Read this this morning and got very upset. The energy companies have got to be stopped from writing public policy. If you live in Mass, please contact your state reps and senators and let them know that you strongly disagree with this law. There should be no limits whatsoever,IMO.
This law has already caused at least three large turbines to not be built, and possibly more.
Arguably, the case can be made that there is a legitimate technical reason for the cap… The utilities at least claim that there are problems caused when an overly high percentage of the grid power is from wind or other such “intermittent” power sources. The issue is that because the wind supplied electric is inherently erratic, the amount supplied changes as the wind does, the utility has to keep a lot of conventional turbines spun up and ready to kick in any differences, or you risk having excessive sags or surges in the power delivered to customers…
Makes a certain level of sense, though I don’t know how legit it is to put the cap at 1% rather than some other number…
I hear you on your concerns but I think Gooserider has a most important point. Public Utilities can’t rely on the wind. The cost of a backup for lag times would cost as much as they’re running now. I think the answer is for you and everybody else to do it yourself. You’ll have your own power to do what you want when you want at your cost and most importantly, no government. Get rid of big business and big government and we all win, imho.
I hear you on your concerns but I think Gooserider has a most important point. Public Utilities can’t rely on the wind. The cost of a backup for lag times would cost as much as they’re running now. I think the answer is for you and everybody else to do it yourself. You’ll have your own power to do what you want when you want at your cost and most importantly, no government. Get rid of big business and big government and we all win, imho.
Many people in my town have applied for permits for home windmills, none have been approved.
That’s the fault of the people in that state. They need to run those in charge out. I understand not wanting your neighbor to put up a big noisy wind mill, but some of these new ones - no excuse. I think the government people see how much control they could lose if people could start fending for themselves. Imagine what it would be like if you didn’t need them for darn near everything.
I hear you on your concerns but I think Gooserider has a most important point. Public Utilities can’t rely on the wind. The cost of a backup for lag times would cost as much as they’re running now. I think the answer is for you and everybody else to do it yourself. You’ll have your own power to do what you want when you want at your cost and most importantly, no government. Get rid of big business and big government and we all win, imho.
Many people in my town have applied for permits for home windmills, none have been approved.
Exactly his last point. IMHO I think we need to just get rid of big government. A lot of big businesses will not survive in a TRUELY capitalistic society. It would look more like a bell curve.
I hear you on your concerns but I think Gooserider has a most important point. Public Utilities can’t rely on the wind. The cost of a backup for lag times would cost as much as they’re running now. I think the answer is for you and everybody else to do it yourself. You’ll have your own power to do what you want when you want at your cost and most importantly, no government. Get rid of big business and big government and we all win, imho.
Many people in my town have applied for permits for home windmills, none have been approved.
Exactly his last point. IMHO I think we need to just get rid of big government. A lot of big businesses will not survive in a TRUELY capitalistic society. It would look more like a bell curve.
I agree with you. I’m getting a little lost who saying what to whom. What I think is people should be allowed to become as self reliant as they choose, as long as they aren’t violating someone else’s rights, and not be punished for it. I say go after big gov. like they’ve been coming after us. I could care less about the concerns of big business, they screw people over almost as much as big gov.
. IMHO I think we need to just get rid of big government. A lot of big businesses will not survive in a TRUELY capitalistic society. It would look more like a bell curve.
If the tooth fairly put energy under our pillows, it would solve a lot of problems too!
Sorry, but there is no tooth fairy and no “pure” capitalistic society on the planet earth. There never will be. What is benign to one person (a couple wind machines) is the end of the world to another (perhaps the oil man, or coal salesman, etc.).
In order to settle those disputes, we organize into committees called governments.
You can’t put 3 people in a room without disagreements…so imagine when millions are involved.
Anything we do involves risk. Wellfleet wants someone to guarantee their payback, and that is not always possible! Heck, electricity prices may double in five years, right? Then they would make money even without net metering.
The powers that be are not dumb….they may be inefficient, but not dumb.
In terms of Ma, we are on the right path when it comes to many areas of energy and conservation. As it stands, we use less energy per capita than virtually any state in the union. Lots of plans and efforts are underway right now to reduce that further. The energy profile of Ma. is more like Europe (they use 1/2 the energy as average US for same standard of living).
Our building codes are getting stricter, money is going toward renewables and a lot of citizens are making smart decisions about their food, vehicles, housing, etc.
It’s not perfect, for sure, but the direction it is headed is positive.
I look forward to vast wind farms off the Ma. and RI coasts…..but at the same time, I think any subsidies should be designed to taper off as the price of wind generation comes down.
Yup, Mass. is so concerned about energy savings, they won’t allow you to put in a good quality Wood Boiler in a safe closed installation, unless you pay around $1,000 extra for a totally worthless ASME stamp that arguably gets you a LOWER quality boiler… (Sorry, Euroboilers need not apply…)
That sucks, but it is mostly an insurance issue. After all the boilers blew up (way back when), the Hartford Steam Boiler insurance company set standards which became ASME.
There are ways around it including regular UL and other lab tests which can test to “ASME Equiv”.
Frankly, wood boilers have been off the radar for many years due to almost no sales. If things continue as they are, I expect codes will catch up…...
This link explains net metering. Net metering is not a “subsidy”.
Acording to this month’s Scientific American, by 2030, wind, water and solar technologies can provide 100% of the worlds energy, eliminating all fossil fuel use. This would be acomplished by the construction of the following: 490,000 tidal turbines -1% currently in place
5350 geothermal plants-2% currently in place
900 hydroelectric plants-70% currently in place
3,800,000 windmills-1% currently in place
720,000 wave converters, less than 1% in place
1,700,000,000 rooftop photovoltiacs less than 1% in place
49,000 concentrated solar plants less than 1% in place
40,000 photovoltaic power plants less than 1% in place.
I realise these numbes sound staggeringly high, but consider that one very small town, in one rather small state in one country wants to install three more turbines! Maybe then you can see the importance of this law being changed.
In Spain, for many years now, it is mandated that NO building shall be constructed for any purpose which does not have a solar roof. A world free of fossil fuel use is a possibility, but every impediment must be removed, post haste.
I saw that Scientific American - this is the same Scientific American that published a complete issue about four years ago on energy generation in a future “carbon limited” world. The conclusion in that issue was a much more believable need for some non-renewable base load generation sources. This could be coal, natural gas, or nuclear (pick you poison) but something 24 hours 7 days a week and predictable.
However, I don’t believe that >1% wind energy is the end of the world for the power grid. More than 1% may mean that the utility engineers have to learn some new ways of doing business (which they may not want to do). Most realistic estimates on max wind generation for the grid are about 20%. So 1% is totally bogus. And 100% all renewables in my lifetime (i.e. next 40 years) is bogus too.
It may be possible to have a 100% renewable energy grid if you didn’t mind hundreds of thousands of miles of high voltage transmission lines criss-crossing the country. That would work. It would also be super expensive and not likely to make the “100% renewable” advocates too happy.
Everything I said about renewable limits goes away if someone can figure out a way to store renewable energy cheaply for hours when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind isn’t blowing.
Why would intermittent positive loads (read: solar and wind) would be any more problematic than the intermittent negative loads (read: folks using electricity). Utilities have never liked other people generating their own power. A 2.5k watt wind turbine is hardly a load that is going to cause the utility problems, just as opening up a store does not present problems.
