Revision to: Wind Farm Back-of-the-Envelope Economic Analysis | Watts Up With That?"Various commenters pointed out to me that I made an error in my calculations.
First, the maintenance man told me the turbines were designed to produce 2.3 MW but only produce an average of 1.3 MW.
...Next, I have been informed that a capacity factor of 1.3/2.3 = 57% (told to me by the maintenance man) is probably way high. ...And I raised the annual maintenance costs to $1 million from $750,000.
...It gets lots more complicated when you consider that the wind farms are being subsidized by the government with the Production Tax Credit (PTC).
...If the company sells $3 million of electricity they get the $3 million, plus a PTC subsidy of $2 million.
That is a huge subsidy!
In fact, I think it is the biggest subsidy ever given for anything.
However, the economics get worse – much worse. ...Even with my error in the original calculation, my conclusion remains: Companies are making money on these things, but the source of the profit is only (or at least mainly) coming from the Production Tax Credit – the subsidy paid by our government with our tax money for these projects.
It’s obvious that T. Boone Pickens and Warren Buffett were right.
Without the PTC (for the past 27 years) these things would not exist.
I think we should stop building these wind farms — yesterday.
Larry F. Brown, PhD--Palisade, CO "
No comments:
Post a Comment