Harvey Wrightman Explains How One Wind Company is Bilking Taxpayers for $287,040,645.00 Per Year.

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Here’s how NextEra makes $287,040,645/year from Ontario wind projects

Posted on 11/09/2015 Ontario Wind Resistance

NexterasMillionsOntarioby Harvey Wrightman
Seven years ago when we first entered the fight against wind projects, everyone including myself assumed that wind companies sought to put their turbines on the sites with the most wind. Wind data was gathered and fiercely guarded by wind companies, the data being “proprietary.”  That’s how it is in the real world – performance is the goal or should be.

Well, in the alter-world that is Ontario Energy Policy, real data is undesirable. Imaginary data is much more useful. It’s almost impossible to find out how much the wind companies are getting paid. The terms of the Feed in Tariff (FiT) contracts are never released to the public – that’s also proprietary and confidential information.  However, from the minutes of the final Community Liaison Committee (CLC) meeting for NextEra’s Adelaide wind project in mid July this year, a smidgeon of real data did surface revealing how much power NextEra was claiming to have produced – it’s a lot more than anyone ever expected.

Here Operations Manager, Peter Miller, let slip how much NextEra was billing the Ontario Power Authority for power production (p 7):

“ … over 160,000 MWH of wind energy has been produced since commercial operation.”

That’s 160,000 MWh for 9 months, or 213,000 MWh/year.

Nameplate capacity for  Adelaide Wind is 60 MW which means Adelaide Wind will produce 60 MWh x 24h x 365 days = 525,600 MWh/year if at 100% of capacity.  This means that Adelaide Wind is claiming production efficiency of 41%!

At $135/MWh the Adelaide Wind project will rake in $28,755,000/year.

But, but, but… real world operational efficiency in SW Ontario rarely exceeds 25%according to the Independent System Operator (IESO) records. The windiest sites mightgenerate close to 40%, but that’s definitely the exception. It seems the Ontario government has decreed that the wind industry shall be paid what the wind industry believes it should be paid. Real numbers/data don’t matter.

Then a question is posed as to how the  Independent System operator (IESO) determines who gets to put power into the grid (p 9). Ben Greenhouse, NextEra Executive Director of Development states:

 “… our electricity system is bizarre … If we bid zero [to IESO, system operator], we would get zero from IESO but we would get compensated at the end of the month for our contract price which is 13.5 cents per kilowatt [$135/MWh].”

Greenhouse conveniently neglects to say that the grid must take renewable (wind/solar/biomass) if available over any other source, and the price for wind is 13.5 cents/KWH. He also doesn’t explain the complex calculation process used to determine the “theoretical availability” of a wind project. Whether it is operating or not doesn’t matter. It’s the theoretical or imaginary availability that does matter for payment purposes.

What the grid managers do to fill in the “theoretical” gaps is their headache. Wind companies could care less.

With payments based on an imagined capacity factor of a whopping 40%, it hardly matters where the project is sited – it could be in a cave!  A little bit of creative data and you’ll be paid close to max. No doubt this is standard industry practice.

Let’s see how much of the $28.755 million filters down to the community. NextEra presents the annual payments to the municipality and lease-signed landowners (p 5):

Property taxes                        $250,000
Lease payments                     $500,000
Community contribution         $150,000

Total:               $900,000 or 3% of earnings goes to host community. 

Estimating maintenance at ~ $2 million/year, total annual costs of Adelaide Wind come in around $3,000,000/year. This leaves NextEra Adelaide Wind with a tidy profit of $25,755,000/year.

Adelaide Wind cost ~$132 million to build.  The return on investment is 19.5%! Where else can you get that?

I haven’t included the financing costs because these projects offer so many “securities packages” that are secured by liens on the farmland.  Since the operating companies are “shell” entities lacking any real assets, attaching a lien to the leaseholder property is rather convenient.

Note also that NextEra states:

“Previous estimates included taxation on transmission line infrastructure, which we have determined is currently not being assessed.”

Once again Nexterror delights in rubbing a bit of dirt in your face.

Presently NextEra has 592 MW of nameplate capacity in its Ontario wind projects.  Using the same calculated 41% capacity factor, NextEra will earn $287,040,645/year from its Ontario wind projects. Not much wonder they want to build more!

…and on an even larger scale, Ontario has 4042 MW of nameplate wind capacity.  Using that figure from CanWEA , the yearly cost to Ontario homes and industry is about $2 billion/year for wind turbines – most of it imaginary power that has never been produced.

Wind Industry’s Armageddon: Wind Farm Output Collapse Leaves 110,000 South Australian Homes & Businesses Powerless

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Unreliable, unaffordable, wind turbines, leave Aussies in the dark…

stopthesethings's avatarSTOP THESE THINGS

sherlock-holmes Pinning a massive blackout on plummeting
wind power output is elementary, my dear Watson.

****

STT could be forgiven for being just a little smug after events unfolded last Sunday night (1 November 2015) in Australia’s “Wind Farm Capital”, South Australia.

As our post – Wind Power Disaster Unfolds: SA Facing Total Blackouts, Rocketing Power Prices & Thousands More Chopped from the Grid – was being put together for an airing on Monday, unbeknownst to STT – a bit after 10pm on Sunday – 110,000 South Australian homes and businesses were plunged into darkness.

STT’s SA operatives were quick off the mark, informing us of their unscheduled trip to the Dark Ages – with emails and comments on that post.

Without warning, traffic lights were dimmed to dangerous pointlessness; street lights were out, leaving less surefooted and vulnerable pedestrians creeping home nervously in the dark; hotel, cinema and restaurant owners…

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Carmen Krogh: Wind Turbine Noise the Irrefutable Cause of Human Harm

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Carmen Krogh speaks on “Harm from Wind Turbine Noise”!

stopthesethings's avatarSTOP THESE THINGS

carmen

Carmen Krogh is a medico in the know: ‘in the know’, that is about the known and obvious adverse health consequences caused by incessant turbine generated low-frequency noise and infrasound, such as sleep deprivation. Carmen is a medical scientist with an understanding of what the term ‘science’ actually means – unlike Australia’s NHMRC, for example (see our post here).

STT has covered Carmen’s work, including her dynamic-duo efforts with Bob McMurty:

Diagnosing Patients Experiencing Adverse Health Effects from Industrial Wind Turbines

Carmen delivered an address on her research at the same conference where Lord Monckton delivered his stinging attack on the ludicrous economics of wind power:

Lord Monckton Dissects the Great Wind Power Fraud

At the start of his address, Lord Monckton makes reference to Carmen’s powerful presentation, which is as big on human compassion as it is on factual detail – here it is (click on the image…

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More Proof that Proximity to Wind Turbines, Affects Sleep & Quality of Life

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Scientific Proof: Wind Turbine Noise Causes Wind Farm Worker’s Sleep & Health to Suffer

November 6, 2015 by 1 Comment

Proof

Among the growing list of what’s getting to the wind industry, its parasites and spruikers is the fact that – despite their relentless efforts to cover up both the work and the results – highly skilled people are working flat out around the world to discover the precise mechanism that causes the adverse health effects from incessant turbine generated low-frequency noise and infrasound, including sleep deprivation, vertigo and the like.

It’s not only the fact of their rather obvious conclusions that has wind-spinners in apoplexy, it’s the fact that they’re looking at all.

You see, the line being run is that there is NO problem – a tobacco advertising guru said so – so why on earth should anyone be looking?

For the wind industry and its parasites, the problem is, that there IS a problem: teams of highly skilled scientific investigators don’t generally devote their every waking hour to chase answers and solutions, when there’s nothing to chase.

Here’s just another example of what properly qualified people can do when looking for answers to real problems.

This time the victims are Iranian wind farm workers, who, funnily enough, suffer precisely the same negative health consequences as everyone else who has the miserable misfortune to be exposed to the insidious and intolerable noise and vibration generated by these things. Here’s a summary of the study.

Impact of wind turbine sound on general health, sleep disturbance and annoyance of workers: a pilot-study in Manjil wind farm, Iran
15 October 2015

Authors: Abbasi, Milad; Monazzam, Mohammad Reza; Akbarzadeh, Arash; Zakerian, Seyyed Abbolfazl; and Ebrahimi, Mohammad Hossein

Background: The wind turbine’s sound seems to have a proportional effect on health of people living near to wind farms. This study aimed to investigate the effect of noise emitted from wind turbines on general health, sleep and annoyance among workers of Manjil wind farm, Iran.

Materials and methods: A total number of 53 workers took part in this study.

Based on the type of job, they were categorized into three groups of maintenance, security and office staff.

The persons’ exposure at each job-related group was measured by eight-hour equivalent sound level (LAeq, 8 h).

A Noise annoyance scale, Epworth sleepiness scale and 28-item general health questionnaire was used for gathering data from workers. The data were analyzed through Multivariate Analysis of variance (MANOVA) test, Pillai’s Trace test, Paired comparisons analysis and Multivariate regression test were used in the R software.

Results and discussion: The results showed that, response variables (annoyance, sleep disturbance and health) were significantly different between job groups.

The results also indicated that sleep disturbance as well as noise exposure had a significant effect on general health.

Noise annoyance and distance from wind turbines could significantly explain about 44.5 and 34.2% of the variance in sleep disturbance and worker’s general health, respectively.

General health was significantly different in different age groups while age had no significant impact on sleep disturbance. The results were reverse for distance because it had no significant impact on health, but sleep disturbance was significantly affected.

Conclusions: We came to this conclusion that wind turbines noise can directly impact on annoyance, sleep and health. This type of energy generation can have potential health risks for wind farm workers.

The hard-hitting team behind the paper were:

Milad Abbasi, Mohammad Reza Monnazzam, Seyyed Abolfazl Zakerian, Department of Occupational Health Engineering, School of Public Health, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran. Arash Akbarzadeh, Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, School of Public Health, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran. Mohammad Hossein Ebrahimi Department of Occupational Health Engineering, School of Public Health, Shahroud University of Medical Sciences, Shahroud, Iran.

The full paper is available here: Impact of wind turbine sound on general health, sleep disturbance and annoyance of workers: a pilot-study in Manjil wind farm, Iran

manjil wind farm

The Wind is ‘Free’ Myth – Totally Busted: the True & Staggering Cost of Wind Power

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Wind Energy Fact: It is ridiculously expensive!!

stopthesethings's avatarSTOP THESE THINGS

mythbusters2

Wind worshippers continue to make wild claims about wind power already being “free” – and, apparently, getting cheaper all the time.

Although, it appears that selling a product with no commercial value (apart from the massive subsidies it attracts) is getting tougher all the time. Even the merest mention of a cut to subsidies has the wind industry’s parasites quaking in their boots.

Now – in a ‘hey, quick, look over there!’ kind of move – the wind industry’s spruikers have taken to making claims about the costs of wind power, that would make Pinocchio blush.

Wind: Still Two Or Three Times The Cost Of Conventional Energy, Whatever The Greenies Claim
Breitbart.com
James Delingpole
19 October 2015

headline

That was the headline in the Independent this time last week. I’m not suggesting for a moment that you’re an Independent reader but suppose for a moment you were: what do you…

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Shock horror, BBC interviews a sceptic

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Interesting development….

Steve Davison's avatarWolsten

As many will know who take an interest in these things, a recent GWPF newsletter reported that France Télévisions has sacked their weather man, Philipe Verdier, for having the temerity to write a book Climate Investigations challenging the orthodoxy on climate change impacts.

41hRpA5LRSL._SX316_BO1,204,203,200_

Here we have a man who believes in climate change but suggests that some of the impacts will be positive and some of the worse ones will not be a problem to developed nations like France.

Given the blatant bias in BBC broadcasting on climate change I was rather surprised to find the following interview available on the world service:

Suspended weatherman speaks

What is less surprising is the tone of the interviewer and the blatant spinning of climate hysteria. Apparently Australia is in a deep drought due to climate change, whilst other countries are flooded and there are increasing numbers of climate refugees! Seriously.

Interesting, despite…

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Wind Industry Thugs….Destroying Lives, With Impunity. (Gov’t sanctioned)

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Fighting a Monstrous & Cruel Industry: Ireland Declares War on the Great Wind Power Fraud

November 3, 2015 by 1 Comment

1397574371-dublin-thousands-gather-to-protest-against-pylons-and-wind-turbines_4479876

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What kills the wind industry is facts; including the fact that rural communities are fighting back, simply because THESE THINGS DON’T WORK at any level. Here’s a tale from the Emerald Isle that combines just about every pertinent fact, of the kind that spells inevitable doom for the wind industry and its parasites, everywhere.

Families forced to move out of homes due to industrial monster wind turbines
Irish Mirror
Henry Fingleton
9 October 2015

Prolonged exposure to this low frequency noise causes insomnia, headaches, nosebleeds, anxiety and a general inability to function normally

turbines pylons

****

A war is taking place in rural Ireland. Not one with guns, bullets or bombs but with wind turbines and pylons.

Families are being forced to move out of their homes due to the negative health impacts of these giant industrial monsters.

The enormous turbines make so much noise, people who live near them cannot sleep.

Prolonged exposure to this low frequency noise causes insomnia, headaches, nosebleeds, anxiety and a general inability to function normally. Children are especially vulnerable.

Were you ever in the toilets of a night club and noticed how you could feel the base drum in your chest – that’s low frequency noise.

Imagine your children trying to sleep with that sensation.

Shortly after a turbine was built 1.6km from their home, one Co Cork family noticed their kids falling asleep at breakfast. This quickly became a rush to hospital with severe headaches and nosebleeds.

This family was forced to move from their home.

Thankfully, once at a safe distance away, they eventually returned to full health.

The wind developers denied liability and are facing legal action.

Meanwhile, this family can’t live in their home and can’t sell it because once a windfarm is built near a home, the value plummets.

Families are effectively being evicted by these developers.

But who can they turn to for help? Who is protecting our families, our children?

Alan Kelly is Environment Minister and it is his department’s job to make sure proper guidelines are in place to protect us.

But the wind industry is a cruel business and is forcing the Government to ignore the problem.

These turbines are so big – up to 185m. If you laid this out flat in Croke Park it wouldn’t fit in the stadium.

Labour Minister Alex White certainly isn’t helping.

He has been heavily lobbied by the wind industry not to publish guidelines so they have effectively blocked any measures that would help prevent this terrible situation where families all over the country are being made so sick they have to leave their homes.

Mr White says we can’t put anything in place that might impinge on wind developers because it’s the only way to meet renewable energy targets.

But opponents point to a fully-costed and assessed plan to convert Moneypoint power station in Co Clare from coal to sustainable biomass as a viable alternative.

If this was done, there would be no need for the massive grid upgrade with towering pylons snaking through the countryside to carry the power from the wind farms.

And we would save the country almost €3.5billion.

That’s almost €2,000 for every single worker in Ireland – €2,000 of your taxes wasted on pylons we don’t need.

But it gets worse. You also have to pay for the expensive electricity created by all these wind farms.

Look at your next ESB bill, see the PSO levy – most of it is meant for the wind developers.

Another way of taking money out of your pocket.

Converting Moneypoint could be done for a tenth of the cost of the Government’s plans for all the turbines and pylons.

Mr White admits, incredibly, they’ve never even looked at this alternative.

Besides the tragedy of families having to move from their homes, all of us have to pay huge electricity prices.

We have the third highest in Europe, mainly because of the cost of wind energy.

Contrary to popular belief, it turns out wind farms are not even good for the environment, giving us tiny CO2 savings.

So much for the “green, clean” image – turns out it’s a marketing slogan churned out by public relations gurus.

If there’s one thing this country can be really proud of is our truly world-class racehorses and stud farms.

Ann Marie O’Brien of world-renowned Ballydoyle racing stables says: “Wind turbines and pylons are incompatible with racehorses.”

This energy policy will destroy our bloodstock industry which directly employs 15,000 people.

That would be a devastating loss for our country.

Government energy policy is to turn our beautiful country into a pin cushion of massive industrial wind turbines, pylons and power lines.

And ALL for what?

No benefit for the economy, no benefit for the environment, and definitely no benefit for the ordinary working people.

It’s time this Government called a halt to the marching terror these wind farms and pylons are bringing to all corners of the country.

Time to stop the war that is being waged on our landscape.

Until that happens, nowhere is safe.
Irish Mirror

armed robber

There’s Much Going On, That Government’s Are Covering Up! We Have the Right To Know!

/ 1957chev / 1 Comment

#NOAAgate latest – gag order by Obama on NOAA staff

Posted on 1st November 2015 by Scottish-Sceptic

It’s too late for me to check this news from geoengineering in detail, but it looks like #NOAAgate is just the tip of the iceberg with growing discontent in various agency staff, which has got to end up in a leak somewhere by a real scientist fed up with the Climate Extremists who seem to run these agencies under Obama:

The power structure is beginning to panic as the public wakes up to the criminal climate engineering insanity. The growing police state is completely out of control and becoming unimaginably blatant with their actions. In recent weeks Washington has placed “gag orders” on the following agency employees, “The National Weather Service”, the “National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration”, and the “US Department of Commerce”. This is a massive red flag that should trigger alarm bells everywhere.

Bill Hopkins, the executive vice president for the National Weather Service employees organization (NWSEO) said this:

“As a taxpayer, I find it highly disturbing that a government agency continues to push gag orders to hide how they operate. This is the work of the American government, owned by the American public, and should be open to the American public.”

Jeff Ruch, the executive director “PEER” (Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility) said this about the “gag orders”.

“The National Weather Service is about the last place where national security-style secrecy rules need to be enforced,” Ruch noted that the broad scope of the gag orders put much of what goes on inside the agency under wraps.  “Everyone is free to talk about the weather except for the people working inside the National Weather Service. Go figure.”

Some time ago I personally spoke to an NOAA scientist that said “we all know it is going on (climate engineering) but we are afraid to speak out, we have no first amendment protection”. The new “gag order” is a further muzzling of the NWS and NOAA. It is likely there are many in the National Weather Service and NOAA that have had enough of lying about what is really going on in our skies.