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World's Largest Wind Turbine
PeteJones writes "'Construction work on the REpower 5M was successfully completed last night with the installation of the rotor. Thus the main work on the prototype of the 5-megawatt, world's largest wind turbine has finally been completed.' The pictures are quite impressive. With 3 18-ton rotor blades pumping out 5 MW I wonder if my neighbours would mind one in my backyard?"
How much wind does that thing require to spin?
It slices! It dices! It makes julienne fries!
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If my answers frighten you, stop asking scary questions.
...they could create a politician and run for public office. The amount of hot air produced would give it an insurmountable advantage.
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.
If that's becoming less true, I think this is a great thing. I worry a little about the environmental effects of "taking energy out of the wind", but I haven't read about anyone important who shares my worry, so it's probably unfounded.
well, I for one am totally blown away!
It should get plenty of hot air to spin it,
That'd reall blow.
They'd mind it a lot less when you told them it means free electricity for the whole block.
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SeqBox
Trees, houses, mountains, and skyscrapers also take energy from the wind, they just don't harness it and use it. Instead, it's bled off as friction and turbulence, which inevitably is dissipated as heat.
A while ago (with a previous generation of wind turbine technology, for sure) someone built a particularly large wind turbine on one of the windier islands of Scotland's west coast, hoping to replace (or lessen) expensive shipments of fuel oil. Power production was fine, but the locals were driven to distraction by the noise the thing produced, particularly when the windspeed was high. I believe it produced a very loud "whump" every second or so, loud enough that no-one could sleep. I believe the conclusion to which the developers came was that very large turbines were prone to this problem.
Still, that was a while ago (maybe a decade) so I'd imagine the developers of this new megaturbine will have engineered out the "whump" issue.
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With 3 18-ton rotor blades pumping out 5 MW I wonder if my neighbours would mind one in my backyard?
This is Joe from down the street.
Please.. just please, stay in your mother's basement, you creep.
Birds shouldn't be hitting this since they can see it from miles away. Plus the fact that it's moving should scare them away. It's not like glass where they often can't see it and try to fly through it.
Now, how do I get one of them in my box to cool cpu for MASSIVE overclock?.....mmmmm
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
Does any one know how much they spend researching, designing, and building this? Alternativly does anyone know the price tag if I wanted to have another one built? At 5MW it should provide power to between 4 and 5 thousand people and I'm just curious how it compares to other power plants in cost, wind or otherwise. Sure is impressive though.
If they can make it a bit smaller, it would make a wondeful vacuum cleaner! I mean, a REAL vacuum cleaner.
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
How big would a Wind Turbine have to be to power a house? Some people already have solar panels on their roofs, why not a small Wind Turbine?
The Coral links of "The pictures are quite impressive"
Candle burns its brightest in the dark
Some nerd is thinking, "where can I get THAT kind of power for my beanie....."
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
This is a great idea. Why aren't we fully exploiting the power of the wind?
This is an example of the obstacles that American power generating windmills are facing. If ever there was a NIMBY group it's these people. Someone wants to build an offshore set of windmills to power about 3/4 of Cape Cod and surrounding areas in Massachusetts. Since Massachusetts is heavily dependent on important electricity and oil, this seems like a great solution.
Undoubtedly there are some ecological implications, but the NIMBY group clearly is magnifying these issues in order to shoot down the whole idea; they're fishing for excuses. They don't want to have to look at windmills. This is where some federal leadership may be required in order to get the U.S. off its foreign energy dependency.
it's = "it is"; its = possessive. E.g., it's flapping its wings.
Wow. That's enough to power a small town. How much noise would a thing like that make?
I'm always impressed by 'Proofen Technology'.
Checkout the cool 5M CGI here
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May this post be indexed by spiders, and archived for all to see as my Internet epitaph.
That would work wonders in hurricane season!!!
...to move 3 18ton rotor blades? The inertia is tremendous. And what about friction on something so stupendously heavy?
I know that for smaller windmills, say the 1-5kw models you can buy online would pay for themselves in saved electrical bill cost in about 5 years.
And thats the cost to buy the thing. Meaning materials, employees, as well as power in production. I don't see how you can say the power required to make it would be more then the power generated. I mean, unless the manufacturer were getting power for free, which is pretty unlikely.
Windmills are simpler then most other kinds of power plants too.
Now, i've heard that solar cells have this problem, though.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
http://www.renewabledevices.com/swift.htm
Men are born ignorant, not stupid; they are made stupid by education. Bertrand Russel
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I hope your mother brushes her teeth afterwards ;-)
Ya, it's all about torque. They all have transmissions inside to convert it optimal RPM to power load.
Life is not for the lazy.
I don't know much about this field, but is there any way to make windmills safer for birds? Perhaps have some kind of a large wire "cage" around the entire turbine, much like most household fans do to keep things away from the blades?
Wind in the southwestern deserts and midwest plains away from most everything else. Solar would work in the south in general. Hydro in the north. If you take NYC (niagria falls), SoCal (solar and wind), Boston (from QuebecHydro)Texas (solar and wind), Flordia (solar) you are 25% of the way there. That is a big cut. Should drop existing energy prices and reduce greenhouse emissions as well. Add in some good insulation and, while you dont have the problem licked it is a big step in the right direction.
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Verbindung fehlgeschlagen
What the hell are you talkin about?
If someone wanted to build that monstrocity in my neighborhood i'd be all about it... assuming we all get free juice out of the deal. (and assuming they figured out that thump thump thump thing mentioned above.)
In Soviet Redmond, software programs you!
Birds shouldn't be hitting this since they can see it from miles away. Plus the fact that it's moving should scare them away. It's not like glass where they often can't see it and try to fly through it.
Unfortunately, birds tend to save weight on brain. B-( They don't seem to connect the passage of one blade with the next. When blades are big, and moving an an appreciable fraction of the speed of sound at right angles to the bird's flight path, they sometimes don't notice that there's another one coming until it's too late to dodge it.
Google for "windmills birds dead". Lots of info out there.
One estimate is 70,000/year in the US alone. Another is 44,000 for just Altamont pass. Another (in 1992, when there were fewer mills) put the Altamont Pass golden eagle kill rate at 39/year, and the total breeding population at 500 pair. More recent numbers put the kill rate for goldens at 60/year.
Golden Eagles, Red-tail Hawks, and Kestrels are at particular risk. They focus on their prey on the ground and ignore the blades. And there's a positive feedback loop: The shelter from raptors leads to a denser population of rodents near the mill, which baits in more raptors.
But other birds are not immune: Large wind farms tend to be set up in mountain passes, where the mountains concentrate the winds. But they also concentrate bird migrations, one of the factors focusing bird migrations into a few narrow "flyways". Birds tend to fly in flocks (to save energy by riding the vortices from the bird in front) and depend on their numbers to protect them from peredation. So even if the blades are noticed they may be ignored, and a flock may fly right through a windmill's swept disk.
The problem is mainly the large mills, whose blades turn at a slow rate (though still at a phenomenal speed) and which are too large to be perceived as a single unit. (I've never heard of any issues with birds related to the small, fast-spinning mills used for wind power on a home or farm level.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I prefer the "verbindung" thing. Error messages sound more urgent in German.
Why, are you going to kiss her in the mouth afterwards?
... all produce waste.
Think about it. As these become more popular - there will also be additional waste in plant emissions, disposal, and batteries that store the electricity.
Solar silicon is a nightmare to dispose of from what I read and the batteries, well, we all know that those cause problems.
You also have to look into the cost of actual setup - more trucks, more crew for maintenance.
While I am SURE this is less pollution, it is hardly reduction.
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
Think of those blades as huge levers. By applying a small force at the end of the lever, you can create a truly huge force at the hub. The rotor is 126m wide.
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This site http://www.windpower.org/ which the danish wind generator producers have put up contains a lot of useful information about windpower and counters most of the FUD you'll hear.
Wind power is not perfect, but it is here now (as opposed to fusion energy) has no waste problem (as opposed to current atomics) has local and well understood failure modes (things break, fall down) Produce a lot of power when we need it most (wind is driven by energy from sunlight) and it is economically competitive.
The key to a sensible energy future is to not be fanatical for/against any one source, but to exploit them all where and how it makes sense.
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You cannot build any kind of power source that gives you more usable energy throughout its lifetime than it takes to construct.
Do you mean the anti-nuclear activists?
Undoubtedly there are some ecological implications, but the NIMBY group clearly is magnifying these issues in order to shoot down the whole idea; they're fishing for excuses.
Yes, I believe you mean the anti-nuclear activists.
They don't want to have to look at windmills.
When I look at the 2300MW nuclear power plant near my backyard (well, 100km distant), and consider that it would take 460 of those wind eyesores to replace it, I don't want to have to look at windmills either. Considering all the pollution in smelting and refining all the plastics and metals that would go in manufacturing each of those 460 windmills, I think that research funds would be better spent at improving the nuclear fission process. Even more so, if one takes into account that a nuclear power plant runs at over 90% capacity most of the time, while wind varies a lot in most places. Except for some few places with constant wind, it would take several thousands of 5MW wind turbines to replace one 2300MW nuclear power plant.
There's a newly-opened farm of 200 3.6MW turbines, running for 24 miles, 5 miles off the coast of Wicklow in Ireland... it's called the Arklow Bank and is quite interesting...
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http://www.airtricity.com/opencontent/default.asp
When wind power started to come back after the 1973 energy crisis, useful sizes were much smaller. There were a few big machines, but they were one of a kind prototypes. Most of the turbines of the 1970s and 1980s were in the 100KW range. That's a convenient size, because all the components can be shipped easily. The entire hub/generator unit can be shipped assembled.
But all those little turbines are a maintenance headache. Farms of big mills generate more power per acre than little ones, because the blades are higher and catch more wind. So size has been creeping up. As the 1970s units wear out, they're being replaced with fewer, but larger, machines. New wind farm machines are running around 1.5MW. That's a commercial technology. General Electric alone has 2300 units of its 1.5MW turbine installed.
Offshore, much bigger machines are the norm. Setting a pylon in the ocean is a big job, so the fewer the better. Big components can be moved in by ship, so the truck size limit goes away. So offshore machines are running around 5MW. But there aren't many of them. Most of the really big machines are still experimental.
Wind power is like hydroelectric power. There are a limited number of good sites. Most of the ones in California, the major passes through the coastal mountain range, are already taken. The East Coast doesn't have a long coastal mountain range, so installing wind farms in passes is out. So the East Coast systems tend to be offshore.
Total installed wind turbine capacity worldwide is about 40 gigawatts, although that's peak, not average, output. This is up by a factor of 10 in the last decade. Much of this is due to better power conversion technology. Early wind turbines synchronized the blade itself to the power grid. Newer ones have inverters and better controls, so they interface much better to each other and the power grid. Many of the early turbines were only tolerable on grid because they were such a minor portion of generation. They were a destabilizing influence, forced into synch by bigger generators elsewhere. With improved controls, wind generators can contribute to frequency stability, rather than stressing it. As wind power becomes a larger fraction of generation, that's essential.
The city of Alameda is suing Altamont pass energy group because all those wind mill blade are killing birds. Will that windmill kill more birds? what's the environmental impact on birds?
Now lets think about it. Some are thinking of making that space elevator. Isn't it easier to build hundreads of thousands of those fans on Antaractica?
Now don't get me wrong. I know it's a nature preserve but if we don't take advantage of its nonstop windy conditions, soon our land in which we live in will become as poluted as the east river that Kramer was swimming in.
"With 3 18-ton rotor blades pumping out 5 MW I wonder if my neighbours would mind one in my backyard?"
Ummmm.... Why? To power your Tesla coils that can't have ANY latency from power gerneration to use or other pseudo-scientific mubmo jumbo?
There is this invention called wires that can actually TRANSMIT the power over a DISTANCE with minimal losses. It would work just as well in a park down the street away from buildings sapping the airflow, but that would be nit-picking.
-Charlie
That are best kept near shore. It's a safety issue.
To me, this isn't much of a decision. Should windmills move farther offshore or humans? No contest.
That cannot be true. I cannot refute it with a source, but if it were true, nuclear fuel would be ludicrously expensive. You don't just end up with CO2, you have to expend energy to make it, and if you expended that much energy to make the fuel rods, it would show up in the cost of them. I suspect this would make fuel rods too expensive and thus not viable.
This is just a guess though.
Besides, do you know how much CO2 a coal/oil/gas plant puts out over its lifetime? The amount is nearly unfathomable.
Click here
The article gives a nice comparison of the output of the wind turbine and the nearby by nuclear reactor.
"All the darkness in the world can not quench the light of one small candle."
Come on, it must be possible - someone can photoshop that for a laugh.
(warning: sarcasm in this post).
This is my Sig, this is my Gun. One is for Slashdot and one is for Fun.
The Stateline Wind Energy Center in SW Washington and NW Oregon has the capacity to produce 300MW of energy, one of the largest installations in the world to date.
Granted, each turbine is only 660kW -- far short of the 5MW of the turbine mentioned above -- but all put together, with 454 turbines, it makes for a sizeable facility. Plus with lease payments of $1500-2000US per turbine, it provides farmers with their biggest cash crop since marijuana.
Yes, there's photos.
Give me my freedom, and I'll take care of my own security, thank you.
Power storage can be accomplished by using "water gravity batteries" (I just made that term up) which are essentially hydroelectric facilities that are reversible, pumping water up into a reservior during off-peak hours, and releasing it thru turbine/generators during times of peak load.
One such facility is at Grand Coulee Dam in Washington state.
Give me my freedom, and I'll take care of my own security, thank you.
If I can figure out a way to blow it over the mobo - my cooling problems are OVER !!!
*for now*
21045.09663 to 78167.5018 furlongs/fortnight
When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.
But mirrors only take up 0W per Lm of redirected light. :)
Do you even know anything about perl? -- AC Replying to Tom Christiansen post.
I am happy to see that wind power is catching on more and more. Economies of scale from increased popularity are even making it more cost effective. Now I would like to see another great alternative become equally popular... recycling of agricultural waste. By extracting oil, methane, and alcohol from agro waste it is projected we could replace the majority of our oil imports. This is from a domestic source that is currently being thrown away, it plugs relatively easily into our current petroleum based infrastructure, and reduces global warming by staying within the atmospheric carbon cycle rather than liberating more petroleum from deep underground.
I know of at least one farm here in Wisconsin that captures methane from its slurry tanks and uses it to generate electricity. It generates enough to power the farm and still sell back to the power grid, and the manure is still usuable as fertalizer when done. Then there is also that Butterball turkey plant that is recycling turkey offal into oil, turning the previous cost of disposal into a profit center instead.
As a nation, why are we not doing more of this? It makes both fiscal and environmental sense, and could substantially reduce our dependence on foreign oil.
The Bolachek Journals
Now we only need about 15,000,000 of these and we can power Pennsylvania!
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
..but it depends where you are (local average wind speed, depends heavily on topography) and how much power you need.
If you can find a way of levelling the load (e.g. batteries) with only moderate conservation you'd need the equivalent of a constant 1kW output, about 1.4 Hp. Power abstracted from a windmill follows the formula k*0.5*A*V^3, where A is the area of the blade disc, V the windspeed, and K is the fudge factor. There's a theoretical limit of about 59% efficiency, due principally to retaining enough momentum to carry the air on the downwind side away from an axial turbine.
Anyway... say you have a mean wind speed locally of 10mph, which is constant, because you have the device up a tower. That equates to 4.45ms^-1, so working backwards, and assuming 50% efficiency for the 'k' factor - hey, we're geeks, we'll buy th every best - you'd need a blade disc, um, 5.4 metre diameter. Of course the conversion to electricity incurs losses, sy 80% overall... so a (*very* efficient) wind genny rated for1Kwh output at 10mph would imply a 5.9m diameter swept area. Pretty small!
In fact, in the interests of minimising noise and improving part-speed efficiency, you'll find 1kW rated wind generators are slightly bigger, and rely on rather higher mean windspeeds. Beware the windspeed measurement though, that V^3 term will kill ya. If the mean windspeed locally turns out to be just half what you measure, you'll get, at best, only 1/8th the output expected. The actual design considerations for wind turbines (disc solidity, operating range windspeed etc) are wonderfully technical and pretty interesting in their own right.
As to why not...well small wind gens are rather expensive , and Planning control (local ordinances, US) tend to restrict the possibility to rural areas.
How many birds does it vaporize in an hour?
Those are called vertical axis rotors, a variant of the savonius rotor. I've seen a few, they work well enough for a project any back yard handy dude can build. Usually they used truck differentials and axles, then some more pulleys, for the gearing to the alternator to get the speed up enough from the pretty slow turning oil drum halves.
There are some large commercial examples of them now also. I remember seeing a link to one company in wyoming that makes and sells them, but I have forgotten the name or I would provide a link to their page. IIRC, they look like big towers with wind openings, totally different from the airplane propeller blade looking projects.
Personally, I'd love to see a lot more R & D work on using atmospheric static electricty potential, I think it would be a serious contender in the alternative energy market. I like the idea of no moving parts whatsoever. I've read some on hobbiest experiments with them, some guys are getting useful amounts of juice from it, using wrapped bundles of stock fencing to act as the static accumulators in effect, and automotive coils as capacitors, then going to an opened up severely (large electrode gap) spark plug, then to a storage battery. Wind blowing over the fencing induces a slight charge, when it reaches potential to work the coil and spark, it jumps, gets into the battery in a series of very high voltage but low amperage pulses. Interesting concept. I'm not an EE, but that is my understanding about how it works.
Since the Kennedy's (supposedly part of the more enviro conscious Dems) continue to fight this wind farm, why not offer to build a coal or nuke plant on Nantucket?
Where do they think the power for their 'compound' comes from anyway?
What hypocrites!
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
Twitter, you're a petulant cock-gobbling sycophant to Linux Torvaldyos! Quit taking DP from ESR and RMS's feculent cocks and why don't you try to stop sucking quite so much? Get out of your parents' basement and see the real world - maybe then you'll see how pathetic you sound, with your neverending stream of bullshit about how Microsoft is stalking you. Wasn't it you who said that Microsoft believes your insane ranting is actually a threat to them, so they PAY PEOPLE to reply to you on Slashdot? No sir, I don't get any money. I do it for the love. Someone has to go up against your paranoid whining. So get back in your cage and shut the fuck up already.
A local guy filmed it in action, and you can hear just how audible these things really are:7 83.avi>
<http://www.wigleyandassociates.com/uploads/MVI_6
I hear the wind can get pretty strong down there. :)
..other forms of energy conversion devices, or just normal throw away human products? Payback? Yes, they have net gains with energy over their useful projected lifespans, there's a payback then gravy period with them. They really wouldn't drop millions on them (or small thousands on homeowner scale) if this wasn't so.
Contrast that with game consoles, ipods, big screen TVs, various home audio equipment, jetskis, movies and video, whatever format, and the players needed, and etc, etc, etc, that people have no problems with,either the upfront manufacturing cost in terms of energy and raw materials used, and the ongoing cost of powering those purely for amusement and entertainment devices. I think the energy impact and benefit from wind turbines is justified economically and resource-wise at a human and societal scale of where we put our collective interests currently.
I find it kinda humorous really, anything designed to provide humans with energy needs to be justified down to the penny, and it's usually decried as "not cost effective" unless it's a ridiculous one year payback or something like that, or it can only be done by existing energy monopolies, whatever method they choose,yet, anything designed to just use up what energy and raw resources we have, merely for amusement, as fast as possible, gets a free skate on the "payback" part as regards energy and raw materials and pollution impact, etc. Really quite an amusing phenomenon I've noticed with most people in these discussions.
As to the wind effect, basically not a lot different than trees or buildings of similar size, as has been pointed out elsehwere in the replies.
If we just put some effort into doing it right. A coal plant produces far more waste and even more radioactive waste (due to Carbon 14) than a nuclear plant. And it gets to spread it across the countryside from the tips of its smokestacks.
Given that we are already irradiating ourselves with our non-nuclear power plants, I'm sure with some effort, we can reduce the problem of nuclear waste to an acceptable level.
American Wind Energy Association, you can look around the reference library section there for costs, financing, etc sorts of questions. If you want more detailed and varied sources, just run a google search on wind generation cost analysis, ton of hits, I just checked, and it's where I got this one site I linked to.
As an aside, commercial wind power was one place where enron was really doing some good. GE picked up that division and it's still in operation and doing well, last I checked.
Mod parent down : Quax entirely misunderstood the argument I was trying to make, and is implicating me of making hypotheses I never made. Although I give the parent the benefit of the doubt that (s)he misunderstood me and didn't purposely mislead on what I said.
Quax - listen, I am NOT claiming that the windmills will extract heat energy from the atmosphere and thereby cool it down. Not at all.
Windmills will keep the temperature integrated over the global surface the same (well, actually the energy). Windmills will merely change the pattern of tradewinds (maybe significantly, maybe not). The main crux of my argument, which you seemed to entirely miss, is that because the tradewinds carry hotter or colder air to their destinations, slowing the tradewinds down will also slow down this transfer of heat to the destinations. The effect is that the destination might have its temperature altered, maybe significantly, maybe not.
Please understand my main argument before replying again. If you want to poke holes in my argument, or if you're still convinced it's unscientific nonsense, fine, then reply on topic to what I've claimed.
For example, look at Europe vs. North America on a map. Compare their latitudes and temperatures. Notice how Europe is much warmer for similar latitudes than North America. One of the replies to my parent post was this one , which mentions Rome is at the same latitude of southern Ontario, yet Rome is considerably warmer. Why is this? Because of trade winds and water currents that carry warmer air/water from the tropics to Europe.
And you're also confusing the heat energy contained in the trade winds with the kinetic energy of their motion. It's the kinetic energy that will be extracted by the turbines, but the extra heat carried by the wind will still be dumped somewhere. Read my simple analogy of a truck carrying heat (in the form of boiling water) in this post . It gives a qualitative idea of how if a windfarm was built that slowed down these winds significantly, less heat would be carried to Europe, and more heat would be dumped into the tropics. Whether this amount of heat is significant remains to be studied.
I could do back-of-the-envelope calculations if I knew the volume and velocity of air that flows past the turbines per watt (probably not linear) and the volume flow and velocity of tradewinds to Europe and where they come from (to get the rough air temperatures). However so many factors go into climate affects even order-of-magnitude calculations can be difficult.
And as to your last paragraph : Really don't know what to make of the parent post. Suspect for a second that this was just astroturfing but then the posting history doesn't support this. Wass even claims an undergrad degree in physics. He really should know better.
Well, again, I give you the benefit of the doubt that you misunderstood my argument. And actually I'm currently a graduate student in physics.
make world, not war
robert kennedy explains their perspective very well if you go listen to an interview of his (i heard him on fresh air i think). essentially martha's vinyard is one of the last remaining pristine areas in new england, putting this wind farm where they propose would destroy the natural beauty of the area, and this is the only area that people in the region generally can afford to visit to experience nature, which we all have a right too. the thing that makes it so stupid is that if they moved it a couple more miles offshore and out of the protected area, where there are already wind farms, there would be no complaints. this is a clear cut case of commercial self interest trying to usurp the rights of the general populace for their own gain.
Slightly offtopic, but if we consider size, check out the idea of a Solar Tower, a completely different approach for harvesting sun energy by producing wind (in the form of an upward draft). There was a prototype in Spain (195m high), and now the Australian Government is considering to build one that is 1 km high, with a diameter of 5 km!
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
I always wanted to put in a couple square miles of wind turbines/mills here in Kansas. Two main areas of Kansas have the perfect amount of wind for just such a deal. I imagine the overly-paranoid tree-huggers (bird-huggers) would try to put a stop to it, going from "save the children" to "save the birds" like they did in California. Still I think it would be a damn fine investment.
I give up, where was it built?
How many standard 24" box fans would it take to consume 5M of power?
These are the standard square fans that run off of 120 VAC with the motor mounted in the center?
(Kind of Ironic, one big windmill needed to power X amount of box fans blowing air...)
The first link in my earlier posting points specifically to a paper that has the telling title "MERIDIONAL ATMOSPHERE AND OCEAN HEAT TRANSPORTS".
The amount of energy that humans can draw out of the atmosphere with their puny machines (no matter how impressive the photos) simply pales in comparison to the amount of energy transported by wind throughout the atmosphere.
My calculation was just a simple illustration of the magnitudes of energy that you are dealing with when talking about atmospheric processes. People simply tend to forget that our planet is really, really large in comparison to all the shiny machinery that we can produce. Then again this is not really news. Throughout the ages humans tend to get drunken on their own cultural power and technical achievements. Already Sophocles put these words into the chorus of his play Antigone:
"Wonders are many, and none is more wonderful than man; the power that crosses the white sea, driven by the stormy south-wind, making a path under surges that threaten to engulf him; and Earth, the eldest of the gods, the immortal, the unwearied, doth he wear, turning the soil with the offspring of horses, as the ploughs go to and fro from year to year."
I wonder if there were any Greek philosophers around that were wondering what damage harvesting the wind in that fashion could do to upset the balance of nature.
It's a cool idea, but it seems like, unless the natural spin due to the coriolis effect is cancelled out some how, these things would create tornadoes : ( Does anyone have more info ?
Windmills do not work that way!!!! Goodnight!
Someone makes a huge, f$%king, wind, f$%king, turbine. So, f^&king, what? I'm, like, sitting here, and looking at this computer, and I really couldn't care less about some wind turbines. I mean, c'mon, my 2-yr-old son would probably find this interesting news. Really. He'd, like' point his little finger at it and say GHOOOO-WOOO. I'm, like, too old to get excited about this s@#t/. Really:-)
P.S. This is a joke, damn it. Laugh.
someone will get in a plane and try to whiz through those rotors... i mean i would...
electric power comes from immported fuel. you don't have an argument.
...your muscles repeatedly contract and relax to maintain the position of your limbs. You're "applying force" but you're doing no work. Muscles are a bad example; they do work even when no output work can be done. Wind doesn't work like muscles... it pushes with kinetic energy only. It hits something solid, and it changes direction. It loses some energy to the acceleration, but that's it.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
My only sin, it seems, is to have deviated from the strong trend on /. that wind power must be perfectly green, and there's no chance it can have any bad effects on the environment. To disagree with this absolute truth means death to your karma! slashdotters beware!
make world, not war
A planned 1 km tall tower in Australia will house a set of turbines that will not be powered by wind, but by convection. The air will be heated by a sort of huge greenhouse skirt at the base of the tower. Planned output could be up to 200MW. More info at http://www.buzzle.com/editorials/text8-18-2002-247 01.asp
LM Glasfibre production of these wings are quite impressive. Allthough its been over a year since I was involved in the project, let me tell tou this:
When I first started out walking among the moulds for these wings its mind-boggeling how big the become. At first I thought 39mester was big, but the 61m meter turbineblade is incredible.
And think about the amount of engergy that a wing is loaded with, when you do a DESTRUCTIVE load-test (I dont think they actually do it on the 61m - but its normally how you test a blade) - KAPOW.
Windturbines really is an impressive industry - something we danes can rightly be proud of.
And the future ramifications of their use makes it even more interesting to be working in the field.
or 6.803455724 to 48.59611231 knots (that's Don Knots).
I've come up with that argument myself a few years ago, I've never heard anyone else bring it up. Perhaps the silence of established climatologists speaks of the validity of the argument.
But anyway, as you say "same tired old objections to wind power", that implies people have brought up this concern long before me. And if so then the wind-power people and/or climatologists should have well-reasoned scientific explanations to easily refute it. Do you know of any such refutation?
make world, not war
GROWIAN was installed in 1983, and shut down in 1986 due to material problems. It had a power output of 3MW, two rotor blades of ~50 meters each (23 tons per blade).
Wind energy generators installed by danish company in the north of germany now routinely have a power output of 2.5 MW each, and 5 MW are expected to become standard in two or three years time. The German Wind Energy Institute reported a newly installed capacity of 729MW between January 2004 and June 2004, a 13% decrease against the same period in the previous year. The total installed capacity came to 15327 MW in June 2004, 5% more than at the end of 2003.
"brace yourself Shiela, it is pissing slashdotters"
... or everybody's sig. Funny stuff.
That quote is just screaming to be added to the bottom-of-the-page list
Global warming is neither science, nor politics. It is a religion.