wind mills and Wind Fall, a look at wind energy...

[billc]

The problems of wind mill produced energy are examined in this article...

http://pjmedia.com/blog/blowing-away-the-windmill-lies/

Windfall is that rare documentary that casts a skeptical gaze on claims made by the left, though in this case the environmental lobby’s interests line up neatly with those of the Wall Street investment banks that bankroll this supposed miracle cure to our alleged greenhouse-gas problem.

It turns out that the wind turbines are 400 feet tall — the height of a good-sized Manhattan skyscraper placed incongruously in the sprawling countryside. A single blade weighs seven tons. The diameter of the cement base of the windmills can be 250 feet. Once erected, they spoil the natural beauty of the nearby mountains, they cast giant shadows, they throw off dangerous quantities of ice. People living under them complain of health problems, difficulty sleeping, and strange pressure in their ears, and the low, intense thudding noises of the turbines are compared to the effect of living next door to a disco that never closes, or being under a plane that never lands. Another citizen says that living near a windmill is like having “your vacuum cleaner running beside your bed all night.”

Wow, sounds like a good time had by all with these windmills...

The article also talks about the killing of birds and bats due to windmills, the cutting down of trees and building service roads, oh, and the greedy walll street types funding the windmill projects, with government help...

So why are these windmills being built in the first place? As is often the case when something bizarre and senseless catches on, there is a one-word answer. Government provides huge subsidies to wind production, and it’s not much of a surprise when Windfall looks at a list of investors in the monstrosities and names like “Morgan Stanley” and “Goldman Sachs” pop up. Apparently depreciation schemes encourage the wind farms to be sold and re-sold and re-re-sold to generate tax advantages — a blizzard of paperwork that snows over the original green purpose. Absurdly, the state of New York announced in 2004 a goal that 25 percent of its energy would come from renewable resources by 2013. Many other states have passed similarly cockamamie mandates, as if reordering the energy economy happens by wishing it so. With subsidies sloshing around the budgetary trough — even in an age of so-called “austerity”– large industrial firms such as GE and Wall Street banks are only too eager to come running and lap up the excess like purring kittens.

 

[geezer]

So Bill, what's your own take on wind turbines? The article you posted is pretty negative. But it seems to me like you could come up with similar problems with any kind of energy development. My brother is a recently retired public power utility exec. and from what he said, you'd hear negative stuff like that every time they tried to put in a new power line, gas pipelne, sub-station, or heaven help you, a desperately needed power plant. A couple dozen NIMBYs could stall a project for years that would benefit 200,000 people.

Personally, I'd like to see some energy diversification and less dependency on foreign oil. I'd also like to see a little more common sense when it comes to projects that are necessary to the development of the North-American economy. Like regarding pipelines for example. Especially, if you know we are going to have to build it eventually anyway.

BTW, it's sad about birds getting chopped up in those turbines. And fish getting chopped up in hydro-electric turbines. And roadkill on the highways, too. I drove up to southern Utah a couple of years back and in one morning passed five dead deer hit by cars the night before. I do think measures to protect wildlife should be taken. Reasonable measures. In other words, my truck is not for sale!

 

[Steve]

Ugh. I'm not going to even bother looking up the articles again. I've posted several times that the real issue with wind, water and solar isn't production. It's storage of the electricity. The stats are out there if your politics don't get in the way of seeing them.

The biggest pro for coal/non-renewables is control. You want to increase production of electricity during peak periods? Burn more coal. Can't do that with wind.

 

[Sukerkin]

...

No can't be bothered to try to show a power systems engineers perspective on this - like BillC even cares about reality that doesn't revolve around his political-hobby-horse anyhow.

As it happens, I had been considering posting a thread on Alternative Energy, particularly the mistake that is the current design and implementation of wind-farms. Hopefully I shall be able to pull that together this week sometime.

 

[billc]

I think that wind turbines on a large scale do not work. Living in a cold state for 3 months of the year I like power to be reliable, and wind isn't going to do that. If they actually make it as efficient as current energy sources then fine, go for it. Just don't tell me, well...they don't generate as much energy, the energy generated costs more, you still need coal, natural gas and oil in order to back up unreliable wind, and the only way to actually build these things is with huge government subsidies, because they can't make money with them...but other than that, they are a good idea. On top of that, add the list of actual problems with the wind mills listed in the article and they become even less attractive.

Also, drill off the shore, in Anwar and build the pipeline, and build more nuclear plants, and then let's talk about wind energy.

I could care less how we get the energy, as long as it is as, or more efficient than what we have now. If you could achieve the same amount of energy as coal, natural gas, oil and nuclear by running hamsters in cages...and you could keep PETA off your back, that would be fine too.

The biggest pro for coal/non-renewables is control. You want to increase production of electricity during peak periods? Burn more coal. Can't do that with wind.​

Yeah, that would be a pretty big Pro for the other sources, especially in cold weather states.

As to the pipeline, don't count on it being built if obama wins. He is a true believer and he went against his union supporters right in front of an election year.

 

[billc]

Here is another article on the problems with wind energy...from Ireland...

http://www.independent.ie/opinion/c...stbite-and-death-due-to-exposure-3012098.html

Wind power in Ireland actually produces only 22pc of its capacity: would you
spend ¿100,000 on a car if it meant that ¿78,000 of the purchase price was
wasted? It gets worse. On a really cold day, we actually need about 5,000
megawatts, but yesterday wind was producing under 50 megawatts: a grand total of
1pc of requirements.

Yet despite such appalling figures, we legally prohibit civil servants from
even looking at the nuclear option. They won't even take a phone-call on the
subject. Instead, the fiction has taken hold amongst our media classes that we
are close to being an exporter of renewable energy through the much-vaunted
interconnector with Britain. But this is grotesquely untrue. We shall actually
be exporting through the connector only 3pc of the time, and importing 86pc,
with the system otherwise idle.

Mad, isn't it? And madder still that RTE or the BBC will continue to trot out
their pet wind-enthusiasts to bluster balderdash and poppycock about global
warming and how renewables are the solution -- and without the contrary point of
view ever being given an airing. This is dogma, as created, promulgated and
enforced by the John Charles McQuaids of our time -- and if sceptics are not
actually anathematised from the pulpit, they are ruthlessly and systematically
ignored. These dishonest, hypocritical and deceitful energy policies are now
widely accepted by our political and teaching classes as being the very
embodiment of environmentalist virtue. Such imbecilic virtue, if implemented as
energy policy across Europe, could have brought about a human catastrophe last
weekend

this is why reliable energy is important to cold countries...

Russia's main gas-company, Gazprom, was unable to meet demand last weekend as
blizzards swept across Europe, and over three hundred people died. Did anyone
even think of deploying our wind turbines to make good the energy shortfall from
Russia?

Of course not. We all know that windmills are a self-indulgent and
sanctimonious luxury whose purpose is to make us feel good. Had Europe genuinely
depended on green energy on Friday, by Sunday thousands would be dead from
frostbite and exposure, and the EU would have suffered an economic body blow to
match that of Japan's tsunami a year ago. No electricity means no water, no
trams, no trains, no airports, no traffic lights, no phone systems, no sewerage,
no factories, no service stations, no office lifts, no central heating and even
no hospitals, once their generators run out of fuel.

 

[Sukerkin]

You stop making sense right now! :lol:.

As to the Independent story, it's a bit of a moot point as we over here in Blighty are going to have more nuke stations and have been for the past number of years - as I've said before, I know because we have been contracted to do the control systems for them. Of course they could still be cancelled but that would be daftness of the highest order, even higher than building wind farms that will never pay back their environmental costs and may well reach the end of their service life with it being uneconomic to replace the turbine housings.

 

[billc]

Who were you addressing there Sukerkin? Do you support wind or...what exactly do you mean?

 

[Sukerkin]

I thought it was pretty plain.

1) I was talking to you. 2) Wind power in it's current implementation is uneconomic once government subsidy is removed (we do control systems for them (off-shore wind-farms) too by the way). They are also non-effective environmentally as the damage caused by the materials used in their construction is never off-set by the 'clean' energy they produce.

 

[billc]

Well, considering your post #4 it made me wonder if you directed the post to steve or geezer.

 

[Sukerkin]

Yeah, I relented as it looked like that poor, dead, political horse was taking less of a flogging than usual and this is an area where I have current {yeah, electricity based pun attack! } expertise.

 

[Carol]

Yeah, I relented as it looked like that poor, dead, political horse was taking less of a flogging than usual and this is an area where I have current {yeah, electricity based pun attack! } expertise.

I love engineers. :inlove: