Letter: Alternative energy comes with costs

EDITOR: In a recent column by Bill Lueders of the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism, it was stated that Wisconsin is falling behind other states in production of energy from wind and solar. He also stated that the majority of people are in favor of more wind and solar.

What Lueders does not say is that the majority of the people would not be in favor of more wind and solar if they knew the true cost. We have spent billions of dollars to subsidize wind and solar for the past 30 years, and both are still far more expensive than coal, gas and oil, and will continue to need taxpayer money to be supported.

In another column, Bill Skewes, director of the Wisconsin Utilities Association, recently wrote that consumers who use solar and wind will need to start paying their share of the fixed cost for electricity.

When it is sunny and solar panels produce excess electricity, the utility must buy the excess electricity produced. However, when the sun is not shinning or the wind is not blowing these customers require electricity from the grid. At the heart of this is the fact that power plants need to be kept running to provide the needed electricity at all times to meet the fluctuating needs. It takes days to power up a plant and they cannot simply be turned on and off like a car engine.

While we need to investigate and develop alternative energy sources, we must do so with an eye on the costs, so that our economy will not be stymied by money being spent wastefully.

Michael Fochs,

Aniwa