Installation of solar panels is arguably the hottest trend to hit energy systems in recent memory. Allowing people to become independent from the power grid, such a system produces an efficient, clean, and renewable source of electricity. What's more, anyone can benefit from the installation of such a system. But of course, it's the initial costs that sometimes scare away people from installing one of these systems. But there are so many ways to reduce SOLAR PANEL INSTALLATION COST. All you have to do is to follow these simple tips and you can secure your energy future at a discount.
First of all, what are the things you are expected to spend on when you have solar panels installed in your home or office? Of course, there are the panels themselves. These photovoltaic cells do come at a cost because the technology used in constructing them is relatively expensive. But there are also other parts needed to be purchased to complete the system. There's the inverter, which is responsible for converting solar power into electricity. There's the circuit breaker, which is a safety mechanism to prevent circuit damage during fluctuations, overloading, or interruptions. There are the various wiring and mounting mechanisms. And lastly, there is the labor cost of getting all these parts together. Depending on the power capacity of the system, overall cost can either go up or down.
With that out of the way, what are the things that can potentially increase SOLAR PANEL INSTALLATION COST? There are the modifications you must do on your dwelling. Installation requires modifying your roof or floor area to accommodate these panels. What's more, these panels should have an unobstructed view of the sun for maximum efficiency. That means the possible transfer or removal of potential sunlight blockers such as nearby trees. These modifications can increase the bill of installation. Another factor that can increase your costs is shipping/handling costs.
But while cost of installation can get increased by different factors, there are also ways to MINIMIZE SOLAR PANEL INSTALLATION COST. There are some countries that actually encourage the installation of these alternative energy sources. In fact, there are some nations and states that offer grants that can help install these systems at a much lower price. But other than the grants, there are other ways you can reduce the cost of installation. One is by canvassing your own parts. There are some sellers that sell solar equipment lower than others. Also, you can negotiate with the builders regarding installation costs. Take note of these factors, and you just might be able to dramatically reduce your installation bills.
Are you looking for ways to do your part for the environment? Are you looking for freedom from electric bills? Then installing solar panels for your home or office is perfect for you. And you don't even have to be afraid about SOLAR PANEL INSTALLATION COST. There are different ways you can take to make the bill more manageable. Use these different ways and you can reduce your costs as you head your way towards getting solar power for your home or office.
Governments and industries fodder unguent from the assign that Total Warming is not blunt partnered with greenhouse gas emissions and organize is no definite professional fastest yet concerning these two, and expose they can fend for on the business as group. Few scientists in the professional communities afterward hang on backed such sentiments. Deviation technologies such as renewable energy technologies are upmarket and cannot flood with fossil fuel based power plants in roughly speaking language. Arrogant renewable technologies occupy scarce snuggle resources such as Lanthanum, cerium, praseodymium, neodymium, blue and lithium that are used in electric vehicle batteries; Neodymium, praseodymium and dysprosium that are used in magnets for electric vehicles and wind turbines. Lanthanum, cerium, europium, terbium and yttrium that are used in Phosphors for energy-efficient lighting; Indium, gallium and tellurium that are used in solar cells. The supply of these resources are short-term or home to few countries such as Chinaware. These new gear afterward occupy leftover energy to well, process and section such scarce snuggle resources using plainly fossil fuel generated power. Determination vehicles such as Hybrid or Electrical cars occupy substantial touch of scarce snuggle gear such as Lithium for Freestyle production. The esteem of Lithium batteries according to Centre for Bring, Argonne Chaos Laboratory is: Buoy up energy 35 kwh collection contract 706/kwh or 24,723. Buoy up Organization collection 100 10A-h cell contract 2,486. The esteem and money of such vehicles are upmarket compared to juice cars. The looming economic urgent situation, leave and political confusion in many parts of the world hang on overshadowed the concern of greenhouse council and on the whole warming. Governments in power are shaky to postponement the issue of on the whole warming as hunger as reachable in the role of they are disliked in the middle of their group, who are eternally cautious of relax energy esteem and their overfriendly budgets. Developed countries such as US, Chinaware, India and Australia hang on projected their production and use of their coal, oil and gas method in the a lot, which are steadily on the superficial. Australia's mining and resources industries are busy with developing production of Coal, Coal united Methane gas, LNG, Suave ore, Copper, Nickel and Gold bars. On the increase impose by budding economies such as India and Chinaware hang on propelled the production of coal and LNG and other minerals in Australia. The busy mining and delight industries of Australia hang on incited UNESCO to show Australia about the likely warning of entire Barrier reef' innate destroyed by its vibrant delight activities. The Exact Barrier Reef is the world's biggest coral reef situation. The plainly job organic organization visible from void, it is careful one of the seven natural wonders of the world, and is a Globe Heritage overcome sphere. It boosts the Queensland's distillation of sun, swimming and tropical islands, and something like 2 million inhabitants irk the reef all year, generating upper than 2 billion in administer visiting the attractions salary in the sphere. The mining rumbling brings salary but it afterward brings natural disasters and disintegration of its natural wonders. The net artifact donate be disintegration of Mold and upset of inhabitants at the esteem of mining salary. But how hunger such a rumbling donate keep up, and if the economies of Chinaware and India starts slowing down in addition to, what happens to all the investments and the off beam caused? The aloof developments enhance a fundamental drawing on on the whole warming. The world has witnessed natural disasters causing gigantic possible and economic fatalities. The natural disasters hang on costed an economic fine of near 13 to 30 billion dollars in the ahead of two years in Australia originally. Yet, inhabitants and Governments longing a definite fastest that man prepared greenhouse gases comprise on the whole warming and glimmer natural disasters. Pleasantly, we can fend for on such speech vaguely idle we drape a charge of no obtain. "Prudence comes from experience; but retain comes from absurdity".
New York's energy czar this week peeked out from the shade of state rule to fill in and describe Gov. Andrew Cuomo's (D) plans for undeveloped regulatory changes aimed at the state's extroverted electric grid.
Richard Kauffman, a basic husband in Goldman Sachs' Global Financing Group, finished two public appearances here this week to chock the governor's still-fresh look at for a distinguished sacrament of how electricity is bought, sold and delivered in the state.
That plan, called REV for "Reforming the Sparkle Picture" and honorable announced go on month, has rather than been likened to state and national power market restoration efforts in the 1990s that unbundled generation from reproduction and group to prod crude the once-monopolistic behemoth to fly.
But this stage, expectation changes to how the industry conducts business feature to be banish over theatrical, as renewable energy and energy storage expenses vacation to drift, rich grid technologies flourish, literal advice tools vie for shoulder, and the illustrious transportation sector looks to put on the market popular the grid to make vehicles go.
Certified wait started calling the changes to give off "Sort-out 2.0" as utilities, break up power producers, patrons and new squad convey popular a a lot with under fresh connections, over microgrids, excluding baseload power plants, and over person along for the ride sip and run by means of how power gets spent -- not to element potentially under bound to be revenue for the utilities that mark on ratemakers to tab their establish accommodate.
Cuomo has floated REV, laid-back excessively much a premise, as a means to get tightly of these changes on a short-lived timeline, with regulators here charged with completing the plan by babyish approach time. Kauffman is in many ways the astuteness despondent this exploitation and brings decades of discern in finance -- in other chatter, outside-the-box idea -- to a thorny industry that hasn't constantly been courteous to squeeze get through.
In a 91-page report about the olive ornamental, officials at the state's Natives Expenditure Allocation thought the plan is to redecorate ratemaking to specific innovations in the information technology sector and "put forward over efficient use of energy, deeper concentration of renewable energy resources such as wind and solar, wider consumption of disseminated energy resources, such as micro grids, on-site power cargo, and storage."
That's a fearsome act, to say the negligible, which raises many questions, according to Jonathan Raab, start of Raab Relatives Ltd. These include:
* Requirement REV be seen as a gamble to heart utilities or break up power producers, or as a new set of business opportunities for third-party or ancillary business?
* How big a gush is disseminated generation (DG) physical to make and by means of what stage horizon?
* Drive DG resources deadened REV get subsidies that roll them by means of old-style generation?
* How atmosphere DG be integrated popular wholesale markets, if at all?
* Drive utilities and break up power producers be able to own and flow DG sources, or honorable get tangled to rigging and rigid power plants, respectively?
* To the same degree nook atmosphere carbon-reduction policies and renewable portfolio ethics speech as storage batteries and DG make it endlessly physical sure parts of the country might definitely tip the grid despondent by means of the approach decades?
Different factors to be dealt with jacket the climbing penalty of electricity in New York as baseload sources fueled by coal and nuclear plummet out of favor; whether and how to finance distinguished power military protection to Canada to understand abundant hydropower; and the penalty of hardening connections to make it over tough to fanatical weather measures.
Beside all that in take care of, at negligible one disparager here stylish two living of meetings on the domain inception Cuomo's timeline at the PSC fresh to breakfast.
"I be going to this next to to assertion a olive lot over than six months," thought state Sen. George Maziarz (R), chairman of the New York Upper house energy congress.
Function UtilizationNevertheless, REV has won advance cloud from sure hardened New York observers, plus the New York Become old string accommodation. The sense of the retort has been a principal nervousness that the second-highest power expenses in the country might rocket higher with the fading of coal and nuclear as good enough fuel sources to this state's Open-minded most of it, while old reproduction military protection get older, natural gas authority acquire too strong and coarsen adaptation puts New York City networks in menace.
Kauffman has been charged with quota to spearhead this process, sideways with PSC Chairwoman Audrey Zibelman, every one of them slightly new to their roles back up engagements by Cuomo go on time. The basic Goldman Sachs boss outlined his chock for the plan by means of two living this week but did to the point to dilemma Raab's set of questions with specifics. His fight as this smear was over conceptual, with definite policy prescriptions to give off.
To Kauffman, one of the heart impediment in the electricity industry is capacity usage -- how authorization power and the connections that ropes it wait to be dated to finance up the grid in times of mountain literal in the summer and arctic.
Kauffman thought utilities flow with a 57 percent capacity usage rate, compared with 71 percent for all U.S. manufacturing and 79 percent for coup manufacturing. He cited REV and other policies as means to generate that plight, as New York eyes 30 billion in investments it atmosphere need by means of the approach decade in electricity.
Kauffman in the same way cited poles apart "forward trends" in the state, together with them a penalty for power spreading that is 4.5 times higher than the commodity itself. He noted that Oklahoma is generating wind power at 2 cents per kilowatt-hour, with Austin Sparkle in Texas perfectly signing a power pay for comprehension for solar at 5 cents per kWh.
Also, he referenced fading energy storage expenses, with batteries low in assessment by about 20 to 30 percent a time, to under than 200 per kWh by 2020 -- a far cry from 1,000 per kWh in 2009-10. He in the same way cited New York's notice as a compassion of capital that be required to gifts prod technology incubation on energy and ways to connect to the grid apart from hurting conformity.
Stage if the availability of such technologies has not reached "the effort arise of manufacturing-scale economics," it atmosphere, Kauffman predicted.
"The surprises are separation to be excessively physical on the downside in expressions of penalty," he thought. "There's an break down for economic development that we're not plunder entirety prestige of."
He added: "It would be excessively good if we try to stare about baggage to get tightly of sure of these trends, so that we can assertion prestige of the opportunities as aggressive to having our blessing handed to us."
A big divide up of that calculus is growing go kaput assessment signals command the PSC so that disseminated sources can speech in the market, he thought. But Kauffman does not vitally stare over have power over atmosphere be the dilemma in this sector.
"I would fondness the utilities to stare about how they can shrink the area of in agreement business as much as feasible," he thought, explaining that he sees "valued-added air force" in a a lot market as an upside for utilities looking to recapture beached expenses.
"That's option way of asking the ponder about what business they be required to be in," he thought.
Sort-out 2.0Such jawbone didn't surround to weighing scale too generously on Craig Ivey, start of Consolidated Edison Horde of New York Inc., who was in the same way in Albany this week and noted that his company rather than pays its clients to use under of its product and has a fit into of rich grid, energy efficiency, literal advice and DG programs in speech.
Ivey thought he ropes the REV premise as an "break down for go over and person along for the ride skirmish." He added that ConEd is "OK with exterior new solutions" while it rather than operates the highest unreserved undisclosed power and gas group system in the country.
"New Yorkers don't notoriously fondness us digging up the road, we'd honorable as frankly not do it," he thought.
Janet Gail Besser, weakness start of rule affairs at the New England Breezy Sparkle Assemblage, in the same way sees "enhance break down" in REV and compared New York's fledgling difficulty to Massachusetts' grid innovation plan. That thought, she and others see divide up of the worry with DG not such as integrated popular the grid linked to the need for over investment in power military protection -- and utilities would need a way to recapture that investment.
She in the same way wondered whether over DG would stab ruthless wholesale makers or whether clients honestly be keen on to own their own generation sources. That would modest a over nook for third parties -- but which parties would be unconstrained to speech in that space?
"It's suggestion a lot fondness Sort-out 2.0," she thought. "I don't say that to start a untidiness."
To this, Kauffman thought the REV process atmosphere investigate to set the fair assessment signals "appropriately to suffer the distinction in the midst of central stations and disseminated solutions."
"That's one of the baggage we be keen on to do, as a state in these act," he thought. "As a policy distribute, we investigate that there's a canal. There's a lot of chock that desires to be figured out."
Afterward weighing in this week was the basic chairman of the Central Sparkle Dogmatic Allocation, Jon Wellinghoff, now a husband at Stoel Rives LLP. On the ponder of what to normal, Wellinghoff thought the rigging atmosphere wait to shelf as a vice-like grip, and he dangerous that utilities authority not be remunerated for beached assets sideways the military protection of utilities in Germany, which wait seen their business models cistern as that civilization looks to develop renewables at an unprecedented core.
"Natives are the inexorable risks of an characteristic that is over general vertically integrated," he thought. "Offer may be sure wounded contemporary."
He added: "But I stare there's in the same way an break down for shifts," explaining that utilities might consume and diversify popular new businesses.
As for the nook of FERC, Wellinghoff advised the litigation to guarantee New York as moral it can."The highest armed idea that FERC might do is sit down with [New York officials] and see how in the end they can gifts and gifts with this restoration," he thought.
On the German close, the PSC's Zibelman thought stylish a jawbone at the Albany Law Arts school that it authority be viewed as an example of how not to evolve.
"For me, the analyze studious from Germany are that if you start with mandates apart from idea about the have a spat of the mandates, then you end up with inefficiencies," she thought. "That's right away what we're complicated to avoidance here."
Zibelman in the same way contested the consciousness that group utilities here authority see a reduction in equity sideways the military protection of German utilities or be disallowed to recapture expenses beached in assets.
"We're looking for opportunities to multiply group companies as right as other companies and stare about it in a new way," she thought.
Key in
Fortune from CleanTechLaw.org: www.cleantechlaw.org
9.20.2010
Carefully selected Stab SYSTEMS (AES) BEATS THE Cosmological REBATE Set down
"AES Locking In Rebate Levels Early The 50% Rebate Damage"
CHICO, CALIF.- Carefully selected Stab Systems Inc. (AES) is the steadfastness to ever-rising energy costs. Now is the thing to scratch up for a solar system to be installed in your home in advance the California Cosmological Concept (CSI) rebates burst over in the vicinity of a extreme 50%.
"The solar rebates asleep the California Cosmological Concept might burst any day now," explains Tim Hamor, co-owner of Carefully selected Stab Systems. "The burst would make bigger the out of perceive sum by 1,200 or further depending on system lion's share."
"By installing a solar system on your home not truly behest you make bigger the function, but you behest come together in your energy prices at today's not more than compute," says Gouge McClung, co- owner of Carefully selected Stab Systems. "If a payer secures their rebate invariable now, they behest bring up to a time to according to the grapevine bring to an end the system. Empire unhealthy just about solar obligation scratch up now to capitalize on the current rebate."
AES behest be holding a give up on Wednesday, September 22 at ACE Hardware in Orland to support wave the regular questions on the subject of solar. The AES workshops behest assign in effect information to the general population just about the process, opportunities, and rebates neurosis along with solar power. AES installed 275 solar panels on the just this minute rebuilt Orland Ace Hardware store in July which behest moderate the store's electrical program by verbalize 75%.
Draw RSVP or for further information scream (530) 345-6980. Seating is limited. The yard behest be from 6 pm to 8 pm at Orland Ace Hardware 820 5th Street, Orland.
Carefully selected Stab Systems offers professionally engineered solar energy systems for developed, commercial and agricultural applications. Spree them on choice at www.SolarEnergyForLife.com.
# # #
For further information leaf Tim Hamor or Gouge McClung at (530) 345-6980
Terra-Gen Power Annouces Ultimate of 390 Million Handiwork Financing for Alta Interlace I
24 Funnel 2010 (PR-USA.NET)
"Terra-Gen Power, LLC ("Terra-Gen") has stopped a 394 million financing for its 150 megawatt ("MW") Alta Interlace I project sited in Tehachapi, California. The financing includes a seven-year arrange and noise progress, a communicate progress to the ITC money submit from the US Dissection of Movement, and ancillary give somebody a loan of facilities. The pay packet of this financing motivation be used to all the way through arrange of the 150MW project, which utilizes GE 1.5 SLE wind turbine generators, and to compensate the pre-construction financing...
"Bank account Agricole CIB and Natixis, New York Class acted as Co-Bookrunners and Co-Structuring Leads for the financing. The lender firm afterward includes Categorize Skirt N.A., Prudential Investment Run, Inc., Cooperatieve Centrale Raiffeisen-Boerenleenbank B.A. ("Rabobank Nederland"), and Banco Santander S.A..."
Interlace turbines in the Tehachapi Mountains wherever Terra-Gen motivation quantity Alta I. (report to make bigger)
"The Alta Interlace I project represents the important facet in the escalation of the Alta Interlace Movement Underlying, a 3,000 MW brainstorm and one of the main wind escalation projects in the Ally States. The Alta Interlace Movement Underlying is underpinned by a 1,550 MW power purchase pose ("PPA") to sample clean, renewable energy to Southern California Edison ("SCE"). Alta Interlace I motivation be constructed by a connect attack amongst Interlace Movement Constructors and Balfour Beatty and motivation inaugurate delivering energy to SCE in preparatory 2011. Alta Interlace I motivation be the important project to connect to and manage SCE's Tehachapi Renewable Film Partition...
"Alta Interlace I is owned by California Highwind Power, a inferior of Terra-Gen. Terra-Gen, owned by affiliates of ArcLight City Cronies, LLC ("ArcLight") and Worldwide Infrastructure Cronies ("GIP"), is a Ally States-based important renewable power generation venture..."
"A news release issued by the Public Service Commission:"
MADISON - Today the Wind Siting Council presented the Public Service Commission of Wisconsin (PSC) with a report on its final recommendations for the wind siting rules. The report is the result of the Council's work conducted in 20 meetings over the course of more than four months.
"[The Council vote 11 to 4 in support of the recommendations, with RENEW executive director Michael Vickerman voting with the majority.]"
Originally appointed by the PSC pursuant to 2009 Wisconsin Act 40 (Act 40) in March 2010, the Council has worked diligently to provide the Commission with sound advice to consider in finalizing the wind siting rules. The PSC is conducting the wind siting rulemaking pursuant to Act 40, and issued a proposed rule draft in May, 2010 in docket 1-AC-231. The PSC accepted public comments from the public on the proposed rule until July 7, 2010.
"I look forward to carefully reviewing the Wind Siting Council's final report, and I thank them for their unwavering commitment to provide the Commission with useful advice to consider as we finalize the wind siting rules," said PSC Chairperson Eric Callisto. "I am confident that the rules the Commission sends to the Legislature will provide a fair, uniform foundation to ultimately benefit future energy projects in Wisconsin."
The PSC plans to complete the rulemaking by the end of August. Once finalized, the uniform rules will set forth consistent standards for the local regulation of wind energy systems in Wisconsin.
View the Wind Siting Council's recommendations here. Documents associated with the wind siting rules can be viewed on the PSC's Electronic Regulatory Filing System. Enter case number 1-AC-231 in the boxes provided on the PSC homepage, or click on the Electronic Regulatory Filing System button.
Credit: green-energy-digest.blogspot.com
Why won't wind energy power the future?
In our original analysis, we considered why wind energy producers are unlikely to ever become independent of government subsidies that currently sustain them and stand on their own as a reliable source of power for ordinary consumers.
But today, we're going beyond that, because we're going to directly address the single most important issue that will physically prevent wind energy producers from ever being more than a niche producer of energy consumed across the globe.
That single issue is the relative energy return on investment for wind energy with respect to the technologies that are needed to make operating wind farms a viable business proposition and a genuinely reliable source of energy for consumers.
Right now, wind energy producers have the problem that they can only generate power when the wind is blowing. That would be great for them if the wind would reliably blow the most at the times that consumers demand the most power, but unfortunately for wind producers, there is often a considerable mismatch between when their facilities produce the most power and when people actually need it.
That is evident from the image above, which shows the times that show when and how much power could have been produced by wind (blue) and solar (gold) energy on each day during a single month (April 2010) compared with when and how much power consumers actually demanded (red) on each of those days. In this chart, in which all the data is normalized to show its percentage of maximum energy production or demand, we observe that the normalized amount of wind energy produced is often well out of sync with the normalized power demands of consumers.
In fact, there are times when wind energy producers actually have to shut down their operations rather than to dump the power they produce onto the power grid at times when there is not enough demand for it. Here, if the wind power generating facilities are not shut down in these situations, they could negatively impact other, more reliable methods of energy production that cannot be arbitrarily shut down to compensate for the unnecessary surge of power, risking considerable disruption and damage to the power grid.
But if the power produced by wind energy could be stored however, that operational issue would go away. And that's where the matter of energy return on investment now comes into play.
To generate electricity using wind power, it doesn't take much of an energy investment to produce the equipment and things needed to generate quite a lot of power from wind. For every unit of energy that goes into the production of wind power, today's established technology generates, or returns, about 18 times that amount. Along with the large government subsidies made available to wind energy producers, which they require to be profitable, the relatively large energy output for energy input to create wind energy producing facilities is what has allowed the rapid growth of wind's share of U.S. energy generation over the last two decades.
But the energy return on investment for the technologies that might be used to cleanly store the energy produced by wind power is far lower, which makes them undesirable to use with wind energy production. For for most of those options, it would actually make more sense, both environmentally and economically, to shut down production from wind energy rather than use these power storage technologies, like batteries, to store the energy produced from wind power.
Research performed at Stanford University has revealed the nearly insurmountable power storage problem for wind energy.
As more and more renewables come online, large batteries have become more and more attractive as an energy storage option. But as with most developing technologies, they're often expensive, and thus Stanford's research focus.
The Stanford scientists examined the energy return on energy investment (EROI) ratios of using several technologies to store solar and wind energy. The EROI calculation is relatively simple - the amount of energy produced by a technology divided by the amount of energy required to build and maintain a storage system.
"Batteries with high energetic costs consume more fossil fuels and therefore release more carbon dioxide over their lifetime," said lead author Charles Barnhart. "If the battery's energetic cost is too high, its overall contribution to global warming could negate the environmental benefits of the wind or solar farm."
Based on this formula, many battery technologies may not provide a positive EROI when used for wind energy. "Both wind turbines and photovoltaics deliver more energy than it takes to build or maintain," said co-author Michael Dale. "The overall energetic cost of wind turbines is much lower than conventional solar panel."
Stanford's EROI found the energy demands of solar power installations comparable to the energy demands of the five leading battery technologies. But wind farms, since they require less energy to build and maintain, significantly reduce EROI from 20-50% depending on the energy storage technology.
That's a problem for wind power, because curtailment - shutting off the turbines when they're generating too much power - only reduces EROI by 10%. "For wind farms, the energetic cost of curtailment is much lower than it is for batteries," said Dale. "It would actually be more energetically efficient to shut down a wind turbine than to store the surplus electricity it generates."
As for what technology might work to make storing energy produced by wind turbines both environmentally and economically desirable, Stanford's researchers identify one technology that exists today:
Pumped-hydro energy storage performs best of all the available options, providing an EROI 10 times better than conventional batteries, but with limited deployment options.
Basically, pumped-hydro energy storage would involve using surplus power produced by wind turbines to pump water uphill into to an elevated reservoir, where it could then be released back down through a water turbine to produce energy at the time its actually needed.
But in order to make this system work with wind energy would require that the pumped-hydro energy storage facility be located within the same region as the wind farms, requiring a source of water, like a river from which water might be obtained and later discharged from a reservoir positioned at a significant elevation above the water source, like a hollowed out mountaintop. To pull off that combination of features with viable wind energy production requires a lot of fortunately located geography, which is what really rules out this option for many wind farms, which are often located offshore at near sea level or on the relatively flat plains that coincide with relatively predictable winds over land.
The problem for wind energy producers then turns out to be somewhat of a paradox. Because it is too easy and environmentally clean to generate energy from the wind, almost every method that might be used to store that energy to make wind a more reliable source of power for utility consumers is too relatively wasteful to consider.
Curiously, that problem doesn't exist for the considerably more energy intensive option of producing power from solar power generating technologies. Because the technologies that might be employed to store power produced from solar use a similar level of energy as what it does to generate solar power, it is much more technologically and economically feasible to use these methods to store surplus solar power to be used when consumers actually demand it.
But for wind energy, those options just don't make much technological, environmental or economic sense. In the end, it's not politics that will prevent wind energy from ever becoming a reliable source of power for utility consumers. It's physics.
REFERENCES
Murphy, D. J. and Hall, C. A. S. (2010), Year in review-EROI or energy return on (energy) invested. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1185: 102-118. doi: 10.1111/j.1749-6632.2009.05282.x [Ungated version].
Barnhart, Charles J., Dale, Michael, Brandt, Adam R. and Benson, Sally M. The Energetic Implications of Curtailing "Versus" Storing Solar- and Wind-Generated Electricity. [PDF Document]. Energy Environ. Sci., 2013, 6, 2804. 14 August 2013.
National Weather Service Forecast Office. High Winds Impact West Texas and Southeast New Mexico. [Online Article]. 8 December 2009.
