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And what was the output of the first wind turbine? Wind turbines are not new at all.
The largest wind turbine is the http://www.vestas.com/en/media/news/news-display.aspx?action=3&NewsID=3163 at 8MWs. So you would need 587 of these to match the nuclear power plant. Scaling them up much bigger is really not going to be practical as the blades are already 80 meters long. The idea of churning these puppies out is extremely optimistic Let's say they can make and install one of these monsters a month. To match the nuclear plants output would only take 48 years. Even if it takes 10 years for a reactor you could have 5 plants in operation in that time. Now think about world wide production. Factories that can make something like this will be limited in number. Just shipping the blades will be a huge task. Then the infrastructure of floating wind farms and the under sea power cables and maintaing the wind turbines in a marine environment. This is not as easy you may think and it is not because it is "new" but because of well known problems that intrinsic to the system.

Actually, you laugh, but Vestas, the largest wind turbine manufacturer in the world, bought a supercomputer two years ago.

They use it to run simulations of wind conditions back in time. In some sense terrain-aware interpolations of existing measurements.

The thing is that when you're trying to figure out the economics of putting up a wind turbine, it doesn't really help you terribly much that you know the wind conditions 20 miles away in the nearest town. They've built a tool on top querying the simulated data so they can instantly tell their customers what the ROI would be for a specific location. Beats raising a long pole and waiting a year or two for the results.

Or perhaps they are helping to make your next windmill more efficient, since their sponsor is probably interested in some of the aspects of their work.
Although most of their recent work probably is more interesting for boat and propeller designers, since much of it was centered about not having the t-foil sword cavitate, to loose speed.

Oh yes please, PLEASE continue like this. CO2 reduction is BAD for American companies!!! In the mean while, here in Denmark we will develop CO2 reduction technology like insulation, biofuels and windmills. Ten years from now, you can then come back to this forum and ask yourself why Uncle Sam lost all its jobs to a "socialist" welfare state.

Solar and wind are scams.

I'll let you try to tell it to the Dutch! Or, maybe "scam" is some Russian slang, perhaps for something very advanced, or very successful.

One will not be able to fuel a vehicle with them, or with electricity.

You might be right -- about something else.

A battery is worse to the environment than a fossil engine.

Maybe a battery is worse,but not this type of battery. It will even be made in Russia, and other articles show that the design is very viable.

You do not like Putin because he started to tax and control properly oil companies, and oil costs not 7 USD as it used to be, but times higher, but people in Russia like him exactly for this. Because they build road, schools, etc. on this money. They even started to build autobahn from Pacific ocean to the Baltic sea.

I'm glad your gas prices have dropped, but it looks to me like your petroleum industry is holding you hostage, making clear to Russians without ever saying it directly, that if your petroleum industry is not the wealthiest industry in the world, nobody else will build you roads, schools, etc., you will be poor, maybe even starve. Our oil industry tries to do the same thing. In English, the word "scam" refers to something like taxpayers giving billions of $ to Exxon in years when the oil market is a little bit challenging for it, and not getting that money back from Exxon when it's able to succeed a few years later, in a kinder market. Excuse me, I meant to say, "the kindest market any US company has ever enjoyed."

http://www.vestas.com/en/about-vestas/sustainability/wind-turbines-and-the-environment/life-cycle-assessment-(lca) There is a pdf at the bottom about the V80 onshore and offshore. Not a lot of money details since they will vary between locations and countries, but it does cover a lot of the other details.

Overall, cost of wind power vs other power sources vary a lot depending on who's talking about it and that's if they're in the same country.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4631737.stm

Here's some nuclear vs the rest economics.
http://www.uic.com.au/nip08.htm

Just don't try to use your wind turbine. In our location, to run my small car on its current, fairly low usage cycle, I would need a 6M diameter turbine on a 40M pylon, and I suspect the neighbours would object.

That would be a very small turbine. Why not go for something like this one, 82m diameter with a 59m tower? That should power a few cars, and it's a good mid-size turbine for use in areas where you cannot depend on a strong, regular wind. Place it half a mile or more from houses, of course, otherwise the sound can be a bit tiring. If the neighbours object, offer them a part in the project -- people are much more receptive to such things if they make money from them.

Yes I do know the numbers. I'm thinking of something like this. Sure, people would think it an eyesore, but technically speaking, skyscrapers fall into the same category, but people are used to them.

That's not really a big improvement. General Electric's big wind turbines (1.5 to 3.5 megawatts) cut in at 3.5 m/sec. Vesta large wind turbines cut in at 4 m/sec. At the low end of the size range, the classic Jacobs wind turbines cut in at 8 mph. Magnetic bearings aren't that exotic; they look like electric motors. Bearing losses aren't that big anyway, although wind turbines do have tough bearing requirements. So it's not clear that magnetic bearings are worth the trouble.

The big breakthrough in wind has been in energy conversion. The older large wind turbines were AC syncronous machines, and had to sync to the power grid. That's why, when you see older wind farms like Pacheco Pass, all the blades are turning in sync. Modern units free-run, and there's an AC to DC to AC conversion with rectifiers and inverters to convert the output to 60Hz. This lowers the cut-in speed; with older systems, you couldn't get any power out until there was enough wind to get the generator up to 60Hz speed.

Wind power shows some promise but is associated with bird and bat kills and can never scale up to meet our energy consumption.

I agree that wind power will probably never scale to meet energy consumption, but wind turbines are up in the 3-4 MW by now sold comercially. But there are other big advantages of wind energy.
The biggest advantage I see is that it is the only working decentral power solution we have right now, if we totally rely on big power plants, that being coal, nuclear or hydroelectric we are suddenly very vulnerable to enviromental disasters (with the global warming the extreme weather conditions probably aren't getting fewer) and terrorism which also seems to be a problem on the rise.
So investing in wind-power is way to secure power in critical situations for critical needs.
Another great thing about wind power is that if a wind turbine fails ... if you are extremely unlucky you might get a wing on your head (that has never happened to anyone you to my knowledge), but compared to the effect of a failure in any of the other central big power solutions that is truly nothing.

As for the bird and bat kills ... this is terrible nonsense. I live in Denmark where we have the biggest wind farms of the world or at least they were the biggest for many years, there has been several studies about how these windfarms have been affecting bird life and the conclusion of every study has been pretty much no effect. Yes maybe one bird get's killed once in while but the overall birdlife is not affected at all and the birds breed happily below the wind mills. Actually one of the wind mills farms on the ocean at the west coast of Jutland has become a seal habitat where the seals live on the foundations of the mill's and there is also plenty of birds there, they have totally gotten used to the mills being there and the technicians out there pretty much never see a dead bird but lot's of livings ones (I have been talking to one of the technicians myself).

Yes I am very pro-wind ... I once was very strongly against nuclear power (I actually have been sitting on the rails, and doing everything I could peacefully to get past police to block the so called castors which contain nuclear waste that has an "non permanent" depletion place in the area of Gorleben (northern Germany)), but I have by now accepted that for the time being nuclear power is needed, no matter how unpleasent it is. I especially don't like the way nuclear power forms "small governments" outside public and government control (I guess the oil-companies are in no way better when it comes to this) and the waste problem still being pretty much unsolved doesn't make things better ... still I am accept that nuclear power is needed for now.

I am sorry to say this but some of these complaints are valid or are believed to be valid.

A little background. I live in Denmark (Nothern EU) where windmills are used a lot. In fact we have the largest windmill producer in the world.

In Denmark we have laws stating how close you can put windmills to people. Studys have confirmed that the noise from the windmills do stress people close to the windmills. They produce a low humming noice that some people will get stress from other will get headaches and again some will not be bothered at all.

It is also a fact that the wings produce reflections from sunlight in a manner similar to stroboskobe when turning at certain speeds. Some people get ill from this - even people who are not epileptic!

I have never heard about women getting problems with their period. I guess that may be hysteria.

In Denmark the windmill producers try to reduce the reflections by coating the wings in a different ways. But most importantly we are moving the windmills to sea.

At sea there are now people living so it is less of a issue as long as they are far away from land. At sea the wind conditions are usually better resulting in more power per hour hence a better economy.

My mom has a share in a collection of windmills just outside of Copenhagen. You can see pictures here from a introductory trip this summer http://pix.xbsd.net/middelgrund-molle/.

My suggestion to New Yorkers and others would be to contact the Danish government and ask for advice and perhaps Vestas (http://www.vestas.com/) if you want to by windmills.

Denmark has also had problems; they have only about 15% wind power and suffer from grid instability, which suggests this is the maximum about that a country should aim for.

WTF are talking about? There are NO grid instability problems in Denmark connected to wind power. And in fact the latest energy report I saw, said that Denmark over time, could easely cover 80-90% of its electricity consumption by windpower alone. Update your stoneage knowledge about windpower technology and check out this 3 MegaWatt windmill http://www.vestas.com/uk/Products/v90/v90_UK.htm

Their next generation windmill is a 4.5 MegaWatt whopper with carbon blades; and thats what I like about
about the windmill industry; it is rapidly technology driven with massive computer simulations and new hi-tech materials like carbon fibre and ceramics, and it is and free enterprise too, unlike the nuclear industry with its heavy government involvement, if not outright control.

Alternative energy sources like wind power is the future, since alternative energy only requires brainpower, technology research, and capital, all available to any country that wants it, unlike old fossil and nuclear technology, whose raw materials always seems to come from suspect and unstable countries, and always seems to leave environmental damage in its trail.

Alternative energy sources like wind power is the future, since alternative energy is nimble technology, able to utilize the rapid progress in computer and materials technology, unlike nuclear plants that are decades in planning and building and usually don't carry the cost of dismantling it when obsolete, meaning that tax-payers are going to pay for it.

Alternative energy sources like wind power is the future, since alternative energy safely can be driven by private enterprise and greed, unlike the government subsidized nuclear industri whose real reason to exist is nuclear weapons, not energy.

Alternative energy sources like wind power is the future, since alternative energy isn't a stepping stone for nuclear weapons; India and Pakistan had a "peacefull" nuclear industry, then, BOOM, they also had nuclear weapons; Israel and South Africa too, and Iran is next. It is simply impossible to seperate the nuclear energy sector from the nuclear weapons industry, and nuclear proliferation makes the world an unsafer place. I think it is better that North Korea and Iran had 50 large windmill parks, instead 5 nuclear powerplants and 50 nuclear warheads.

Since wind turbines are expected to run for several decades, it's good to get a few years of operating experience on a new design before deploying it in quantity. It took decades to get wind turbines to where they are now. The first megawatt-sized wind turbine, in 1941, ran less than 1200 hours before experiencing a loss of blade accident. About half of the units from the 1980s failed within a few years. There are subtle issues, such as the fact that wind speeds may be different on different blades, which stresses the mounting. That doesn't happen with aircraft propellors. So aircraft hub designs don't transfer directly to wind turbine hubs.

This applies to most new energy schemes. Scaleup always brings out new problems.

I've ran the numbers for solar cells and windmill generators and can't see the overall savings. Taking into account the manufacturing, installation and maintenance costs, are these techniques better for the environment or any cheaper?

Wind turbines pay for their total life energy cost within the first 9 months. They repay their energy input many dozens of times within their lifetime. The materials are also highly recyclable. Offshore farms are practical in many countries and have minimal impact on the environment. The issues of mooring are already well understood, due to the efforts devoted to offshore oil rigs.

More info from Vestas. Remember the name.

I think money will be better spent in more efficient storage of energy. Batteries, salts and event heat tanks all interest me. I'm not seeing any long term viability of anything but coal, gasoline and natural gas until the storage exceeds the unit per dollar ratio of the 3 gases mentioned.

Then the only thing I can say is that I'm glad you're not in charge.

Does this sort of über-large wind power machine generate more energy than it takes to create, install, and maintain it? I remember reading that the smaller machines required more energy over their lifetimes than they were able to generate.

vestas claims here that their mills has an energy balance og 7.7 to 9 months, and an expected lifetime of 20 years. so i don't know where you read that.

Current offshore rotors also can't handle very strong winds: They have to be swung out of the wind at wind speeds of 25 meters per second.

And from your own link, the stop speed of the Vestas is also 25m/s:

Operational data Cut-in wind speed: 4 m/s Nominal wind speed: 16 m/s Stop wind speed: 25 m/s Output (kW)

It's on page 4. Variable pitch is nice, it means the Vestas is more efficient accross a range of wind speeds, but my point was that at high wind speeds the turbines have to be shut down to prevent their being destroyed.