To the editor:

Clay Commons, regarding your letter in the July 25 edition (“Wind power foes should ponder where energy comes from”):

First off, let me say that not all of us want to live as monetarily conservative as you. Some of us like the trappings of modern life and what they have to offer. I happen to enjoy my comfortable house, my air conditioner, my green lawn and my gardens.

Second, “They want plenty of electricity … but don’t want to see how it’s produced.” As for the coal mine or the oil well, we must do better with that, but they really aren’t the issue, it’s a simple matter of- we need the power. That’s the bottom line.

So maybe you can enlighten us on how it’s produced. How, from that lump of coal, that gallon of oil, that U235 fuel rod, is electricity produced then distributed from the generator to the transformers, to the primary power lines, then to the secondary power lines and ultimately to the lightbulb in your living room. I’d love to hear you explain that.

There are losses that occur at every step of the generation and distribution process that add up to somewhere around 80 percent from lump of coal to that light switch. Now imagine taking that and moving it 50 or so miles out into the ocean, these huge behemoths covering hundreds of square miles with central substations like the one on Jepson Lane built on platforms over the water. How environmentally dangerous, inefficient and maintenance heavy would that be? Not to mention ugly.

But let’s suppose that we were all to accept the cost of this maintenance and these inefficiencies and be willing to pay another 40 to 50 percent for our power. OK, then let’s look at some comparisons. Vineyard Wind, in a footprint of 261 square miles, has a nameplate capacity of 804 megawatts. By contrast, Brayton Point, the old coal fired plant in Somerset, in a footprint of half a square mile, had a capacity of 1,530 megawatts. Interesting, huh? The United States alone consumes 4,070,000,000 megawatts in electrical power. How much of our oceans are you willing to give up to produce that kind of power? If you do the math, it’s a lot.

Also, I’ll bet you didn’t know it takes 18 or so hours to cycle a coal or oil fired plant up and down, so unless they are gas turbines like the ones in Tiverton, those plants have to stay running 24/7, with reduced loads, for when the wind farm is not producing. They spew carbon, wind turbines turning or no wind turbines turning.

The world’s energy needs are going up, not down, Clay. We need to look to the future, not the past, with an energy source, coal, oil, natural gas, nuclear that has the power to produce the power.

Fossil fuels are available now and they can do it now. Then right around the corner there’s liquid fluoride thorium reactors and with a concerted effort there’s the holy grail, nuclear fusion. These all are capable of supplying the power that the world needs.

The bottom line is, unless we want to fill our oceans with them, wind turbines, or any alternatives, can’t produce enough power. End of story. In 30 or so years, as these wind turbines begin to sit idle, like big ugly monstrosities clogging our oceans, we’re going to look back and think, God we were stupid.

So, before you start talking that stuff you don’t know, Google it, educate yourself a little. In the meantime that “no offshore wind sign” is welcome on my front yard. 

Ken Kossak 

87 Kerr Road 

Portsmouth