Letter to the Editor: Questions on Renewable Energy

Posted

In regards to your letter to the editor concerning pumped storage electricity, I have to agree with the writer. 

After some research, it seems that the alternative energy bunch are at it again. Have you ever tried to increase your gas mileage on your car by doing a lot of coasting? Or wonder why your mileage doesn't go up after coasting downhill? It's because you can't create energy, nor can you destroy it. 

Yes, you can get some energy by allowing water to drain from a higher source to a lower source through a generator. But you have to use energy to pump it back up to the original source. And, if my physics is correct, it requires more energy to pump it up than it creates letting it flow down. I think that we need to tell the alternative energy bunch to sit down, shut up and keep your feet off the seats.

What about wind farms? Is there any research concerning the environmental damage done by changing the air flow around these monsters? What about the deaths of birds and insects? Or solar? Yes, it provides energy, and it saves a lot of consumer money in the long run by selling it back, but what about the heat generated by the reflected sunlight? That must be doing damage to the environment and the animals, particularly birds. 



There's a video going around with a tight shot just showing puffs of smoke. A lot of them. When the shot widens, it's a solar farm in California with thousands of solar panels that reflect light back to a central pole at the top of which is a ball containing an element that generates electricity when superheated. The puffs of smoke? Birds flying through the heat radiated by the panels. 

I think it's necessary to reconsider nuclear energy. X-Energy of Maryland has been operating one near Richland since 1984 without incident and can generate enough power to power Seattle by itself. WPPSS may have been a disaster, but it's plain that Washington's clean energy initiative isn't going to go far without nuclear power. Until we get rid of the Democrats in Olympia and regain some sense of balance and decency, this may be our only solution.

Bruce Peterson

Centralia