No One Plugs a Lamp Into a Windmill.

Cross-posted from The Green Miles

Virginia tourism is very unreliable. Summer & weekends? Extremely busy! Winter & weekdays? Extremely slow!

A ridiculous premise? Of course! But that's the argument you often hear people make against wind power. When it's not windy, it doesn't produce as much power! You are correct, Mr. Wizard. I can't wait to hear your analysis of how much power solar produces on cloudy winter days. (Spoiler alert: Not as much!)

Here's the thing -- just as no one plugs their television directly into a nuclear reactor, no one plugs their television directly into a windmill. It's just one element of a massive electric grid.

But that doesn't stop people from acting like they've cracked some major conspiracy every time they point that out. Just look at a recent public hearing on the proposal by Dominion Power & BP Wind Energy to install wind turbines on top of East River Mountain in Tazewell County:

“It produces very little energy and it’s very unreliable,” said Charlie Stacy.

A power plant produces very little power? Really? I made many arguments against Dominion's Wise County coal fired power plants in the last few years, but "it produces very little energy" is one that never crossed my mind. Probably because it's beyond batty. Why bother building a reservoir? It produces very little water!

As for reliability, just as with tourism, you have to look at the big picture. A wind farm is part of a grid, which includes a mix of energy from an array of sources like coal, nuclear, natural gas, hydroelectric, solar & other sources.

Good day for wind? A nuclear plant can throttle back for the day. Bad day for wind? If demand's low on a given day, the grid may not miss it. If demand is high, a natural gas plant could work closer to capacity to make up the difference. (There's a misconception that all existing coal/gas/nuke plants work at 100% day & night. Not true except on a few of the hottest summer days.)

Or better yet, a smart grid could manage it. On good days, it could direct the excess electricity to other parts of the country where it was in demand. On bad days, it could pull more power from a part of the country where the wind was blowing strong. The bottom line is, customers wouldn't notice a thing.

If you've found all this energy nitty gritty fascinating, buy Al Gore's new book, Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis.

Photo courtesy Flickr's floyduk

60 Minutes on Coal Ash and Dirty Dominion Power

Start watching around 6:30 of this video and "enjoy." Actually, come to think of it, you probably won't enjoy watching this, but at least you'll learn something about the way Dominion Virginia Power behaves (and where your electricity comes from). As you watch, you might also think about the fact that Dominion has given Virginia politicians hundreds of thousands of dollars over the years (not to mention its sponsorship of a lovely evening with Tim Kaine at Red Rocks, Colorado during the Democratic National Convention last year). And let's just say, all those contributions and all that wining and dining wasn't for our health (that's for damn sure).

h/t: Huffington Post

We Can't Afford Clean Energy! We Spent All Our Money on Coal!

Posted by The Green Miles

Life in coal country is hard. Jobs aren't easy to come by. People have been told for generations now that the only way they'll get by, the only way their very way of life can survive, is to hitch their wagons to Big Coal.

But coal's always been a losing bet. Maps of mountaintop removal overlap almost perfectly with poverty rates. In the face of that hard evidence, people in coal country who can start to sound like they're stuck in a dead-end relationship. No one else can ever love us but Big Coal! I know it's wrong, but it's all we have! And politicians of both parties have been convinced to look the other way by the coal money lining their pockets.

People trapped in dead-end relationships tend to rationalize it with statements that don't make any sense. Like this editorial from the Bluefield Daily Telegraph:

According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, the federal cap-and-trade legislation will eventually cost the average household an extra $175 per year. Sadly, folks in our region — who have been bombarded with one rate increase after another in recent years — simply can’t afford to pay another nickel, dime or penny for electricity.

How can we possibly afford to leave coal -- we're getting soaked by coal! It's like a friend saying, "I can't possibly afford a new car -- it takes every dollar I have to keep my clunker on the road!"

It's not clean energy that's a risky financial bet -- it's staying hooked on increasingly expensive coal-fired power. And here in Virginia, we know what a lousy partner coal can be. We felt the pinch of coal's rising rates three times in the last year:

• An 18% rate hike last year, primarily to cover higher coal costs
• An average fee of $1.84 per customer in January to pay for the new coal-fired power plant in Wise County
• A 6.1% hike in September to pay for the Wise County plant and new transmission lines to carry coal-fired power from the Midwest to East Coast cities

Look, Coal Country. We're not saying you didn't love Big Coal with all your heart. But maybe they're just not the ones for you.

In fact, maybe you can find someone better. A shift to clean energy would create millions more jobs than staying addicted to coal.

And admit it -- wouldn't it feel good to finally kick that no-good, dirty Big Coal to the curb?