Senator rails against more TVA windmills

Senator rails against more TVA windmills

BY DAVE FLESSNER
STAFF WRITER

The chairman of the Tennessee Valley Authority Congressional Caucus urged TVA on Monday to stop building more wind turbines for at least the next two years.

In a letter to TVA's board, U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., said wind-generated power is "high cost and unreliable." He asked the federal utility not to build any more of the 300-foot-tall structures in its seven-state region.

"These oversized windmills produce a puny amount of unreliable power in a way that costs more than coal or nuclear power, require new transmission lines, must be subsidized with massive federal tax breaks and, in my view, destroy the landscape," said Sen. Alexander, chairman of the Senate Energy Subcommittee.

Wind-power enthusiasts blasted Sen. Alexander for his attack on windmills, which they hope will supply a growing share of America's power demands.

"He's making reckless, mean-spirited attacks on renewable energy when, to my knowledge, he has never even been to a wind farm," said Stephen Smith, executive director of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy.

After building 18 wind turbines over the past three years for its Green Power Switch program, TVA directors said Monday they didn't have any plans to build any more in the next two years. The Green Power program, in which TVA consumers pay extra to purchase power generated from renewable energy, expects to meet consumer demands from solar, biomass and existing wind units for at least the next decade.

"Our planning scenarios for Green Power Switch do not project the need for additional generation until 2018," TVA directors Bill Baxter and Skila Harris said in a letter written to Sen. Alexander on Monday.

But the TVA directors said the existing wind turbines have proved popular in the Tennessee Valley. While sites such as Lookout Mountain, Ga., faced opposition, the Buffalo Mountain windmill farm in Anderson County has been welcomed by local officials.

Sen. Alexander said he objects to the noise and visual pollution from wind turbines, which often are located on ridgetops and can be seen for up to 25 miles.

Alexia Poe, a spokeswoman for Sen. Alexander, said that while the senator has not been to a windmill farm, "he has been to Neyland Stadium and he can envision the size" of one.

Sen. Alexander said Chattanooga "has just spent 20 years improving its waterfront and saving the Tennessee River Gorge. Do we really want to string hundreds of towers with flashing red lights as tall as football fields on Signal and Lookout mountains?"

E-mail Dave Flessner at d.flessner@timesfreepress.com

BY THE NUMBERS

• TVA operates 18 wind generators, including 15 on Buffalo Mountain in Anderson County, Tenn.
• There are 6,700 windmills in the United States.
• Nationwide, the capacity to generate a record 2,500 megawatts of new wind power is projected to be built this year.
• Wind power will receive a 1.8-cent-per-kilowatt production tax credit under an energy bill moving through Congress.
• Rotor blades on some wind turbines are wider than a 747 jumbo jet wingspan and turn up to 100 mph.
• Most windmills are about 300 feet high or as tall as a football field is long.

Sources: American Wind Energy Association, U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander