Today's intersection: dumped wind turbines and energy giants

NextEra is the fourth-biggest US energy group after ExxonMobil, Chevron and ConocoPhillips.

The story began with the company NextEra Energy, a large Florida-based clean energy developer. Often, expired turbine blades end up in a landfill. The fiberglass components are tough to reuse, creating a weak recycling market. Xcel Energy now owns the wind farm, but the company says it can’t move the blades because it doesn’t own them and described the situation as “isolated.” Xcel is still sensitive to the issue because the blade junk is not exactly building goodwill in a wind-rich area. [‘Seriously, this sucks’: How a small Minnesota town was left with a giant pile of wind turbine blades]

Xcel Energy is responsible for part of the methane bubble over the Four Corners area and worse. In 2015 the Minneapolis-based utility even sued to prevent the hookup of a solar generating station for a Minnesota company and enjoys frequent rate hikes from the South Dakota Public Utilities Cartel (SDPUC). Several utilities are based in South Dakota because of the state's regressive tax structure — Northwestern Energy and Black Hills Power among them. In South Dakota the three elected Republicans on the PUC have taken a position opposed to net metering and the state's Koch-soaked legislature has considered but declined to pass legislation on the issue. No corporate taxes, a compliant regulator, a dearth of environmental protection and cheap labor make South Dakota the perfect dumping ground for earth killers like coal and eyesores like wind farms. 

A Texas group calling itself American Stewards of Liberty with ties to the so-called Sagebrush Rebellion presented anti-Earth resolutions to a receptive Otero County Commission and the San Juan County Commission heard two resolutions dealing with land use issues after watching ASL's Margaret Byfield's dog and pony show. Byfield has been lobbying the Yankton, South Dakota County Commission appearing for a second time in the mostly Democratic district near the Yankton Sioux Nation.

Wind power has stirred a storm in Yankton County. The proposed development is the Swan Lake wind project from NextEra Energy Resources. [Wind energy proposal fans flames at Yankton County Commission meeting]

Ice storms and other calamities driven by anthropogenic climate hijinx routinely knock out electric power often resulting in lost lives and the inevitable cyber attacks on the US will take down the grid for days, even months causing food shortages and mayhem but the addition of virtual power plants or VPPs can change that handling some twenty percent of peak power demand by 2030.

Two years ago, NextEra Energy agreed to a settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice related to accidental eagle fatalities at certain wind farms owned or operated by the company in Wyoming and New Mexico. The resolution resolved past fatalities and provided a framework that allowed NextEra Energy to move forward without a continued threat to the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. [Florida Firm Proposes 600-MW Wyoming Wind Project Near Jim Bridger Plant]

The cost of subsidizing, manufacturing, transporting, erecting, maintaining then removing and disposing of just one wind turbine eyesore bat and bird killer would take a thousand subscribers to energy self-reliance. Microgrid technologies are destined to enhance tribal sovereignty, free communities from electric monopolies and net-metering only gives control back to utilities enabled by moral hazard. 

Utilities are not your friends so don’t tie your photovoltaic system to the grid but if you use it as a backup keep your own electricity completely separate from the utility that reads your meter.

ip image: a residential solar array powers two houses on a Santa Fe County property.