I heard an interesting story from a guy I know who works on the wind farms around here. Apparently, a lot of the wind farms are privately owned by investors. However, there is a hierarchy to when power sources are tapped - Water generated and public generation is first tier, Nuclear is second tier, and wind is down the list a bit... So, when power requirements are low, the wind farms sit idle and the investors aren't making any money on their investment. So, once the federal subsidies started to come down, production and delivery prices started to go up, and energy policies reduced the need during certain parts of the year- the wind farms aren't looking quite as attractive as an investment these days. Add in the fact they don't work well in very cold or very hot weather and only have a life span of around 10-15 years and I see an industry that may not have a bright future....
Not the way the PBA does things. The Bonneville Power Admin is a federal agency that controls all the power in the PNW. Some years ago, we had a huge spring runoff. The Snake and Columbia Rivers were running full and the dams were producing more than the grid could handle. They had to shut down the windmills because there was no place to put the power. In any other industry, when you over produce, you shut down, lay off, and ride it out until your surplus inventory is down and the market is back up, living on your savings. Not so with the BPA. When that happened, they shut down the windmills but paid the windmill owners anyway for power they weren't producing.
