This is in response to comments made by Angus King that appeared in the Sun Journal on Oct. 23.

I agree with Gov. King. Maine needs more electric generation, both for the technical and economic efficiency it can bring and for the dispersed economic development in rural areas it can induce. However, wind power, is not how to do it.

Writing in the Proceedings of the (U.S.) National Academy of Science in Oct. 2004, Professor David Keith of the University of Calgary reported, among other things, that "Large scale use of wind power can alter local and global climate by extracting kinetic energy and altering turbulent transport in the atmospheric boundary layer." So wind power is not necessarily as benign, as its advocates would have it.

Now let's talk about cost.

The price of the 2.5 megawatt turbines favored by wind power developers will be between $2.7 and $3.2 million. That is roughly $1.18 per watt of installed capacity. Yet installed capacity cannot be fully realized because of variability of wind and interference of individual wind turbines in any wind farm. At best, only about 70 percent of capacity can be realized.

That raises equipment costs to about $1.69 per watt, installed. On top of that will be the costs of site preparation, permitting, operation and maintenance and other variable costs. To compare wind power with fueled electrical generation, one must look at energy output, the kilowatt-hours or kilowatt-years that a plant produces.

In the case of wind power, the wind itself does come at no cost. However operations and maintenance is a variable cost that must be paid for regularly, just like fuel. The total cost of energy output should play a large role in governing the choice between the two: fuel or wind. As for the variable cost of fuel, wind power also requires fueled back up generation and so it does not completely escape fuel costs.

So, in comparison, is wind cheaper than fuel?

The California Energy Commission reports that natural gas turbine/combined cycle electrical plants generate power at a total cost of $485.30 per kilowatt year, at about 8,400 hours per year. Then, the total costs of electric energy generated for these plants amount to 5.8 cents per kilowatt-hour.

Who knows what the construction of a gas plant would exactly cost in Maine today (the best estimates are between 35-50 cents per watt). This is certainly far less than the cost of wind equipment, the $1.69 per-watt cited above, which, does not include the costs of fuel for back up power, site preparation, operation and maintenance. 

So now let's talk about fuel costs for a gas plant. Recent, remarkable discoveries in petroleum technology, especially horizontal drilling and fracturing, have released gas reserves of such scale that the entire fuel situation in the United States requires reassessment. The proven reserves of natural gas in the country today are large enough to provide for all the energy requirements of the country for 10 years; we now have enough natural gas in the "lower 48" to supply gas consumption alone for 100 years. Further discovery is still under way.

At present the price of natural gas, on an energy basis, is a little more than one-quarter the equivalent price of crude oil. Remember, gas can be used directly in combustion; crude must be refined — at additional cost. The country is awash in natural gas, and the reserves keep building up.

Given this supply and the lower cost of construction, it's clear that building natural gas-fired turbine/cycle plants and operating them for, say, 25 years (the average lifespan of a utility) is still much less expensive than erecting wind turbines. 

The variable costs of wind power must include interest on all the costs of construction, installation, site preparation, insurance, etc. The kicker here is that, by governmental fiat, all those construction and variable costs of wind power will be disguised through subsidies. The public will still pay them, via taxation, but they will not appear in the utility bill.

While King's encouragement of conservation is laudably correct, his proposal of wind power would result in more expensive power and eliminate the all-important price signal that motivates the consumer to conserve.

Charles A. Berg is a professor emeritus of mechanical engineering at Northeastern University and former chief engineer for the U.S. Federal Power Commission (now the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission). He lives in Buckfield.