A Glance at Wind Power

I can see where we need SMART government subsidies here for the development of this technology.

And I mean smart, not an unguaranteed loan or grant in exchanged for a nice donation to my election campaign.

cough, cough,....^{solyndra and the likes,} ,...cough, cough!

Cool picture of the turbulence effect...

There's actually a formula for spacing of the turbines

The towers would never be positioned in rows like those shown here. This must be a digitally created pic.

You don't want a turbine directly downwind of another, because the turbulence (and the reduction in the energy carried by the wind) downstream of the first unit makes the second one semi-useless. As you said, there are methods for placement of turbines to get the most energy from each one, considering the available range of wind speeds, direction, flow patterns, terrain and obstructions.

My new desktop wallpaper!

May i ask where did you get that? By the way, this picture,don't show this would affect the wheather in same scale that be an important energy source?.-

Instead of using very tall crane can we manage with a smaller crane if supporting structure is made telescopic?. Lowering for maintenance too will be easy.

Only if the rotor wings were significantly shorter than the mast.

Telescopic towers would need to be a lot chunkier than a rigid monopole to have the same strength.

Each telescoping tower would need a built in crane to facilitate the proposed "advantage".

Not looking too attractive.

If you build a well(lined with concrete) near the base of the tower,deep enough to accommodate the vertical blade(other two will be above the ground 120 deg apart) when the structure is lowered the bottom blade will go into it and the machine will be accessible for maintenance. During erection only,a crane will be needed.

Why didn't you say so?!!

That's a lot simpler and cheaper than renting a crane.

There is another suggestion to keep the generator at ground level and drive it mechanically or hydraulically. If turbine gets damaged the generator/transformer will be safe. Also capacity of crane required will be less as it need to lift only the turbine not generator/transformer.

Why do you claim that bird killing is not a problem at sea? Unless you are very far offshore, there are birds flying over the water. Is it because their bodies are carried away and cannot be counted that it is suddenly a non issue?

.....there are dead birds?

Yep. Just look along any road near you. The wind generators kill them by the millions and the wind farm operators pick them up in big truck loads and toss them along the roads to hide it.

I just saw a dead bird scattering truck go by a few minutes ago this morning.

Heck they even go so far as to shoot them out of the ditch right into the front of my pickup while I am driving so it looks like I killed them. The did it to me twice this week!

Heck they even go so far as to shoot them out of the ditch right into the front of my pickup while I am driving so it looks like I killed them. The did it to me twice this week!
That is sick!

Why don't they fix some warning light or employ low/high frequency noise to keep the birds away.

Warning lights can attract some birds because some birds use stars for navigation, and the lights would be mistaken for stars.......... THUMP!

Will a particular colour of light distract birds?.

....come to think of it the chickens at the market are looking a bit odd.

You could tell by the dead cats along the roadside where they get killed going after the dead birds. But the wind farm operators scoop 'em up and sprinkle them around the base of the wind generators to confuse everyeone
Del

So that's why there is a dead cat truck always going the opposite direction of the dead bird truck every morning!?

Well that would explain the piles of dead cats in our local wind farm then!

(I always wondered how they got them to jump 200+ feet in the air!)

Have you noticed that the guys running the dead bird launchers along the roads must have a sense of humor. Every once in awhile they shoot a cat or dog or odd critter out in front of you while driving as well.

how much more low frequency noise do you want. Its what windfarms do.

They should put it off the coast of Martha's Vineyard, and you'll see if you don't already know where this twat's true convictions lie.

Horseshoe Shoals (Nantucket Sound) is actually off the coast of Martha's Vineyard almost equidistant from Nantucket, Martha's Vineyard and the South Cape. But it's not on the side of the island with the biggest homes and richest people. Interestingly enough, on a clear day the Kennedy's should be able to see them from their compound in Hyannis so quite frankly, I'm surprised this is actually coming to fruition.

Ah yes, the Cape Wind project. A great idea, that is, as long as you can't see them from the Compound.

FYI BSR, Worcester now has it's own windy thingy:

http://www.holyname.net/green/index.html

A new semi-permanent addition to the skyline.

As a "Codder" the actual cost to the consumer will be a LOT higher! 18.7 cents/kwh is higher than 7.928 cents/kwh

any numbers from design to replacements per sold kwh?

Wind advocates might do well to look for another job -- instead of power generation -- that wind can do. Wind is intermittent, requiring backup gas capacity, and when wind is available (mostly at night) power is cheap. One might reasonably conclude from these two facts that the prospects for wind electricity sales are dim and will remain so, no matter what the political situation might be. Screaming louder for government subsidies is not a long-term solution for the wind business, which seems to be locked into a fantasy from the '70s about "renewables" replacing fossil fuels.

The US has 50 GW of installed wind capacity. But the capacity factor is small, so wind capacity is largely wasted. It is a failure of imagination, not of technology or political policy, that has put the wind business where it finds itself today.

A better use for wind would be a prime mover for pumping or grinding things. The first picture. For example, grinding waste for upgrading by pyrolysis (see http://www.freepatentsonline.com/20120193271.pdf) or cracking CO2 to produce syngas and nanotubes (see http://www.freepatentsonline.com/20100146927.pdf and http://www.freepatentsonline.com/20090200176.pdf).

Wind advocates might do well to look for another job -- instead of power generation -- that wind can do. Wind is intermittent, requiring backup gas capacity,

sounds like a career in politics would do it, because politics have plenty of backup gas......

Wind power could be used for charging batteries,to produce and store compressed air as energy source,for pumped storage system etc. At the same time for the purpose of fuel saving in grids fed by wind power some diesel power could be kept as standby instead of using fuel continuously.

We have pretty unreliable power. Several hours of outages every other month or so not uncommon. Our legislature "decided" that alternative energy is the "wave" of the future and ordered our power company to generate 20% of the power by alternative sources. 7 Wind turbines have appeared in the past 4 weeks. Looks as if several more are being planted. It will be interesting to see how well this works. Hopefully they will publish the figures. As our published rates are $.04 to $.05 per KWH, the billed rate last month was $.285 any increase will hurt. Isaac shouldn't cause a problem. How do they stand up to tornadoes?

Those are awesome pics, how did they get the turbulence to appear?

I huff and I puff and I blow them all down!

WINDPOWER in a relationship to a kind of "COP/$" ended up with consideringthis:

MegW/hr claims for a year in a place with ~11-to-12 mph winds per some wind-standards (been reading as "their's")

for every $1000.oo as a proposed installed estimate has left me with a resultant as follows:

one 55 million dollar project of the 1980's disbanded as one pointed out in other threads--- a .15

a recent quote in Aug 2013: .67 ( "100 mwh / of some annually standardizing outputs per $ 150,000.oo" installed estimate )