Regarding carbon emissions, every one of the Renewable Standards and all of the Environmental Impact Statements claim that wind power will add value to the grid and displace older dirtier coal plants.
Here is the reality.
In 1948 Rochester Gas and Electric (local utility) built Russell Station on Lake Ontario, a coal-fired power plant. For many decades it was a large contributor to the local grid. Russell initially had no scrubbing system, although electrolytic units were added some twenty years ago to capture carbon/soot (not carbon dioxide or nitrogen or sulphur oxides).
Russell was shut down in 2003 under pressure from the EPA for ongoing violations of clean air rules.
With all of the wind power now becoming available one would expect that Russell would stay shut down. After all its capacity of 257 MW pales compared to the nameplate capacity of the 500 to 1000 wind turbines planned for the area.
However RG&E has just announced that they will spend $500M to re-power Russell using the latest clean coal technology. (Clean coal means minimal carbon, nitrogen, and sulphur but the same amount of CO2. Thus they are spending just under $2M per MW of generating capacity.
They are also re-fitting two small hydro stations on the Genesee River that will generate 9 MW for a capital cost of $2.2M per MW.
By comparison, a 1.5 MW wind turbine operates at about 10% of capacity here and costs about $1.5M so the capital cost for wind is about $10M per MW of generating capacity.
These numbers clearly argue against continued investments in wind; feel free to use them as you wish; the source of this data is the Rochester Business Journal, 4-20-07.
Brad Jones
No comments:
Post a Comment