World's Largest Wind Turbine

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Posted by michael on Saturday October 2, 2004 @04:56AM from the it's-a-chopper-baby dept.

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?"

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I hope the noise isn't too bad by wfmcwalter · 2004-10-02 05:05 · Score: 5, Interesting

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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## W.Finlay McWalter ## http://www.mcwalter.org ##
Re:Wind power efficiency by drwho · 2004-10-02 05:09 · Score: 5, Interesting

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.
Sounds like typical anti-wind propaganda. Its funny, every time this argument is brought forth for wind or solar, someone says 'I just read it somewhere' - I have never seen hard figures to support such a critique of the economics of alternative energy. I am sure it could be done for a specific installation that was poorly design, or used outdated techniques (like those horrible inefficient copper photovoltaic cells).
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.
If only we could slow down some of those winds, I am sure a lot of people who just suffered from hurricanes would be rushing to install wind turbines! But no, the amount of wind taken by even the largest turbines is so infinitesmal as to not matter. It would be like fretting about contributing to global warming each time you farted, to worry about these machines causing environmental damage by calming a windy area.
World's Largest Wind Turbine by demon_2k · 2004-10-02 05:10 · Score: 5, Interesting

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?