wind farms - whar are your views...?

I'm not happy - where I live (weardale), a local coal company are proposing to build about 26 massive wind turbines on some of their old landfill sites...

they will be situated very close to houses (and about 1 mile away from mine, but within metres away from a friends back garden...) - where the recomendation is 2 km away...

the low level frequency noise levels can scare the local animals...

they do seem to be spouting up a lot now in county durham too...

 

aestheticly i'm fine with them. i'd not want one within meters (how many? 10, 50, 100, 500?) of me but if the regs say 2km and were stuck to then i'd be fine with it? oh hang on does your mate own a large paddock as his back garden?
do you have any evidence of lfn scaring animals? i'm not arguing with you just want to know.
overall, as long as the area wasn't home to some endangered spieces and was outside of the 2km from haibitation then i think they are a great idea.
my grandparents are up in arms about some being erected in devon. i'd rather have a wind farm near me that a nuclear, coal or gas burning power station that's for sure.
this kind of thing reminds me of the simpsons episode where the teachers want better equipment but the townspeople don't want to pay for it via taxes. can anyo0ne say cake and eat it too?
cheers


julian

 

id happily have a wind farm in my back garden rather than some form of nuclear plant in the same country,localy to me theres plans to build another wind farm,suprise suprise those who are against it are those who've olny resently moved into the area,or second home owners,the locals are already working out how to make it a tourist feature

 

Wind farms are great, and definitely the way to go; but you have to cluster them tightly in SIM City 3000.

 

well, my friends back garden backs onto one lof the actual fields where they're planning to erect them - her garden is quite long, and I dare say they wouldn't place one that close...but potentially they could...

as for the evidence for scaring animals - they are known to scare birds and horses due to their noise - so a search on windturbines...they can have an effect on migrating paths of birds - especially when dark.

other animals are known to be frightened by their appearance of blades, shadows, unexpected starting of turbines with fresh wind etc...

if you do a google on this, you will find out more...but I guess this is a case of NIMBY...!

 

I think they can be quite disturbing at close range but 2 k's sounds like a good enough distance. I'm sure people would get used to them pretty quickly.
I love the idea of sustainable ebergy, working for a conservation organisation I get to hear various things about it. I think it would be great to see the government grasp the nettle and start a project tiling roofs accross the country with solar panels. The effect on the carbon output would be massive. Biodiesel engines and carbon neutral buildings all over the place. Bit of a utopian idea though unfortunately. Could make up for us all leaving our hifi on cus it sounds better warm!

 

There are very good reasons to be opposed to wind farms. It's all about business exploiting the regulatory regime without significant concern for efficient power generation, whether from renewable sources or not.

Paul

 

We have them all over the place in Sweden, farms etc can get there entire electricity supply from wind, therefore reducing their reliance on other forms of energy. It does generally seem to be a British trait to moan about these things, elsewhere roads, wind turbines etc just get built.

My next house is having all its rain water recycled which is enough for all non drinking use, heat will be supplied by drilling a pipe about 160m into the ground and using a pump to move an alcohol liquid around it, the heat from the earth then heats the liquid and bingo, warm house, and power will be a combination of wind and solar. So after initial costs no more bills!

 

Surely better to waste a renewable source? not too sure I understand the rest of the comment

 

Here's a thought. If the overlarge propellor blades that are used in windfarm generators are the most efficient way of converting wind/airflow to circular motion for a generator to convert to electricity, why don't you find the same design in the internals of a jet engine ?? The impellor inside a jet engine does exactly the same job and is designed for maximum effiency. If we are going to go down this route for electricity generation then we should at least use the most efficient design we know of.

Personally I think they're ugly, (when in large farms), and should be limited to off shore use.

The problem with the worlds energy production is that everyone is blinkered by national boundries. Energy production is a global issue and should be looked at globaly. Put these things in remote areas of the world where no one lives, (of which there are plenty), and distribute the output globaly.

GTM

 

Seems far too logical GTM

 

I see your train of thought but I'm not sure whether it holds true - a wind turbine and a jet engine do different things, one is designed to push air as much as possible at high air speeds, the other is designed to be rotated as easily and freely as possible at (relatively) much lower wind speeds. As such maybe they need a different type of turbine blade with a different shape? Maybe W-M will know, he used to work for Dowty I think, and they make propellors,amongst other things....

The cost argument may be what prevents the approach you suggest being taken up though - how much more efficient would a turbine with many impellors be than one with larger blades, as they all seem to be? It'd probably cost a lot more to fabricate the a turbine with blades like in a jet engine....

Getting back on topic, personally I think they're a good idea, much preferable to a conventional or nuclear power station in terms of environmental impact. Sure they may look a bit ugly, but conventional sources of energy are too, and if we carry on polluting as we do now then the environment on a grand scale may be damaged far more than the visual impact of the wind turbines.

The guidelines should be adhered to though, to avoid noise disruption in centres of population - some people cite objection to wind farms on aesthetic grounds as NIMBY-ism at its worst , well I'm in favour if NIMBYism if it literally means 'not in my back yard!' for wind turbines - having them metres from ones home as mentioned in the first post wouldn't be nice from a noise point of view.

My 2p...

 

Nice one Philip, if only the rest of the world would follow Swedens lead. The solutions seem to be endless but we still get most of our energy from burning stuff, pretty primitive stuff really given all the other options.

 

One of the issues the UK has is that too many people live in too small a space!, (the reason I left!) It's just soo much easier elsewhere to build around things, while in the UK we have to build next to or on top of things.

 

The great majority of the income from a wind farm isn't from selling the electricity, it's from selling the fact that you've generated from a 'renewable' source to the 'non-renewable' suppliers, and from your share of the fines that the 'non-renewable' suppliers who cannot make their quota of 'renewable' have to pay. The income ratio is something like 3 to 1.

ISTM that reducing electricity consumption by the amount that is generated by wind farms would be verging on the trivial and would be a better way to proceed. Every house could install at least one long life/low power light bulb. Cut consumption by a significant amount and more serious alternative sources start to make more sense. Wind farms are never going to be a significant source of power. Imagine only being able to watch the TV when it was windy in Suffolk.

Paul

 

personally i'm all in favor of solar power. not the namby pamby calculator solar cell or water heater strapped to the roof. but big space bourne mirrors either focussing sunlight onto collectors on earth or converting sunlight to energy and then beaming it back to the ground as microwaves. with todays computers this could be made as safe as anything is these days. certainly safer than nuclear power and coal / gas burners in the long run. the big problem as ever is storage and transmission. batteries are terrible with a little hope from fuel cells.
cheers


julian

 

Paul is correct that wind farms really only generate a very small amount of electricity compared to a conventional (coal, gas, nuclear, hydro-electric) power station. The same seems to be true of other renewable systems such as the "tide power" station on the Britanny coast. There doesn't yet exist a renewable energy source that's a serious contender for providing significant amounts of energy unfortunately.

GTM, to answer your point about whether the wind turbines are the most efficient system I think they must be, at least given current aerodynamics knowledge. Aerodynamics is an extremely complex subject and it's far too simplistic to suggest that what is best for a jet engine must be best for a wind turbine. You're not seriously suggesting that the designers of wind turbines have willfully, or through monumental incompetence, not used the best possible solution (given current knowledge) are you? I know very little about aerodynamics but there seems to be a "rule" in turbines/propellors that the larger they are or the slower the airflow through them, the less the number of blades they have.

Europe is getting close to having to make some tricky decisions. Energy demand is increasing all the time. This is particularly true for somewhat less developed countries like Portugal where there are still a fast growing demand for extremely energy hungry devices like air-conditioning, central heating, dish-washers etc. as these luxuries, once the reserve of the wealthy few are now being demanded by everyone for their houses. Fossil fuels are a no-no because of greenhouse gases and renewable sources can only provide a tiny fraction of what's required. The only alternative seen by many is a massive increase in the number of nuclear power stations. The supporters of nuclear claim it's now a lot less expensive and that the latest reactors produce far less waste than the older ones. I don't know if that's true but it seems likely. However, I really don't see any European government managing to convince the electorate of building a load of new nuclear stations. It would be political suicide. Even if there started to be electricity shortages and blackouts I still don't think people would go for nuclear.

Given that, I think there will have to be some serious thinking about drastic reductions in energy consumption, an area where less developed countries also have room to gain more. I also think that a lot more "local" energy production such as individual homes with solar water heaters, etc. should be looked into. Of course those things aren't cheap.

I personally, am against nuclear power for the same reasons I've always been against it:
- it produces very dangerous waste that has to be expensively disposed of and leaves a legacy for thousands of years
- it's potentially catastrohpic - no matter what security and safety measures you take there's always the possibility of an accident or terrorist strike causing a major Chernobyl style disaster.
- it's very expensive, to the extent of not being economically viable, which is why it was often subsidised by goverments to hide the true cost. This last argument may no longer be valid with modern stations.

There are some fairly hypocritical attitudes toward nuclear power though. Italy, for example, has a non-nuclear power policy but it imports huge amounts of electricity from France, which generates 50% (or more) of it's electricity from nuclear! Similarly, nuclear power stations are usually placed miles from any major population centres and often near the border with neighbouring countries so that if a disaster were to happen the other country would take half the fallout. Neither attitude shows a strong belief in the safety of nuclear. If it's so safe then why not put them near big cities where the power is needed (assuming appropriate water for cooling was available)?

Well, I've rambled on enough for now :shame:

Michael.

 

Whenever I see those windfarm along the hills when driving around empty fields and country side my first thought is they are a real beath taking sight. Agree not every design are nice just like mobile phone mast. There should certainly be more sensitive design and placement.

Link of a photo here. http://www.waymerks.org.uk/windfarm.htm

Since most of us never see the need to turn off any of our toys it seems whether we all think they are beautiful or not we need many more of those windfarm turnbines. Ok so they alone are not going to sufficient. That is where the national grid come in. You link up all you generators whatever it is suitable for you country geography. If you have tall mountains and wet climate good for you. Built more hydropower stations. Sunny climate, solar electricity panel. By the way why not put one on every roof. If hot sunny day your air conditioning come on. Maybe there should be a EU rule that. Then surely the price of those stuff will comes down.

 

Its a pity nuclear power has the downfalls you list - ultimately its by far the most efficient way to generate power. I dont believe its as dangerous as people make out, in the right hands (i.e. not russians), but I guess the possibilities are pretty frightening.

 

paul,
in todays world of idiots crashing passenger planes into building, buldozing family homes and straping c4 to themselves and going for a stroll i'd rather there were fewer nuclear power stations than more.
cheers


julian