However, wind and solar still require subsidies to work and that is what T. Boone Pickens is betting on. He said, “I believe that Congress will recognize that it is critical not only to this project, but to renewable energy in this country, that they enact a long-term extension of the Production Tax Credits."
Let’s look at the numbers for this new wind farm in the Texas panhandle. The eventual cost will be between $10 and $12 Billion and it will cover 400,000 acres. The power produced is expected to power 1.3 million homes. Shall we apply a little Mikeronomics to that?
Doing a little math, that is .307 acre of wind farm per home powered. There are 112 million homes in the U.S., so if we chose to use wind to power all of those homes it would require 34,384,000 acres of land. That is considerably more area than the state of Indiana. If all of the new homes built in the U.S. were powered by wind, it would require an additional 400,000 acres…every year!
But more importantly, if you do the math, the investment in this part time power plant alone, neglecting transmission, profit, and operating overhead, is $13,000 per home. I say part time, because we must remember that someone has to own the backup power plant that isn’t making any money when the wind is blowing.
Solar in some ways is even worse when it comes to the massive arrays and land necessary to place them on. And like wind, solar is not full time, science has not figured out how to keep it from getting dark at night.
I am certainly not against technology, just so long as we get the whole story. Like ethanol, we can burn our food supply, but not without repercussions.
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