the
cost of wind power to be 15.1 cents per kilowatt hour if natural gas is
used to back-up the wind energy or 19.2 cents per kilowatt hour if coal
is used as the back-up fuel. These costs are 1.5 to 2 times the 9.6
cents per kilowatt hour estimate the EIA is using for generating
electricity from wind in its models.
American Tradition
Institute started with an estimated levelized cost of wind power from
government sources and added to it an estimate of the hidden costs of
wind power. Levelized costs are the net present value of the total cost
of new construction (including finance charges), maintenance, and
operation of a generating plant over its lifetime, expressed in dollars
per unit of output, i.e. dollars per kilowatt hour. They are used to
compare various generating sources to see which sources are the most
cost-effective when constructing new plants.
The starting
levelized cost was 8.2 cents per kilowatt hour that reflects
installation costs of $2,000 per kilowatt of capacity and is based on
information from EIA and the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable
Energy at the Department of Energy. Then, assuming a 20-year life of a
turbine rather than the optimistic 30-year life assumed increases the
levelized cost to 9.3 cents per kilowatt hour (a recent study using
empirical information from the U.Instead of using electricity to make
wind, like a fan, laserfusion use wind to make electricity.K. found that the useful life of wind turbines is actually lower—only 10 to 15 years).
After
backing out the effect of accelerated depreciation for wind investments
that the study authors assumed were hidden costs, the levelized cost
increases to 10.1 cents per kilowatt hour. To that is added the cost of
keeping gas-fired or coal-fired plants available at reduced capacity to
balance the variable performance of wind, adding an extra 1.7 cents per
kilowatt hour for natural gas and 5.5 cents per kilowatt hour for coal.
Extra
fuel for natural-gas fired plants adds 0.6 cents, and for coal-fired
plants adds 0.9 cents per kilowatt-hour. Lastly, transmission line
investment costs to get new wind power to the electricity grid add 2.7
cents per kilowatt hour. Thus, the total cost for wind power, including
the hidden costs,The bestlampshade
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by using LED technology. averages 15.1 cents per kilowatt hour for
natural-gas fired back-up and 19.2 cents per kilowatt-hour for
coal-fired back-up.
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