Letters

I self-identify as a member of that merry little band of citizens with common sense. Since I am not in the pocket of Big Wind, I wonder how those foreign-owned wind turbine companies are going to keep their promise of lowering my electric bills when they are already asking for really huge price increases (or else). The less-advantaged in my community are worried, too.

Another scary thing I worry about is how long my power will be out if a category 4 or 5 hurricane knocks down a couple of those 35-story-high wind turbines, full of lubricating oil, way out in the ocean.

I think the plan of the Big Wind experts is for all of my electricity to come from wind turbines, connected to a bunch of battery energy storage systems. I learned through Wikipedia that a BESS only stores power; they don’t generate power like the peakers that the Big Wind experts are going to get rid of.

So I’m wondering how long I will be without power once the BESSes run out of electricity while they fix or replace those turbines.

I must say, I was really impressed with the Long Island Wind Farm press release pointing out that “at full capacity the [Long Island wind farm] will generate enough renewable energy to power approximately 70,000 homes.”

But then I started wondering about how long a wind turbine could run at full capacity. I checked Wikipedia to find the scientific metric is average capacity factor, which for an offshore turbine is 42 percent — so that’s actually 29,400 homes.

With respect to safety, I was happy to read that the new BESSes will be safe because they meet all safety codes. However, I’ve read that Albany hasn’t quite finished writing all of those codes — so that’s a little confusing.

I was sort of sad (and, well, honestly, a little angry) to be called “a problem” to my face, as well as some other disrespectful and pejorative names in the local newspaper, simply because I asked some common-sense questions that the Big Wind experts didn’t think were helpful in the march to net zero — but I’m over it now. I think it would be really nice to have civil and cooperative discussions (without name-calling) about alternative energy where energy wealth and energy density and common sense come into the picture, and willful blindness to risks is not the modus operandi. But that goal may be hard if that lawyer sues to get his way, like he was hinting.

It’s unfortunate that there seems to be so little tolerance or respect for suggestions or compromise perceived to be an impediment to the march to net zero. Oh well.

R. George Arnold

Southampton Village