Different parts of the country need to use energy sources that are good for their area. Utah's not ideal for nuclear because of the amount of water it uses. Other places are good for nuclear, some places are windier and better for that source. We are ideal for solar, so we should explore that.

Denmark currently gets 30% of their electricity from wind power. We probably can't get that much here due to differences in geography, but I bet we can get more than the 1% we currently get.

Good morning Gerald! As usual you are right on. I always enjoy reading your comments. We need to use/explore every energy avenue available.

A myth is that you need energy 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. In reality, our power consumption peaks in the afternoons and dips way down at night when most of us are asleep. Consequently, good wind sites produce power when it is needed. The Spanish Fork project produces its best power in mid-mornings just when folks are getting to work and powering up their computers and turning on their lights. When wind is available, it allows utilities to cut back on the most expensive power source -- typically natural gas -- to save money. In fact, studies have shown that wind on the system helps keep natural gas prices down by reducing demand. While wind is not the "complete" answer, when it is used as part of a diversified portfolio of energy sources, it is cost effective, clean, and a valued source of power. It generates property taxes for local schools and community services and steers our country onto a cleaner path without the costly waste management of nuclear power. Most natural gas plants sit idle until needed -- does that make them worthless? Not at all! Indeed, mixing gas and wind is a good match!

I have read that geothermal energy production in Yellowstone would be capable of producing 60 billion watts of electricity. The equivilant of 30 large power plants. It could be tapped in a manner that would be barely noticeable. If this global warming is really so bad, why don't environmentalists get behind this idea?

JTM, don't perpetuate the myth that nuclear power requires lots of water. The water used in nuclear power generation is recycled so it actually consumes very little water.

Utah needs nuclear power in its future. It's going to be hard enough to do as it stands today......the last thing we need are lies being perpetuated that will make the approval process that much more difficult.

Even though the experts have done their calculations, they're all wrong because Gerald drove past a couple of times and saw the turbines moving slowly. Why are experts so stupid?

Wind power is land use intensive, and also suffers from the fact that in the United States, the large centers of power use are not located in wind-rich areas. (Not surprising -- people tend not to like to live in places where the wind is always blowing hard). That means more resources have to be used building extensive transmission infrastructure, which also causes a lot of the energy to be lost from resistance in transmission.

Wind power can make a small contribution to meeting the country's power needs, but as usual, there ain't no such thing as a free lunch.

re Thomas | 10:44 a.m.

"Wind power is land use intensive"

A wind mill "farm" may exist over many acres of land, however very little amounts of that land is off limits for other uses.

Wind requires financial help from government. However so does oil. How much do we spend on the military to protect our foreign oil sources?

Also oil, coal and natural gas are finite resources, we need to start now to use renueable sources.

I saw an article in the news paper that a professor from BYU was working to develop a new type of carbon composit structural material that may allow the use of much higher windmills. Only read the one article though. If we can find cheaper ways to build higher wind towers, then there will be more potential sites open for development and the wind sources will be more constant.

Airplanes in the begining were not as nice today, neither are windmills as good as they will be tomorrow. I for one am excited about wind power and also we need to do more with geothermal.

We need energy sources that are inexaustable that will help us not be so reliant on foreign sources.

"How much do we spendon the military to protect our foreign oil sources?"

Not much, actually. Most of our imported oil comes from places other than the Middle East. We don't spend much money defending Mexico and Canada.

Just to through something else into the pot, a recent study conducted by the University of California, Berkley (now there is a bastion of environmentalism), suggests that massive dependence upon wind as a power source would significantly impact global weather patterns.

And JTM - Nuclear does not use much more water than other boiler based power solutions, such as coal, natural gas and so forth. Those big cooling towers everyone associates with nuclear are present at large coal plants as well.

Not needed 24/7 | 6:04 a.m.
Do you really think the wind stops when you go to bed and then starts again when you wake up? Ask a weather-man. There is no predictable (time of day) pattern for wind!

Geothermal in Yellowstone | 6:38 a.m.
Don't even talk about geothermal power in Yellowstone. You could NEVER, EVER, EVER get approval to do an energy related project anywhere near Yellowstone. The environmentalists would shut you down before you even got started. We can't even harvest the energy resources in ANWAR and the part that would be affected is a wasteland (little or no vegetation or wildelife) nowhere near as fragile as Yellowstone. If Old Faithfull even dropped a fraction of a percent, you can bet the drop would be blamed on man and his evil energy project. Don't even think about it!

And you Nuclear Power nuts, give it a break! The environmentalists have successfully blocked EVERY N-Power project in the United States over the past 30 years, what makes you think they are going to suddenly become LESS successfull? Man-Caused-Global-Warming theory being gobbled up by our politicians just means these guys control our energy-policy-even-MORE-now-and-in-the-future-than-they-ever-have.

NO-energy-source-is-acceptable-to-these-people. The-only-acceptable-solution-is-for-man-to-cease-to-exist-or-at-least-learn-to-live-without-energy. Not-even-a-campfire-is-accetable (CO2/particulates/etc). Evil-cave-men-ruined-the-earth-when-they-discovered-fire.

Geothermal in Yellowstone: Yellowstone was establish by Teddy Roosevelt, a republican, as America's first national park. Why don't we put solar panels on LDS temples? Some things are sacred to people.

crmeaball: Michael Savage is a Cal grad. The UC Berkeley School of Business did a study on Carbon trading. There studies showed it wouldn't work.

"now there is a bastion of environmentalism."

Why do I see conservatives as mindless drones incapable of doing there own research?

To Be Patient: How long should we be patient for? Windmills have been around for over a thousand years. Should we wait another thousand?

"Response" -- With a few radical exceptions, I don't think modern leftist environmentalists *really* want to send humanity back to the Stone Age, or even to an Amish lifestyle (although some of their rhetoric makes you wonder).

Rather, I think they have a fundamentally childish view of economics and possibility. They really do think that there are free lunches out there -- that all they have to do is Enact Laws, and the industrialists and capitalists they despise will discover and finance new technologies that will produce cheap, reliable, limitless green energy.

They point to the Clean Air Act (whose mandates industry opposed as potentially catastrophic) and say "see, you polluters were just crying wolf; you managed to reduce pollution just fine." Well, yes: The auto industry financed research and -- fortunately -- an easy solution was discovered in the catalytic converter.

But the fallacy lies in assuming that because industry pulled one rabbit out of its hat in response to an onerous mandate, it can do the trick again and again. You can only get so much mileage out of burdening productive people; eventually, even the strongest break down or run out of ideas.

to Response | 1:33 p.m.

Uh, yeah, you can predict times of day that the wind is generally stronger than other parts of the day, and you don't have to be a weatherman to be able to do so. You just have to live by a canyon.

I do agree that you're not going to capture geothermal energy from Yellowstone.

What's with all the hyphens? If you can't get in your comment under 200 words, cut out the extra, useless words. None of your hyphenated statements even made any sense.

to Thomas | 10:44 a.m.

Electricity is sent long distances across high voltage/low current lines, which means that resistance has little effect on the amount of power in the lines. Of course, any system is not 100% efficient, but they run with very little power loss.

TO: “Oh Please, 10:01 a.m.”: Thanks for your feedback. I think you have misunderstood the intent of my letter. I’m not questioning the experts. If they say this is a 19-megawatt facility, I believe it. But that likely means it can produce that amount only if all nine rotors are spinning at full tilt. I’ve driven past this facility 4 times this years, so, you’re right, that is a very limited sample. But all 4 times only one or two of the rotors were turning at all, and very lazily at that. So I suspect the true output at this facility is probably pretty small.