Boone Pickens, the Texas oilman, has been running TV ads on how to save the world energy shortage with his plan of windmills and natural gas. As a director of an electric co-op I have been to plenty of meetings this past year looking at the future energy problems we face in the U.S. today. I was at a wind farm last year, that Associate Electric is getting power from, in northern Missouri. Associate supplies power to Ozarks Electric Co-op customers in Oklahoma. It is neat, no pollution, little sound and no fuel, but the windmills are not cheap.
Several area people have called me and asked if they could put one up. You can, if you have three and half million dollars and live near a major transmission line that is not over loaded. Actually for what electric power sells for, you would need a large income tax bill to use the tax credits to ever make it feasible. John Deere was the company that built and financed the one up there – but now that rebate is in jeopardy since the original law is about to run out and Congress has not renewed it.
Even at that, the electric costs coming from that wind generation up there are running almost twice as much as your current sources of a mixture of mostly coal, some gas and hydro-energy. Newer wind operations cost even more to build today than those did, they say, which is no surprise.
Last summer the entire state of Texas electric grid was counting on the wind source for their peak. The wind stopped one day to everyone’s dismay and they came close to having a state wide black out. Building all these wind farms is one thing and I saw plenty out west this past week driving to Colorado Springs. But who wants the lights out? So you can’t call them base load generation—generation that you can count on. You also need dependable power plants that run on something. Either coal, nuclear or gas. No one wants another dam built on their river.
What I am getting at, we need power plants that will replace these wind sources immediately when the wind quits. So that means a double investment—not a cheap deal.
As for Mr. Pickens’ other solution, natural gas, he fails to tell you we already are having to import natural gas to meet the demand. The price for natural gas has quadrupled. The cost of natural gas as a fuel for electric generation is four times higher than you are paying currently on an average kilowatt.
There are some things you can do around the house to save electricity and save you money. Replace all the light bulbs with the new twisty low usage bulbs. Do you really need that extra refrigerator to keep your soda pop cold? Do you use that old freezer enough to keep it running? One man discovered there were only five loaves of frozen bread in theirs when he unplugged it
Turn off your computer when you are through with it. Unplug those battery chargers for your cell phone, etc, they continue to use electricity.
Cut out the ones you can. Your local electric co-op has more ideas on how to save electricity, start now.
The greatest concern in America is that we're going to run out of power supplies before we build enough to meet the needs. The moratorium on building coal fired powered plants is going to begin to hurt in less than two years. In some regions it will even be even sooner if we have a big peak demand. To complete the first new nuclear plant will be 12 years away at best.
We really need a grass roots examination of this problem by practical people in government. High priced gasoline has folks in Washington finally looking at issues they should have done years ago. We can’t let extremely high-priced electricity be that wake-up call too.
Western novelist Dusty Richards and his wife Pat live on Beaver Lake in northwest Arkansas. For more information about his books you can email Dusty by visiting www.ozarksfn.com and click on 'Contact Us' or call 1-866-532-1960.
