More from Power Hungry...

More from Robert Bryce's book "Power Hungry" --Chapter 12. The most salient point in this chapter could be summed up easily:

1) “Every megawatt of wind power that is added to a given electricity system must be backed up with a megawatt of gas-fired generation.” That’s right. If your city or county or state decides to add wind mills to it electricity generation, it then needs to either add a back up or it needs to currently have enough energy capacity in the existing system to kick in when the wind doesn’t blow. And those “back-up” forms of generation must always be manned 24/7 just in case they are needed. Think about that for a minute. If you are a public utility and you are mandated to generate some of your power from wind, you know that this means more employment, more overtime pay for you workers, more capital equipment expenditure—all at the expense of taxpayers and customers that have to pay higher prices. This is a pretty sweet deal for utilities. Additionally, you have “green wash” cover by politicians, environmentalists, and the poor deluded average citizen that believes that something good is being done for the environment while shelling out more for electricity.

More to come.