Who's benefiting from the wind turbines that we already have in the US?

Question

The ones that already exist (or are are being built) are always in really far away, empty areas. Who's benefiting from the electricity from these wind turbines? Are there any known neighborhoods or cities that are receiving energy from them? Which ones? Because if the ones we already have aren't benefiting any of us now, how do we know that they will when theses companies get their trillions in government subsidies?

Answer 1

There are very long expensive transmission lines to get the power from the remote decent wind sites (which are becoming harder to find, to the point at which Pickens will probably be lucky to get 20% capacity factor should he con the government out of the subsidies to build his wind farm).

The electricity does actually get fed into the grid and used to power homes but fossil fuel fired backup power is also standing by (enough to completely take over from the wind, hopefully) as spinning reserve for when (not if) the wind stops (and covering an entire country with wind turbines doesn't seem to be much of a solution to the reliability problem of wind).

Spinning reserve does use less fuel than running the fossil fuel power plants at load although even then, the wind turbines don't prevent much CO2 from being emitted (at least compared to how much they cost).

Of course if you try to build them too quickly as Texas has you may find you don't have quite enough spinning reserve for when it all goes off-line at once (which actually has been known to happen) and you have to cut power to some customers.

Denmark deals with the problem by just using their coal power plants (along with buying Norwegian hydro and Swedish and French nuclear) and selling most of the wind output to Norway (at a loss) where it gets used to pump water uphill.

As for Germany, they're looking at increasing their CO2 emissions despite building so many wind turbines and solar panels (actually it may be because they are building a lot of wind and solar, the coal plants they are building (and they sure seem to have a lot planned) would not be needed but for another policy they have that only makes sense to those who think wind and solar are useful).

Answer 2

The only people who benefit from wind power are the manufacturers the engineering firms that design the system, the contractor that installs them and the energy provider that gets big fat subsidys for building them

Answer 3

I don't know - good question

Here is a picture of a windmill in the middle of the city - in the riding of High Park Parkdale (where I live)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/countablyin...

Really they can be put anywhere  

Answer 4

well who would benifet the wind farms? Well only 20000 people at most per wind farm! yes its inefficiant and crazy cost to set up(well enough to get good power from it) better to go nuclear or invest in Fussion not fission!

Answer 5

No one is benefiting from any wind turbine in the USA. The "Grid" must be able to withstand peak output and turbines cannot do that. The end result is that nuclear, gas, and coal plants must always be in play. There are thousands of turbines in Illinois sitting idle as the nuke plants pump out the electricity.  

Answer 6

These wind turbines are owned by companies and by private persons. They feed into what is called the "Grid" which connects most of the US together. The Grid power suppliers (Coal Fired Power Plants, Nuclear Power Plants, and Wind Turbines) all run at the same frequency and the same phase. The wind turbines are feeding everywhere and everything. They benefit anyone on the Grid.

Answer 7

There's a "power grid" that interconnects all the power plants across the country.  So the existing wind power is already being used by everyone.

Many power plants are located well away from population centers, like the huge coal burning plants in New Mexico.

Bestonnet - The more wind power we build in different locations, the less this will be a problem.  There's definitely a place for wind power in the mix.

EDIT - The use of wind has lowered the amount of greenhouse gases we emit to power the grid, and has reduced our imports of fuel somewhat.  As we build more, the benefits will increase.  The costs of the subsidies (which are actually quite small, less than a billion dollars, not "trillions") are much less than the benefits.  The real problem is that we actually subsidize imported oil.

"During the year 2003 alone, federal energy subsidies

ranged from $37 billion to $64 billion, according to a study

prepared for the National Commission on Energy Policy.

Wind energy accounted for less than 1% of the total"

http://72.14.205.104/search?q=cache:caQd...

Or if you have acrobat reader:

http://www.awea.org/pubs/factsheets/Subs...

Many countries like Germany believe wind subsidies should be MUCH larger than those in the US, to address the rising costs and uncertainty of imported oil.

EDIT2 -"The least they could do is tell us what we're getting"  The nature of the grid makes it impractical to tell who's providing YOUR electricity, since it changes minute to minute.  The total amount of wind power generated is known.

EDIT3 - When the grid is running normally, power plants feed the grid, not specific areas.  Local failures are usually local failures of the grid itself.  Or, if an area is pulling too much power (example - New York in a heat wave losing some power plants that happen to be feeding it at the time), the grid may cut it off to save the whole grid from going down.  But power sources are constantly changing, in response to changing demands.