Wind Farm in the Glades - Another "train to nowhere"

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Another Scam in Palm Beach County.

With the promise of 300 temporary jobs over nearly 13,000 acres in the heartland of the Everglades as well as the threat of killing off our wildlife by twirling blades, Burt Aaronson, a Palm Beach County Commissioner who never lets us down said, "All these people out of work are endangered species too." The Unions used their clout and lobbied its passing because of jobs. More jobs, more members. More members, more dues. Everyone should know by now that the Unions just cost government billions in wasted money usually to themselves.

Literal beacons of the "green" energy movement, giant wind turbines have been one of the renewable energy sources of choice for the US government, which has spent billions of taxpayer dollars subsidizing their construction and use across the country. But high maintenance costs, high rates of failure, and fluctuating weather conditions that affect energy production render wind turbines expensive and inefficient, which is why more than 14,000 of them have since been abandoned. It is just a matter of time that the wind farm in the Glades will go the same route.

Before government subsidies for the giant metals were cut or eliminated in many areas, wind farms were an energy boom business. But in the post-tax subsidy era, the costs of maintaining and operating wind turbines far outweighs the minimal power they generate in many areas, which has left a patchwork of wind turbine graveyards in many of the most popular wind farming areas of the US.

Read the rest of the story.

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory has gathered data on a region-by-region basis to identify the nation’s wind-energy resource.The results of this effort are contained in the Wind Energy Resource Atlas of the United States. The Southeast region consists of Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi and South Carolina.

“There is little wind energy potential in the Southeast region for existing wind turbine applications (Zabransky et al. 1981). Even along coastal areas, existing data from exposed sites indicate at best only class 2 at 50 m (164 ft) above ground. The only places in the Southeast region estimated to have class 3 or higher annual average wind resource are the exposed ridge crests and mountain summits confined to northeastern Georgia and extreme northwestern South Carolina.”

Did we eliminate that one wind tower on our beach redevelopment? We waste more money in this country on "trains to nowhere."