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Wind Farms: What’s Your Position?
I’m against them, personally. There is a big push in my corner of the state to build wind farms — my county has one already and another being built. We tried to fight it, but when the editor of the paper at the county seat is gung-ho, we didn’t stand a chance, and none of the 30-some other people did either.
The county where I work is putting up a pretty good fight against them. A couple with a private airstrip (they’ve had it many years) will be severely impacted. The company involved came in and bought leases with ‘hush’ clauses in the contracts, and many of the people who sold leases don’t live where the farm will be. The number of towers planned has increased, as has the height.
When one of the company reps was asked if the towers would survive an F5 tornado, she said, “Show me the tornado.” I think that’s pretty flippant and dismissive, don’t you? When people brought up the number of bats, migratory birds, and birds of prey killed by wind turbines, the answer was ‘cats kill many times more birds’. How many bats have you seen your cat catch? Can they kill a swan, bald eagle, or snow goose? Why add something that kills, some say, over 500,000 birds a year?
What happens to old wind turbines? Do you know how far down in the ground they have to go for the base/foundation? What about emissions generated in mining the rare earths and ore to build and transport them?
Jobs? A few local cement contractors will have work, the road rebuilding will make a few temporary jobs, but permanent jobs? At most, 12 to 14, and they won’t be local people. Most won’t move to the area, so schools, etc., won’t see much impact.
Let’s “shoot the breeze” on this, shall we?
Published in General
noD,
Combined wind and solar farms are done, at least occasionally — I’ve seen pictures, though I haven’t seen the arrays themselves. The biggest win, I’d think, would be the energy storage and transmission savings from co-location.
Flywheel storage is an interesting concept. Other than its use in some vehicle energy reclamation systems, I’ve read essentially nothing about it. In the case of wind power in particular, it seems that it would be compounding the risk of bearing failure in an already troubled technology. And, unlike with a wind turbine, the energy release in the case of a flywheel bearing failure would be, I think, pretty impressive. That would be something to see.
I just replaced a bunch of CFLs in my recessed lighting with nice LED retrofits. I now have a bag full of CFLs. Please provide your home address so I can send them to you.
The California Duck Must Die
A post from General Electric does a good job of explaining the impact of increasing use of “renewables” (solar, in this case) on the problem of balancing grid demand and grid supply in California, and the way that energy storage can help. The post does not, however, address the problem of prolonged periods of time…days or weeks…when the “renewable” source is inhibited by weather conditions.
Hot damn, there are two free* CFL disposal sites right in my town.
*Free meaning: paid for by the tax payer.
Correction. This particular program isn’t paid for with taxes. Rather, it’s paid for by consumers, who pay a little extra when they buy lights of any kinds at particular retailers. That bit extra is sent by the retailer to the program operator, in this case a “non-profit”. The non-profit then operates a collection and disposal process. I guess that ain’t so bad. Except for the fact that these mother flipping CFLs were mandated by the government in the first place.
I already addressed that…
The progressive project is and always has been to transfer wealth, status, and power from those who produce to those who persuade. That is the sum total of all the reasons wind farms are built. They are theft.
Oh neat. Though I was thinking of something a couple orders of magnitude larger.
Get behind them. I mean that literally rather than figuratively. Those things will rip you to shreds. Speaking for my eagle and hawk friends.
Safety is important. I see by your avatar that you wear a seat belt while posting from your car. Excellent!
These would be high power, high speed flywheel energy storage units, about 10,000 RPM, magnetic bearings, running in a full vacuum, installed underground. Sensors can provide early detection of potential failure.
As opposed to this application for flywheels that comes to us from the wonderful August 1970 issue of Popular Science. Wouldn’t want to get in a fender bender with this puppy, you’ll take out a city block.
Yes, I find that, without the seat belt, posting while driving causes me to spill my beer
Sounds expensive, but then short-term energy storage is the Achilles’s heel of alternative energy, so I guess all of the choices are probably pricey. I’d like to see a comparison of initial and operating costs for batteries, capacitors, fuel cells, flywheels, and other storage forms (molten salt, pumped water, etc.). Given that footprint likely isn’t a big deal in these installations, but that unpredictable downtime — hence potentially long discharge time — is, I have a hard time seeing flywheels as a great choice. But I’m just guessing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1MnX1wT7BRU
Well, that’s just it: we should probably be thinking smaller, not bigger. If I can get 80% of my homes electricity needs by a hybrid system that includes multiple sources and efficient storage, that’s actually a huge deal with cost-per-KwH and cost-per-Ah both going down down down, it’s possible. No government, no greenies. Just the free market and smart people who like to save money. We aren’t there yet. But we will get there.
I’m ok, on principle, with so called green energy as long as it’s profitable on its own terms.
No subsidies, government or otherwise, no artificial economics regarding carbon emissions, no mandates requiring utilities to purchase green energy over carbon based.
If green energy holds up on its own, including the necessity of investing in specialized generation to provide power when the wind dies and clouds block the sun, then I’m fine with it.
You don’t need to invest in specialized generation. It’s already there. Renewable energy can be used to supplement that.
This just doubles or triples the capital costs of energy. Constructing additional generation sufficient to cover the absence of wind or solar indicates one should be building that generation instead of wind and solar. Especially when that other generation’s complete life-cycle cost per kWh is less than wind or solar. When wind and solar have battery technology that lets them actually follow energy demand just as well as throttlable fuel-powered generation, at a competitive price, we can talk. Until then, grid-connected wind and solar are detrimental to the grid and detrimental to the economy. Just say no.
Off-grid? Go for it.
When people talk about batteries and energy storage in these debates, the green energy enthusiasts ignore the fact that fuel-powered generation has storage built-in: piles of coal, and tanks of oil or LNG. And it is storage that doesn’t care just how long the sun won’t shine or the wind won’t blow, because the storage is portable. Ship in more coal or ship or pipe in more liquid fuel and you just keep going. When battery storage or pumped-hydro or flywheels or any other infrastructure-based storage runs out, the grid that depends on it goes dark. Too bad for it.
I’ll be happy with green energy when it’s output is used to efficiently synthesize liquid fuels from scratch.
Actually you do. Standard generation is designed to run at one speed for long periods of time, much like jet engines on long range aircraft are (the most wear and tear a jet aircraft has is take-offs and landings, so much so it’s how they measure the lifespan of a particular aircraft).
Varying the speed of standard generation several times a day to follow sun and wind generation fluctuations has its own medium to long term costs, its own wear and tear, that will reduce the lifetime of that turbine. Whether you pay to replace that generation or pay to establish specialized generation, you do pay.
Completely understand what you’re saying, Phil. However, I’d be satisfied if the mode of storage were such that (1) it could level energy output throughout the majority of downtime (clouds, calm), and (2) its acquisition and operation costs, when combined with the cost of the wind/solar farm itself, resulted in electricity competitive with conventional baseload sources. I’m perfectly willing to entertain alternative technologies. I just don’t want them foisted on us as part of a green religion movement.
Do you have records of the relative usage of the various sources of energy?
I hate them! They are ugly, murderous, and freeze up in frigid temperatures. Plus, stating the obvious, they only work when the wind blows. I did extensive research and discovered that often times the wind is not blowing when I am needing electricity. NIMBY!
But I hate those outdoor LED Christmas lights that look like they’re vibrating (makes my eyes hurt!)……
My position has always been that we wouldn’t have to consider whether building these things is a good idea if building them was actually a good idea.
When the technology is mature, it will be a no-brainer. Consider that we are making advances. So if we build a giant infrastructure of poor-yield, untested turbine monstrosities or poison-panels today, we will have giant fields of garbage to haul off tomorrow as well as huge concrete slabs that may or may not be useful for whatever form the eventual better tech calls for.
Homeowners get to take their own chances; taxpayers get to pay for whatever their venal easily-corrupted and scientifically ignorant representatives make them take.
I think they look cool. Haven’t been able to conclude if they are ever a cost effective energy source. I kinda doubt they are except in perhaps very precise climate conditions.
People need to get over nuclear. That’s what we should probably have more of. A big subset of Liberals tend to be against anything that might let humans do what they want (if it uses energy) though…
There is an excellent, on-point article on Townhall, by Paul Dreisen, “Saved by Pseudo-renewable Energy?”. It covers so many of the points brought out by all of you, the timing of my post and his article is eerie.
Also—here’s my victory yell—MY FIRST POST TO GET TO THE MAIN FEED! WOO-HOO!
Thank you to everyone who got me there! I let out a yell when I saw it—that is so cool!
Tsunamis and earthquakes and heated water discharges aside, breeder reactors leave little waste for waste sites to be fought against. From Wikipedia (emphasis mine):
Windmills have ruined the natural environment of Washington State. It’s sickening to look at what used to be untamed wilderness covered in big fat ugly white boondoggles. Liberals are such hypocrites. The Columbia River gorge… that provides renewable electricity from hydroelectric dams already, is covered in the ugly things. But this is the East side, not the Westside where the voting happens. They are hypocrite fascists over there in King County.
Note: the dams would never be built today… but they predate me so they look natural to me :)
So true, grumble.
That isn’t the Columbia Basin, that is still the same River, but the East side of the Cascade Mountains is a “shrub steppe” ecosystem, and it basically forms a basin of glacier origin. It gets very very little rain and is dependent on man made irrigation that was part of FDR’s projects in the depression.