Wind power rocks!

Our school is supposed to be getting wind powered generators for the science labs or something like that. Hurrah for wond power (or as most people like to call it, WIND)!

 

ahaha I found this slightly amusing ready... instead of wind power ROCKS... its should be wind power BLOWS hahaha.. get it hahahaha... wind power blows....

 

*clap, clap, clap*...

 

Denmark gets something like one fourth of its power from wind.

 

I saw a field of them when I was in England, it was quite a sight

 

http://www.ecolo.org/documents/documents_in_english/windmills-ferguson-04.htm

So did this guy. I guess there are at least two sides to every story. I've heard conflicting POVs on this topic.
I do applaud the effort to find cleaner energy. Though, you've definetly got to come at it with a critical mind.

 

There is a lot of mis-information out there... wind power on a large scale is no solution, simply because nobody can guarantee that the wind will be blowing when you want to boil your kettle, so the power companies have to keep their conventional power stations running all the while in case the wind stops. Net result? Zero savings, zero reduction of pollution, complete damage and destruction to our beautiful planet...

Did you know each leg of one of those giant wind turbines is bedded in to a huge concrete base the size of a large swimming pool?
Did you know that the energy (when the wind blows) generated from wind farms requires miles and miles of those horrible pylons and wires marching across the land to get the power back into the national grid?

In the UK, wind farms have destroyed the water table (because of the massive disruption from all that deep concreting, and because of the vibrations that go deep into the earth from the force of the spinning blades) so that most rural households near windfarms have lost the water supply they have had for generations from their wells and have had to go onto mains water!

In the UK, wind farms are built, and then sold to global corporations who are concerned only with the profit they can make from the government subsidies paid for the power they generate, and care not a thing for the local communities whose environment is totally destroyed by the construction process. Our beautiful mountain ranges and wild uplands are being sold to the highest bidder with all the profits from the manufacture and building of the wind farms going to the same huge global corporations?

Again, in the UK, wind farm sites change the planning zonage of the land they are built on from being either farmland or national park land (ie non-industrial land - no factories, no houses) to being industrial land... this means that the global corporations which end up owning the land can do almost anything they like with the land... factories, dumps, whatever - it is no longer zoned as green land, it is now brown industrial land.

All of which would be just about acceptable if the wind farms were useful in shutting down conventional polluting power stations - but they are not! They are of no benefit in terms of closing conventional power stations... the only benefit they provide is financial to global corporations!

Sorry if this is disturbing to you, and I have to add that I am totally in favour of wind energy used locally and domestically as a part of a complete alternative energy solution. But those huge wind farms are a total waste of time and yet another con. It is far more important to emphasise that we in the developed world must change our lifestyles, we must consume less, and we must all make our homes as energy-efficient as is possible.

 

Are they benificial in not building new conventional plants?

If wind power benifits the finances of global corprotations, it sounds like someone uses the electricity.

 

According the British Wind Energy Association, wind farms are active only 25% of the time, so we will still need conventional power generation for the other 75% of the time. Plus, because nobody knows exactly when the wind will blow at the right force to turn the turbines, we have to have conventional power stations standing by... wind turbines have a very limited operating range in terms of wind speed - too much wind and it is dangerous to let them generate, not enough wind and they cannot generate! So the answer is no, they are not going to stop any new power stations being built. Hence the present debate in the UK about building more nuclear power stations.

And the ONLY reason wind power benifits the finances of global corprotations is the massive government subsidies paid for generating "green" electricity. So, in effect, our money (from taxes) is going to global corporations in the name of "green power", but it's a complete con - the global corporations support the government which supports the global corporations...

 

Agree with you Satch. Wind farms remind me of the government subsidies paid for conifer planting years back, and it was the rich who got richer.

 

And, like the conifer planting, the environment will only suffer from all the huge turbines the government wants to sell to corporations. The conifers acidise the soil and use huge amounts of water to grow... and have you noticed how in a conifer forest, nothing else grows, no bird life, no animals? Compare that to a deciduous forest!

 

Where I live we have conifers and wind farms, and both are a blight on the landscape in their own particular way. Recently, people around the Tebay area fought a proposed plan for a giant wind farm...and won. Countryside around there is spectacular, and would have been ruined forever had the project gone ahead. Personally, I hate the damn wind turbines!

 

For me it's the huge "industrial wind farms" that do nothing to relieve the pressure on our existing energy generation systems that I don't agree with - but on a domestic level, and as part of an integrated alternative energy approach, wind power can be a good thing.

 

wind mills kill bats...

 

I like everything about them... I say build thousands and thousands.

 

Reactors kill everything given the right circumstances...

 

they were gunna put a large field of them out off the coast of martha's vineyard or nantucket but people were actually against it because it would ruin the view or something like that. I just don't get it...all they would see wouldve been a few white dots.....

 

Wind turbines are built where the wind blows most of the time. Your figures are probably referring to "full or rated capacity generation". According to the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA), Wind turbines generate electricity 65-80% of the time. They generate at full capacity 10% of the time, and on average, a typical plant will generate 30-35% of its rated capacity. Here's a link:
http://www.awea.org/pubs/factsheets/050629_Myths_vs_Facts_Fact_Sheet.pdf

 

In reality, Solar is the only form of energy. Without the sun, there would be no wind. There would be no bio-energy, no hydroelectricity, and no fossil fuels. Long term, solar and wind, are the only solutions. Fossil fuels and Uranium are non-sustainable, not just because of the pollutants and wastes, but because they're finite resources.

In todays energy market, wind energy fills a valuable gap. First of all, the electrical grid is served by multiple power sources, and is available to users across continents. The wind may not be blowing in one area, but it may be in another.

Any efficient Electrical utility company has on-demand sources of power. One of the most effective of these is hydroelectric power. Administrators can let the water levels above the damn build up, while an intermittent source, such as wind, is providing electricity. There is virtually ZERO start-up time for hydro-generated power. Coal burning (or any burning) is a different matter. They require a ramp-up.

Also, there are storage technologies for intermittent power sources. In general, these are not cost-feasible at the present time.

Here's an article I had published on storage technologies for intermittent power sources such as wind and solar.
http://www.earthtoys.com/emagazine.php?issue_number=06.06.01&article=waterstorage

Here are a few paragraphs (sources are available in the article):
>According to the US Department of Energy, "of the theoretical wind resource in the United States, only 4% is recoverable, but this is still 20% more power than the entire US energy consumption, for all forms of energy.
>As the cost of conventional sources of electrical generation continues to rise, wind power will continue to experience growth. As the costs rise even more, water storage and other storage technologies will be utilized more and more. According to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, "They [DOE researchers] are also conducting research to develop low power hydropower resources, optimize project operations, and combine hydropower with other renewable technologies such as wind power to provide a stable supply of electricity to our nation’s grid."