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Danish Goal: 50% of Electricity from Wind
tres3 writes "The Danes have an ambitious
plan of producing 50% of their national electrical needs from wind by 2030. The website has tutorials on everything related to wind energy you can imagine. The index gives you an idea of the detail of the site. It includes land and sea wind turbines as well as details about the machinery needed and where to locate it. There are over 100 pages so I didn't link to them all. [ed. note: thanks] A picture says it all."
this idea blows...
IBM had PL/1, with syntax worse than JOSS,
And everywhere the language went, it was a total loss...
Ireland also plans to get 10% of their power by wind. You can read a BBC article here.
The main problem with wind power is that it is mostly available during the spring and fall (during temperature changes).
Unfortunately, we need our electricity mostly during the summer and Winter months. Now if only we could cheaply store this energy in 3 month blocks.
The rotational pollution caused by windmills is unacceptable! The rotational energy will throw the rotational axis of the Earth out of kilter, and penguins will be in Equidor within hundreds of years. Sure, Linux fans will love that, but I don't think Equidorians could harvest their frozen bananas that way.
Stop this nonsense, it is killing our planet's life! Save the poles!
Table-ized A.I.
The AERO concert with Jean Michel Jarre two days ago was staged in a windmill park in the north-western part of Denmark.
Unselfish actions pay back better
Sure, wind power is non-polluting from a chemical standpoint, but it certainly disrupts the environment significantly. Producing any decent amount of power takes a lot of windmills. California's been experimenting with it a bit, and if you drive along I-10 in the desert east of L.A., you'll see acres and acres covered with windmills every 10 feet or so. Certainly ugly, and probably has an impact on the native wildlife as well. Now multiply that by 100x or so to get enough windmills to actually power California, and you'll have most of the state covered in ugly white towers...
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
They need more power before they can survive a Slashdotting.
Now if we can only convince Environmentalists that wind power is a good idea.
Think I'm smoking crack? Well check out this story from the NY Times about the enviro fight against windmills in Cherry Valley, NY:. html?ex=1031568343&ei=1&en=0920b9cbdc48601 9
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/28/nyregion/28WIND
And there is this story about enviros against wind power in Moosic Mountain Ridge, Philadelphia
http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/3693755.htm
If you want a good site to view on how the Enviromentalists have shifted from Science to Socialistic Demigogery check out this site from GreenPeace co-founder Patrick Moore:t rickmoore.html
http://www.fcpp.org/publications/conversations/pa
I love this quote from Dr. Moore:
"Many factors including a lack of science education, a need to perpetuate themselves and "means justifies the end" thinking. The worst aspect is what I describe as the environmental movement has been hijacked by political activists who are using green rhetoric to cloak agendas that have more to do with anti-corporatism and class warfare than with ecology or the environment."
Remember this is the co-founder of Greenpeace. Not exactly your average "evil right-wing" nutcase.
Brian Ellenberger
... the amount of energy required to manufacture and erect such an array of wind turbines?
With the turbines running at full-pelt, how long will it take them to break even?
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
Now, the US, with it's vast spaces and enormous power grids. That'd be a great place to use wind...
He provides all the wind they need in Denmark...
Sure. Tell me more. You have some information or statistics that involve modern windmill technology?
You're familiar with modern wind technology, correct? Large blades, turning slowly. Certainly some birds might smack into them (the same way they do to buildings and cars), but we're not talking about the little, fast-moving windmills of the 1970s and 80s.
I'm tired of hearing this one trotted out every time somebody talks about wind. Show me the numbers, dammit!
They're certainly going to pollute the visual enviroment
Maybe we can disguise them as trees. Or put Budwiser advertising on them. Then they'll fit right in with the rest of the country :)
This is nice. They are in fact implementing known technology for the benefit of all, AND DOING SO IN an aggressive visionary project. It is unfortunate that most of the industrialized world is not as nimble in implementing technology, when the benifits don't neccessarily fit neatly in an accountant's bookkeeping. We admire ourselves as humans with descriptions such as adaptive, modular etc. But our culture is not, when it comes in conflict with immediate rewards like profit. This Danish wind power project is an example of human culture rising to the challenge and becoming, indeed, an adaptive and modular culture. Now if we just had an aggressive program for developing cheap, clean and abundant energy.
A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.
By having a focus, Danish industry can seek to acquire the IP such as patents to build up a top industry. As in other industries the idea is to go so far down the learning curve that it becomes more economical for other countries to buy the technology from you rather than develop it themselves.
That is why conservatives who bash alternative energy are stupid. Any reading of US history shows massive government involvement to nurture any industry whether through protective tariffs, cash for infrastructure, land grants, whatever. To make money you have to spend money. A so-called conservative who espouses capitalism should understand that.
I think the subject says it all. While impacting native wildlife is a differnet issue, if it was simply staring at white towers vs. not being able to breathe, I know what *i'd* choose...
It gets 43% of its electricity from hydroelectric dams, 22% from geothermal, and another 4% from other renewable sources.
The city really focuses on finding plausible, cost-effective power sources, but for some reason it doesn't get any of its power from the wind. Perhaps the Santa Clarans know something the Danish don't?
- TV setup. My television, amplifier, and Tivo alone took up
1.6 Amps = 185 watts, while they were completely idle. The Tivo was not
recording anything, and I verified that it was not doing anything by
telnetting in and observing that the load average was 0.00. Does it
really require 1.6 amps just to spin a hard drive and wait for a
10mW infrared signal??
- Computer monitors. I run XFree86 4 in dual-head mode. My two
monitors take up 2.6 Amps = 300 watts while they are on, and a whopping 70
watts when they are turned off at the switch. It's worth noting that they
produce about a third of the light, and twice the heat, of two 150W light
bulbs.
- Computer hardware. The power strip supporting my 1.6Ghz Athlon
and 1Ghz Duron draws a whopping 4.4 Amps, or 500 watts, while
both systems sit at zero load! Apparently, AMD expended significantly
more effort making sure their processors were well-equipped to start house
fires when the heatsink falls off, rather than making those Linux kernel
"CPU idle" calls actually do anything.
- Uninterruptable power supplies. These were the sleeper hit of
my power measurement experiment: with full batteries and no devices on the
load side, my UPSes drew 50-80 watts of power each. I understand that
filtering power comes at a cost, but these things really should be designed
to be at least a little bit more efficient than the average space heater.
So, this brings me to my main point: why is it that my cell phone can run for two weeks without a recharge, my digital scale can run for 10 years (guaranteed) on a single battery, my thermostat, analog clocks, and smoke detectors can run for 2-3 years between battery changes, but my computers and consumer electronics have to suck up as much power as my toaster while they are completely idle?As long as our toys are designed to waste as much energy as legally possible, even the most well-intentioned power conservation efforts are doomed to utter failure.
-sting3r
(Besides, your premise is wrong: wind is not limited to spring and fall in many places.)
This seems off. Oil fired power plants don't take much time to get up to speed and on the grid... a few minutes is generally fine.
What I think you are talking about is called "spinning reserve," which is not idling; it is there to back up a plant that goes down, or a circuit tripping. Spinning reserve would be even more important (regionally) when dealing with wind power.
Just to nitpick, I have never lived somewhere where the wind picks up during the day. The peak windspeed is almost always early to late evening.
There is a lot of potential for wind power, especially when it is combined with other forms-- tidal power or solar come to mind.
Modern windmills have a wingspan the size of a 747. They turn only a few times per minute. The windmills at Altamont pass are mostly older technology and spin much more rapidly. So far I haven't heard anyone claiming that the modern type of windmills are very bad in this way, though it's certainly possible for a bird to run into one.
Also, Altamont is a particularly sensitive area for a number of endangered species. Any stories you've heard out of there wouldn't necessarily apply to the rest of the country.
Also, in line with Trepidity's comment, the main problem with wind power from what I've heard is that it just requires too many turbines to get the neccesary amount of power. You have to have truly giant wind farms to get a pitiful amount of power...
Wind power is competitive with coal and (certainly) nuclear (nuclear is really expensive when you look at the per kw/h prices.) And the technology is improving rapidly. It's worth pointing out that many of the companies building wind farms in the US are doing it to make money-- if wind really doubled their costs, they'd hardly be doing that. Wind does get a very minor gov't subsidy, but no more than the other power industries.
I applaud the Danes for their bold, foward thinking Energy 21 energy policy. Bush's policy on the other hand, involves meddling in the middle east or drilling in our national parks and preserves.
Being the man of vision that he is, Bush, should reconsider our depenence on oil from the middle east and its impact of our foriegn policy. Like a drug addicted individual the US governments choices sometimes are far from rational.
For example, we call the Saudi's "our fiends". Bullshit! They would slice our thoat in a heart beat if we were not their biggest customer. They are a twisted theocracy that rejects womens rights, democracy, personal liberty, religious freedom, etc. We have nothing in common.
If the man would come out with a Kennedy like vision and plan of developing renewable technologies such as wind, solar, geothermal, wave, conservation, etc. and even clean and safe nuclear we would be much further down road to world stability, peace and prosperity. Instead he wants to start another war and one which has the potential of being a messy urban war where civilian casualities are unavoidable if you want to win.
There are also countries much smaller that Denmark. Luxemburg springs to mind...
Please don't feel bad about being confused about our small nations. We - inversely - tend to get confused about the myriad of world-dominating, corrupt and arrogant major nations, who are ruled by capitalist oligarchies, and show a (to us)... shall we say SLIGHTLY relaxed attitude towards getting small details (such as major national elections) right ;)
The quantity of turbines improves the efficiency of the system, and improves the ability to maintain power quality. I think the problem with what has been done today is that people are going too much for the HUGE turbines. A few dozen 10kw turbines on a building would make an impact. It wouldn't do everything, but it can run a chiller or UPS system and reduce the overall oil dependancy.
...uncertainty of imported oil, it's worth some subsidies now!
An interesting link on novel wind turbines is www.windside.com. They are vertical axis turbines, and therefore have much slower tip speeds (thus less impact on wildlife).
As far as costs go, the industry will require subsidies for a while, to develop the industry more. The same holds true for fuel cells. However, the cost per kw is competitive with everything but oil-fired plants. Looking at long-term financials, and
Give every nation a surface "resistance" allotment or budget. For every windmill you put up you can cut down several trees :)
In the United States, about 10 billion kiloWattHours are produced and distributed per year. That's about enough for 1 million standard US households.
The Danes plan to have 2.5 times this number of households provided for by 2030. I would imagine the US could match them in number of homes covered in the same time period. The fact that this represents 50% of their total needs is something very ambitious indeed!
In order for the US to match the Danish goal, approximately 250 billion kilowatt hours would have to be produced for half the 100 million (approximate) US homes occupied today.
-gnuDaruma
Here is the picture that "says it all," since it's being Slashdotted.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
the vacuum, but as it turns out that idea sucked.
My carpet is clean and fresh though.
So instead I started working on transportation. I figured out a way to travel between NY City and LA for free. Just build a big tube between them, LA Sucks and NYC blows. It only works one way though, so that idea was down the tube.
Let's face it, all of my ideas just seem to break like the wind.
KFG
We're currently producing 10-15% of all electricity in Denmark with wind-energy and nobody wants that number to increase currently due to the problems we are facing.
The main problem is that we actually get so much wind-generated electricity during a storm that we cannot get rid of it, this unbalances the power-grid and results in voltage and frequency instabilities.
The secondary problem is that you also need electricity when the wind does not blow. This could mean keeping large centralized power-plants around, paying a lot of maintenance costs, waiting for the wind to die.
Various suggestions abound, and the Engineers weekly newspaper here in Denmark has been the home of a fierce debate for the last couple of months about the merits of these and wind-generation in general.
The fact that all sorts of micro-plants and co-generation is popping up like mushrooms is in fact a very interesting problem for the electrical grids: How do you balance supply and demand, when you have almost as many suppliers as consumers ?
Poul-Henning Kamp -- FreeBSD since before it was called that...
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Your comments are true of large continental land masses like North America, but Europe is a different story.
Remember that countries like France, UK, Denmark, Germany, are at a higher latitude than even Newfoundland.. yet those countries enjoy much higher temperatures than the average Canadian will get.
London's (51oN 00' lat) temperatures are generally similar to those of New York (40oN 42' lat) even though London is over ten degrees 'higher'.
This is because of the Gulf Stream, but also because the land masses in Europe are, generally, quite small and broken up with lots of lakes, fjords, rivers, and seas (North Sea, Baltic Sea, Mediterranean Sea).
This gives Europe cooler summers and mild winters, and a climate that remains quite the same throughout six months of the year. We don't get many 'surprise' weather events, like the US. Nor is our weather as extreme as that in the US.
Therefore, we might not get big hurricanes and sudden gales like the US can experience.. but.. we get a metered regulated amount of wind, that is perfect for generating electricity.
mogorific carpentry experiments
Now you know what those who support fission power feel every time the "environmentalists" say something about fission power based on what the tech was in the 1970s and 80s.
McDonald's has signed a 50 year deal with the government of Denmark for the manufacturing of chicken McNuggets.
yes, It's a joke, I know about modern windmills.
-- Who is the bigger fool? The fool or the fool who follows him? --
Why can't the US, the world's largest economy, do the same?
What about smaller wind gennys? I've got a AIR 403 sitting in the garage, with those sharp carbon-fiber blades. I haven't put it up yet because I haven't installed the inverter/battery setup, but I have worried about complaints of noise from the generator at night, and about possible injury to birds (I live in an urban/suburban area). After all, these generators only have a 3 ft dia, so they tend to spin fairly quickly. On the other hand, they do present a smaller cross-area, so if I stick lights on it (LEDs along a vane), maybe that will warn any flying creatures off.
On the topic of advertising, has anyone seen the billboards with the horizontal wind generators, the ones that look like ultra-thin, slowly rotating helicopter blades?
Well birds have been chopped up in these things so it's no use pretending it's not a concern. That's why the U.S. DOE initiated research into the environmental impacts of wind farms and attempted to identify the optimal locations for wind farm placements.
The National Wind Technology Center has a pretty thorough collection of research on the topic, which you can access here.
And about "polluting the visual environment," yeah that sounds dorky, but it's the kind of argument you hear in opposition to wind farm proposals in places like Nantucket. Personally I think they're kind of majestic, but that's just one man's opinion. Supporters of renewable energy really need to have some ready answers for these kinds of arguments.
The Technology Review recently ran an article on wind power. It's an interesting read:
7 02.asp?p=0
http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/fairley0
Power lines kill much more birds than wind power generators.
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
Windpower demo for Kids on Windpower.org rejects the Mozilla user agent by name, basically saying "Netscape 6 is broken, get Internet Explorer". It is quite apparent that this is in error because that site works fine in Konqueror. These scattered sites are a serious problem to alternate web browser adoption. When people try Mozilla for the first time, they expect all sites to work without problems. One of the greatest problems they run into is when sites like this reject their visit.
Several months ago I discovered that my local bank was rejecting the Mozilla user agent by name at their online banking site. My LUG began a small letter writing and phone call campaign. After we spoke with a bank vice president, they were concerned enough to make sure that our needs were taken care of in their planned site rewrite coming later this month. I have confirmed with their site designer that their new site works properly with alternative web browsers.
I have begun the "BrowserAdvocacy" discussion mailing list for the purpose of organizing advocacy campaigns in identifying these sites, analyzing the problem, and politely contacting the sites with reasoning and suggested fixes. Please join if you wish to help in this project, or if you know of sites that reject alternate web browsers like Mozilla/Galeon/Opera/Konqueror by name.
I am looking for a volunteer to organize the web page of this project. This webmaster would simply need to keep a scoreboard showing the current status of the sites that we target. Please post to the list if you are interested in helping. Once we have some formal guidelines and infrastructure in place, I plan on making a formal announcement on Slashdot. (I hope my server can handle it!)
Thanks,
Warren Togami
Mid-Pacific Linux Users Group
http://www.mplug.org
Shouldn't those be Tidal Generators?
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
Athlons have circuitry to disconnect from the system bus when idle (on a signal from the Northbridge, which gives the signal when the OS enters the ACPI C2 idle state), reducing clock rate and essentially going into a standby mode (~5W power consumption). Unfortunately, it's not enabled by default, partly due to minor performance problems (~3% is the normal performance hit), and partly due to intermittent problems with some motherboards, especially when using PCI bus-mastering cards that require low latency (such as video capture cards). I'm not sure why it's not available as a BIOS option though.
In any case, you can enable it manually by setting the relevant bit in the Northbridge. For Linux, see the Athlon Powersaving HOWTO for a variety of methods to enable it.
For Windows, there's a utility called VCool, whose site was at vcool.occludo.net, but it appears to have disappeared in the past week or two.
When idled using the setpci trick mentioned in the HOWTO, my Athlon 1.33 GHz, which used to idle at 57 C, now idles at 33 C (case temp is 31 C, so it's generating very little heat and by extension using very little power, especially compared to what it used to do).
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
The report was from Sven Auken, a leading member of the social democrats, and the primary hate figure for the then opposition, now current government.
The new right wing government have basically stopped or severely reduced funding for all environmental programs, and the current "wisdom" is that the emphasis on wind power was a mistake, because it (despite Denmarks 50% markedshare of the world production of wind mills) hasn't been short term profitable.
The new government appointed Bjørn Lomborg as head for the only new environmental institution.
Your citation of Dr. Moore shows what, exactly? That some in the left wing disagree with some others in the left wing? Oooh! Just because Greenpeace gets more involved in politics in the process of protecting the environment, and this old-schooler thinks they should proceed a different way, that doesn't mean Greenpeace is doing anything wrong. The thing about the lacking science education is true up to a point, but exactly how many science Ph.D.'s are memebers of Greenpeace? One that I know personally, and I bet you there are tons more. Yes the average environmentalist hippy doesn't know much about science, that's unfortunately a fair observation, but why should we hold them to a special standard regarding this? After all, only a right-wing nutcase could possibly think the average Greenpeace hippy knows less about science than the President of the United States.
Just about all new large structures get some opposition from locals, who believe their view will be ruined. And the modern wind mills are huge. This has nothing to do with the traditional environmental groups, it is more a "not in my back yard" thing.
There have been one case in Denmark where a (rather moderate) environmental organization protested, in that case the park was proposed in a protected wildlife area. In general, the environmental organization support wind power, but it is not clear how much more than the current 15% can be derived from that source, both for technical reasons (we need energy when the wind doesn't blow too), and because of the increasing impact on landscape.
The 50% mentioned in the Auken sounds unrealistic.
If you had bothered to look on this page (same site) and read the second paragraph you would have found out that the goal is to get 35% of our energy from renewable sources, that is wind, waves, solar etc..
My opinion? See above.
However, Denmark has a higher density than the US, which means that the space that is used to produce wind-energy is more valuable. With the huge amounts of empty space in the US, wind power should be even more viable.
I'd be less worried about birds smacking into them than their presence screwing up jetstream patterns or something. I don't know much about wind streams, but way back when we started putting dams in rivers we thought it was the greatest thing in the world, and now we have to deal with things like metallic sediments and screwed-up salmon runs. I can't imagine even a huge number of windmills affecting wind patterns to any noticable degree, but it still might not be a bad idea to keep an eye out for weird things like screwy migration patterns, or something.
c-hack.com |
milk and sea wind turbines. What do you get when you combine these two? Cream. I see great synergy benefits in here!
They're actually dressing up cell phone towers as trees here in the nicer suburban areas of New York. While, I must say that it's nicer than some grey metal monster, they certainly aren't fooling anyone either...
Take a look.
The secondary problem is that you also need electricity when the wind does not blow
Exactly. You have to have enough means to produce power on the cold, dark and windless winter days. At that point energy demand is also highest.
I would hope that these turbines have a control system that would "feather" the blades (turn them to their point of least wind resistance) in extreme conditions. I imagine that this would also be varied to keep a constant angular velocity. (Are these turbines AC or DC?)
On the other hand, here's a US company that makes turbines using a flexible design that they say can "shed excessive wind loads".
(this is not a
making alternating energy cheaper per unit.
Remember the fixed costs in the utilities industry are about about the highest you can get.
A device running at 120VAC can consume 4 Amps *without* consuming 480 Watts.
:)
How? Well, most real-world devices are slightly (or sometimes not so slightly) inductive loads - this causes the current draw to lag after the voltage "peak" supplied.
In the DC world, your formula is valid: P = U * I, effect equals voltage times current.
In the AC world, it is still valid but it cannot be used the way that you used it. You multiplied the voltage with a current that was drawn at a different time - what you need to do is to find out the "power factor", the phase distortion (or whatever the english word for that is), of your devices.
The formula becomes:
P = U * I * cos(d)
where d in most household devices would be anywhere from near-zero to 0.3 or so.
The minimum cos(d) is regulated by law, at least in Denmark and probably everywhere else, since the power companies have a hard time measuring and correcting phase distortion.
Anyway, what this all means is, that your devices probably only consume 60-80% of what you *think* you measured.
It's still a lot though, I'll give you that
Not too surprising, the site was made last year and rejects Netscape 6 by name. Netscape 6 did indeed suck... Mozilla just wasn't ready back then.
Windmills in rough areas such as on buildings do not generate very much electricity. The wind is not even enough. They are also subject to large stresses from the turbulent flow, which reduces the lifetime. The site in the article has more details.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
Is available here.
Fair enough, but, fundamentally, wind farms are still basically trying to obstruct the movement of a fluid that is being driven, at some remove, by solar power.
Environmentalists get all worked up about hydro-electric and the fact that it fundamentally changes the river ecosystem, and then hold up wind as a better solution.
As far as I can see, the only real difference between hydro and wind is that hydro is better localized, more consistent, and easier to harness. How many hillsides do you have to cover with windmills to match the power generation of a Grand Coulee or a Hoover Dam? They plan to have basically run out of terrestrial sites by 2005, at only 2.5x their current capacity.
The energy consumption of a wealthy western population is huge. Attempts at renewable energy sources are laudable, but they pale by comparison to the volume of power generated by conventional means. The first page I found with actual numbers claims a goal of only 35% combined from all renewable sources by 2030, not 50% from wind alone, but that still seems optimistic to the point of hubris when compared to the existing renewable energy sources. Even their own numbers only give a duty factor of 20% (1200GWH per year on 600MW of capacity).
Attempts to migrate to renewable energy resources are laudable, but how long will it be before there's a backlash against the giant tracts of land being dedicated to unsightly wind farms?
Exactly.
;)
A superconductive coil with a shield. This is incredibly more efficient than to pumping water uphill and the other conventional suggestions.
Only hope it doesn't accidentally heat up and lose it's superconductivity... *boom*
Well, since Greenland is still Danish territory, we are actually the seventh greatest nation in the world (area wise).
;)
However, I do see a problem getting the power from a huge windmill farm on Greenland across the atlantic
The problem with using super-conductors as energy storage devices, as I understand them (with my limited knowledge), is that the superconductive properties of all known materials break down when a certain density of magentic field (flux?) is reached in the material. The more power (amps) you put in the material, the more magnetic force is created. At a certain point, the super-conductor cannot take any more of it, and it becomes a regular conductor. And that's the end of that. (*boom*). As I understand it, this property of superconductors makes them impractical for use as power storage devices.
Today, according to the Danish electrical power companies, the energy cost to society (the social cost) per kilowatt-hour of electricity from wind is the same as for new coal-fired power stations fitted with smoke scrubbing equipment, i.e. around 0.04 USD per kWh for an average European site.
Ouch! What idiot would think of burning coal? Blech! A sky full of nasty brown stuff is what you get, unless you use "newer" "smart coal" technology Al Gore tried to push a while back which was really a revival of 1920's coal gassification. What to do with the open strip mines or dead underground miners is not answered by that nor is what to do with all the ash developed. The only thing dependable is the cost.
Four cents per kilo-watt is twice the cost of nuclear or natural gas power. Who out there wants to double their electric bill tomorrow? Great, just go with wind power. The more distributed your electricity generation, the higher your costs. It's a sad fact of life that everything needs to be maintained and that costs money. Why is it that people turn their backs on cheap, clean, proven and reliable power sources?
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
It's inertia that does it. When the wind blows fast at your farm, all is well. Your windmills turn, regardless of size, and do their job. When the wind stops, the windmills don't. They keep turning as they wind down, creating local air circulation loops which can suck in bald eagals!
It's part of the trade off. Sure, one pass might not kill a bird. It's a statistical thing, many passes by many birds kills a few. The more windmills you make, the more birds you kill. There are dead birds in California and other nutty places where people are willing to pay 4 cents per kilowatt hour to generate electricity. Go visit the windmill FAQ where they tell you that windmills cost as much as "scrubbed" coal. Barf, nuclear power costs half that and natural gas is less on average.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
http://uabar.mozdev.org/
Well one alternative to the Air Conditioner is a ground source heat pump (GHP) which will heat and cool your home without sucking enormous amounts of power from the grid. They are relatively expensive to install, but not insanely so. And the systems last for a very long time.
Once more unto the breach dear friends...
Uhm ... LOL!
Hvad skal jeg sige? Boller fra Kohberg!
We do not live in the 21st century. We live in the 20 second century.
...should harness Slashdot.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Ice thrown from spinning blades in winter and noise are among the potentially harmful consequences of building the wind energy project on hills east of U.S. Highway 41
Hmmm. Ice daggers and noise.
I wonder what causes the noise? Is it the blades vibrating against the wind, or the generator, or something else?
Table-ized A.I.
It's good to see someone looking at the demand side. Once you do, it's obvious that our only problem is demand -- not supply.
There were scads of common devices in my house that were wasting virtually all of the power they consumed (90% or more) -- computers, inkjet printer, scanner, ethernet and usb hubs, monitors, instant hot-water (under-the-sink tank style), microwave, laptop, cordless phones, cordless mixer, etc. etc.
In all these cases the "off" or "idle" states burned significant amounts of power ALL DAY LONG. When you multiply the load by 24 hrs, suddenly "small" loads become not-so-small as a percentage of your total usage.
Things with rechargable batteries (cordless appliances) were particularly bad. The charging circuits have not been well designed, so they leak A LOT of power after the battery is charged. They leak even more when the battery gets a bit old, because they don't hold charge well any more, and the charging circuit doesn't have any mechanism for figuring this out.
The laptop had a battery that would only hold charge for 10 or 15 minutes, so it was plugged in all the time. Turns out being plugged in and "off", it was drawing HUGE amounts of power trying to charge the fried battery. Solution was to remove the battery.
(For those who doesnt want to know why - skip to the last paragraph).
;)
I know it's hard research since most stuff is in danish but this is very far from the reality today. So here is some insight for those who want it
If you notice the date (april 1999) it's actually 3+ years old. A lot has happened since then.
We got a new goverment close to a year ago after around 8 years of government by the "Socialdemokratiet" (Social Democrats) together with minor party which isn't important regarding this issue. The new government consists of "Venstre" (The United Left) and another minor party which isn't important either in this issue.
Note that "The United Left" is not even close to be a left wing party, it's somewhere between The Democrats & The Republicans, although quite a bit closer to the Republicans as their main ideoligy is liberalism, however as any governing party they practice a fair bit of populism, which currently in denmark results in a policy which on some issues moves them more to the left.
However one issue they have in common with The Republicans in the US is "Environment and Energy". You wont hear any Venstre members in the parlament deny global warming but they generally believe that denmark is far to extreme and carefull on enviroment and energy issues.
This knowledge is important considering the fact minister in charge of the linked document "Svend Auken" no longer is in charge of the "Enviroment and Energy" Ministry but it's currently a Venstre member.
One of his first actions as minister was cutting 1/3 the employees.
(FOR THOSE WHO DIDNT CARE WHY)
In short, the current government makes HUGE doubts about how valid this document and it's goals are today.
still reading?
There's a plan to put a couple of hundred windmills off the coast of cape cod (consistant wind is good). It is being thwarted by so-called "environmentalists" who think it will spoil the view. Such short sighted people!
Since we are talking about offshore wind turbines here and floating obstacles tend to attact fish in large numbers, I would say any chopped birds would provide a ready supply of fish food - which in turn would be turned into human food.
;)
So in a round about way these windmills would be transforming protein that is not normally in the human food chain (ie seagulls and such) into one that is (fish). Maybe we should be looking into the older faster turning wind conversion technology
... it's all gonna run on Mindstorms bricks from right there in Billund! Don't think the tiny LEGO propellers will get them much, though...
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
On the other hand, if you think that jetstreams occur anywhere near ground-level, you must have failed your earth-science course in junior high (or you went to a school which doesn't even teach that much science). Either way, it is an indictment of the educational system (of the USA, I presume). This has consequences all the way through the system, right down to public policy; if voters can't tell facts from bullshit, they'll vote for whoever's platform sounds "best" whether it's hard sanity or utter crap.
Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
Same is true in AR, TX, MO and of course UT.
And I suppose you have a brother named Jared?
ASCII tastes bad dude.
Binary it is then.
Some of these devices will draw power even when they are switched off. For example, TV's will draw enough power to keep the CRT tube warm (which is why TV's don't need to "warm up" like they used to) and accept signals from the remote control. The only way to ensure it doesn't draw any power is to unplug it.
Whether you are worried about chemical toxicity or terrorist actions, anything radioactive will someday become so dilute that it just isn't worth worrying about compared to other issues.
Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
I completely agree with you there. The most sensible solution is to do what we are doing now: Burn oil, which is cleaner than coal and is both safer and cleaner to get out of the ground, while developing nuclear and solar technologies so they will be cheap enough to use once oil reserves become too expensive to get at (probably in the next 150 years or so). Also, continue to research space-based power systems and nuclear fusion, keeping in mind that we have one really big, really safe fusion reactor already (hint: we orbit around it).
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Untapped wind potential of over 10,000 billion KWH (gawd what an ugly unit - why didn't they use quads?), which is some 3 times current US consumption.
Rosebud Sioux reservation is good for 35,000 megawatts (that's 35 gigawatts) in ONE COUNTY.
The real problems with wind power aren't that it doesn't exist, it's that most sources are a long way from where consumers are (and nobody likes big transmission lines), and it can't be scheduled (you either use it when it's available or throw it away, and you need backup generation for your base load). If we had a much more opportunistic pattern of consumption we could get maximum benefit out of this, but right now our whole system is tied to consumers being able to flick loads on and off whenever they feel like it and most of them pay a flat rate regardless of the immediate supply/demand situation. Trying to re-engineer that to squeeze the most out of intermittent supplies like wind is going to be like pulling teeth on an irritable and unanesthetized orca.
Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
Another thing is that most switching power supplies use a bridge rectifier feeding a capacitive filter; these draw no current at the zero crossing, suddenly start drawing amps as the line voltage exceeds the capacitor voltage plus the diode drop(s), and then stop drawing current again shortly after the waveform peaks and the line voltage falls faster than the power supply draws down the filter cap. The harmonic content of such current waveforms is horrendous, and it really messes with transformers (and everything else in the system).
Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
- Heat water. Over-heat the domestic hot water systems, if necessary (control outlet temperature with a tempering valve); if you get things hot enough you may not need any electricity for water heating for some time afterward. You could also dump some of this excess heat as space heat via radiators, allowing fossil-fired heating to be turned back or shut down for a while.
- Charge batteries of hybrid vehicles. Most hybrids are designed to be independent of the electrical grid, but if your nation's fleet could be plugged in you could drain the batteries just as you got to your destination and then plug in to drive on wind power instead of oil. You'd need improved information systems to be able to do this - there would be no point in draining the vehicle battery if there was no charging facility where it was going, so the vehicle system has to know both the state of the grid and the destination of the current trip.
- If you can keep energy-hungry systems like aluminum smelters on standby, use them to suck down the excess watts when you have them.
People keep suggesting that you make hydrogen, but the efficiency of electrolysis isn't all that great and the systems to make use of the hydrogen aren't there either. That makes it a much bigger infrastructure project than anything I suggested above.Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
I have several devices at home where the power button is a "soft" power button which only converts the device to standby. For example, the stereo receiver. The only way to turn it off completely is to unplug it or turn off the power strip it's plugged into. My DVD player turns power off if you push the mechanical power button but is only in standby if you turn it off using the remote control. My initial comment about AC/DC converters still stands. Although they draw less power when they are not being actively used, they still use power when they are plugged in. Devices which maintain any memory tend to be pretty bad, drawing 4-7 watts even when they are "off." In other words, the only true "off" for many devices is unplugged. I suppose you could turn everything off at the power strip level. Then your VCR, microwave, etc. will always blink 12:00, you will have to reprogram your TV stations every time you want to use it, etc. There are chips that electronics makers can put into a device to make it use 1 watt or less which is not as bad, however it increases the cost (50 cents is a lot to a manufacturer) and most consumers don't know or care about energy vampires.
See also: CNN article
The noise would come from the protesters, protesting the ice daggers and the noise.
Black holes are where God divided by zero