Wind farms could supply planet's power

[makeithappen40 0]

I have heard it both ways. (People complaining about the noise)

But then I have seen footage that had no noise at all.

And then I have seen footage of one exploding from spinning too fast.

And then I have seen a video of guys base jumping off of them too.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzEgkr4eJQQ

[mnealtx 0]

I think the distance from the wind farm has a lot to play in that.

http://www.wvmcre.org/neg_imapcts/noise.htm

Mike
I love you, Shannon and Jim.
POPS 9708 , SCR 14706

[makeithappen40 0]

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The wind industry is very aware of this problem but tries to "hide" it by taking visitors directly under the turbines where there is typically little noise or conducting tours from May-September when wind speeds are typically much lower

The "quiet" video did take place right under the spinning blades.

I am convinced that the generator noise will become more and more quiet as time goes on... but then I don't think they will ever be able to get rid of the blades from making that "whoosh" sound.

[mnealtx 0]

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The wind industry is very aware of this problem but tries to "hide" it by taking visitors directly under the turbines where there is typically little noise or conducting tours from May-September when wind speeds are typically much lower

The "quiet" video did take place right under the spinning blades.

I am convinced that the generator noise will become more and more quiet as time goes on... but then I don't think they will ever be able to get rid of the blades from making that "whoosh" sound.

Agreed - I think that as the various technologies develop, efficiencies will increase and 'downsides' will decrease, which are good things.

Mike
I love you, Shannon and Jim.
POPS 9708 , SCR 14706

[quade 4]

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I have heard it both ways. (People complaining about the noise)

But then I have seen footage that had no noise at all.

Not to put too fine a point on things, but visuals have nothing to do with audio tracks. Even more to the point, audio can be adjusted automatically or by an audio technician and microphones can be used and placed in such a way to cover or give emphasis to a noise problem.

Judging the noise a wind tower makes by looking at a video is an extremely poor way to go about things.

quade -
The World's Most Boring Skydiver

[carmenc 0]

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Thankfully the 16, 100!!!! metre high ones along the A14 have been rejected - phew.

I was just in Scotland and saw some enormous ones in the highlands. Bigger than any I've seen in the US.

[ltdiver 3]

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Wind Farms suck

They are noisy, ugly and kill birds - fuck um

For FUCKS sake! You can't win with the enviro's! No coal! Dirty. Wind Farm, noisy and kills birds. Solar field! NIMBY! Nuke? To risky. Dam? Harms the waterlife. OK so how do you want us to generate power?

Pedal Power.

People of the world are getting fatter. Electricity is getting more expensive. Solve both problems with a single answer.

We get more fit, trim and healthy. The power problem is less of a issue (sight, sound, expense, and pollution).

Brought to you by the Dept of Physical Therapy.
ltdiver

Don't tell me the sky's the limit when there are footprints on the moon

[quade 4]

Average person can sustain about 1/3 hp on a bike. That's roughly 225 watts. While it's "fun" to think about, it's not actually competitive if you have almost any other way to create the electricity.

By way of comparison, the potential power of sunlight falling on one square foot is roughly 10 times this much.

I'm a much bigger fan of a solar/Sterling solution.

quade -
The World's Most Boring Skydiver

[makeithappen40 0]

Fantastic. I admitted that and also read mnealtx's article on the fact.

Thanks for making the point ever more explicit...

It has been so long since I have seen them in person I can't recall what they are really like. However, as I said before, I have seen footage of them being noisy/destructive and other footage (which you can rightly say is distorted here) where they have been quiet. I don't see, however, how the "whooshing" sound will ever be eliminated.

[quade 4]

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Fantastic. I admitted that and also read mnealtx's article on the facIt has been so long since I have seen them in person I can't recall what they are really like. However, as I said before, I have seen footage of them being noisy/destructive and other footage (which you can rightly say is distorted here) where they have been quiet. I don't see, however, how the "whooshing" sound will ever be eliminated.

Noise comes from two main sources;

1) Mechanical vibration
2) Prop tip speed

Better engineering takes care of most of the mechanical vibration.

Prop tip speed can be handled in various ways. Unfortunately big things spinning around at high speed are ALWAYS going to make noise and unfortunately the higher the speed these things spin, the more efficient they're going to be. There's always going to be a battle of design tradeoffs.

quade -
The World's Most Boring Skydiver

[billeisele 130]

what complex topics for this forum: avoided cost, net metering, reverse power relays, retail wheeling, basic facility charge, metering charge, point source generation, etc.

true net metering rates are political decisions that pacify the vocal mini-minority and penalize non-participants (99.99% of customers)

the grid was never designed or intended to accomodate point source generators, either from an electrical engineering or economic perspective, it was designed for safety and reliability

our utility offers 4 types of "net metering" programs, our "Offset Only" program is almost identical to the one SDG&E has that Billvon uses

the method Billvon utilizes is as fair as it gets for all concerned - the customer, the other customers and the utility

Give one city to the thugs so they can all live together. I vote for Chicago where they have strict gun laws.

[ltdiver 3]

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Average person can sustain about 1/3 hp on a bike. That's roughly 225 watts. While it's "fun" to think about, it's not actually competitive if you have almost any other way to create the electricity.

Who's talking about competitive? Let's at least talk about the idea that if a person want to do something simple like watch tv. Well, they can't unless they're pedaling! A sedentary activity turns into a productive and health producing endeavor.

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By way of comparison, the potential power of sunlight falling on one square foot is roughly 10 times this much.

Yes. This can be for thing that are -always- on, like your refrigerator, etc. Most people would hate to go to work and come home to find their food spoiled!

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I'm a much bigger fan of a solar/Sterling solution.

But of course.

ltdiver

Don't tell me the sky's the limit when there are footprints on the moon

[mnealtx 0]

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Kinda sucks for the jump run and afterwards, though...

Mike
I love you, Shannon and Jim.
POPS 9708 , SCR 14706

[ltdiver 3]

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Kinda sucks for the jump run and afterwards, though...

Jump run will just gradually lose a few hundred feet for the pass. There'd be no go-rounds though!

The pilot just glides his baby back down to earth then. They're supposed to be able to do this, right?

That, or 1PP ( One Pedal Power ) will be enough to bring them back to land safely. This, plus gravity, that is.
ltdiver

Don't tell me the sky's the limit when there are footprints on the moon

[Zep 0]

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I have heard it both ways. (People complaining about the noise)

But then I have seen footage that had no noise at all.

And then I have seen footage of one exploding from spinning too fast.

And then I have seen a video of guys base jumping off of them too.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzEgkr4eJQQ

I live in an area perfect for wind farms, mountain ridges with a permanant wind
we had a company who thought they could ride rough shod over us,
To a man our community voted NO wind farms are a astetic pollution
You want cheap power build nuclear, but not near me.

Gone fishing

[makeithappen40 0]

Well you know our goal is to cut the power out, come straight down, cut off anyone in the traffic pattern, exit the runway, and then pick up the next load. I don't need an engine for any of that.

I'm also willing to live with one of the not-so-healthy jumpers in the back passing out while everyone else in the back stops pedaling to help that person as opposed to providing drive. What the hell, its only a small chance that will happen. (And as skydivers, we are all willing to deal with small chances right?)

[billvon 2,991]

>the grid was never designed or intended to accomodate point source
>generators, either from an electrical engineering or economic perspective . . .

Actually, since it was designed for AC, it is designed for bidirectional flow of power. Indeed, AC _is_ bidirectional current flow.

Another sort of cool thing is that the more point sources you have, the fewer transmission lines you have to build. Point sources offset loads and reduce current that powerlines have to carry.

Some utilities are starting to experiment with "intentional islanding" - the ability to drop the load to one sector of the grid (due to lost transmission lines, overload, insufficient generation capacity etc) and have the grid "island" wherever it has power available. That means that the guy producing solar and his neighbors still have power while the rest of the neighborhood loses power.

In terms of an economic perspective, utilities would prefer to charge whatever the market will bear. Since most people have no other option, prices would rise until it bankrupted more people than could pay, at which point prices would stabilize. This, of course, is not a free market system, since the consumer cannot choose Joe's Power Delivery instead of the local utility.

So prices are set by an outside organization, like a Public Utilities Commission or the like.

[DanG 1]

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I live in an area perfect for wind farms, mountain ridges with a permanant wind
we had a company who thought they could ride rough shod over us,
To a man our community voted NO wind farms are a astetic pollution
You want cheap power build nuclear, but not near me.

Thanks. This is exactly why America won't get off the oil teat until it is too late.

- Dan G

[shropshire 0]

Well done

(.)Y(.)
Chivalry is not dead; it only sleeps for want of work to do. - Jerome K Jerome

[dreamdancer 0]

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>the grid was never designed or intended to accomodate point source
>generators, either from an electrical engineering or economic perspective . . .

Actually, since it was designed for AC, it is designed for bidirectional flow of power. Indeed, AC _is_ bidirectional current flow.

Another sort of cool thing is that the more point sources you have, the fewer transmission lines you have to build. Point sources offset loads and reduce current that powerlines have to carry.

Some utilities are starting to experiment with "intentional islanding" - the ability to drop the load to one sector of the grid (due to lost transmission lines, overload, insufficient generation capacity etc) and have the grid "island" wherever it has power available. That means that the guy producing solar and his neighbors still have power while the rest of the neighborhood loses power.

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Chaotic grids

The ever-growing number of wind farms in Europe, and the US are in particular forcing the hand of grid maintainers. And growing interest from consumers in microgeneration – installing, say, solar panels to cover their own needs and selling any excess back to the grid – presents an even greater headache.

In coming years, the number of generators contributing to the grid is set to balloon dramatically by thousands or even millions. "The logistics of controlling even a few hundred large power stations are difficult," says Strbac.

The best solution suggested so far is a concept known as the "virtual power plant", says Lang. Each virtual plant consists of several hundred or thousand microgenerators lumped together in cyberspace into a unit comparable to that of a large power station.

A virtual power plant can contain a mixture of different generators, for example wind turbines, solar cells, hydroelectric dams, and biomass-fuelled combined heat and power stations. A well-chosen mix of all these types can offset the inherent unreliability of different generators to make a virtual plant that can be treated much the same as a conventional one.

Homeowners might benefit from the arrangement too. Strbac says that, in theory, the owner of, say, a few photovoltaic cells could opt to switch between a number of virtual power plants during the day to find the best price for their power at any precise moment.

Implementing virtual power plants is possible with relatively little modification to existing infrastructure, says Lang. "It's not about wholesale replacement of the existing system – you'd never be allowed to do something so disruptive – it's about looking at the existing network and seeing what we have to do to monitor it more successfully," he says.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17290-virtual-power-plants-could-tame-coming-grid-chaos.html

stay away from moving propellers - they bite
blue skies from thai sky adventures
good solid response-provoking keyboarding

[billeisele 130]

fundamentally agree with your comments but the devil is the details

my comments were referring to:

electrical engineering: the grid was originally designed for safety and reliability, thus the design and coordination of devices for those purposes - breakers, relays, fuses, etc., if electrocution, more outages and longer outages are not an issue then there is no problem, eliminate the downstream system devices and just have a multi-shot breaker rated to protect the line from melt down

economics: the traditional rate-making model creates rates for customers of similar characteristics, rates are averages and in theory they allow for each customer to contribute their fair share to the overall cost, when a customer is allowed to connect to the grid but does not buy kWh then that customer "under contributes" to the cost and is subsidized by other customers, as long as there are only a few of these no big deal

all issues can be overcome with technology and money, it is possible to install enough sensors, switches and other control devices to manage any technical challenge, the issue is who pays for it, seems reasonable that the customer that creates the problem pays for the solution

in SC residential rates are ~ $0.10 and large commercial/industrial customer pay an average of ~ $0.06, its hard to make an economic case with low rates, no worries the government is working to fix the problem with carbon tax and an energy bill

islanding is being done, the real challenge is when they return to the grid, managing voltage, frequency and synchronizing are always interesting, when large areas/loads are in the dark and being re-energized this can be real tricky, that is one of the major reasons why it took a while to recover from the NE blackout

Give one city to the thugs so they can all live together. I vote for Chicago where they have strict gun laws.

[billvon 2,991]

> if electrocution, more outages and longer outages are not an issue then there is
>no problem, eliminate the downstream system devices and just have a
>multi-shot breaker rated to protect the line from melt down . . .

Actually, utilities are starting to go the other way. Better islanding systems, better grid monitoring devices, bidirectional HVDC transmission lines and NEC-rated grid tie inverters will all help make the grid more reliable, safer and cheaper.

>the issue is who pays for it, seems reasonable that the customer that
>creates the problem pays for the solution

Well, by that token, line workers should pay for all safety improvements. Heck, the local line workers should pay for my inverter, since it contains anti-islanding features that protect them!

Actually I think people who use the grid should pay for its upkeep. Those who use the grid more should pay more. (Which is how it is now.)

>islanding is being done, the real challenge is when they return to the
>grid, managing voltage, frequency and synchronizing are always interesting . . .

Yep. Gone are the days of the three light bulbs and the big switch. HVDC transmission will make this _much_ easier.

[billeisele 130]

synchronizing are always interesting . . .

Yep. Gone are the days of the three light bulbs and the big switch. HVDC transmission will make this _much_ easier.

[sundevil777 102]

As we know, the erratic nature of wind and solar energy don't make it possible to rely on them without storing the energy, which of course is difficult to do.

But at hydroelectric dams, it is relatively easy to store the power, and what it takes to recover that power is already in place. We should be using solar and wind to pump water that is in the river below the dam, pump it back up to the lake above the dam. Many dams don't operate at full capacity because of a lack of water above the dam, so this would increase the possible flow through the hydroelectric generators. The infrastructure to distribute that power to the masses is already there. Many dams are in windy canyons and in sun-drenched areas. Whenever the solar cells or wind mills can pump water, they can store the energy.

It may not be a huge impact on our total energy needs, but it seems like a better application than some other proposals.

People are sick and tired of being told that ordinary and decent people are fed up in this country with being sick and tired. I’m certainly not, and I’m sick and tired of being told that I am

[jerryzflies 0]

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As we know, the erratic nature of wind and solar energy don't make it possible to rely on them without storing the energy, which of course is difficult to do.

But at hydroelectric dams, it is relatively easy to store the power, and what it takes to recover that power is already in place. We should be using solar and wind to pump water that is in the river below the dam, pump it back up to the lake above the dam. Many dams don't operate at full capacity because of a lack of water above the dam, so this would increase the possible flow through the hydroelectric generators. The infrastructure to distribute that power to the masses is already there. Many dams are in windy canyons and in sun-drenched areas. Whenever the solar cells or wind mills can pump water, they can store the energy.

It may not be a huge impact on our total energy needs, but it seems like a better application than some other proposals.

Of course, we're using (fresh) water at an unsustainable rate too.

If you can't fix it with a hammer, the problem's electrical.