Coupon Queen of Corning: WIND TURBINES AND OTHER FORMS OF ALTERNATIVE ENERGY

I was driving on the highway yesterday, going to the airport to pick up my husband, and happened to glance over and see a truck carrying the blades for a wind turbine. We've been seeing these a lot lately, and they are always headed west. There are some very windy areas around here, like around the lakes. I really think between wind, solar and geothermal we could drastically reduce our dependence on oil.

If every house had solar panels (even in most of the northeast) I think that would dramatically help. The government has a lot of tax rebates and refunds right now and it's a great time to do it, if you can afford to. We looked it up because we are thinking about putting them in after we get our modular up next spring, and in New York state between rebates and credits, it would end up being just about free if you installed them yourself - which my husband can do. If you wanted to use solar to heat your house, you would need to make sure you had an electric heat source.

Wind power also has a lot of potential. It's a renewable resource and it's not like we are going to run out of it. Some people don't like the way they look, but I'd much rather prefer a bunch of these near my house, than having more nuclear power plants or relying on foreign oil.

There is also geothermal energy we could use. Since I don't know much about it I will not talk about it, except to say that it is being used more and more these days and looks like a good alternative for heating our homes. If you know more about geothermal energy and would like to share, please do.

I guess what I'm trying to say with all this is that we need to be expanding these alternative energy sources as much as possible. I do not like depending on other countries for our energy when we have so much potential here! I think that the latest talk I heard of the oil companies reducing their output is crap! They said it was because demand went down. If they reduce the oil they are refining, our price is going to go up, along with THEIR profits. With reducing the output, they get more money per gallon of oil. Why wouldn't they want to do this? I would hope that the government would step in and tell them they can't do this, but I don't see it happening. The way I see it, the less oil we need, the better. I will save talking about energy independence in vehicles for some other day.