“Truth is tough.  It will not break, like a bubble, at a touch, nay, you may kick it all about all day like a football, and it will be round and full at evening.”

~Oliver Wendell Holmes, The Professor at the Breakfast Table

 Something big just happened in Ontario–something the Wind Lobby fears. Recently, Minister of the Environment John Wilkinson held fast to what had been a “for now” moratorium policy where tough talk about environment-before-wind was followed by turbine contracts and business-as-usual wind development.

It is about time for a change. Rural Ontarians are mad about wind development, as are Lakeside communities, fishermen, and boaters.

Indeed, Ontario is about as fed up as a province can be with a laundry list of discontent ranging from 1) increased hydro bills and announced electricity rate hikes of 40% in the next years; 2) a tax-grab ‘Harmonized Sales Tax’ and 3) a Green Energy Act, which took away Municipal rights to project planning and superseded other environmental legislation.…

Parts I and II dealt with most of the issues in a recent paper by Chuck Kleekamp and showed the weaknesses of his analysis. This post addresses in detail the question of the costs of electricity generation for nuclear and wind.

Kleekamp says, “If you think wind power is expensive, wait till you have to pay for electricity from a new nuclear plant.” This suggests that nuclear plant electricity is more expensive than that of wind. This is remarkably incorrect. The costs of each according to the EIA along with my adjustments, are shown in Tables 2 and 3 below, which clearly demonstrates the high costs of wind compared to nuclear. As will be seen, the EIA costs are just starting points.

These costs are shown on separate tables for wind and nuclear because they are not really comparable.…

Part I of this series critiquing an article by Chuck Kleekamp dealt with the more general issues of examples used, one of the major references and electricity markets. There is a lot found to question his analysis. This post focuses on capacity considerations and other miscellaneous issues raised by Kleekamp. Finally, Part III addresses his remarkably inappropriate warning, “If you think wind power is expensive, wait till you have to pay for electricity from a new nuclear plant.”

Availability of Other Generation Capacity

Kleekamp cites the extensive unused capacity in the total electricity system that he claims is available to balance wind. He is incorrect in this notion. This capacity provision is normal, and it is there for a purpose. One of the reasons is the need for reserves as described in Part I and represents about 20% of total capacity.…

This post is the first in a three part series that critiques the recently published article “Wind Power Always Replaces Fossil Fuels” by Chuck Kleekamp, which provides material for another in the series of my critiques of wind proponents’ claims. Previously analyzed were papers by Milligan, Komanoff and Gross. My understanding is that this author has previously made notable contributions to environmental matters. Let’s see how he does with respect to wind.

To begin, I cannot help commenting on the inclusion of “Always” in the title. The apparent certainty in this term immediately alerts me to a questionable analysis. Perhaps the author meant to be provocative, and was not serious in the use of this word. If so, this does not give due consideration to the importance of the matter.…