Worlds Largest Windfarm Coming to Oregon

A large windfarm that takes up 30 square miles and blocks the picturesque views of Oregon is "green"? A nuclear plant would produce much more electricity and take up a lot less space.

Picturesque views? Seriously? If you want those, move to New Zealand. Sure you can crank out more power with a nuke plant, but you're going to have to deal with where to put the waste, and that takes up valuable space too. At least with wind there is no produced bi-products.

Interesting about GE getting the contract, kind of like, I don't know, Darth Vader planting trees for Ewoks.

Such a shame that everyone has been blinded by the fallacy of "green" energy. It's supposed to benefit the entire environment, not just select bits and pieces. Perhaps supporters should take a jaunt to some of the larger industrial windfarms and take a look at all the dead birds and bats. And no, they don't "learn" to avoid them. Migration isn't taught. It's inborn.

There was a great article in Scientific American that every support of wind farms should read. If I remember correctly 400 bats were killed during their migration period. Another great article was in Discovery News that actually studied how these bats were dying. And they were not in collisions. These turbines essentially blow bats up from the inside out. Attractive, huh?

Perhaps people need to turn down their A/C units, turn off the plasma, and consume LESS - rather than demand more.

By the way. Turbines are probably one of the least reliable form of energy out there. You can't predict when the wind is going to blow, and energy is largely reliant on increasing load when they know demand will be higher. Can't really do that with wind.

But let's keep decimating sensitive environments, killing birds and bats, and wounding landscapes and call it "green" energy. What a joke.

I saw a five foot pile of dead spotted owls under a windfarm windmill. It was sad.

Power for -California-? About time for California to consider some sort of resource independence rather than shipping everything in from the surrounding states.

I'm wondering how efficient solar power has been getting.

I wonder if people in California will realize the extent of this boondoggle when their power bills double over the next year?

"Green" energy is not economical when it is supported by government subsidy. Wind turbines are enormously expensive to maintain, and they can't be used for base power load.

If you really want green energy, remove all subsidies from all forms of power production (and standardize regulation of each type so they are treated the same by the government), and you will find that the cheapest form of power has the lowest net footprint of any of the production methods, because it is creating the most power for the least amount of input (ie money). This is the basis of free market economics, and it ALWAYS works, in every field, and under every condition. The free market in this nation was destroyed a hundred years ago, and we have been moving on momentum ever since. Well, we've been at a complete stop for almost a decade, and are now starting to reverse course.

Prepare to be the world's first Deindustrialized economy!

Nuclear power will create Godzilla and a China Syndrome. I saw it on TV.

Funny how this "green technology" requires lots of coal to be burned to manufacture. That's not counting the energy consumed to dig the metal they are made from out of the earth. It will take years for a windmill just to replace the energy used to build it in the first place. But if it makes you feel good...

Skyscrapers and cats kill more birds than wind farms.
http://www.fws.gov/birds/mortality-fact-sheet.pdf

A nuclear plant is more than just the plant, there is the mining and its infrastructure, and the watersheds destroyed by that, etc. Look into this.

A field of windmills is much more picturesque than a coal or nuclear plant or mine, in my opinion.

Coal receives more subsidies than wind.

Even in 2007, the wind power industry employed more people then the coal industry.
[http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/coal/page/acr/table21.html and http://www.awea.org/newsroom/releases/wind_energy_growth2008_27Jan09.html]

I see a lot of volunteers for the home-storage of nuclear waste in this comment list. Keep it up. :-)

We can store nuclear waste the same way as the French do, or just take over Iran and bury it there.

What Tom said above, well put!!

This project wont produce as much power as they are saying in the "pre-build hype phase", and it has not been built yet, talk is cheap, especially green talk.

80% of Americans support nuclear energy - there's the consensus. And breeder reactors all but eliminate waste - there's the answer to the ignorance.

Please note that the wind farm will not provide 10% of the power California needs. It will provide 10% of Southern California Edison's renewable energy portfolio. (California's Renewables Portfolio Standard calls for electric companies to get 20 percent of their power from renewable energy resources by 2010.) Thus, the windfarm will provide only about 2% (10 % of 20%) of Southern California Edison's total energy output.

An 845 MW wind farm that generates 2 billion kWH per year would have a capacity factor of 27%, which is pretty pathetic.

There is already a lot of wind farms popping up in this area, and it's sad to see so much of the scenery gone now. I know we need clean energy, but at what cost?

@joenapalm Just because a lot of people support something, does not make it the best, or right (or vice versa of course) idea. A whole population can easily be lead astray with confusing propaganda. ie: Most people in some countries believe it is right to stone a woman when her husband has cheated on her.

Just as no one talks about how solar cells degrade over time, no one talks about the 800lb gorilla in the wind farm: storm damage and maintenance.

How many of those units will still be operating 5 or 10 or 15 years from now? And how much will it cost per year to keep everything going?

Florida Power and Light is building a series of 400ft windmills right beside the Port St.Lucie nuclear power plant, which kept right on chugging when we had a Cat3 hurricane a couple of years ago.... who will pay when those 200ft blade go flying across the county during the NEXT series of hurricanes???? (and why would anyone build a wind farm in a hurricane zone?)

yes please is right. Loook at all the idiots who support globull warming theories.

and @scot is an example of people that selectively pull info to misrepresent others

yes please, please don't tell me you're going to flush all your credibility by saying you believe in the Algore tax increase/ socialist/ money-grab fraud.