Wind farms

[nikkie]

Those giant wind farms, do all the windmills point the same way or are they staggered to get different wind directions or do they move round?

In Britain, you'd have to make them move round.
This accounts for a lot of the cost as well as adding to the considerable amount of lubricating oil they consume.
The technology is not advanced, but you have load bearing components which move which therefore push up the maintenance costs.

Just wondered we have a massive one near us (just finished or maybe not quite finished) and there keeps being letters to the local newspaper about only 20 moving today/only 30 moving etc, I just wondered if they wouldn't all work at once as they face different ways?

They move around to find the wind. If you happen to be watching when the wind changes direction, you will see them come to a stop and then slowly turn to 'seek' it again. They also always turn clockwise when in action.

The wind doesn't always blow, so wind farms can only ever be part of the answer to clean energy needs. I know of quite a few wind farms and the usual letters in the paper I have seen are protesting about dislike of seeing them. Ironic really that noone complains about huge ugly pylons, do they

Morcambe Bay is now full of them and its rare that its not windy here!

I quite like them, they look Alieny

I like them too, before we had them in the UK I visited Denmark and they are everywhere, whole fields of them. I was really taken with them and couldn't wait until they appeared ove here.

We have a couple of new developments here and of course lots of objectors, ok it is only part of the energy solution but I don't suppose they want a nuclear reactor next to there village, or a coal burning power station either.

OurTesco has just got one , past it the other day , apparantly people don't like it as its noisy at night (not working yet and its at least 1/2 mile from any houses )

In the one nearest us they took recordings for a period of time before it was constructed, so they have something to compare it with later on if people nearby complain that they think the wind turbines are noisy. It is a common concern, but the technical advances mean the mechanics are quieter than the earliest types of turbine, even though they are bigger and therefore can generate more.

At half a mile away, I doubt they would find them noisy. You can stand beneath a turbine that is turning quite fast and still hold a conversation without raising your voice.

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Think we have a lot of NIMBYs here

I think they're fab. But I'd Loooove to see the government/private enterprise stick billions of pounds into wave energy - we have a lot of sea, we should use it.

I think what's always bothered me about wind farms is the vast amounts of concrete used to build them, and the energy required to make it, and all the new infrastructure that goes with them. Also the fact that the developers generally submit completely cr*p environmental statements but that's a whole other rant that belongs in my office not on MN!

Wave power suffers from much the same problems as wind, lots of equipment put in places that will break it.
I agree that we should play a bit with these whacky technologies, but our main energy needs are going to be met by nuclear, not becauase it's nice, but because we need a core of heavy energy production.
"Greens" haven't thought through all the bollocks they half understand and spout.
We are going to hit the consequences of our abuse of the planet hard, and we are no going to like it.
Any plausible model of the next century's atmosphere has occasional very strong winds, and increase not just in the average temperature, but the amount it varies. Windmills don't look clever in that scenario. We are going to need serious power to heat and cool ourselves.
Water is going to be a pain, and to deal with that will need heavy energy, not windmills, and certainly not solar.
Even if you ignore climate change, we are going to run out of oil & gas soon. The BBC likes to talk of a given wind or wave site "powering 5,000 homes". IE running their lights and TVs. If it had to run their heat, power their transport, and pump their water and manufacture their tranport, that would drop to a less BBC-friendly gushing headline of the form "£30 million wind farm powers a couple of tower blocks and a chip shop".

IMO we should be focussing our energies (sorry!) on providing renewable energy on a community basis. There is so much wastage in the national grid that by the time energy generated by wind gets in the system it's a mere drop in the ocean. Community ownership of these projects is what's needed - I think if people knew that their electicity was actually coming from their own local small wind farm then that would encourage a wholly different attitude. It could also be used as a hook on which to hang all sorts of other energy-saving measures.

what does anyone think about Ecotricity (the energy company)? You could switch to them (while you're setting up your community wind farm).

Thing is we evolved a national grid because local power generation is not a great idea. Equipment breaks down, needs maintenance etc.
A big and truly hard problem is forecasting demand, some of the smartest people I know do this, and frankly they don't get it all that right.
You simply can't help but end up with more energy than you need in some places, and not enough in others. Thus more generators than necessary get built to get people though the ups and downs. Costs more as well.

Short version: the national grid saves resources.
As for "community" resources, one only has to look at local government in this country to get really scared of them playing with matches.

Well yes I'd agree there DC (and I work for em for my sins!)

Fair enough you have to consider the infractructure and the energy involved in siting and producing the mechanisms for new technology , but this is the same for any source of energy both sustainable or otherwise.

If the same amount of finances had been put in to reasearching 'green' energy as was directed towards research into nuclear energy, we would have a very different source of energy.

The realistic sources of energy can plug striaght into the grid we already have.

Wind can't, and it's not just a matter of the infrastructure we have already built.
Good wind is mostly to be found in places where there aren't many people, and is very spread out. Lots of inefficient caples which not only waste energy but the metals used in the cables require a serious amount of energy in manufacture.

I accept that many have fallen for the green propaganda about "research". Nuclear power was developed very cheaply, was so easy that even socialist countries could knock up a plant. It turns out that there is at least one natural nuclear reactor that ocurred by accident in Africa.

It's not clear where you'd spend money on windmill research. All the technologies involved are old ,and already heavily researched.

The BBC stuff on this doesn't mention the big probles with wind, indeed you'd get the impression that the things just provided 100% clean, free energy forever.
Sadly they have gears and other moving bits that consume large amounts of lubricating oil.
Gears have been researched for a good 2000 years, and if there was any major improvement to be found, we'd know it by now.

The blades use aerodynamics, another heavily funded and now quite old technology. We're talking 10% here or there, not the factors of 5-10 you really want.

The conversion from mechanical to electrical energy loses quite a lot, and again vast amounts of money have gone into making dynamos more efficient.

The truly daffy ideas of solar electricity are the beneficiaries of huge amounts of research money. Cells are basically silicon chips, and although they are the most energy expensive things tht humans make, this has been reduced a little.

The thing is are we just to say f8ck it and keep using more and producemore and more nuclear energy, and just forget about all the health issues and waste management issues it brings?

Or should we blindly carry on using up all the fossils fuels we can find and ignore the fact we will eventually depleate all sources?

Shoulds we be researching how other forms of energy production can be more productive and efficent? In the future we may have no choice and other energy sources will be the only options, its not all wind farms and solar panels, there is already use of hydro electric produced power and biomass plants using waste products from other industries to produce power.

All energy sources are dangerous. If you do the numbers per unit of energy wind comes out very badly, and the processes used to make solar cells are quite amazingly polluting. California where a lot of silicon has been made has screwed it's groundwater big time producing only a tiny fraction of the amount needed for viable power generation.

As for making other sources more efficient, many are so mature that we are talking a few % here and there. People have been trying real hard for centuries to make engines and turbines more efficient.

We've already dammed a large % of the rivers that it's viable to dam. Humans like building dams. Small children will build them as entertainment. Dams are often ecological disasters, since by necessity they screw with large important water resources. In the middle east they contribute to increasingly terminal salination of the soil.
They also are very very dangerous when they break. Dambusters anyone ?

Biomass is viable in the very long term, but only after we've had at least 2 or 3 major climate disasters. The extinction of polar bears, penguins or whatever don't count as "major" on this scale, not indeed apparently does the death of a few thousand black people in the southern USA.
To make biomass actually produce more than it consumes you need genetic engineering.
Given that almost no white people have died in things we can viably blame on the climate, the greens would go 100% apeshit at this, and kill it stone dead.
Currently biomass is not an energy source, it is a form of racist/nationalist pseduo-economics. In N.America and Europe rich white farmers get subsidies, and in Latin America it gets used for "national dignity", ie subsidising mostly white farmers.

I think you are off down your own road here . I am talking about things like huge saw mills using their off cuts too produce their own power, but hey carry on, you obviously feel the need to vent something.

Nothing is perfect I know that!