Re: And When It Doesn't Happen...

==Harley== wrote:
> There's no place in the civilized world where the wind blows all the
time.
The Great Plains is not a place, which is why the word is plural. The
Asian Steppe is a plural word as well. We are talking here about a band 
of land from West Texas north into Canada. There's never been day the 
wind someplace along that stretch as the foot hills of the Rockies 
flatten out the wind has not been blowing.
> These turbines get their rated output at 22 MPH. You need to go check
> average wind speed at some of these installation sites. Granted, Pampa 
> ain't half bad.
> I think Pickens picked a great place to start. They average around 16 to
17
> mph, I think, but not much more, if any, than that.
> 
> http://www.met.utah.edu/jhorel/html/wx/climate/windavg.html
> 
> BTW...There's not a single conventional power generation plant that has 
> been eliminated due to wind power.

You can say that for nukes as well. As we see with NIMBY, its not an 
engineering problem, its a political one. We are where we are. Nobody 
will giva**** politically if the Great Plains have thousands of wind 
turbines from the Canadian border to Texas. In fact, there are some 
towns out there who see the jobs coming, and they are all for it.

There's prolly legions of linemen as well looking forward. Everyone 
thinks of the turbines, but there are investors who'll make even more 
money off building the maintaining the transmission lines. Maybe it'll 
be like the Maginot wall, providing a false security, but these days, 
sheeple will take what they can get.