Tom Stacy Letter to Acconia

To the heads of Acconia-NA departments involving corporate governance, siting guidance and operator safety standards and manuals:

Good morning.

I am a well known wind energy skeptic and activist. My name is Tom Stacy, and I live in Ohio. I have recently received word from numerous land owners in Rushcreek and Jefferson Townships, Logan County, Ohio that your land man has been calling on them. It is from the awareness provided by these citizens that I write to you today.

I also fill a role whenever permitted, with Ohio and federal elected officials, departments of state and with our public utilities group, PUCO and their transmission and generation siting group, OPSB. As an example, I worked closely with the Ohio legislature in developing minimum siting requirements and further considerations that encourage responsible site selection and alternative site analysis. Today my work is to bring into focus the importance of power/land density metrics of wind energy project areas (which also minimize collector line investment). I also lobby to state officials and to wind energy companies that alternative site analysis should play a role inversely proportionate in importance to land-power density in generation facility proposals. in other words, the less steady-state and annual aggregate electricity a facility could reasonably produce on a given unit of land, the more important alternative site selection should be to help reduce impact to existing and future planned land uses.

Of course I am well aware of the investment and production credits, depreciation schedules, tax free bond availabilities and RPS mandates at play, and recognize the percentage of revenue flows resulting from the sale of electricity at market rates falls between 25% and 30% of total revenue flows in the "wind farm" development industry. I do also well understand the technical aspects of ramp rates, heat rates, and the replacement value wind represents for each generation farm technology (coal farms, nuclear farms, OCGT and CCGT farms, hydro dam farms, etc.) in a regional and trans-regional generation mix. I have close ties to energy attorneys on capital hill, to well respected conservative political think tanks, and to numerous engineers in the electricity generation field. My work synthesizes inputs from a wide variety of sources, and generally finds the wind energy business to be a capitalizing on the public's inability to grasp the complex technical and economic foundations of how the industry operates. I then attempt to offer digestible analyses while guarding against my materials being an effective sleep inducer.

I have not studied the capital equipment manufacturing economics and political environment as closely, but am intrigued by your vertically integrated approach to the industry. I believe strongly that domestic industrial manufacturing must rebound for the US to stop the decline of its past global financial and standard of living leadership.

This background is in the interest of full transparency and honest, constructive dialog. The reason I am writing today is to ask you for a full copy of your operations, maintenance and safety manuals for your 1.5 and 3.0 MW turbines. This information would be useful to the state legislature and PUCO staff, as well as to your organization in establishing a pattern and mean of recommended setbacks from various wind turbine manufacturers, and in building an atmosphere of trust between Acconia-NA and the state of Ohio. Should you be willing to comply, I thank you.

Should you choose to deem this requested information "competitively proprietary," may I suggest that with the wind energy industry's incomparable reliance on public sources of revenue for its ongoing existence, a lack of transparency might be inappropriate. I am certain you are aware of the recent actions of the federal government, capping salaries of TARP recipient financial institutions. Those institutions have not been built on the backs of taxpayers, and do not rely on tax dollars for the majority of their revenue the way your industry has and does. It may be well worth your careful consideration that the American taxpayer is increasingly interested in transparency and efficient use of state and federal treasury resources. I pledge that I will do whatever it takes to extend and promote this important ideal.

Thank you for your time and attention to this matter. I look forward to your prompt reply.

Tom Stacy