World's Largest Wind Farm Gets Green Light

cliffski writes "According to the BBC website the UK govt has just given the go ahead to two large offshore wind-farm projects. Between them the schemes would produce enough renewable electricity to power about one million households. The larger London Array project covers 144 sq miles (232 sq km) between Margate in Kent and Clacton, Essex and will be the world's biggest when it is completed. The £1.5bn scheme will have 341 turbines rising from the sea about 12 miles (20km) off the Kent and Essex coasts, as well as five offshore substations and four meteorological masts"

144 mi^2 !=232 km^2

[SNR monkey]

Last time I checked, 144 square miles would be 373 square kilometers. Remeber is 1.609*1.609 *144...

Re:144 mi^2 !=232 km^2

[smaddox]

thats the Imperial-Metric square mile. Oft' confused with the strict Imperial square mile.

It was invented solely for the purposes of this article, and has yet to reach widespread use.

Re:

[SNR monkey]

Ignoring my typos (must use preview), when I RTFA, it says

the larger London Array project covers 90 sq miles (232 sq km) between Margate in Kent and Clacton, Essex.

So, the 232 km^2 is correct, but the summary is wrong about the 144 square miles.

144 mi^2 != 103.5 mi^2

[mypalmike]

From the article:

The larger London Array project covers 90 sq miles (232 sq km) between Margate in Kent and Clacton, Essex.
The second wind farm, called the Thanet scheme, will cover 13.5 sq miles (35 sq km) off the north Kent coast.

I'd call it 103.5 sq miles (267 sq km).

What about our fine feathered friends?

[udderly]

The Law of Unintended Consequences in full effect: http://www.heartland.org/Article.cfm?artId=14562 [heartland.org]

Re:

[tomknight]

Hopefully it'll kill off a few bloody seagulls. Maybe we should have a wind farm in central London to cut down on the vicious bastards.

Re:What about our fine feathered friends?

[SNR monkey]

Compare the number of bird deaths from those windfarms to the number of bird deaths (and non-bird deaths) that would result if it was a coal burning power plant instead. Every project has costs (not all costs are $$). Hopefully the people in charge weigh the environmental costs as well as the monetary costs (sometimes the environmental costs end up being monetary costs anyway). Most large scale power generation techniques have an environmental impact.. The question is - do the benefits outweigh the costs?

Re:

[be-fan]

God, I wish the environmentalist would take the same position with regards to nuclear power!

Many environmentalists do!

[benhocking]

Of course, many do not. Probably more do not. However, Al Gore (the anti-enviros favorite whipping boy) does. That was one of the things I really liked about him in 2000. He understood technology and respected the environment. (Not that I want him to run in '08. I think it would detract from his current campaign.)

Re:

[mrchaotica]

First of all, Three Mile Island was a success -- the containment system did exactly what it was supposed to do.

Second, we have better reactor designs (e.g. pebble-bed reactors) now that can't fail that way.

Re:What about our fine feathered friends?

[Inda]

Eagles, Hawks and Owls. Three types of birds with eyesight ten times better than mine.

I can see the blades spinning...

Re:What about our fine feathered friends?

[Rei]

The number killed is tiny compared to most other man-made causes -- windows and housecats being two big ones, killing millions of birds annually. Even with widescale adoption of wind turbines, they'll still kill far fewer birds than just those two causes alone.

Really, when you look at the numbers overall, turbine birdstrikes are not much of an issue at all.

Re:The question nobody's asked.

[polar red]

wind power is rather good in that respect:
http://www.eoearth.org/article/Energy_return_on_in vestment_(EROI)_for_wind_energy [eoearth.org]

Re:

[petaflop]

The question has been asked and the anwser is yes for both wind and solar. (The answer used to be no for solar, but with concentrators and cell technology improvement it changed. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_energy_gain [wikipedia.org]).

Re:The question nobody's asked.

[Intron]

According to this California white paper [ucdavis.edu], the payoff is within the first 4-6 months of operation. Also the cost per kWH is lower than most other alternative energy sources.

Re:

[Rei]

I'm more bothered by people complaining about people not checking about energy return on investment without checking to see whether the people they're complaining about check on energy return on investment.

*breathes*

Re:

[Mad Dog Manley]

Survival of the fittest my friend.

I wouldn't be a bit surprised to learn that birds adapt very quickly to windmills. We built skyscrapers, and birds die when they fly into them, yet we haven't torn down our buildings. The stupid ones either die, breed in sufficient numbers to replace those lost, or adopt behavior such that they do not fly into them.

Re:

[udderly]

I agree...but I wouldn't want to be the one to stand up and say that at a PETA meeting.

Re:What about our fine feathered friends?

[randallman]

Scarecrow. Duh.

Re:What about our fine feathered friends?

[Hijacked Public]

I guess there has to be, or has already been, a decision about the acceptable tradeoffs before it is built. For a given amount of power from wind versus coal, which method is best overall, not just to birds or the pocketbook or the ozone layer.

Typically in order to find out what the Unintended Consequences are things have to be built first, and while wind farms aren't exactly new neither are they common. As with most things the more widespread they become the more effort will be focused on correcting whatever problems they have.

A friend and I had a similar discussion about cell phone towers while hunting this weekend. He was complaining that the woodcock population has been down lately, and I mentioned that one factor might be the continued proliferation of cell phone towers in our area. Towers were going up with solid beacon lights that screwed up the navigation systems of some migratory birds. A simple change to blinking beacons seems to be fixing the problem. Of course we had to find piles of woodcocks dead around cell phone towers before we even knew it was necessary.

Re:What about our fine feathered friends?

[Anonymous Coward]

It really helps to have some perspective.
Mans activity contributes to a vast number of bird deaths every year:

1. Utility transmission and distribution lines, the backbone of our electrical power system, are responsible for 130 to 174 million bird deaths a year in the U.S.
2. Collisions with automobiles and trucks result in the deaths of between 60 and 80 million birds annually in the U.S
3. Tall building and residential house windows also claim their share of birds. Some of the five million tall buildings in U.S.
4. Agricultural pesticides are "conservatively estimated" to directly kill 67 million birds pe year.

In December of 2002, the report "Effects of Wind Turbines on Birds and Bats in Northeast Wisconsin" was released. The study was completed by Robert Howe and Amy Wolf of the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, and William Evans. Their study covered a two-year period between 1999 and 2001, in the area surrounding the 31 turbines operating in Kewaunee County by Madison Gas & Electric (MG&E) and Wisconsin Public Service (WPS) Corporation.

The report found that over the study period, 25 bird carcasses were found at the sites. The report states that "the resulting mortality rate of 1.29 birds/tower/year is close to the nationwide estimate of 2.19 birds/tower.16- The report further states, "While bird collisions do occur (with commercial wind turbines) the impacts on global populations appear to be relatively minor, especially in comparison with other human-related causes of mortality such as communications towers, collisions with buildings, and vehicles collisions."

Re:

[Ucklak]

5. Birds that fly into my large window that either die from impact or get their knocked out carcasses picked up by larger, predatory birds : approximately 15 a year.

I know when it's time to clean the window then the outline of said bird is left on the window.

Re:

[End Program]

Tell the to the rich snobs trying to stop a wind farm off the coast of Nantucket, MA. All of a sudden, they have become bird advocates. http://www.saveoursound.org/node/119 [saveoursound.org] All while they drive their large SUV's. F'ing hypocrites Another example of we are for green power, except for NIMBY

Re:

[Duhavid]

So, the report was done by Howe'nWolf?

Re:

[truthsearch]

From what I've been reading, the largest turbines hardly kill any birds. Apparently the larger propellers move slower, giving birds time to avoid a collision.

I'm much more curious to know the impact to the waters. Hundreds of pillars built into the sea floor might affect sea life or water currents.

Re:

[Citizen of Earth]

I'm much more curious to know the impact to the waters. Hundreds of pillars built into the sea floor might affect sea life or water currents.

What about the climate effects of sucking that much energy out of the wind?

Re:

[polar red]

from the article on wind power on wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power [wikipedia.org]
"An estimated 1% to 3% of energy from the Sun that hits the earth is converted into wind energy. This is about 50 to 100 times more energy than is converted into biomass by all the plants on Earth through photosynthesis." This gives you an idea of the scale.

Re:

[Angostura]

Before any windfarm is approved in the UK there is a tremendous amount of debate about the effect on birds, particularly where the farms are close to migratory routes. The exact sites would have been chosen with this in mind.

Re:

[jafiwam]

Aw go fook yourself already.

Fluffy the neighborhood kitty kills way more songbirds, exotic birds, rare land mammals, rare land reptiles than any wind tower every will yet there is no one bitching about that.

Radio antennae for Clearchannel do the same damn thing, nobody ever complains about them.... not to mention glass covered sky reflection having every goddamn downtown in every goddamn city on the planet kill more birds in a friggin day than all the wind towers in the world in a single day.

Yeah, because t

Re:

[An Onerous Coward]

Fluffy the neighborhood kitty has probably never taken down a bald eagle.

Wait, wait, I know what you're going to say, but it's obvious that youtube video was a fake.

Re:

[udderly]

True Story (or so I'm told): My brother is an ornithologist out West and they were conducting a Lincoln Index study in a suburban area. Every morning they would come in to man the nets and in one back yard a toy breed dog would bark his fool head off. One early morning the yapping was punctuated with a yelp and then silence. My brother looked and a Great Horned Owl was flying off with Fluffy.

Re:What about our fine feathered friends?

[shanen]

Yip, yip, yip, yip, yip, yip

NO TERRIER

Re:

[An Onerous Coward]

Most of the Altamont Pass turbines were built back in the 80's. It's one of the earliest attempts at a major windfarm, so it's not surprising that they're chewing through raptors like buzzsaws.

I say yank them down and replace them with more modern, more efficient, less bird-hungry turbines.

Re:

[eln]

Any decline in roadkill numbers due to evolution has been more than eclipsed by the dramatic increase in incidents of Squirrel Hazing [squirrelsinblack.org].

Re:

[udderly]

As far as I can tell squirrels and opossums have not evolved one iota in that regard. I wish I had a nickel for every time a squirrel cut back in front of my car after already successfully getting across the road. And possums? For the love of God, you almost need a snow plow to clear 'em from the roads around here.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:

[ScentCone]

Lisa, in this house we obey the laws of thermodynamics!

I don't know which is worse... the use of the term "renewable" (from an energy/mass-there-is-only-so-much-of-it point of view) or the use of the term "renewable" when you're talking about wind. The tides aren't renewable. Geothermal isn't renewable. Solar isn't renewable. These are all forms of energy that are simply used.

Trees are renewable. Oil is renewable (um, if you're really patient). How can we expect to get people to think more critically

Re:"renewable" energy?

[Michael Woodhams]

Sorry, but your distinctions are just silly.

First off, language is about communication, and requires transmitter and receiver to agree on the meanings of symbols/words. "Renewable energy" is a well recognised term, and does its communciation job perfectly well, even if it doesn't quite match your idea of what "renewable" means. "Kick the bucket" similarly communicates an idea, despite having a meaning unrelated to do with kicking or buckets.

Secondly, the word "renewable" is entirely justifiable in "renewable energy". It refers to energy souces which are constantly renewed, so that extracting energy from them depletes the source only for a short period of time (months or years for hydroelectric, hours for tidal, possibly minutes or hours for wind.)

Finally, why should it be that harnessing solar power by photosynthesis is renewable, but harnessing it by photoelectric cell is not?

Re:

[ScentCone]

First off, language is about communication, and requires transmitter and receiver to agree on the meanings of symbols/words. "Renewable energy" is a well recognised term, and does its communciation job perfectly well, even if it doesn't quite match your idea of what "renewable" means

There's nothing at all wrong with language evolving. What I don't like is when it devolves - when two distinct words/phrases used to make the distinction between two similar but importantly different concepts are replaced wit

Such specific numbers, blah.

[mobiux]

"Enough to power about 1 million homes."

How about a MW output. That's a specific number that can be compared to other forms of electric generation.

Is that one million homes in the late spring (mildest time of year), when no one is running a/c or heat?

Or is that one million homes in the middle of summer when whole power grids collapse from the strain?

Specifics please.

Re:Such specific numbers, blah.

[LizardKing]

How about a MW output.

1.3GW according to the Register article.

Re:Such specific numbers, blah.

[SnarfQuest]

Just enough to run my Delorian.

Re:

[Citizen of Earth]

1.3GW according to the Register article.

I'm confused. What is that in megaelephant square football field lengths per cubic femto-femto universe ages?

Re:

[simm1701]

Following the link to the london array project gives 1GW peak power for 271 turbines which could power 750,000 homes (I assume the other array must produce 500MW to power the other 250,000

This should mean that the new media mesurement of 1Hp (House power) is equal to 1.33KW peak power....

Re:

[Citizen of Earth]

Wind is typically rated in peak capacity. The capacity factor for excellent wind resources is about 40%.

Actual power isn't quite as snappy in the brochure.

Re:Such specific numbers, blah.

[NSIM]

> How about a MW output. That's a specific number that can
> be compared to other forms of electric generation.

According to the Register, it's 1.3GW

> Or is that one million homes in the middle of summer when
> whole power grids collapse from the strain?

You are confusing US power requirements with UK. Vast majority of UK homes don't have A/C so you don't see that massive summer energy consumption spike, in fact quite the reverse, with fewer houses needing heat and daylight from 6am-10pm (give or take) the electricity requirements in the UK typically drop during the summer.

Re:

[terrymr]

Not 1.21GW ?

Re:Such specific numbers, blah.

[el_womble]

We also take insulation more seriously: use brick/breze block cavity walls almost across the board and have double glazing - but compared to Scandiavians we're still savages when it comes to heat efficiency. I was in Stockholm a couple of weeks ago and the room was so hot because of the insulation I had to put a fan on to keep me cool.

What I don't understand is that a wealthy and educated country like America sees air-conditioning as the solution to being too hot and not quadruple glazing. Insulation keeps you cool too (and makes it cheaper to run said air-conditioning if nothing else).

Re:

[SatanicPuppy]

Well, where I live, A/C is pretty much a given. With Summer temperatures running in the mid 90s to the mid 100s (35-39c), there is no amount of insulation short of ~20 feet of earth thrown over your house that will make a difference. You're going to need something, and while insulation means that it'll be cooler until ~13:00, after that it just means it'll stay warm longer.

Still, the first thing I did when I bought my new house was to put another layer of insulation in the attic, and get a quote for having

Re:Such specific numbers, blah.

[SatanicPuppy]

I used to do that when I lived in New York...That was completely effective, you could close all the windows at 7:00am, and the house would stay decently cool until around 2:00 or 3:00, and then you'd open all the windows and sweat until 5:30 or 6, when it would start cooling off.

In Georgia, however, the nights are almost as miserable as the days because the humidity in the air traps the heat...it's literally like a sauna...and leaving your AC off for hours means it has to work harder to cool things back off when you finally cave in and turn it on. It's probably still a net savings, but in July I don't even consider it.

I'm always interested in better insulation...The house has too many damn windows though, and I'm not planning on living there long enough to make my money back on replacing them, which is an issue. I've still done a few, but it's ~200.00 per window, not counting installation, so I'm not in any hurry.

Re:Such specific numbers, blah.

[budgenator]

Actually the type of construction your talking about is pretty poorly insulated by american standards. Our windows are universally double pane, often with argon filling to reduce heat conduction, exterior wall are 15 cm thick with the wall filled with fiberglass insulation, and the attic has 30 to 45 Cm of insulation then the whole house is wrapped in plastic to prevent infiltration losses. Right now my thermostat is set at 62F and by opening the drapes to let some sun in the house stays between 65 and 68.

Re:

[budgenator]

I'm in Michigan, and I don't think I can even get single pane exterior windows unless it's by special order, and I'd never pass inspection with them. Even old construction has blown in insulation in the wall or foam, unless it a tenement in Detroit. Still I don't think primative areas like California, New York and Florida define average for the United States.

Re:

[iroll]

Well, there's also the matter of latitude to remember here, when comparing Europe and the USA. I live in Phoenix, which is at approximately the same latitude as Baghdad. Most of the USA lines up with the Mediterranean, not with Scandinavia.

At high altitudes in AZ, you can get away with passive cooling if you have excellent insulation. You can open the doors and windows at night, and close them during the day, and keep your house livable. At low altitudes like Phoenix, however (~1500'), that's a fool's e

Re:

[bdonalds]

"Enough to power about 1 million homes." How about a MW output. Specifics please.

Maybe I can help. It will supply enough power to fill the Library of Congress two times over.

Mobile Farms

[Doc Ruby]

Why don't they put these wind farms on barges floating around the seas offshore, where the winds blow steady and reliable? Relocated when economical according to satellites tracking the seasonal winds.

Barges covered with solar cells. And reverse-gyroscopes that generate power from waves and currents. They anchor landmines, don't they?

Re:

[Mad Dog Manley]

Why don't they put these wind farms on barges floating around the seas offshore

Hmm, maybe you should have read the submission text, let alone the article. Let me quote for you:

According to the BBC website ehe UK govt has just given the go ahead to two large offshore wind-farm projects

Offshore, meaning, you know, not on land. On the water.

Re:

[Doc Ruby]

The point is not so much the offshore location, as their mobility, as you could tell if you read my post's Subject. Mobile, as in moving. On the water.

Side point: solar/gyro. Power stations capturing all the power passing through its point, not just the wind.

Re:

[Colin Smith]

Cables?
 

Re:

[Mad Dog Manley]

Sorry, I misinterpreted you on my first reply.

I believe that the additional cost of installing windmills on a barge would not be economically feasible.

To mount a windmill on a seaworthy barge is no small feat. These windmills are very, very heavy and require a very stable surface to be mounted on. Most large windmills require thousands of tons of concrete as a base. You would require the same foundation for a barge with a windmill on it.

To relocate thousands of tons of windmill x 1000 windmills as the seaso

Re:

[Doc Ruby]

I'm sure they ship the windmills on barges. Making those barges anchors for erect windmills is just more engineering. The kind that makes the current expensive immobile anchors work.

I'm not so sure that the windmills can't retain generating efficiency while bobbing up and down, so long as they're facing the wind and remaining perpendicular to its direction. If anything, it's just more engineering to accommodate the extra degrees of freedom of motion for capturing its energy.

As for relocation energy, they ca

Re:

[RAMMS+EIN]

From what I've heard, the sea is too aggressive an environment to build windmills in. Well, you can build them, but you'll have to repair and replace them so often that it's, effectively, not a good idea.

Re:

[Doc Ruby]

I bet geodesic construction, tensile strength rather than compressional, is seaworthy. If Buckminster Fuller designed these today, he'd use nanotube fiber composites, and maybe synthetic diamond bearings/joints. The diamonds are still power-hungry manufacturing, but the fibers can be made fairly cheaply. And the investment would reduce the costs even further.

Re:

[Doc Ruby]

The British are experts in undersea cables, having laid them literally around the world since the Victorian Age.

We have the technology.

But I do think that windmills all suffer from electric transmission losses (up to 30-50%), located far from the humans who consume their power. It's one reason I prefer coating every roof with solar panels, in a localized grid that minimizes transmission.

But I wonder whether these windmills could be more efficient driving seawater and air through a cracker to generate ethano

Tides

[pubjames]

I've never understood why the power of tides is not exploited more. In a short streach of coast around the UK, hundreds of millions of tons of water must be moved every 24 hours. I'm sure there must be a lot more energy in that than in the wind in the same area. Why isn't that exploited? Anyone know?

Re:

[simm1701]

iirc it is. In scotland

However I also beleive that there is a huge engineering challenge in order to anchor the generators effectively and economically

Re:Tides

[CmdrGravy]

The best place to harness tidal power is in river estuaries which tend to support large eco-systems dependant on the tides.

Unfortunately I think most devices capabale of turning tidal energy into electricity tend to need to be built on a pretty large scale to worth while and this tends to totally destroy the eco systems in the immediate vicinity.

At least that is what I learned in Geograpgy lessons 15 years ago so things may have moved on since then !

Re:

[pubjames]

But tides also act off shore (i.e. the depth of water changes), so I see no reason why the energy shouldn't be harnessed their. Of course, it might be easier to do it on a rive, but of course there are the problems you mention.

Re:

[CmdrGravy]

I'm not sure but I suspect most of the energy is created from tidal currents rather than the simple height difference of the water at high and low tide so there are some areas which have much stronger currents than others based on their geography which make it far more economical to site generators where nature has naturally concetrated a lot of power than build a massive generator over a wider area to capture a similar amount of power.

Re:Tides

[Mad Dog Manley]

Most of the water that is being moved by tides isn't moving very fast, or very far. Tidal power is most efficient where the world's largest tides can be found, such as the Bay of Fundy in Canada.

There is tidal power being generated in the Bay of Fundy, there has been a 20MW generator operating for the last 20 years. However, it is expensive (operating in salt water isn't the most friendly enviromnent), and expanding it would put a large strain on the ecosystem.

This isn't a lot of power though. 20 large windmills could produce the same or more power, for much less cost. Incidentally, Nova Scotia, which borders half of the Bay of Fundy, has some of the world's strongest and most consistent winds.

Re:

[pubjames]

Most of the water that is being moved by tides isn't moving very fast, or very far.

No, but there is a lot of it.

Re:

[hcdejong]

I'm sure there must be a lot more energy in that than in the wind in the same area.

Maybe that's part of the problem. Building a structure that can withstand tidal forces for 30+ years, including watertight compartments for the electrical parts, isn't cheap.

Um.

[neimon]

Gee. Take that much power out of a surface wind? Makes you kinda wonder what happens when you take that much energy out of a system that determines a lot of weather and water temperature and moves it inland to, say, make toast.

Doh.

Re:

[b0s0z0ku]

Gee. Take that much power out of a surface wind?

Don't worry - the windmills aren't actually that efficient, nor do they cover a large percentage of vertical cross-section. They're spaced quite a bit apart and aren't that tall, vertically speaking. Chances are they don't end up being more disruptive to air currents than, say, the skyscrapers in NYC. And the weather in Brooklyn isn't *that* different than in the rest of the region.

-b.

Horror movies?

[SnarfQuest]

Will we be getting hundreds of horror movies from this, like they do with nuclear power plants?

"Sheltered from the destroying wind by the turbine farm, the flesh eating larva thrived in the darkness created by the solar panels, coming out at night to feast on human flesh...."

ehe UK govt

[SlayerDave]

Uhhhh... Run that by me again.

Another Idiotic decision...

[OneSmartFellow]

... made by people who refuse to think clearly!

Talk about immediate environmental impact. WAKE UP people - wind farms take energy directly out of a very complex self-regulating system. Let's see how long it takes the greenies to realise this is NOT a long term solution,

As I have repeated said, energy efficiency is the only soultion to our energy problems. Until manufacturers are required to produce more efficient products, we are on the wrong path.

Re:

[mwilliamson]

Basically, this boils down to giving up your air conditioning. Mankind evolved without HVAC...seems like a silly waste of energy IMHO.

What, Pray Tell ...

[bperkins]

will power this green light?

The Problem with Wind Energy

[RAMMS+EIN]

The problem with wind energy is that it's output is unreliable and unlikely to match demand. For electricity, it is essential that supply match demand very strictly. Essentially, this means that wind farms have to be backed up with other, reliable, fast-switching power sources. This, of course, means you've still not solved the energy problem - what do these other plants run on? Also, it adds to the cost of electricity from wind - which is already very high.

Re:

[cyfer2000]

I think they will store energy when the wind is strong and get the stored energy out when the wind is weak. There are many ways to store energy, my question is which one do they use and why?

Re:

[pkulak]

You're right. If it doesn't completely solve the problem, it's not worth doing. I was going to buy a pellet stove so that I would save thousands of dollars a year on my electric bill, but then I realized that I couldn't even plug my microwave into it! What a sham!

Re:

[legirons]

The problem with wind energy is that it's output is unreliable

Not when the wind turbines are in different places

and unlikely to match demand

Cold winds -> lots of electricity to heat houses. Plus, UK houses can turn their heating on and off when the electricity company sends them a radio signal, which means you can modify the demand whenever you want.

Essentially, this means that wind farms have to be backed up with other, reliable, fast-switching power sources.

Like Dinorwig power station? (hydroelectric,

Wind power NOT significantly harmful to birds

[Anonymous Coward]

Birds don't really often get killed by wind turbines, the blades move quite slowly and predictably and are clearly visible so the birds can avoid them. Some birds even have nests on top of turbines.

Rather birds tend to fly into ordinary power lines and die. Climate change and pollution are also big threats to birds as other wildlife too, and their effect is often global.

Furthermore, bird enthusiasts even in America are supporting wind power, here is a link to a statement from the Audubon Society:
http://personals.salon.com/blog/1976/post_32241.ht ml?dcb=personals.salon.com [salon.com]

It's one of the perpetual myths against wind power that surface every time the public discusses about it, I was sure it'd pop up here on slashdot...
Now just waiting about the "will the turbines ever recoup their construction energy cost?" (They will in a few months.)

Re:

[montyzooooma]

But it will only kill off the stupid sea birds. I for one welcome our... oh god just shoot me....

Re:

[SnarfQuest]

Personally, at the moment, I quite like Wind Farms because they're unusual and interesting to look at but once every square metre of the countryside is covered in them I suspect this opinion might change.

They're also a great place to get "chicken" burger. Catch it before it hits the ground, so you know it's fresh.

Re:

[CmdrGravy]

I'm sorry this experience seems to have stunted your brain growth but with modern technology events such as 3 mile island will be an awful lot less common.

Re:

[ronanbear]

Annoy? It's 12 miles offshore. You can barely see them at that range let alone hear them.

Personally I think they're great when I'm sailing along as they usually mark sand banks and make navigation much easier. I like the look of them too.

disagree

[Anonymous Coward]

The global energy market disagrees with you, that is why you are seeing this article instead of your alternative which is ...nothing. Ignoring the problem doesn't work, actually doing something about it beyond talking is the only solution that can possibly work right now.

  The alternative energy solution is "all of the above", solar, wind, geothermal, biofuels, etc, etc, all of it in total. There will probably not be any one solution any time soon, we need the combination of vastly more energy efficient buildings and vehicles (really the number one place we should be working on) combined with alternate sources of energy combined with the traditional energy sources. That's the only silver bullet. Backyard mr. fusion is here if you recognize that the Sun works, it just works, and it is our only practical fusion power. Solar PV, Solar thermal, biofuels, and wind are all mostly factors of the Sun's output. If you are waiting for man-made ITER type reactors to save you you'll be shivering in a cold dark house for decades to come. Not to say we shouldn't still try and develop it, but reality indicates we need solutions to start now, not wait until it hits OMG crisis mode.

Re:

[simm1701]

Yep, the biggest wind farm has a peak - yes peak, ie only when there is wind which is not all the time - output that would barely match 1/4 of Drax (the UK's largest coal power station)

Not to mention the question of what to do on a no wind day... or worse several days of no wind (since for short term lapses gavity batteries using hydro electric generators could be used, pumping water up hill when power is plentiful, using it when power is needed, a system already used to provide peak power boost in the UK)

Re:

[CmdrGravy]

I always thought Drax was a great name for a power station, especially such a big powerful one.

Wind farms are part of an answer

[Per Abrahamsen]

In Denmark around 20% of our power come from wind, expected to grow to 25%. That is probably the maximum, as you need power when the wind isn't blowing as well. Wind power is not the answer, or an answer, but can be a significant part of answer.

I wonder why so many people (in particular Americans for some reason) feel that such a complex issue as energy supply need a single source as an answer. Some even dismiss all discussion of conservation with the "argument" that you can't totally eliminate the need of energy that way. Even though just going to EU/Japan level of conservation would eliminate 50% of the energy consumption. Maybe it is because people have been brought up in a world where only answers that can be expressed as sound bites are considered relevant by the media.

Re:

[Rik Sweeney]

If you want a viable answer to the worlds energy needs I think we need to think outside this particular box.

We'll get there in the end, but for the moment I think we need to accept that even though it's not perfect, it is a step in the right direction.

I reckon we should get Microsoft to design a solution though. Then it's guaranteed to work after the third attempt...

Re:

[Jeff DeMaagd]

Of course. I think the attention should be given to diversification of energy sources, so this is good. Every bit of diversification helps reduce the instability in the energy markets.

Re:

[Cervantes]

From TFA this is the worlds biggest windfarm but will generate 1% of the UKs electricty needs. If you want a viable answer to the worlds energy needs I think we need to think outside this particular box.

You're right. Obviously we've been building windfarms on too small a scale up until this point. It's about time we fully embraced the technology and started building windfarms that can provide a comparable percentage of electricity needs. Let's get out of this "little windfarm" box and start making them the

Re:

[butterwise]

They already have. [ecofriend.org]

Re:

[b0s0z0ku]

Put them inside the Houses of Parliament, plenty of hot air in there!

And lock all other exits. If the MPs want to leave, it's through the blades. Arrrrr, matey!

-b.

Re:

[Martin Blank]

A gigawatt, while small in the scheme of things, is still a respectable power plant output. Many of the units that go up in the US are between 500MW and 1GW. Hopefully, in the next few years, we'll see nuclear plants coming online at the 1GW per reactor level (like we used to see), with two or three reactors per plant.

Re:

[ronanbear]

So by that logic a house uses half the power of a kettle. Modern fast boil kettles use 2kW. That'd be a good way to get people thinking about conserving power.

Re:

[spacefight]

but it's certainly worse than nuclear power
Facts, anyone?

Re:

[cyfer2000]

maybe he/she was talking about fusion.