Think FPL is giving the true story?
In the Feb. 5th 2009 Lee county zoning board meeting, on page eleven, Mr. Ortgieson ( a private citizen) voiced his concern about the efficiency of wind energy vs nuclear power. Mr. Pedroni of FPL states
” that the energy produced at the proposed Lee-DeKalb Wind Energy Center will be equivalent to more than 1/3 of the energy produced by one the Petitioner’s nuclear plants.”
This is absolutely not true. The Byron facility is fairly typical and it averages 2300 Mw output, how can a 226 Mw windfarm that will actually only produce an average of 45 Mw be compared to this. At the average wind speed in this area at 160 ft above the ground of 12 to 14 mph, a 2.5 Mw turbine will only produce about one fifth of the max power. The max power of 2.5 Mw is only achieved at 28 mph wind. This info comes from power curve graph from a General Electric turbine. Other brands of wind turbines all have the relatively same power curve. This is about two percent of a nuclear power plant output, not the more than one third the wind rep told the zoning board. The rep from RES wind co. tried to con the people at a meeting in Franklin Grove with the same misinformation until challenged. Most people don’t realize that wind turbines power output is not proportional to the wind that drives them. Just go to any of the wind turbine company’s web site and look at the power curves, they are grossly inefficient at wind speed’s below 20mph. These things will never produce the average amount of power that the rep’s tell the people they will. This two percent can be achieved much easier by electric conservation.
Details available on line at www.countyoflee.org
