dispatches from TJICistan

http://www.boston.com/news/education/k_1…

[ Medford ] is in the process of commissioning a wind turbine at the John J. McGlynn Sr. Elementary and Middle School.

The site is just along the highway and the Mystic River near the Route 16 exit and visible to thousands of people using the road.

The turbine’s hub is 131 feet high and its three blades are 34 feet long. It was made by Northern Power of Barre, Vt., and is expected to generate 170,000 kilowatt hours, or about $25,000 worth of electricity per year. That’s about 10 percent of the school’s electricity bill, said Patty Barry, director of the city’s energy and environment office.

Barry and Mayor Michael J. McGlynn showed the turbine to a reporter yesterday, a day after the official ribbon-cutting ceremony…

the $644,000 Medford project…

Let’s assume that you can borrow money at 5%.

Let’s assume that the turbine has a lifetime of 33 years, and thus depreciates 3% per year.

Let’s assume that maintenance costs are 1% of the purchase price, or $6k / year.

The cost to operate the turbine is now $57,960 per year.

…and it delivers – maybe! – $25k,000 per year in electricity.

The citizens of Medford would be better off gathering every January first, taxing themselves $30,000, putting it in a pile, and lighting it on fire.

Every year.

For 30 years.

If they did that, they’d come out almost $3,000 per year ahead of this idiotic plan.

Nice work, leftists.

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 31st, 2009 at 3:08 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.