My "ideological obsession with wind"

My friends tell me I should be flattered by the attention. A Mr. Michael T. Hogan has posted no fewer than 25 lengthy comments in the space of a week.
Mr. Hogan introduced himself in his first comment a week ago as "an environmentalist with an MBA from Harvard, a MS in Environmental Policy & Planning from MIT and expertise in the electricity industry." So he must be knowledgeable, which may be why Randall Speck, the D.C. lawyer Sen. McDowell hired to interrogate the chair and staff of the Public Service Commission, invited him to address one of Harris McDowell's hearings earlier this year. I do not know whether or how much Mr. Hogan was paid for his appearance.
He has taken exception with my coverage of wind power, and urged a more reasoned approach to my blogging:

Please push past your ideological obsession with wind and think about this problem rationally.

He asserts the offshore wind farm "will destroy jobs in the near term (owing to the fact that it is 2-3 times as expensive as conventional generation today with it's possible economic benefits not appearing until well into the future)…" Destroying jobs is economist speak for too expensive and economically wasteful.
Mr. Hogan seems determined to rescue wind power proponents from the error of our ways. Regrettably, his own arguments have not been free from error.
While I have no intention of reviewing all of his assertions point by point, one assertion deserves more careful, dare I say rational, scrutiny. He had me puzzled with calculations involving what he calls an all in contract price based on a 40 percent capacity factor:

Assuming a (moderately generous) 40% average capacity factor, the all-in contract price for Bluewater's power is about 14 cents/kWh in 2007 dollars. Add to that the 1.9 cents they expect to realize from the Production Tax Credit and the price to Bluewater is about 16 cents, again in 2007 dollars, rather than the 15 cents I suggested yesterday. I asked him to clarify that point: So to be clear, the energy component is about $98.50/MWh, the REC component is about $19.75/MWh, and the capacity price is about $70.65/kW-yr, which at a 40% capacity factor works out to about $20/MWh, bringing the total effective contract price (in 2007 $s) to just under $140/MWh or 14 cents/kWh.

The sheer volume of his comments have made for slow going, given my ongoing interest in my work/life balance, but I eventually caught on to one fundamental error. He refers to "the price to Bluewater" in explaining his 40 percent capacity factor. Actually, the price in the power purchase agreement (PPA) is the price to Delmarva, not Bluewater. Mr. Hogan seems to have confused inputs with outputs. The erroneous inclusion of his capacity factor results in this all in price that he states is too expensive, which it would be if it were true.
In other words, he interpreted Bluewater’s price as its cost and added a capacity factor to compensate for those times when the wind farm won’t be productive. The problem is that the price Bluewater negotiated in the PPA already takes expected productivity into account. By adding in spurious capacity factor, Mr. Hogan makes it easy to portray Bluewater’s price as extravagantly expensive.
So who is Michael T. Hogan? He gave us some background on kavips:

I am an industry veteran of 27 years; I have developed power projects around the world, about $8 billion worth, and my company developed wind farms onshore and offshore in the UK. I am currently doing research at MIT on renewable portfolio standards in the Environmental Policy & Planning Department. The counsel for the Energy Committee, Randall Sparks [sic], asked me to provide testimony regarding the project financing aspects of the Bluewater project because I’m a project financing expert.

He seems to have embarked on a personal crusade to correct the errors of those who favor the Bluewater Wind project:

After sitting through the hearings, though, I can’t say the same thing about BWW and their shareholders. I was shocked at some of the misrepresentations and inaccuracies in their testimony, and that day I promised myself I’d do what I could to make sure that the decision on the BWW contract was made on the basis of fact, not emotion and misinformation.

But as we see, Mr. Logan's arguments themselves have not been free from error. There are others, which I and some knowledgeable observers have identified, but inventing an all in contract price based on a spurious 40 percent capacity factor seems like a big enough mistake to cast some doubt on his grasp of the situation.