[cdn-nucl-l] Ottawa Citizen: Why wind power is more complicated

["Jerry Cuttler" <jerrycuttler@rogers.com>]

It's not really complicated.  Windpower is a nice idea for sporting sailboats, but not for power generation.

 

The environmental ideologists have been promoting it, and 83% of the Canadian population have bought this method.

 

Nuclear plants that load follow supply about 80% of the power in France and France also exports power to the surrounding countries, but the social committee in the Ontario Legislature likes windmills.  How nice.

 

Jerry

 

http://www.ottawacitizen.com/technology/wind%2Bpower%2Bmore%2Bcomplicated%2Bthan%2Bpeople%2Bimagine/3373439/story.html

 

"Why wind power is more complicated than people imagine"

 

By Tom Spears, The Ottawa Citizen August 8, 2010

July 8 — a Thursday — was the height of Ontario’s heat wave, the day it reached 35 degrees in Ottawa, the day when air conditioners strained our electrical system to the limit.

Ontario was drinking power at a rate of more than 25,000 megawatts — that’s 25 billion watts — in the late afternoon. Not a record, but far more than most summer days.

Our nuclear reactors were pumping out more than 9,200 megawatts. Hydroelectric power (mainly Niagara Falls) supplied another 3,400. We burned gas and coal to generate another 10,200.

But wind power, one of the ways of the future, supplied just 107 megawatts of electricity. That’s less than half of one per cent of the province’s demand and enough to power a mere 32,100 homes.

Tom should have stopped here, but he goes on and on to promote windmills