Wind Farms Can Interfere With Doppler Radar 179
T Murphy writes "Wind farms can appear like storms or tornadoes on Doppler radar when placed too close to the radar. Tornado alley is a good area for wind farms, and good terrain for the turbines is also ideal for Doppler radar. With many new farms being constructed, the problem is growing. A false tornado warning was issued in Kansas by a computer, although canceled by a meteorologist aware of the problem — there are fears that false positives will grow. Worse would be a tornado ignored as a wind turbine. While meteorologists are trying to work with wind farm owners to shut off the turbines during bad weather, they have no control over the placement or operation of the turbines. Efforts are being made to improve detection technology to avoid further problems."
Simple fix? (Score:3, Interesting)
Of course the turbulence will look like tornadoes, but can't they adjust the sensitivity to "if vortex 3m ignore" Or set them to scan Higher then 100m Or whatever the tallest turbine is in that region?
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Re:Simple fix? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not sure that you realize the limitations of the radar systems themselves.
The nexrad doppler radar system uses systems designed in the early-mid 80's. Three meter resolution? Try 1km during the best situations.
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Wind turbines have a safe operation range, outside of that the windmill's brakes are engaged to prevent it from being damaged or destroyed (there's a youtube video of a wind turbine with a broken brake spinning up and shattering in a storm, extremely dangerous since you get large high-velocity fragments flying around that could probably demolish a house). I think the upper limit is something like 50km/h wind speed, above that the mills shut down.
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It should be trivial to filter those out. What a non-story.
Re:Simple fix? (Score:5, Informative)
Ah, found it here: [bwea.com] Wind turbines start operating at wind speeds of 4 to 5 metres per second (around 10 miles an hour) and reach maximum power output at around 15 metres/second (around 33 miles per hour). At very high wind speeds, i.e. gale force winds, (25 metres/second, 50+ miles/hour) wind turbines shut down.
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Eaven easier: Wind turbines don't move around - in other words: Their location is known and doesn't change.
That's what they WANT you to think...
I don't know about you, but I never go walking at night because of the roving gangs of wind turbines.
Back in my day, we didn't have any of this motile turbine nonsense!
Re:Simple fix? (Score:5, Informative)
but the blades still rotate in the wind when shutdown
No they don't, otherwise they would start spinnig too fast. and this : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7nSB1SdVHqQ [youtube.com] would happen. (blade hits the pole)
Re:Simple fix? (Score:4, Informative)
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Unless the radar is imaging the 'downwind' effects of the turbine, this should be a trivial thing to look at and see clearly for a false positive.
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However, with poor resolution, there is no way to determine the difference between the known wind turbine and an actual tornado nearby. Especially in a somewhat loosely-packed wind farm, a large area would constantly read positive.
I'm not worried about our ability to filter out false positives, since it is trivial, as you said. I'm more worried about erroneously filtering out an actual tornado in close proximity to wind turbines, which is not trivial at all.
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My, quite limited, understanding is that if a tornado initially formed in the location of turbines and never leaves the basic area, that's a pretty good indication that it's not a *real* tornado. Combine with reports from the wind farm that 40% didn't just go offline for instance and I think you have a pretty good method to rule out false negatives.
Any indication of a tornado should be checked 'human eyes on' the radar to make sure, but usi
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Of course the turbulence will look like tornadoes, but can't they adjust the sensitivity to "if vortex 3m ignore" Or set them to scan Higher then 100m Or whatever the tallest turbine is in that region?
Exactly. I don't see this being any more of an issue than either directly canvassing the research areas for wind farms or requiring wind farmers to report the locations of their farms to a database. ... now back to those birds... lol
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For bonus points: Have the turbine control center send out a message to the database when turbines are turning on or off. We have this thing called "the Intarwebs" for that.
That's no wind farm! (Score:2, Funny)
Sorry, I couldn't help it.
why ignore common sense? (Score:2, Interesting)
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Very small investment considering the cost of the actual wind farm itself.
I'm sure the hardware investment would be relatively small, but the cost to put eyes in front of the screens would probably be much more significant.
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Very small investment considering the cost of the actual wind farm itself.
I'm sure the hardware investment would be relatively small, but the cost to put eyes in front of the screens would probably be much more significant.
Nope. From the article it is quite apparent that weather researchers are already present to ring the alarm in the first place --- thus those can be informed of the simple camera resource concept that GetQuad suggested --- something that could take a good 15 seconds to look at and then make an informed choice from.
Your skepticism implies a falsehood that simple and practical applications are not feasible with today's technology and innovation.
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Maps? (Score:5, Insightful)
If only the wind turbines were on stationary towers, then they might be able to map them, and use such a map to inform their interpretation of the radar data.
Re:Maps? (Score:5, Interesting)
If only the wind turbines were on stationary towers, then they might be able to map them, and use such a map to inform their interpretation of the radar data.
Exactly and then ignore the Doppler readings of that area, and instead take notice when a bunch of turbines suddenly go offline.
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instead take notice when a bunch of turbines suddenly go offline.
The only problem with that plan is that a warning is supposed to come before something bad happens.
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If only the wind turbines were on stationary towers, then they might be able to map them, and use such a map to inform their interpretation of the radar data.
Exactly and then ignore the Doppler readings of that area, and instead take notice when a bunch of turbines suddenly go offline.
That answer is too simple! We *must* find an impossible flaw in this green tech! umm.. err... The Birds!!!
(sarcasm)
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I just spent the week on Star Island of the Isles of Shoals in NH and they had something like this donated as a test: http://green.autoblog.com/2007/09/09/1kw-bird-safe-home-wind-turbine-available/ [autoblog.com] ...it's really a double helix shaped thing (very odd looking) but it was turning up a storm when Hurricane Danny came through the other day. Of course, it almost looks like an actual tornado while spinning... :-P
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Actually, here's the real brochure: http://www.waterlinecompanies.com/Helix.pdf [waterlinecompanies.com]
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I would expect the rotors will wash out all velocity data between +/- the tip rotor speed. It would also likely be higher intesity, since metal reflects microwave radiation better than water vapor. It will also likely vary by wind speed, direction, and load conditions, which the doppler system can't determine easily, since the velocity information is overloaded by the rotor velocity, and only the wind farm operators know the actual rotor speed.
Not insurmountable, necessarily, but certainly not simple. D
Re:Maps? (Score:5, Informative)
If only the wind turbines were on stationary towers, then they might be able to map them, and use such a map to inform their interpretation of the radar data.
If only the tip voitices stayed at the blades, rather than trailing for miles downwind.
If only "downwind" was always the same direction, rather than moving around when the wind changes - especially when it changes rapidly during a storm.
If only the vortices were reliably visible to the radar, rather than sending a variable strength return depending on how many raindrops are getting blown around by each section of it at any given moment.
= = = =
More interestingly: The conditions that form tornadoes are weather-driven but the exact location they form, path they take, and indeed whether the finally DO form, are dependent on local things that disturb the airflow. Like mountains. And buildings. And forests. And freeways full of moving cars. And big windmills...
Tornadoes have been documented to prefer to form up a short distance downwind of expressways. Perhaps the twisting air behind the mills of a wind farm will trigger the tornadoes in that area.
If so it might be good: Triggering them in particular, known, mostly uninhabited spaces. Triggering them when the storm is not fully formed so they can dissipate the energy as small vortices - maybe not even making it to the ground - rather than letting conditions build until you finally get a small number of big skyscraper-topplers.
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If only the wind turbines were on stationary towers, then they might be able to map them, and use such a map to inform their interpretation of the radar data.
If only the tip voitices stayed at the blades, rather than trailing for miles downwind.
If only "downwind" was always the same direction, rather than moving around when the wind changes - especially when it changes rapidly during a storm.
If only the vortices were reliably visible to the radar, rather than sending a variable strength return depending on how many raindrops are getting blown around by each section of it at any given moment.
You see the glass half empty, I see the glass half full. Someday, a PHD student is going to gather all that "useless interfering noisy junk data", filter it back into an extremely detailed physical wind model, to improve tornado formation detection and write their dissertation. I say someday, assuming that someone isn't already doing it. Possibly, in the future, it will be a marketing advantage to have a wind turbine generally upwind of a trailer park, because suitably advanced radar DSP technology makes
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I have a vision...
A wide-eyed Jethro and Shalene in the property management offices while having "Advanced Radar DSP technology" being explained to them. "So you is sayin, that y'all know about the tornadoes before theys gets here? No shit... Shalene you go tell yo momma her wish is coming true.. we movi
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If only the wind turbines were on stationary towers, then they might be able to map them, and use such a map to inform their interpretation of the radar data.
If only the tip voitices stayed at the blades, rather than trailing for miles downwind.
If only "downwind" was always the same direction, rather than moving around when the wind changes - especially when it changes rapidly during a storm.
If only the vortices were reliably visible to the radar, rather than sending a variable strength return depending on how many raindrops are getting blown around by each section of it at any given moment.
You see the glass half empty, I see the glass half full. Someday, a PHD student is going to gather all that "useless interfering noisy junk data", filter it back into an extremely detailed physical wind model, to improve tornado formation detection and write their dissertation. I say someday, assuming that someone isn't already doing it. Possibly, in the future, it will be a marketing advantage to have a wind turbine generally upwind of a trailer park, because suitably advanced radar DSP technology makes it easier to detect tornadoes headed for the trailer park...
Most people do not quite grasp the entirety of the level of technology and innovation that humans have attained to date. It is hard for those who do not understand this to see the glass as you did.
An example of this:
Right now I hear a TON of people constantly upset about plastics going into landfills "FOREVER!!"... I laugh about this because I kinda see it more of a temporary storage (given it doesn't get lit on fire or something lame).
We have, in today's mechanical/software/systems engineering capacitie
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You don't have to make your whole post italicized. Really, you don't. There are good rules on when to use italics, this isn't it. It's slower reading.
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You don't have to make your whole post italicized. Really, you don't.
I didn't intend to. Blew the end-italics HTML tag after the quoted paragraph and was rushed so didn't preview. Sorry 'bout that.
(One advantage some other systems have over slashcode is that you can edit your posting up to the point where somebody responds to it. With Slashdot it's cast in stone once you post. IMHO a short window where you can fix typos such as the above would be good.)
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Shitcock
Aren't you confusing the receiver and the giver here?
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This is related to the serious risk of false negatives - i.e. a tornado not caught.
Scientists will probably try to model the effect the windmills have on readings, but that can become a full-time job with 10 to 20 thousand wind turbines in the US (this is an estimate, I can't find the exact number), and more popping up all the time.
Also, the accuracy of these models may be a concern. Does the the effect wind farms have on radar change with wind patterns? If so where will the models get this wind information
Shut off turbines during bad weather? (Score:2)
I must really be missing something -- it seems to me that during bad weather, these wind farms could really be craking out the electricity! Why would the wind farms _want_ to shut down during those times?
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Wind speeds above the maximum design speed will tear the mechanical gearing apart - that is if the wind surfaces don't rip off first.
Most wind turbines already automatically lock themselves when wind speeds exceed certain design specifications to protect themselves from damage.
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Not exactly sure, but this might be a clue: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3FZtmlHwcA [youtube.com] ..
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No, it was the BLADES that bent : further and further until they hit the tower.
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I must really be missing something -- it seems to me that during bad weather, these wind farms could really be craking out the electricity! Why would the wind farms _want_ to shut down during those times?
If the wind is too strong, they break. Same with masts and sails of olden wind tech.
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Wrong. You do know what furling a sail means?
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Wrong. You do know what furling a sail means?
Is it a technique meant to reduce sail surface in order to prevent damage caused by too strong a wind?
Do wind turbines prevent tornados? (Score:3, Insightful)
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Hmmm. A couple of thoughts.
1. The tornado isn't a pressure-equalization tool. Were that so, prediction would likely be a bit easier.
2. Yes, wind turbines do modify the landscape. More to the point they modify surface roughness, and research at the National Center for Atmospheric Research is looking at how these changes might affect local weather. It's not quantified yet, so useful conclusions are unlikely to be drawn at this early date.
Conclusion: Wind farms cause tornados (Score:5, Funny)
Wind farms look like tornados on radar --> wind farms and tornados are the same --> wind farms cause tornados
Time to start a panic. Snopes here I come
/
/
For extra credit:
Tornados are a weather event --> all major weather changes are caused by global warming --> wind farms cause global warming
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Wind farms look like tornados on radar --> wind farms and tornados are the same --> wind farms cause tornados
Time to start a panic. Snopes here I come /
/
For extra credit:
Tornados are a weather event --> all major weather changes are caused by global warming --> wind farms cause global warming
Umm...Global warming does not exist (according to Rush Limbaugh) --> Wind farms do not exist. --> People on wind farms do not exist.
Ghosts do not exist. --> Non-existent wind farms are haunted (according to Rush Limbaugh).
Not such a big deal. (Score:4, Informative)
Tornado warnings are extremely vague. Anyone who has spent significant time living in tornado alley can tell you they are routinely ignored. And the new technologies that attempt to pinpoint tornadoes exactly (TVS, VIPIR) aren't as accurate as they're made out to be. False positives are nothing new.
Non problem with modern Doppler weather radar (Score:5, Informative)
IAMFWDWR (I am a meteorologist familiar with Doppler weather radar) and it doesn't worry me at all. There are lots of objects that cause the same types of problems, including rotating radar antennas and buildings.
When a weather radar system is set up the technicians will do a radar survey of the area and then flag areas for the computer (called an RPG, Radar Product Generator) to ignore. For a wind farm they'd look for an area in low scan levels with a high spectrum width and low to zero velocity and tell the RPG to ignore them. If these areas are too far away from the radar, they won't even be noticed by the radar (all scans are pointed slightly "upwards" so even with the lowest scan level something 200 feet tall would not be sensed unless it was within about 4.5 miles of the radar, give or take) unless you have a problem with subrefraction where the radar beam is bent downwards due to atmospheric effects. This would probably be the only time that the situation would cause a false positive and a meteorologist with any amount of common sense is going to investigate the area as it wouldn't be moving at all and would only appear in one or two scan levels.
The automatic warnings generated by a NEXRAD system are helpful, but are nowhere near foolproof. A competent meteorologist will be able to investigate the areas and determine if a weather warning or advisory is warranted within only a few minutes. (generally less than 30 seconds with a proper setup) Detection technology is already in place and easily enacted. Article is ignorance at best, and scaremongering at worst.
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Thank you for that, and I would also like to ask, where is a picture of the supposed false alarm? Wouldn't the article be more informative if they had included that? I'm curious to know how it could even look the same.
Re:Non problem with modern Doppler weather radar (Score:5, Interesting)
There are lots of objects that cause the same types of problems, including rotating radar antennas and buildings.
Yes, I heard this story last week at my local Fox affiliate, WFLD. The chief meteorologist stepped in at the end of the story and explained that there are lots of things that can cause these types of problems. He mentioned specifically that condensation from a cooling lake at a nearby nuclear power plant looks like a thunderstorm all of the time. But since they know about it, they can ignore it.
He concluded that he felt this story was blown out of proportion.
On Fox? (Score:5, Insightful)
So a Fox affiliate employee took the opportunity to...
1) Downplay some senseless and sensationalist bit of fear-mongering...
2) While saying something nice about a green technology that suffers from a lot of NIMBYism...
3) And he based it all on solid science and some common sense?
He was fired immediately after, right?
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IAMFWDWR (I am a meteorologist familiar with Doppler weather radar)
IAASRWDUTPIWAITRAEAI (I am a Slashdot reader who doesn't understand the point in writing an initialism that requires an explanation after it.)
Military issues. (Score:4, Interesting)
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Completely different issue there though, that one is due to the regular array of windmills acting like a diffraction grating and proucing multiple radar images of a given object. (Or so I've heard anyway).
Solvable problem (Score:3, Insightful)
Wind turbines should have a more or less predictable (and hence, recognizable) radar signature. IIRC the US military use turbine signatures (of aircraft engines) as part of non-cooperative target recognition (NCTR), i.e. the ability to recognize the aircraft type from a radar return, without having to rely on IFF transponders. But this probably requires better radars and processing than Nexrad can provide.
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
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Answer from Jon Steward: Ah, you mean those oil & gas companies with their own armies killing dozens of people and owning whole foreign countries? Or do you mean those who use the US army, kill tenthousands of people and *invade* foreign countries? Because I'm not quite sure, which one you mean...
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What about all the people from the Key Atomic Benefits Office Of Mankind? They have a powerful lobby too...
If.. Then (Score:3, Interesting)
If the tornado is occurring where the wind farm is, it's the turbines.
If the tornado is occurring where the wind farm is, and the electricity goes out, it's not the turbines.
It'd be a damn shame with all this great technology and great problems to solve if they had to rely on a phone call to a guy at the wind farm who had to look out the window for them in order to know whether there was a tornado or not.
So... (Score:2, Funny)
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Let's call it "global farming"!
Just go back (Score:5, Funny)
They should just go back to coal-fired nuclear power plants.
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Why is this modded funny? coal fired nuclear is the safest power generation method since ever, the radiation decays overnight and is perfectly safe to use in all of our homes.
Today
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Windmill interference on Buffalo, NY radar (Score:2, Interesting)
wind speed sensors (Score:2, Interesting)
Put simple wind speed sensors (and other weather reporting gizmos) at each big wind tower, have them automatically update that info upstream so it can be cross referenced. If the remote radar says tornado in the direction of a tower, but the tower only reports a 40 mile an hour wind...you can nail the false positives easier. Turn a liability into thousands of new weather reporting assets.
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There are some pluses and minuses to this approach. A micronet of this scale in an isolated area could provide some interesting data BUT the data would be skewed by proximity to the big whirling thingies which would induce a bit of turbulence. More to the point, there's history available. When an an automated vortex signature is detected, the wetware needs to know there's a wind farm in the area, and look at the history. A vortex signature that forms out of nothing right over the wind farm is likely a f
Opportunities, not problems (Score:5, Interesting)
All of those turbines make pretty decent wind speed/direction instruments, and they're all connected. How much would it cost to rig data feeds from them to the weather data collection system? I mean, if the weather computers are reading a Doppler shift from an area where there are wind farms but the wind turbines are all indicating 80 kph winds in the same direction it's not hard to figure out what's going on. Likewise if they're showing major surface-level wind shear around a vertical axis!
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One problem here is the mechanical systems on wind turbines are a bit larger than the typical anemometer vane, so they also tend to exhibit more wear and degraded performance is likely to impede their ability to demonstrate a well-correlated wind velocity. One problem I'm working on is a good hub-height wind measurement and prediction system to correlate turbine power output with wind velocity to act as a status/fault monitor system. We could tell if the wind were in a particular range, but not really exac
Effortlessly stupid article (Score:2, Redundant)
And no one has realized that wind farms are static?
1. Detect Tornado
2. If it is at the same place as any windfarm
2a Ignore detection
else
2b Register detection
3 Make money, live free and sing.
I prey for the death of people who come up with such dumb shit every day, but Satan has not yet answered me.
Who will give me justice ?
Jesus?
Simple fix... (Score:3, Interesting)
Have these wind turbines registered with the National Weather Service and mark the locations in the system. Also, place transponders on the turbines to verify their operational status. If a tornado is detected near a known turbine location and the turbine fails to report its status, there probably is "something" in the area bad enough to damage a turbine.
Not News (Score:2, Insightful)
The REAL problem here... (Score:5, Interesting)
Here the real threat.
Lawyers for wind farms who know they have a nimby problem know that one of the arguments will be the interference problem. The lawyers have learned that NWS/DOD/FAA (the radars are a tri-agency project) usually leased the land for the radars in the late 1980s/early 1990's for either 20 or 25 years, so the leases are coming up for renewal.
In several recent cases, NWS/DOD/FAA have gone to the land holder to renew the lease only to find out the wind project has already leased the land for twenty years at 5x the rate of the government lease and get a notice the radar needs to be moved.
Now moving a WSR-88D costs upwards of a million bucks. They are VERY large and engineering studies have to be conducted to locate a good location
So the radar could end up being moved at high expense to a not as good location. While the radar is down (there aren't any spares), coverage may not be available.
Air Traffic Control (Score:2, Interesting)
There is a rumor that..... (Score:2, Funny)
Two things (Score:2)
1. I find it absolutely impossible to believe that there's no cost-effective, technological solution to this problem. People upstream have mentioned the idea of putting remote cameras on the windmill towers, which seems quite reasonable.
2. Even if we can't, um... so freakin' what? It's not like false-alarm tornado warnings are such a big problem - what's the worst-case scenario? People spend more time in their basements than they really needed to? Note that I'm not buying any argument that this could lead t
Re:"Shut down" a wind farm? (Score:4, Informative)
You turn the wings of the wind wheel so the resulting force is zero.
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There are many ways, and this is necessary to protect turbines against storm damage anyway.
The most obvious for large turbine IMHO is to have blades with adjustable pitch and change the pitch so that they simply extract no energy from the air and stop turning.
Rgds
Damon
Re:"Shut down" a wind farm? (Score:5, Informative)
Stall Controlled Wind Turbines (Passive) stall controlled wind turbines have the rotor blades bolted onto the hub at a fixed angle. The geometry of the rotor blade profile, however has been aerodynamically designed to ensure that the moment the wind speed becomes too high, it creates turbulence on the side of the rotor blade which is not facing the wind as shown in the picture on the previous page. This stall prevents the lifting force of the rotor blade from acting on the rotor.
Pitch Controlled Wind Turbines On a pitch controlled wind turbine the turbine's electronic controller checks the power output of the turbine several times per second. When the power output becomes too high, it sends an order to the blade pitch mechanism which immediately pitches (turns) the rotor blades slightly out of the wind. Conversely, the blades are turned back into the wind whenever the wind drops again.
Taken from: www.windpower.org/en/tour/wtrb/powerreg.htm
Re:"Shut down" a wind farm? (Score:5, Informative)
You missed yaw controlled wind turbines - the common system for homebrewed and also the old "patent windmill" designs like classic the water-pumpers. These pivot the tail which makes the mill turn sideways to the wind to reduce power input or even stop the mill.
Many modern homebrew designs use an off-center and tilted tail pivot and a slightly offset turbine axis, plus a couple stops to limit the tail travel (mainly to avoid it hitting the blades). Combined with the weight of the tail this makes the mill automatically yaw-furl in high winds to prevent electrical overheating or overspeed mechanical stresses.
Some homebrewed wind generators, once they're stopped, are sometimes KEPT stopped by shorting the output, whichmakes them act like an electric brake. The blades rotate very slowly and stay in aerodynamic stall. But trying to do that when they're under power in a storm is more likely to burn out the generator than stop the mill. Available power goes up with the CUBE of the windspeed, torque with the square, and heating from current in a permanent-magnet alternator with the FOURTH POWER.
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For many years I lived on a sailboat with a wind generator which shorted the output to stop the blades as well as to KEEP them stopped.
Worked fine even in gale force +++ winds.
One VERY dark night headed for Fiji though a magnet came loose in the generator and THAT was spectacular!
Think a 1/2 inch hardened steel rod with a 45 degree bend before it broke!
I now understand that the bade was close to MACH 1 when it broke free!
THANK CTHULU that the flying blade that flew off didn't hit anyone on board but went in
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For many years I lived on a sailboat with a wind generator which shorted the output to stop the blades as well as to KEEP them stopped.
Worked fine even in gale force +++ winds.
It worked fine because the turbine was small and the genny was powerful. It was able to produce enough drag torque to pull the rotor down to stall speeds even in a gale.
Unfortunately, for big homebrew turbines the alternators can't be counted on to be sufficiently strong to accomplish this. (For starters ie means dumping the energy
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Re:"Shut down" a wind farm? (Score:5, Insightful)
My question is: how do you "shut down" a wind farm? The wind blows, the windmills turn.
It's called a brake [wikipedia.org].
This is what slashdot is for, making you aware of complicated technology which you couldn't possibly have heard of from other sources ;-)
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Yeah. And when the brake brakes, then either the wind breaks the blades, or the brakes brake themselves, when the wind is too strong. Groundbreaking, indeed!
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Look above, there are very good answers for "complicated technology which (I) couldn't possibly have heard of from other sources"
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All electricity-generating windmills have adjustable-pitch blades.
Power stations can't just produce as much power as they feel like, since electricity can't practically be stored. It has to be used up within about one second of hitting the grid, and if the demand is not there, you need to be shutting down generators.
To deal with this, windmills have adjustable blades so they can extract a variable amount of energy from the wind.
In severe weather, modern windmills are set up to constantly adjust the pitch in
Storage (Score:2, Informative)
Recent advances in giant batteries for wind power load balancing: http://www.reuters.com/article/GCA-GreenBusiness/idUSTRE57P4PJ20090826 [reuters.com]
Re:"Shut down" a wind farm? (Score:5, Funny)
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Windmills do not work that way!
Re:So it's down to.... (Score:5, Informative)
cheap free energy vs pretty pictures of wind on weather.com
Well tornado warnings can, in fact, save lives. [channel3000.com]
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Sure but how many people freeze to death each year vs the number who die by tornado? Not to mention heat exhaustion, starvation because food can not be preserved, etc.
Energy is simply a far far bigger issue at this point. It would seem far more reasonable to expect the tornado warning systems to be redesigned rather than the wind turbines.
Re:The turbines are in a fixed location (Score:5, Funny)
It's not like the turbines are going to be traveling SSE at 30 MPH.
With a strong enough tornado, they just might.
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Fletch: Oh c'mon guys, it's so simple, maybe you need a refresher course. It's all ball bearings these days.
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Unfortunately, we're a few years away from phased-array radars being deployed much beyond your everyday Aegis cruiser... or Norman, Oklahoma (where the Radar Operations Center resides). Also, PA Radars (PAR's) will employ dual-polarization doppler technologies. Expect to see dual-polarization radars in widespread use, even in the TV stations, very soon, since we can do those as a rebuild or retrofit of existing installations. PAR will require replacing the dish and mount wholesale with expensive panels.
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Not unless you have really tall cattle.
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Hmmm.. They take up a LOT of real estate
Not unless you have really tall cattle.
Darn, and I was going to put a bunch of wind turbines on my giraffe farm!
Re: (Score:2)
I suggest considering it more deeply and consider that the anchor pads are about the same size as used for the towers holding up high voltage transmission lines and that there are service roads of a sort to each of those. Nobody is talking about sticking these things in the middle of market gardens when there are plenty of bare windy hills or windy tidal mudflats.