No, it's not a whale. Sorry. But, it is a whale of an idea. As a lobsterfisherman I am very "in tune" to the weather, as any of you that have been following my blog may know. I need to be, since my livelihood and my crew's safety depend greatly on weather conditions. I think I've been seeing a change in the amount of wind we get and how often we get it. This could just be that I am not the young "cowboy" I used to be and have less tolerance for windy days at sea, although it sure seems like I spend a hell of a lot of windy days out on the boat! Or maybe it's too many movies, like The Day After tomorrow and An Inconvenient Truth. (Yes, I know, I "plugged" Al's documentary again, and no I'm not getting paid for it...HINT, HINT AL!) Back to the wind. Does anyone else sense, or know for that matter, if the wind does blow more often these days?
Have you ever found yourself saying, "If I only had enough money, I would..."? Well, that's almost become my tag line in the last year or so, and goes something like this..."If I only had enough money I would go into the wind turbine business." I am not a "greenie", but I am open minded, (Not usually a foremost trait in a traditional lobsterfisherman. We're often fairly stubborn.). In my open mindedness I'm starting to think that wind power might be a really good idea, not to mention lucrative. It is clean, we probably aren't going to run out of wind anytime soon, there's endless amounts of places to put wind turbines, there are tax breaks for using them, and ,(if used to power my own home), I would love to see the day that I could live "OFF THE GRID"! Wouldn't you? If you aren't sure what "off the grid" means, just imagine generating all the power you need to run your own home and being able to tell the electric company to go "piss in the wind"! (Sorry if that offends anyone, but it works too well here.) Another alternative to telling them to do that is selling them your excess power generation, at least in some places that allow it, anyway.
You can find out a lot more about wind energy at American Wind Energy Association.org I seem to like these .org and .gov sites, don't I? This is actually a good starting point, as there are links there to other sites as well.
Friday, March 21, 2008
"Thar She Blows!"
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2 comments:
Interesting post. Living in Texas this has been a topic of numerous discussions. The wind turbines have completely changed the landscape around my home town. Some people are not happy, but I glad this resource has been harnessed. My husband works for the local electric co. (I worked for them for 20 yrs) and the wind generation has taken some getting used to for them. However, they also believe it to be a great thing.
Keep up the wonderful post.
I did an article on my blog a while back about alternative energy sources. I'm not a greenie either, but we need cheap and abundant energy. Oil prices are driving up the cost of everything.
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