Posted by Hal/Eastern Washington on November 11, 2011 at 16:08:30 from (67.5.91.190):
In Reply to: Re: OT Windmills posted by Cas on November 11, 2011 at 12:32:45:
I have wondered about that too. I often make the car trip between Spokane and Seattle on I-90. About mid trip, there are many windmills on the ridge West of Vantage and the Columbia river. Last week I came back from Seattle and was surprised to see most of the windmills idle, even though it was fairly windy. There were some windmills operating about as fast as I have usually seen them running, so I don't believe the others were idle due to lack of wind speed. They were just sitting there with the blades turned so they remained stationary or almost so.
I don't know who owns the "wind farm", but it would seem to me that they were wasting a good opportunity to make some power and get some return on their investment. I don't know how much each windmill costs to get operational, but a few years ago, my neighbor was involved in a group that was considering putting some windmills in the Palouse area. He told me at that time, the windmills were almost a Million dollars each.
The "wind farm" near Vantage should be in a good spot, high on a desert ridge that has little or no value for anything else--it appears to have little soil and mostly grows sagebrush. There are no trees or mountains to block the wind. When I have driven through there, most of the time there was quite a bit of wind.
I have not counted the windmills, but there must be 50 or more. Let's see, if there are 50 windmills and they cost a million dollars each, someone or some company must have invested a BUNCH of money in the project. I wonder how much of it was payed for by the taxpayers (federal and state).
Kind of surprising to see so many windmills just sitting there, doing nothing when the wind was blowing strongly. Maybe our power grid had too much power just then, since the Northwest mostly gets its electricity from hydroelectric dams. I would think they would want to run the windmills as much as possible. The wind doesn't blow strongly enough to make the windmills work efficiently all the time. Sounds like a "government decision".
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