World's Largest Wind Farm

thanks osso, you're awesome.
xoxo

Hah, not.
There are a bunch of threads on tagging.. a lot of us were confused at first.

Were I you, I might have a general tag like "energy resources" that you'd always go to first for that kind of subject..

i'm not an expert !!!
but i understand the old turbines didn't make it ... they were spinning much too fast .
78 turbines have just come online about 3-5 miles from here - on wolfe island at the lower end of lake ontario .
they are moving ever so SLOOOOOWLY - blades are actually turned when winds pick up to keep them running at an even and slow speed .
there might indeed be some long-term detrimental effect ... just like there are claims that living near transmission lines can damage your health ... and young people should not hold a cellphone to their ear - british health scientists claim it results in long-term brain damage since kids have thinner skulls .
if we use a cellphone we should all use it with an earbud only - but who does ?

(right now i have my stereo cranked up realy loud - probably not good for my hearing)

ideally we should probably all produce our own power on site ; be " self-staining" - but i don't think that's easy and inexpensive - most people like comfort at a reasonable cost .
hbg

if you look at this list of cellphone dangers , you may want to ditch your cellphone - but cellphones have probably also used lives ... therefor ... ???

http://www.google.ca/search?sourceid=navclient&aq=0&oq=cell+phone+%2b+health+danger&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4GGLJ_enCA233CA233&q=cell+phone+health+dangers

the wolfe island windfarm as seen from the eastern shore of lake ontario last winter .
blades are moving so slowly , one doesn't need a fast exposure to take a pix .



btw many migrating birds die every year from bouncing into skycrapers at night - they get disorientd by the lights .

I am very interested to hear you say that the worry re birds is not founded.


Complaints here are about noise for anyone living nearby and sheer ugliness (we had one proposed for near suburbia which I think did not happen.)

dlowan wrote re. windturbines :



imo nothing beats transmission towers and lines for sheer ugliness .
by using wind- , water- and other power sources locally we might be able to greatly diminish the need for ever more transmission towers - that stretch for hundreds of miles across the countryside .

i really don't like smokestacks either ...



... but we all do want plenty of electricity - so it's got to come from somwhere .

as for killing of birds , i understand that the good old "housecat" - which only too often let out of the house - is the greatest threat to the birds . they simply have a natural hunting and killing instinct that one cannot control .
good old aunt bee would of course say that her little puddy-cat would never ever harm a bird .
hbg

It baffles me that anyone could think wind turbines are ugly.

Cycloptichorn

cyclo :

how about building turbines that look like a beautiful dali painting ?
we'd all be raving about the beauty of it , wouldn't we ?



aunt bee : "now that is what i call a beautiful turbine ! " .
hbg

I agree wholeheartedly. IMHO it's not like it's really an eyesore that presents issues as does having a nuke in your backyard.
Methinks it's a red-herring that NIMBYs toss out just to keep their flappers yapping. Cell towers might not be so pretty, but they learned to disguise them a bit (as evergreens). The Dutch have had windmills for centuries. What's wrong with those?

in europe , many countries now have large windfarms out in the waters of the north-sea - there are well over 100 of those windfarms .
they look rather impressive when one cruises near them . we saw quite a few on a roundtrip dover-st. petersburg in 2003 .
hbg

I like your routine wind fan, but what is that gawdawful dali shitteroo?

osso wrote :



it's for those looking for an artistic touch in their windfarms - don't tell me you don't like dali - that would really be a shame .
it's been suggested putting turbines inside transmission towers - perhaps that might not be a bad idea - if it's workable .
hbg

Le'me level with you, hamburger. That line of transmission towers looks way better than the Dali.

so you really don't like dali ... that makes at least two of us - though he was a crafty salesman , i believe !
hbg

Boone Pickens cancellation of his north Texas wind farm is a bit hard to understand, given the great lengths to which he went to publicize his intentions.

The key issues for wind farm development are two;
1. A great deal of new transmission capability is needed because the good locations for wind turbines are generally far from where the power is consumed. Hundreds of permits from local governments are generally required to build a transmission line of any length, and this makes project and capital planning very difficult.
2. The capital costs for the net electrical power generated by wind turbines are far greater than those for coal, gas or even nuclear power stations. The major factor here is the so-called "capacity factor", which is the percent of the maximum generating capacity of the power source that is actually realized in generating power. For coal plants the capacity factor is about 80%; for gas about 65%; and for nuclear plants the average for the past decade is 92%. Economic factors enter into this - the price of coal or gas per KW-hr generated is much higher than that of nuclear fuel, so utilities tend to keep their nuclear plants running at 100% 24/7/365. Gas turbines are the first plants shutdown at night when demand falls. The capacity factor of wind turbines is limited, not by economics because the "fuel" is free. Instead it is limited by the wind itself. Wind turbines must be built to handle the highest local winds, but the power output is determined by the average wind velocity. As a result the current world average capacity factor for wind power is about 24% - thus a new 3 MW turbine will do well to average 0.75 MW output.

This is why wind power is so expensive and why it today accounts for little over 1% of our electrical generation. The propaganda of wind power advocates usually cites power and cost per unit of power generating capacity installed, instead of that actually generated. Multiply their claimed costs by 3 or 4 to get the real cost of power generated.

No, I don't like Dali at all.

Snarls. I didn't like him before all the wild promotion. Don't get my goat.

Okay, I like that photo, hamburgboy, but you're not getting me to cozy up to Dali.

I don't know why I thought someone posted that they were getting faster. Sorry, I think they meant to say that the wind helixes are getting smaller. Anyway, I have a report done on the US economic impacts of windfarms, if anyone is interested. It's a .pdf file, I could e-mail it.

NREL - National Renewable Energy Laboratory
Analysis: Economic Impacts of Wind Applications in Rural Communities
June 18, 2004 " January 31, 2005
M. Pedden
Eugene, Oregon

Due to laws of physics and advanced R&D..wind turbines are more efficient and the lighter-weight blades need to spin slower. Smaller stronger lighter helix (worm?) gear allow less RPM in order to get good power yield.

Any physic expert members (like Farmerman and Rockhead) feel free to correct my understanding if I misstated.

Yes some advances have been made, but wind power still suffers from three major defects;
1. Large and expensive transmission lines are required to collect the power from many small generators and deliver it from the windy areas where it is generated to where it is consumed.
2. The capacity factor for wind power is heavily limited by basic physical considerations that aren't going to change. Moreover, because the wind doesn't blow all the time, and power demand is continuous, the plant capacity to deliver the same power by other means must be kept available. Building a wind farm does NOT enable a coal fired plant to be shut down.
3. The total real cost (per Kw-hr) of electrical power generated by wind turbines (i.e. without mnandates or subsidies) remains more than double that for coal-fired plants and almost triple that for nuclear ones.