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It's right next door to our wind turbine ...

Any kind of cage around the blades wouldn't be very feasible. This machine is 126m in diameter, so the structure would have to be massive, and would seriously impede the wind flow.

WindShare did a bird study for their turbine on the Toronto lakeshore. It seems that the 750kW, 52m diameter machine there might kill two birds per year. The front window of my house does about that, too, and it's an unremarkable suburban semi.

Buildings, cars and cats kill more than wind turbines. The unfortunate case of Altamont is not representative of the industry.

The Barenaked Ladies haven't fled Canada. Steven Page lives in Toronto. He's a member of Toronto's wind power co-op.

While you are here, please sort out our broken nuclear plants. They've been down for years, and are just eating up subsidies.

One minor correction: they don't call them "condor cuisinarts" at all. It's the faux-libertarian Cato Institute that calls them that, and we know all about them...

I think it only covers the US -- otherwise WindShare's very nice Lagerwey variable-speed wind turbine wouldn't have been allowed on the Toronto lakeshore.

Another great way of countering the problem is... go ahead and build it anyway. Most (non-Danish, Dutch or German) people haven't seen a wind turbine, and they're usually pleasantly surprised about how unobtrusive they are.

While it's true that most wind turbines use induction generators, they do so for several reasons, including:

• safety: as the wind can blow at any time, an alternator could energize a powerline that's down for maintenance. Induction generators need line (excitation) current to get them going, and thus they won't frazzle an unsuspecting worker.
• stability: an induction generator's torque/speed curve matches that of a stall-regulated wind turbine. Thus a wind turbine of this type will tend to run at a constant speed.

All the turbines I have worked with have either had modest capacitor banks to correct for reactive power, or used insanely cool AC/AC back-to-back inverters to produce line quality AC.

I'm also concerned about the article's allegations of power intermittence. Wind turbine rotors have a fair amount of rotational inertia, so they're not capable of passing every flutter of the wind to the generator. It seems that this part of the article is a sales pitch for a new product that the vast majority of installations won't need.

I was also amused at the requirement of wind turbines to "ride through" grid frequency variations. This is basically a nice way of spinning the fact that wind turbine controllers are often far more picky about the frequency they'll accept or put out, than the rather poor regulation that applies to our power grids.

An finally, that picture. Where on earth did they get it? Apart from the fact that it's a contravention of every safety code to climb the tower of a running turbine, the climber must be a human sloth. To get that kind of motion blur on wind turbine blades, you'd have to have several minutes' exposure. Thus our perfectly sharp climber (and their horse) must be moving incredibly slowly ...

There is a windmill right near my office.

I can assure you, it is neither noisy nor does it kill birds. Birds are pretty smart enough not to fly into something with big rotating fan blades.

The world needs more of these, and less of the people who put up stupid arguments ... like whales are going to crash into the pillings. Heck, the whales are probably smarter than the people who say that!

Compared to Toronto, a.k.a. The Megacity?

> the Sierra Club referred to these things as "Cuisinarts of the air"

ah, that convenient misquote from the Cato Institute, who are not known for their accuracy and impartiality. The Sierra Club denies ever saying it.

> But what types of birds are killed in cities ... ?

cars, buildings and cats claim all types, from songbirds to raptors. Wherever birds are, they are part of the local ecosystem.

> I'm ... suggesting that the best solution for energy generation is one that maximizes return.

Return of what? Smog? If it's return on investment you are after, WindShare is offering its members very good returns.

> ... at least some folks are saying that the ecological drawbacks to mass-scale wind-power right now are large

Let me tell you about one of the power stations running in my province, Ontario. Nanticoke, on Lake Erie, is the largest coal burning plant in North America, and one of the single biggest polluters. It's kept running for two reasons:

1. the promised nuclear reactors refits are running years late and billions over budget. Nanticoke is tiding them over, while New York State is lodging a formal pollution complaint about Ontario's coal plants.
2. the US's power infrastructure is in such chaos due to overconsumption and underinvestment that Nanticoke sells a lot of its power south. Most of its smog goes south, so I suppose that's only fair.

The last two points are from memory, from reading Power: Journeys across an energy nation, by Gordon Laird (ISBN: 0140290036). My numbers may be slightly off.

The negative environmental impact of wind energy is nothing compared to that of traditional non-renewable energy methods. Wind is "What You See Is All You Get" -- no smog, no radiation, no weird stuff.

No matter how extensively wind is developed in the future, bird deaths from wind energy are unlikely to ever reach as high as 1% of those from other human-related sources such as hunters, house cats, buildings, and autos. Wind is, quite literally, a drop in the bucket.

-- from the AWEA FAQ, 2002, emphasis mine.

Oil leakage is an old-technology problem,and then only in the case of poor maintenance. New turbines, like the Lagerwey we built in Toronto, don't use hydraulics.

Turbines failing in high winds seldom, if ever, happen. New generator technology allows wind turbines to generate -- small amounts of power, admittedly -- in winds you can barely feel. There's nothing generates bad feeling like a stopped wind turbine.

Quieter than the Gardner Expressway. Seriously, it can be going flat out, and you can easily have a conversation underneath.

> Have any of the neighbours complained?

No. I've yet to meet someone who didn't like it.

> Have you had trouble with vandalism?

No. The site gets a lot of traffic, which deters lurking vandals. Someone might've written their name on it in Sharpie, but we clean that off pretty quick. Damage to the turbine itself would be difficult.

> Why do people have to buy in chunks of $2500?

They don't; the minimum membership is $500 (5 shares) + $1 membership share.

> Why can't someone buy more than $25k?

WindShare is a co-op. We want as many people in Toronto to be a part of the project. If we let a few big investors take all the shares, it wouldn't benefit the largest number of people. Plus, I think, the maximum investment is intended to generate the same revenue as the average home's hydro bill. We had hoped to get nett billing for our members, but that hasn't come to pass (yet).

> What's the point of having separate "membership shares"?

For legal reasons. The $1 is for membership of the co-op, and gives the member a vote. One member can only have one vote.

I'm pleased to say that the first turbine is sold out; 421 people bought into it. But we'll be opening a new share offer soon for the Ashbridge's Bay turbine.

WindShare -- the first urban wind turbine in North America -- is currently only for Toronto residents. We're investigating a scheme to widen membership, but community involvement will always be at the heart of any development.

(None of the above constitutes official WindShare policy or advice; for that, check with the WindShare office [contact details on the website]. I'm just this wind/linux geek who happens to be a director of the project, eh?)

The Midwest was, until recently, mostly dismissed by wind developers as a marginal resource, as they were off gathering the low-hanging fruit in California. Recent, and may I say very cool, technology has allowed marginal sites to become profitable: mating long blades on high towers to variable speed/frequency generators. This is all cleaned up for grid consumption with some very nifty solid-state power electronics in the shape of back-to-back inverters.

You can put wind turbines in urban settings; we did. Isn't our turbine lovely?

Hugh's design uses a truck brake drum lined with permanent magnets. It is in use the world over, and is extremely reliable.

Using high performance magnetic materials has increased the power output considerably. I don't know if scavenged hard drive magnets are quite the right shape.

OF course, some of us get to play with rather larger permanent magnet alternators, like this one (480x512 JPEG image) belonging to WindShare in Toronto ...