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Erie County Report

Erie County and PA news, analysis and opinion

What Did Germany Learn the Hard Way That PA Politicians Continue to Ignore?

July 11, 2016 by Paul Crowe

Offshore wind turbines in Europe leave an impressive wake effect.  Maybe we'll get to see that in Lake Erie, too.
Offshore wind turbines in Europe leave an impressive wake effect. If LEEDCo, with Kathy Dahlkemper’s support, builds turbines in Lake Erie, maybe we’ll experience some unintended effects, too.

While County Executive Kathy Dahlkemper touts the wonders of wind turbines in Lake Erie, $50 million taxpayer dollars are shoveled into LEEDCo pockets and First Energy plans to install smart meters to monitor and control your electricity consumption, Germany, which has been on a green energy spending binge for years is sharply cutting back on incentives to wind and solar power. It turns out the cost of electricity in Germany is skyrocketing and the power delivered comes and goes with the wind. Imagine that!

The average German pays 39 cents per kilowatt-hour for electricity due to intense fiscal support for green energy. The average American only spends 10.4 cents per kilowatt-hour.

Germany’s wind and solar power systems have provided too much power at unpredictable times, which damaged the power grid and made the system vulnerable to blackouts. Grid operators paid companies $548 million to shutter turbines to fix the problem

The unpredictability of wind and solar power is a fact that’s completely predictable as are the politicians who will ignore the obvious to make themselves appear to be smarter and greener than you or me. As the EPA shuts down coal plants in the US, Germany is building more to back up the wind power and stabilize the grid. You can’t make this stuff up.

Green energy’s failure to meet reliability and cost goals were the primary reasons for declining investment. Europe has poured $1.2 trillion into the green energy industry to fight global warming, but its CO2 emissions and power bills just keep rising.

It’s a good thing nothing like that could happen over here …

Filed Under: Energy Tagged With: county executive, electric power grid, green energy, taxpayer money, wind energy


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Comments

  1. Pat Hersch says

    July 11, 2016 at 5:28 pm

    The turbine fiasco is like the story of the emperor’s new clothes. The emperor (Kathy Dahlkemper) was fooled by conmen (LEEDCo) into believing they could make him a suit of magical fabric (jobs and usable power) that only the pure of heart could see.
    Nobody spoke up as the emperor strutted by
    naked because they did not want to be fired from their jobs for ignorance or incompetence
    (politicians at all levels).
    It took a child devoid of ambition linked to material things to shout out that the emperor was naked (the turbine industry is totally subsidized by the government and is a debacle anywhere it exists in the world.).
    By then, the conmen were long gone with the profits their lies had made possible.
    When will someone with a conscience have the courage to speak out against LEEDCo
    conmen who hope to pull off the scam of industrializing Lake Erie for private profit?

  2. Tom Wasilewski says

    July 12, 2016 at 3:29 pm

    It is amazing that none of the Erie County,PA local, state and federal representatives have questioned the financial and environmental aspects of the plans by industrial wind turbine developers like LEEDCo, Apex Wind Energy, Gamesa (now part of Siemens) and others to build possibly thousands of monsterous IWTs in Lake Erie. As has been pointed out in this and previous Erie County Reports and comments that IWT electicity is intermittant, unreliable, enormously costly, environmentally dangerous, is a negative job creator (high cost electicity drives industry to other states), results in no measurable CO2 reduction. etc.

    -Just a few days ago it was reported that that offshore IWT development in Germany will end in early 2017 because the government (the German taxpayers and electric ratepayers) could not longer subsidize this failed industry. Today it was reported that a new German study of bats indicated that huge numbers of tree bats are dying at IWT projects in Germany and that the economic loss to farmers from the deaths of insect eating bats at wind projects is very significant. To learn more about the failure of offshore and onshore IWTs access the website http://www.windaction.org

    -To learn about the amount of concrete, reinforced steel. fiberglass, copper in an IWT research the the Lincoln Electric wind turbine in Euclid, Ohio. For example over 2.3 million pounds of concrete went into the base of this one turbine. The U.S. taxpayers gave Lincoln Electric a cash grant of over $ 1,900,000 to build this 2.3 MW industrial wind turbine. Pretty sweet deal for Lincoln Electic getting Big cash and Big green publicity. Not so sweet for taxpayers, birds and bats, or homeowners living near the monster.

  3. Chris says

    July 13, 2016 at 7:38 am

    (Dishonest) politician proposes green energy project subsidized by government money which is then lavished upon crony-capitalist green energy company while crony-capitalist recycles part of the profits back to politician who then promotes more crony-capitalist projects while they all laugh at us poor tax and rate payers who get ripped off in the process. If a politician makes a statement in favor of green energy, follow the money an assume he or she is lying. Thank you for your time.

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