[Army_of_One]

Originally Posted by 88-31-10

I didn't say wind energy was free. I said the FUEL was free.

I'd be interested to see how the costs you provided are calculated. Specifically the cost to build the infrastructure (capital) and operate and maintain (O&M) it. The cost of fuel is a no brainer.

I think the Grey County Windfarm (~100 MW) employs about 10 people whereas the Holcomb plant (~350 MW) has around 250, so it looks to me like the O&M is gonna be lower at Grey County by a large margin. Not sure of the cost of the build out of the wind farm, but I believe the 1400 MW's proposed at Holcomb are at a cost of 3.2 billion dollars. That comes out to roughtly $2.3 million/MW to build. My hunch says the wind farm doesn't cost that much $/MW to build out.

There's a lot more to it than that. Actually the figures can be skewed for the costs depending on what you put into the formula. For Coal do you figure the cost of digging it up and transporting it or just burning it to make electricity? Wind is also not dependable but coal is. We have enough coal for hundreds of years. You also have to incorporate the costs of the subsidy's that the windfarms get from the gov't. We pay for that indirectly.