Turbines on Wolfe Island: hidden costs to wind power affect electricity customers
March 2, 2020
Ontario’s fleet of wind turbines cost electricity ratepayers more than $24 million last weekend, says retired bank executive now energy commentator Parker Gallant.
That was mostly due to the fact that wind — as usual–produces power out of phase with demand, but there is a lot more to the costliness of industrial-scale or grid-scale wind turbines, as he details in a recent article here.
Some added costs of wind power or Industrial Wind Turbines (IWTs):
- Increased electricity costs due to the need for duplicate power sources such as gas plants.
- Increased surplus power which must be curtailed or sold for pennies on the dollar.
- Increased costs due to IWT inability to generate power when actually needed.
- Increased surplus power from IWT often means other clean sources must either spill (hydro) or steam off (nuclear)…
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