New York State Energy Usage 2005
- This is a very important document. It shows electricity usage in New
York State as 150,247 gigawatthours used in 2005. The US Department
of Energy estimates that we will increase our usage in 2007 within NYS
by 3% or about 4,500 gigawatthours.
Let's do the math.
A
gigawatthour = 1000 megawatthours or 1,000,000 killowatthours.
A 1.5
megawatt wind turbine producing at a 30% efficiency rate (this rate is very
genorous), will produce about 3,942,000 kwh/year.
The US Department
of Energy increase estimate is 4.5 billion killowatthours. This equates toabout
1160 - 1.5 megawatt wind turbines.
If we keep our usage
constant at a 3% increase till 2013, we will need about 8,000 1.5
MW wind turbines just to meet our increase of electrical usage in NYS
till 2013. After installing 8,000 1.5MW
wind turbines, we will not have reduced one kwh produced by coal
plants!
The fact is wind can be a good source of
some electrical generation, but it will never even put the smallest dent in our
power consumption.