In response to Cecilia Seiter’s Nov. 14 Wespeak, “Green power to the people,” here is why wind power is not a viable energy source for us.
Wind generators need a lot of wind to function at optimum capacity. Most generators reach their maximum capacity at a wind speed of 30 mph or higher. Unfortunately, this part of the country does not have a lot of wind. Over the past 48 years in Hartford, Conn., per the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the average wind speed has been a measly 9.1 MPH. The months with the least amount of wind are July, August, and September, when the average wind speed is under 7.5 MPH. These are the hottest months of the year, when the demand for electricity is the highest, in order to power all of the air conditioners that are in use. Just what everybody wants. A bunch of blackouts when the temperature becomes miserably hot. The wind here is also pretty gusty, which results in premature wear and tear on the turbines, shortening their life.
The power that can be generated from the wind is a function of the cube of the wind speed. What this means is that, given a wind speed of 10 MPH, the power generated is 1/27 of the power generated at the optimum wind speed of 30 MPH, or about 3.7 percent of capacity. At the average wind speed of 9.1 MPH in this area, and assuming the turbine blades are 25 meters long (about the maximum length in service), one turbine produces about 66 kilowatts of electricity. In a year, this one turbine will produce 578,160 kilowatt-hours of electricity. Using Seiter’s number of 26 million kilowatt-hours of electricity that this university uses every year, it would take 45 turbines to power Wesleyan, if we switched completely to wind power. That’s a lot of land compared to that used by a conventional power plant, and a lot of steel. Neither that land nor that steel comes cheap.
There’s also the danger that wind turbines pose to birds. According to the National Wind Coordinating Committee, each wind turbine kills an average of 2.19 birds per year. So, just to power Wesleyan, 99 birds would die each year. That doesn’t sound like much, but Wesleyan is a small drop in the bucket when it comes to electricity usage. Produce 1,000 megawatts in this region (enough to power 1 million homes), and you end up killing 33,000 birds per year. Not such a small number anymore, is it? This number is only the deaths caused by direct strikes. More birds will die during migration because of the longer distance that they will fly, in order to go around and avoid the turbines.
I will be the first to admit that there is an energy problem in this country. Wind power, however, is not the answer. When EON’s pledge reaches the administration, I hope the administration has the good sense to reject it. There are better ways to reduce emissions.
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