Wind Farms and Electricity Costs
This article concerns wind farms and how they will offer more power but with possible problems. The issues associated are the local impacts on ecology due to the large turbine-like blades that capture wind power to transfer into electricity.
For economic purposes I want to focus on the statistical information out of the article pertaining to wind farms and the increased building of them.
In 2006, U.S. wind powered turbines generated over 11,000 megawatts of electricity. While just shy of 1 percent of the national power supply, the article estimates that wind farms could generate up to 7 percent of the nation's electricity within 15 years and offset as much as 4.5 percent of greenhouse gas carbon dioxide from electricity production.
With this data, the question comes down to basic economic cost. Will the increase in supply of cleaner and renewable sources of electricity cause electricity bills to decline? Will the change be too minimal to make a marginal impact on customer costs?
4 comments:
By use of an environmental impact analysis, the scientists will measure roughly which species of birds and bats that will be affected. If these species are not endangered or threatened species (according to the Endangered Species Act), then a cost-effectiveness analysis should be made in order to determine the effectiveness of wind energy as an alternative source to oil or coal power. If the wind farms are too costly to operate compared to other renewable energy sources then they should develop energy projects more economically efficient and more environmentally-friendly.
Because the electricity generated from cleaner sources and the electricity from regular process are substitutes, when the supply of the first kind of electricity increases, the needs of the latter one will relevantly go down. Therefore, the bills of electricity will surely decline—people don’t need to pay money for the electricity made by wind. However, on second thought, I would say there are fewer changes than what I thought before since people decide to use wind powered electricity while forgoing the benefits by selling it. Hence, people will pay some implicit costs during this process.
If the efficiency of wind farms can match the efficiency of current sources of power then the use of the current source of power will decrease because they could be substitutes. However how many acres will it take to create enough air energy to math that of other sources.
I would have to imagine that the cost of electricity would not decrease due to the increase in cost of constructing these wind farms. The cost of constructing the farm may be very great but compared to a coal burning power plant, the long term cost would be much less so initially wind generated electricity may be expensive but if enough farms are created, the cost may eventually come down.
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