hmmm... wonder what happend to the wind farm that was going on George Mountain??? :/

may be in experimental stage still. Takes a few years to collect data.

Notice how taxes and such are mentioned but nothing about subsidies and the golden power buying contracts. It is amazing to me how upset people get over the HST but hardly a peep about getting hosed with projects like these.

The wind farm is said to produce 142 megawatts. Over a year a windfarm will only produce 30% of that. So it is a lie.

Why don't they build all these bird eating wind farms on the lower mainland mountains instead of messing up our northern land.

Go to these wedsites, http://wattsupwiththat.com/ http://icecap.us/ http://climateaudit.org/

Seamutt - just curious how you know that the 142 megawatt number doesn't already factor the 30% in? In other words, how do you know that's a lie?

The suppliers of the wind mills guarantee 96% availability of the rated power. Anything less than that and the supplier pays the wind farm owner the going rate for power production lost. That is why banks are willing to finance $500 million for a projectlike this. Last I heard was a wind mill has a 5-year payback on investment... close to a 15% ROI.

How much are we going to pay per kilowatt hour? I've heard numbers that are 3 times as high for what we pay for hydroelectric power. So who benefits from this? Not the ratepayer, you can be sure.

That is the average output of farms in England and Denmark. The wind is variable and does not always blow.
Banks are willing to get in the act because of govenment subsidies.
Windfarms need backup power and that is one of the reasons site c will be built. So the taxpayer is on the hook for windfarms and site c.

http://www.mpoweruk.com/wind_power.htm

you have that backwards. Wind farms provide additional and supplementary power to the primary (main) power generators which at this time in this region is hydro.
In a Utopian world, we would have a blend of power and heat generating technologies: wind, solar, hydro and geo thermal.

At this time, we do not have market insertion providing the volume to create reasonable pricing of these alternate generation technologies. The manufacturers still have not recovered their R&D and retooling costs, so those products are still at a premium price point.

What we need are more early adopters willing to spend the premium now so the pricing becomes accessible to the majority of consumers.

I believe the key to a successful transition from fossil fuels dependence to renewable sources is what I term as micro generation. That is small installation legally and safely deployed by private home owners and commercial structure owners. High rises should be clad in thermal solar and PV solar panels. Half meter to one meter wind generators could and should be developed to be mounted on our roofs: no it will not completely displace other sources, but it will contribute.

If all this were done, site C would not be needed except to export the excess power as it is going to be anyway. BC does not need the power, the USA, specifically Kalifornia does.

The generating capacity is governed so that you produce near the same output regardless of the wind speed once the wind speed reaches a certain minimum. This is why the manufactures can gaurantee 95% output of the rated output 100% of the time when installed in appropriate locations. Its one of the safest investments a person can ever make especially in times like these.