Wind Farms?

[stonebroke]

A wind turbine will generate back the energy used in manufacturing, placement  and everything else in about five months.

Stonebroke

[Tom]

I think it is real easy to look at off-shore manufacturing in a short-sighted way.  Not meaning that to be personal, just meaning that there is a depth to manufacture that most of us ignore.

In the case of windmills.  We see the put on our land and we get money for it.   We see that as getting an American Dollar.  We see trucks hauling the equipment, truckers driving the trucks, riggers setting up the equipments, maintenance men taking care of the mill, yard people mowing the grass or dressing the road and say, "look at all the jobs it created."

What we don't look at is the economy of doing all of that being handled through a foreign country.  It's those moguls who benefit from the American Tax incentives, jobs of the economists who control the company, the off-shore companies who make the generators and other equipment that are the heart of the system and the ultimate loss of all, the loss of the money.

You see, those dollars that another country "earns" in the United States, whether it be an illegal alien picking tomatoes, or a windmill company that is taking the profits from their farm, are taken directly out of circulation in the USA.  Those profits go to pay employees in the other countries.  They are spent on the building of more plants in other countries.  They are going toward creating more jobs in those other countries and, the money doesn't get back into circulation here, so it is lost.  Not only arel the profits lost, but the tax money ( it came from your pocket, remember) that is lost to the creation of the industry, finds its way to the moguls of the other country, not to the job creation or industry building in the USA. 

You have to look over the fence to see it, but the money is on a one way trip out of the country.  Now picture that as something tangible.  It's easy to think of Government money as free money.  But when you think of it as Gold, and you see the trail of our gold crossing the boarder, it begins to have a different meaning.  Sure, there are arguments that some of it comes back, but I'm not much of a proponent of them.

This loss of money is true with all of the industry we lose.  Money that could have stayed at home, been passed in a tight little circle amongst the citizens of a town and given them the means to increase their buying power.  But when the dollars leave the borders, whether for services or product, they are lost.

This is almost over-simplistic but let's say that Tomville, a little town of 10,000 people has a gross liquid dollar value of a million dollars.  A hamburger joint in the big city sets up shop and hires folks to work there.  The bread, meat, potatoes and drinks are bought elsewhere and shipped in.  They are paid for by the sale of the hamburgers.  Each resident eats two hamburgers a day and spends a dollar.  Twenty-five cents of that dollar goes to the employees.  That pays for the creation of the jobs.

The rest goes to the big city where it pays for the next shipment of bread, meat, potatoes and drinks.  The cattle farmers in Tomville might benefit if they sell their cattle to the hamburger company, but the rest goes into the coffers of the moguls in the paper shuffling jobs.   That money goes to pay for their cars, their houses, their medical, their vacations (maybe one would take a vacation in Tomville), their furniture, their education, etc.  Tomville never sees that money again.  For kicks let's say it is 50 cents a person per day.

So, unless Tomville residents can get that money back someway.....   How long will it take for all of the money to drain from the "hole in the bucket" in Tomville?

Yeah, it's simplistic and not totally accurate, but, do you get my drift?

That's what makes the die-hards buy from the mom and pop local stores instead of the Wal-marts and K-marts.  That's also what makes one leery of the government spending tax dollars to create "holes in the bucket". 

[mr T]

Right on Tom I agree All of these will be built on paper co land so no money to private landowners  The life of these units are only 25 yrs  Short term gains long term impact.

[Brad_S.]

Mr. T,
What wind company is developing the project you are refering too?

[mr T]

Its called Independence Wind LLC Its supposed to be a Maine co. but who knows?Central me power sold out to some spanish co Fla lite &power owns allthe hyro units now.I think everything here is owned by outside interests.

[routestep]

Evergreen company put in about 30 windmills just up the mountain from me maybe 1/2 or 3/4 miles away. I can heard them a little. The faint noise is repetitive, not a hum. From ground to tip they stand 400ft in the air. They are in the next county, just across the line, so my county doesn't get any money from them. We get the view.

[SwampDonkey]

Don't seem to bother the moose none.

Three more just out of frame.



I'll have to start tying cow bells on my private herd.

[mr T]

Nice pics I dont think anything bothers moose How do people there like wind mills ? I havent figured out how to post pics but if you google in friends of the highland mountains youll see the view from my frt porch Picture it with wind mills

[SwampDonkey]

People come to take pictures, ask the locals and they don't pay any attention to them. I can't here them at the house, I can when I walk up the road within a couple miles if there is a stiff breeze. There isn't a day that those mills aren't running. When there is no wind down in the low country it blows up there. Once in awhile one or two will stop. There are 28 up there and like others said they are about 400 feet high when a blade is vertical, actually 389 feet. The towers are 250 feet and the blades 139 feet long. I have some pictures of them erecting them in a Wind Mill thread here on the forum.

[Patty]

I hate the windmills near us. They are such a blight on what used to be rolling hills of farmland. We have about 200 of them 10 miles west of us, with another 200 or so in the works. You see them on the horizon. At night, instead of seeing a beautiful sky of stars, you see 200+ blinking red lights obliterating any view of nighttime skies. They are ugly.

One small nuke (or coal for that matter) plant would be far more welcome than 400 windmills stretching on for miles in my opinion.

[Tom]

I wish they would put stuff like that on top of Urban buildings.  The planning is all done by city folks, sitting behind big shiny desks and they look on Urban property as the valuable stuff and what's outside as wasteland.

Our County got rid of an RC model airplane field that was located next to one of the civilian airports because the land around about was to be developed and the people didn't like the noise.  They moved it to an old pasture at the Prison Farm about a mile and a half down the road.  Folks are right, RC fields are noisy.  Our quiet, peaceful swamp, along the primitive creek, in the wilds of Florida has not been the same since.  There were promises of muffled engines and only midday use, but that was just politicians talking.  After spending a quarter million dollars, or more, on the site, it was turned over to the RC club.  The club means well, but their trying to control a public field is like trying to corral a herd of lizards with a switch.  The News article, touting the City's benevolence quoted the powers-that-be as saying that the field was now located where no one lived, so there would not be anyone to bother.   Needless to say, that stuck in our craw out here, where we moved to get away from the city's noice pollution.

Now we have a National Cemetery in that same pasture.  The RC Planes are supposed to go away sometime and the folks in the Cemetery are a lot quieter.  The problem now is that they are closing our access road for funerals. I respect the right to die and be buried and will stop and show respect when the  bereaved pass, but I sure wish the City had thought of giving us another way out of here.

It sure makes one despise city folks.

[SwampDonkey]

The windmills that are on Mars Hill have blinking lights to, but there have been blinking lights up there for 60 years from towers erected all along it's ridge. Used to it I guess. But, I can still enjoy the stars, as from my vantage point they are to the north and most of my star gazing is over head, to the south, to the east a setting moon to the west or an occasional glimpse of Venus just after sunset or before sunrise.  Can even view the international space station, but surprisingly I have never actually gone out to see it during the viewing times, it's up there someplace different each time they say.

The worst thing I hate is town folk coming up the end of our road and dumping off appliances in the woods. The scorge of the country when the province closed all the municipal dumps for regional land fills. Every ones woods roads is a potential target for spring trash cleanout in towns. And fall hunting excursions, take the old fridge along to dump off. It's senseless ignoramic behaviour because they take them for nothing at scrap yards. Someone is deathly afraid they might have to pay a small toll to rid of their junk.

[stonebroke]

I hate the windmills near us. They are such a blight on what used to be rolling hills of farmland. We have about 200 of them 10 miles west of us, with another 200 or so in the works. You see them on the horizon. At night, instead of seeing a beautiful sky of stars, you see 200+ blinking red lights obliterating any view of nighttime skies. They are ugly.

One small nuke (or coal for that matter) plant would be far more welcome than 400 windmills stretching on for miles in my opinion.

Blame the FAA for that. Honestly, if a airplane is within four hundred feet of the ground it is in trouble already and blinking lights probably won't save it.

Stonebroke

[forest.c]

they dump scrap junk here to realy pi%&& me off we have a camp on st croix lake and sombody dumped a stove just up the road !

[John Mc]

One small nuke (or coal for that matter) plant would be far more welcome than 400 windmills stretching on for miles in my opinion.

Of course, when you are downwind of all those coal plants, and the acid rain is leaching the calcium from your soils, destroying the productivity of our forests and lakes, you may tend to have a different view. Likewise, when the only Nuke plant in our state has a partial collapse of their cooling tower (supposedly due to rotting timbers in the support structure) months after the NRC gave it a clean bill of health as they were inspecting it for a requested uprate of 20% from the designed power output,  and you find that same Nuke plant is leaking tritium from their underground pipes (pipes which they denied having not too long ago when they were appearing before the state legislature asking to have the operating license extended beyond it's planned expiration in 2012)... you again tend to look at things differently.

I'm not saying wind power is the answer to all our problems... every power source seems to have it's drawbacks. Just that it has its place.

John Mc

[stonebroke]

Or maybe she would like to live next to a strip mine.

Stonebroke

[tractormanNwv]

I'm still a little Stunned by it all, if the Power Company"s can produce electric by coal or etc for 6 cents per kw  and then buy the power from the windmill at 9 cents per kw...Who is really saving? We all Know that water runs downhill and We"re at the Bottom. And if it"s about the GREEN....Well please Help Me Understand why I Work with NOT FOR, but with CSX Railroad and I See v-12 and V-16 Engines just Pouring the Black Smoke, and When I Take a Truck into the Mines I See raw Diesel just Pouring from every Piece of Machinery on the Mtn I Wonder why thier so hard on the Truckers?

[gunman63]

the way i see it, its  just like if u think gas  prices are high, and complain about it, dont use it, dont use electric, or gas, show them  whos boss.  Me i dont mind paying my $150 a month for  power i think i get a lot of  use for  my $5 a day, same with fuel, I think i can get a lot of use of $3-5 a gal, fuel, better than not using it. some people are just goin to complain no matter  what

[Patty]

Of course, when you are downwind of all those coal plants, and the acid rain is leaching the calcium from your soils, destroying the productivity of our forests and lakes, you may tend to have a different view.

I live next to a pig factory, so coal seems pretty unobtrusive in comparison

[ely]

nothing wrong with wind as a suppliment to the already existing electric grid. i just get a little preturbed when the good folk seem to think they can use wind power or solar power the same as they do for there house. they expect lights to come on when the switch is flipped.