World's Largest Wind Farm Gets Green Light

cliffski writes "According to the BBC website the UK govt has just given the go ahead to two large offshore wind-farm projects. Between them the schemes would produce enough renewable electricity to power about one million households. The larger London Array project covers 144 sq miles (232 sq km) between Margate in Kent and Clacton, Essex and will be the world's biggest when it is completed. The £1.5bn scheme will have 341 turbines rising from the sea about 12 miles (20km) off the Kent and Essex coasts, as well as five offshore substations and four meteorological masts"

Comments

Originally meant to be a white light

[LiquidCoooled]

The light is not green, it was originally meant to be a white light
But the green cloud coming from all the produced wind obscured it.

Re:Originally meant to be a white light

[duguk]

I live in Clacton and can confirm our clouds are NOT green! :D

WooO! My hometown mentioned on /.

Expect this'll annoy a lot of the old people living around here but I'm all for it.

DugUK

Re:Originally meant to be a white light

[ronanbear]

Annoy? It's 12 miles offshore. You can barely see them at that range let alone hear them.

Personally I think they're great when I'm sailing along as they usually mark sand banks and make navigation much easier. I like the look of them too.

Re:Originally meant to be a white light

[polar red]

hear them ??? Windmills are silent.
http://www.bwea.com/ref/noise.html
"the sound of a working wind farm is actually less than normal road traffic or an office"

Re:Originally meant to be a white light

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed, 12 miles offshore should be far enough but you obviously don't know the folk of Clacton (and Holland-On-Sea especially) so well :D

Seriously, they'll complain about ANYTHING!

DugUK

Re:Originally meant to be a white light

[ronanbear]

Thanks. It's an interesting article but it misses the point. Just because something is louder doesn't make it more annoying.

All it takes for noise to annoy some people is for it to be above their threshold of hearing. If they can hear you they can complain about it. It doesn't matter in the slightest that the noise isn't louder than anything else they can hear. People get used to that and tune it out. But if you decide a noise is annoying you focus on it.

It's the same with planes. Most of the time I don't hear them where I live and I don't find them annoying. But I do hear them most days and I know that other people do get annoyed. Sure they're overreacting but that's irrelevant because you end up with a noise complaint.

If you can't hear the wind farm at all, ever, then you can't be bothered by the noise (no matter how hard you try).

Re:Originally meant to be a white light

[LiquidCoooled]

They will complain that its being built too far away to complain about.

Re:Originally meant to be a white light

[cayenne8]

"If you can't hear the wind farm at all, ever, then you can't be bothered by the noise (no matter how hard you try)."

Hmm..ok, so it is the noise of them that causes people to object to them?

I'd always wondered why people were against them. I mean, I'm FAR from being a tree hugger, but, I'm all for new sources of energy, and if it can be done at a low pollution factor, I'm all for it.

I guess it all comes down to a "Great idea, but, not in my backyard!" thing. That kind of thinking is big time in the US. How many decades has it been since the last oil refinery was built?? From what I understand in the States...it isn't a lack of oil, but, lack of refining capacity we have here that kills us so much on gas and other energy pricing.

Down here in southern LA, we easily provide 1/3 of the oil product needs for the nation...and often we pay the price for that. Much of the devestation caused by Katrina, was due to the erosion of our wetlands that used to serve as a natural barrier to hurricanes...erosion caused in no small part to channels cut in for shipping (the MR-GO for instance), and all that cutting up of the wetlands for laying all that pipe for oil to come onto shore for processing. Thankfully...we just recently got legislation to allow the Gulf states, in particular LA, to collect more fully on the royalties from oil drilling out in our part of the Gulf. At least now we have a steady flow of funds earmarked for rebuilding the wetlands, and also for enhancing our other hurricane protections.

That being said...it is a shame that more states don't share in that burden...no one wants a refinery in their state. No one wants drilling in their coastal waters (Hello, CA and FL?).

At some point, in the US, the rest of the states are going to need to stand up, and do their share of energy production..oil, wind, gas, nuclear....etc.

If not, then quit bitchin' when a storm comes through the gulf, and knocks out a significant chunk of your current (oil) producing/refinement needs...and then tell everyone in the area to just 'move your city somewhere else safer'.

[rantmode off]

Sorry...back to topic...go wind power!

Re:Originally meant to be a white light

[ronanbear]

NIMBY isn't good enough. It's BANANA now (build absolutely nothing anywhere near anything) ;)

On the subject of oil refineries one of the main reasons no refineries were built was due to tough environmental restrictions on NEW refineries. It was cheaper to just expand the existing refineries.

Re:Originally meant to be a white light

[compro01]

actually, i've been hearing about a growing PIIMBY (put it in my backyard) with the new suspended wind power rigs they're developing. i've heard of a number of farmers in the centeral states jumping to lease land to these.

144 mi^2 !=232 km^2

[SNR monkey]

Last time I checked, 144 square miles would be 373 square kilometers. Remeber is 1.609*1.609 *144...

Re:144 mi^2 !=232 km^2

[smaddox]

thats the Imperial-Metric square mile. Oft' confused with the strict Imperial square mile.

It was invented solely for the purposes of this article, and has yet to reach widespread use.

Re:144 mi^2 !=232 km^2

[SNR monkey]

Ignoring my typos (must use preview), when I RTFA, it says

the larger London Array project covers 90 sq miles (232 sq km) between Margate in Kent and Clacton, Essex. So, the 232 km^2 is correct, but the summary is wrong about the 144 square miles.

What about our fine feathered friends?

[udderly]

The Law of Unintended Consequences in full effect: http://www.heartland.org/Article.cfm?artId=14562

Re:What about our fine feathered friends?

[tomknight]

Hopefully it'll kill off a few bloody seagulls. Maybe we should have a wind farm in central London to cut down on the vicious bastards.

Re:What about our fine feathered friends?

[maxume]

Where are the percentages in that article? If the turbines are killing ~1% of the population a year, I would be not that concerned, but 10% would be a big deal. "Thousands" just doesn't mean anything, hell "thousands" of people are killed by something or other everyday, and we seem to be getting by.

Re:What about our fine feathered friends?

[notaspunkymonkey]

There is a wind farm just off the coast where I live - and as u bird friendly as this may sound - we have noticed a distinct drop in the number of seagulls in the area - a good side effect of wind farms.. I say yes..

Re:What about our fine feathered friends?

[morboIV]

Yeah, and what about Steve the janitor?

Re:What about our fine feathered friends?

[SNR monkey]

Compare the number of bird deaths from those windfarms to the number of bird deaths (and non-bird deaths) that would result if it was a coal burning power plant instead. Every project has costs (not all costs are $$). Hopefully the people in charge weigh the environmental costs as well as the monetary costs (sometimes the environmental costs end up being monetary costs anyway). Most large scale power generation techniques have an environmental impact.. The question is - do the benefits outweigh the costs?

Re:What about our fine feathered friends?

[Mad Dog Manley]

Survival of the fittest my friend.

I wouldn't be a bit surprised to learn that birds adapt very quickly to windmills. We built skyscrapers, and birds die when they fly into them, yet we haven't torn down our buildings. The stupid ones either die, breed in sufficient numbers to replace those lost, or adopt behavior such that they do not fly into them.

Re:What about our fine feathered friends?

[randallman]

Scarecrow. Duh.

Re:What about our fine feathered friends?

[Elegor]

Nah. Given time they'll evolve their way around the problem. Just like bunnies, where the ones who don't stand staring at oncoming headlights have a much better chance of producing the next generation.

Seriously though, has anyone ever done a study to see if roadkill numbers have declined over the years as animals evolve the skills needed to avoid traffic?

Re:What about our fine feathered friends?

[Hijacked Public]

I guess there has to be, or has already been, a decision about the acceptable tradeoffs before it is built. For a given amount of power from wind versus coal, which method is best overall, not just to birds or the pocketbook or the ozone layer.

Typically in order to find out what the Unintended Consequences are things have to be built first, and while wind farms aren't exactly new neither are they common. As with most things the more widespread they become the more effort will be focused on correcting whatever problems they have.

A friend and I had a similar discussion about cell phone towers while hunting this weekend. He was complaining that the woodcock population has been down lately, and I mentioned that one factor might be the continued proliferation of cell phone towers in our area. Towers were going up with solid beacon lights that screwed up the navigation systems of some migratory birds. A simple change to blinking beacons seems to be fixing the problem. Of course we had to find piles of woodcocks dead around cell phone towers before we even knew it was necessary.

Re:What about our fine feathered friends?

[Anonymous Coward]

It really helps to have some perspective.
Mans activity contributes to a vast number of bird deaths every year:

1. Utility transmission and distribution lines, the backbone of our electrical power system, are responsible for 130 to 174 million bird deaths a year in the U.S.
2. Collisions with automobiles and trucks result in the deaths of between 60 and 80 million birds annually in the U.S
3. Tall building and residential house windows also claim their share of birds. Some of the five million tall buildings in U.S.
4. Agricultural pesticides are "conservatively estimated" to directly kill 67 million birds pe year.

In December of 2002, the report "Effects of Wind Turbines on Birds and Bats in Northeast Wisconsin" was released. The study was completed by Robert Howe and Amy Wolf of the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, and William Evans. Their study covered a two-year period between 1999 and 2001, in the area surrounding the 31 turbines operating in Kewaunee County by Madison Gas & Electric (MG&E) and Wisconsin Public Service (WPS) Corporation.

The report found that over the study period, 25 bird carcasses were found at the sites. The report states that "the resulting mortality rate of 1.29 birds/tower/year is close to the nationwide estimate of 2.19 birds/tower.16- The report further states, "While bird collisions do occur (with commercial wind turbines) the impacts on global populations appear to be relatively minor, especially in comparison with other human-related causes of mortality such as communications towers, collisions with buildings, and vehicles collisions."

Re:What about our fine feathered friends?

[be-fan]

God, I wish the environmentalist would take the same position with regards to nuclear power!

Re:What about our fine feathered friends?

[truthsearch]

From what I've been reading, the largest turbines hardly kill any birds. Apparently the larger propellers move slower, giving birds time to avoid a collision.

I'm much more curious to know the impact to the waters. Hundreds of pillars built into the sea floor might affect sea life or water currents.

Re:What about our fine feathered friends?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's very sad, but considering that most of the houses I've lived in seem to kill something like 0.1 birds per window per year it's hard to consider this a serious objection. And what about people with cats!

Re:What about our fine feathered friends?

[Angostura]

Before any windfarm is approved in the UK there is a tremendous amount of debate about the effect on birds, particularly where the farms are close to migratory routes. The exact sites would have been chosen with this in mind.

Re:What about our fine feathered friends?

[Inda]

Eagles, Hawks and Owls. Three types of birds with eyesight ten times better than mine.

I can see the blades spinning...

Re:What about our fine feathered friends?

[Ucklak]

5. Birds that fly into my large window that either die from impact or get their knocked out carcasses picked up by larger, predatory birds : approximately 15 a year.

I know when it's time to clean the window then the outline of said bird is left on the window.

Re:What about our fine feathered friends?

[eln]

Any decline in roadkill numbers due to evolution has been more than eclipsed by the dramatic increase in incidents of Squirrel Hazing.

Re:What about our fine feathered friends?

[jafiwam]

Aw go fook yourself already.

Fluffy the neighborhood kitty kills way more songbirds, exotic birds, rare land mammals, rare land reptiles than any wind tower every will yet there is no one bitching about that.

Radio antennae for Clearchannel do the same damn thing, nobody ever complains about them.... not to mention glass covered sky reflection having every goddamn downtown in every goddamn city on the planet kill more birds in a friggin day than all the wind towers in the world in a single day.

Yeah, because the coal plant these things prevent is SO CLEAN that it never harms any wildlife, in fact, they go there and roost in the smoke stacks to get clean fresh air and drinking water.

Let's tear all that stuff down too.

At least that bunk-ass article you linked to didn't use the same black and white picture of the same four birds that every other radical greenie rag uses to prosetylise the same lame issue....

You hypocritical fucktards will only be happy when everyone lives in a mud hut and dies by the age of thirty. Everything is a compromise. A few dead birds to feed the local worms won't make a big impact.

Re:What about our fine feathered friends?

[An Onerous Coward]

Fluffy the neighborhood kitty has probably never taken down a bald eagle.

Wait, wait, I know what you're going to say, but it's obvious that youtube video was a fake.

Re:What about our fine feathered friends?

[Citizen of Earth]

I'm much more curious to know the impact to the waters. Hundreds of pillars built into the sea floor might affect sea life or water currents.

What about the climate effects of sucking that much energy out of the wind?

Re:What about our fine feathered friends?

[An Onerous Coward]

Most of the Altamont Pass turbines were built back in the 80's. It's one of the earliest attempts at a major windfarm, so it's not surprising that they're chewing through raptors like buzzsaws.

I say yank them down and replace them with more modern, more efficient, less bird-hungry turbines.

Re:What about our fine feathered friends?

[udderly]

I agree...but I wouldn't want to be the one to stand up and say that at a PETA meeting.

Re:What about our fine feathered friends?

[End Program]

Tell the to the rich snobs trying to stop a wind farm off the coast of Nantucket, MA. All of a sudden, they have become bird advocates. http://www.saveoursound.org/node/119 All while they drive their large SUV's. F'ing hypocrites Another example of we are for green power, except for NIMBY

Re:What about our fine feathered friends?

[udderly]

As far as I can tell squirrels and opossums have not evolved one iota in that regard. I wish I had a nickel for every time a squirrel cut back in front of my car after already successfully getting across the road. And possums? For the love of God, you almost need a snow plow to clear 'em from the roads around here.

Re:What about our fine feathered friends?

[udderly]

Wow...I guess that I should have included the blah, blah blah for you Mr. Obvious.

Re:What about our fine feathered friends?

[udderly]

True Story (or so I'm told): My brother is an ornithologist out West and they were conducting a Lincoln Index study in a suburban area. Every morning they would come in to man the nets and in one back yard a toy breed dog would bark his fool head off. One early morning the yapping was punctuated with a yelp and then silence. My brother looked and a Great Horned Owl was flying off with Fluffy.

Re:What about our fine feathered friends?

[OriginalArlen]

Birds?? Hey, those little bastards are no friends of mine - they crap on my car. I say: fuck 'em.

Re:What about our fine feathered friends?

[Dorceon]

One article I read noted that people who used to be NIMBYs are now BANANAs: Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything. Rolls off the tongue better than Not In Anyone's Back Yard, too.

Re:What about our fine feathered friends?

[polar red]

from the article on wind power on wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power
"An estimated 1% to 3% of energy from the Sun that hits the earth is converted into wind energy. This is about 50 to 100 times more energy than is converted into biomass by all the plants on Earth through photosynthesis." This gives you an idea of the scale.

Re:What about our fine feathered friends?

[GreyPoopon]

Fluffy the neighborhood kitty has probably never taken down a bald eagle.

Well, the neighborhood kitty I once saw wasn't named fluffy, but I wouldn't be surprised to see it take down a bald eagle. The monster was over forty pounds.

Re:What about our fine feathered friends?

[drsquare]

Are these effects more or less than the effects of burning coal instead?

Re:What about our fine feathered friends?

[peepleperson]

Yes, but their better eyesight means they get super-hypnotised, and fly straight into the blades.

Re:What about our fine feathered friends?

[maxume]

Negligible. Humans use, on average, about 11 Terawatts of power at a given instant; the sunlight hitting the planet at a given instant is something resembling 100,000 Terawatts(that's ballpark, the exact number is going to be quite different than that, but I am lazy).

That's (surface area of a disk the size of the earth in meters) * 1000 w/m, which is going to be close enough to demonstrate that we use a trivial amount of energy, in terms of the weather.

Individual hurricanes dwarf human power consumption, if that helps:

http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/tcfaq/C5c.html

Re:What about our fine feathered friends?

[htd2]

James Lovelock, the environmentalist who coined the Gaia theory is a supporter of Nuclear power.

Re:What about our fine feathered friends?

[djh101010]

God, I wish the environmentalist would take the same position with regards to nuclear power!

/me raises hand

I'm pretty sure I'm not the only person considers himself an "environmentalist" who is strongly pro-nuke-power. It makes the most sense after all, solves most of the problems in exchange for other manageable problems. Problem is, emotionalism gets in the way of science (no, really?) like on so many other topics.

Re:What about our fine feathered friends?

[Rei]

The number killed is tiny compared to most other man-made causes -- windows and housecats being two big ones, killing millions of birds annually. Even with widescale adoption of wind turbines, they'll still kill far fewer birds than just those two causes alone.

Really, when you look at the numbers overall, turbine birdstrikes are not much of an issue at all.

Re:What about our fine feathered friends?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's easily solved. Put plastic owls on top. They do that alot in the Chicago area. Supposedly, the owls scare the pigeons away - but the abundance of pigeon crap covering them makes that debatable. The true purpose is attract the attention of passerbyes who always ask "what are the plastic owls for?", rather than "why are there dead pigeons littering the ground?"

Re:What about our fine feathered friends?

[Rei]

If you look into most of those rich snobs, you'll find that most have almost no association with other environmentalist activities. However, they pick up the environmentalism mantle and wave it around to try and get support for stopping their property values from dropping. Don't pretend that these people actually are environmentalists by any stretch of the imagination just because that's the flag that they wave here.

Re:What about our fine feathered friends?

[SSCGWLB]

You need to stop using words like 'logic', 'research', and 'perspective' around environmentalist. Why would they cloud their busy minds with such trivialities? They like their cars, power, houses, and so those bird deaths are 'regrettably' OK. However, the evil wind turbines, they have to go.

Re:What about our fine feathered friends?

[Citizen of Earth]

We need a 20-year environmental-impact study before we can allow this project to go ahead.

Re:What about our fine feathered friends?

[Duhavid]

So, the report was done by Howe'nWolf?

Re:What about our fine feathered friends?

[legirons]

"Compare the number of bird deaths from those windfarms"

Given that (a) they're not fast-spinning (b) not on land, and (c) not in the flight-path for a certain type of rare bird, it's difficult to imagine why you're using data from the Altamont Pass turbines to evaluate this project?

As the RSPB say, "The available evidence suggests that appropriately positioned wind farms do not pose a significant hazard for birds"

Re:What about our fine feathered friends?

[i.r.id10t]

Roadkill evolution - notice how an armadillo looks like it already has tire tracks on it?

Re:What about our fine feathered friends?

[Alioth]

It's an offshore windfarm, several miles off shore. No birds of prey. The majority of birds in the area will be seagulls - otherwise known as shitehawks or winged rats.

Re:What about our fine feathered friends?

[Alioth]

It'll also be hard to see how an OFFSHORE eind farm in the UK (not noted for its bald eagle population, particularly the undiscovered marine form of bald eagle) is going to harm the bald eagle population.

Re:What about our fine feathered friends?

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently the larger propellers move slower, giving birds time to avoid a collision.

Their propellers may have lower RPMs, but because of their size, the tips are still moving quite fast. Take GE's 1.5 MW turbines for example - one of the more common turbines. Its rotor diameter is 77 meters, and its operating speed is 10-20 RPMs. At 20 RPMs, the tips are moving at about 180 MPH.

Re:What about our fine feathered friends?

[ozeki]

So to kill "2 birds with 1 stone" so to speak we should throw the kitty's into the turbines to scare off the birds and reduce the number of kitty's that kill birds....Net gain for the birds I think.

Re:What about our fine feathered friends?

[Anonymous Coward]

Put up some of these wind mills, paint picutes of small children on the blades to atract them, then sit back and watch the little fuckers drop...lol

Re:What about our fine feathered friends?

[Ced_Ex]

Don't think of it as killing abundant birds, but feeding endangered orcas.

You see, the stupid birds get hit by a blade, their body falls to the water. Orcas, rather than hunt for increasingly rare food sources, now can feast on the birds around the wind farms.

It's a win-win-win process. We get free energy, we cull bird populations, and we save orcas. Everyone's happy.

Re:What about our fine feathered friends?

[sweetpapa]

Have you ever seen a wind farm in action?

Modern wind turbines have huge blades with a huge surface area so the blades rotate slowly and more efficiently so bird mortality is not as dramatic as we would imagine.

Re:What about our fine feathered friends?

[tcoop25]

Modern wind farms use turbine blades that are significantly larger and slower than the early adopted wind farms mentioned in this article. This is the equivalent of a bird flying into a window, or a skyscraper (which result in many more deaths than turbine blades ever will).

Re:What about our fine feathered friends?

[metamatic]

Well, the problem with nuclear power is it's more expensive than wind power, and only has a net energy gain of around 5:1, compared to 40:1. And that's assuming nothing goes wrong. One significant accident at your nuclear plant, and you can make a net energy loss...

Re:What about our fine feathered friends?

[lastchance_000]

But what about Three-Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Moonbase Alpha?

Re:What about our fine feathered friends?

[shanen]

Yip, yip, yip, yip, yip, yip

NO TERRIER

Re:What about our fine feathered friends?

[mrchaotica]

First of all, Three Mile Island was a success -- the containment system did exactly what it was supposed to do.

Second, we have better reactor designs (e.g. pebble-bed reactors) now that can't fail that way.

Re:What about our fine feathered friends?

[lastchance_000]

I guess the joke was too obscure? Enlightenment

Re:What about our fine feathered friends?

[Ben Hutchings]

More nonsense from climate change deniers.

Re:What about our fine feathered friends?

[Dabido]

Pebble bed reactors can fail in other ways. [Such as what happened in Germany shortly after Chenobyl]

I'm yet to see a reactor design that is flawless. Not that I'm Anti-Nuclear for energy so much as I'm distrussful of the 'people factor' involved. I mean, Chenobyl happened because they were cutting corners, etc, and most 'accidents' I've read about were either due to cutting corners [I'm thinking of the half dozen Japanese who got steamed alive about a year or more ago because they were inspecting Rusted pipes that the reactors owners had ignored], or because of human error [either through the 'I don't care factor' or just being plain overwork].

But, if anyone builds a reactor near me, I'd probably move to another city or at least a LONG way away. Not that we need any here [though John Howard wants to build one here], because we generate enough electricty from solar, wind and gas. [No coal generators in our area]. But the Aussie Federal Government wants to plonk a reactor here where it's not needed. Plus they're testing some energy system off shore that uses the water pressure and tides to generate electricty (when they put the prototype out there a while ago, they said it would only take a couple of them to generate enough electrity to power Perth ... though I've heard nothing about it since the big hoo har they made on the News).

But, my distrust of Nuclear power is a basic distrust of Government and Corporate entities who are likely to cut corners and run reactors in unsafe ways. Governments usually understand little of technology things they sign off on, and I wouldn't put it past a greedy big corporation to pay their way through with a cheap unsafe design. [Not that I don't think there will be safe designs submitted, but if I know Government, they usually go for expensive and unworkable, or cheap and nasty].

Re:What about our fine feathered friends?

[rio]

Wow, quite an article there-- which I don't buy. I live near/next to a sizable windfarm in Kansas (insert expected KS wind references here) and with minimal population in this county, I think I'd have heard about piles of dead birds among other things. (Pheasant season has actually been quite good this year, not that they ever fly high enough to encounter a turbine blade).
I do, however, see plenty of birds (most notably hawks) on the roadside. They like to hunt by headlight at night you know... and when we figure out why the chicken crossed the road, we may have some insight as to why pheasants seem to cross only when there's oncoming traffic...

There are maintenance workers regularly driving/working around the turbines, but since the turbines are planted in farmed land... tractors and other farming equipment routinely "disturb" and "displace" the wildlife anyway. Although, this may be a different proposition in other environments.

There are 170 turbines here, and about half the time they will show up as a blip on the national weather radar--- so yeah, obviously it has an effect on the doppler and other weather detection systems.

http://www.aquilaenergyresources.com/aer/renewable /graycounty.shtml

This being Kansas, yes, those turbines are pretty ostentatious standing out there in the middle of....um... not much.

I'd rather have those turbines out there than some of the other energy-generating options. It's not like we (as a society in general) necessarily have a choice... energy sources are an issue that need to be dealt with in any number of ways to solve them. I just wish I had some farmground to lease out to them...

I have, however (since moving the kids out of the house) managed to keep lights and everything that doesn't NEED to be on, turned off-- and as a result have been saving about $75/month on my utility bill. That's simple conservation, and that is a 25-40% bill reduction (depending upon weather and season).

Re:What about our fine feathered friends?

[Dabido]

If the owl hadn't of got him, Bush would have with his war on Terriers! :-)

Re:What about our fine feathered friends?

[Dabido]

I used to have a cat who would take out birds (big or small), snakes, lizards, rabbits ... and would even scare away large dogs, and I mean German Shepherds were afraid of him. [It wouldn't have surprised me if he had of taken down an Emu either ... but, he probably was never that greedy as to want to eat one].

I was living in the country at the time, and it was always good to know the rabbits at least got eaten rather than run over and lef on the side of the road [as was the case of most rabbits in the area].

Re:What about our fine feathered friends?

[An Onerous Coward]

This has been a public service message from the United Canine Coalition.

Re:What about our fine feathered friends?

[Physician]

"Collisions with automobiles and trucks result in the deaths of between 60 and 80 million birds annually in the U.S" That would imply that approximately 1 out of 4 or 5 people every year in the US collide with a bird. I have never hit a bird and neither has anyone in my family. Are we just that lucky or are there a smaller number of people hitting way more than 1 bird a year?

Re:What about our fine feathered friends?

[khallow]

You have to remember that a small number of people drive an inordinate amount of the vehicle miles. Taxis and truck drivers simply put on a lot more miles than regular people. Also, I dimly recall several bird deaths when I was driving or riding (probably around 500k lifetime miles for me). Plus, perhaps you live in a region or have a habit of driving that reduces the number of birds that hit your automobile.

Re:What about our fine feathered friends?

[instarx]

The number killed is tiny compared to most other man-made causes... when you look at the numbers overall, turbine birdstrikes are not much of an issue at all.

Technically true, but you need to look at WHICH birds they kill. Not many condors, eagles or even Canada geese fly into my windows or get killed by houscats. Lumping all species together as "birds" distorts and hides the real issue.

Re:What about our fine feathered friends?

[tehcyder]

man-made causes -- windows and housecats

Do you even know what a cat is?

Re:What about our fine feathered friends?

[Man Eating Duck]

Nice? :)

Re:What about our fine feathered friends?

[be-fan]

And the problem with wind power is that its logistically unworkable on a large scale.

"renewable" energy?

[syrinx]

Lisa, in this house we obey the laws of thermodynamics!

Re:"renewable" energy?

[Bryansix]

Nice Simpson's quote!

Re:"renewable" energy?

[ScentCone]

Lisa, in this house we obey the laws of thermodynamics!

I don't know which is worse... the use of the term "renewable" (from an energy/mass-there-is-only-so-much-of-it point of view) or the use of the term "renewable" when you're talking about wind. The tides aren't renewable. Geothermal isn't renewable. Solar isn't renewable. These are all forms of energy that are simply used.

Trees are renewable. Oil is renewable (um, if you're really patient). How can we expect to get people to think more critically about their use of energy when fundabental notions like "renewable" are tangled up and mis-applied by the very nerdy-smart-people that are supposed to know better? Why butcher the language and cave in to the warm-and-fuzziness of that term when simply calling it like it is would be more accurate, more educational, and better for shaping science-ready minds as they first really stop to think about such things?

Crap is renewable, by the way.

Re:"renewable" energy?

[BoberFett]

Trees as an energy source are renewable? Growing a tree requires a large amount of nutrients. When trees (or corn/sugar cane/switch grass) are stripped and shipped off for fuel instead of being allowed to fall where it grew and release those nutrients back into the soil, there is a loss of potential energy where the tree is grown.

No form of energy transfer is without cost to it's source.

Re:"renewable" energy?

[ScentCone]

Trees as an energy source are renewable? Growing a tree requires a large amount of nutrients. When trees (or corn/sugar cane/switch grass) are stripped and shipped off for fuel instead of being allowed to fall where it grew and release those nutrients back into the soil, there is a loss of potential energy where the tree is grown.

My point is that in the reasonable sense of the word "renewable," the work required to re-plant and nourish a tree allows you to, over time (and with mostly energy input from the sun), efficiently renew that resource. It might take a bunch of cow manure or other goodies to keep the soil useful, of course. But that's my point: "renewable" resources are those things that we can work to keep bringing back or putting in place. There is no such option or need when it comes to tides, wind, etc. The phrase may not be sufficiently detailed when it comes to trees, but it's just plain silly when it comes to wind.

And no, you can't say that the efforts required to "renew" the windmills when they wear out counts. You could say the same thing about coal mining equipment.

Re:"renewable" energy?

[Hijacked Public]

Trees are indeed renewable in any reasonable sense of the word renewable, not that there is any reason when the word is applied to energy, it having been turned into a marketing word for anything not involving fossil fuels.

Out buying the hardwood flooring I put in my bathroom a salesman was expaining the benefits of bamboo. He told me that bamboo and cork were both 'green' flooring because their production does not require the destruction of the entire plant. So it appears, at least in the flooring industry, probably driven by whole-building energy regulations and tax credits and such, that there needs to be a distinction between flooring that requires killing a tree and that which leaves it alive, the fact that trees will happily regrow from stumps has been left aside.

Re:"renewable" energy?

[Michael Woodhams]

Sorry, but your distinctions are just silly.

First off, language is about communication, and requires transmitter and receiver to agree on the meanings of symbols/words. "Renewable energy" is a well recognised term, and does its communciation job perfectly well, even if it doesn't quite match your idea of what "renewable" means. "Kick the bucket" similarly communicates an idea, despite having a meaning unrelated to do with kicking or buckets.

Secondly, the word "renewable" is entirely justifiable in "renewable energy". It refers to energy souces which are constantly renewed, so that extracting energy from them depletes the source only for a short period of time (months or years for hydroelectric, hours for tidal, possibly minutes or hours for wind.)

Finally, why should it be that harnessing solar power by photosynthesis is renewable, but harnessing it by photoelectric cell is not?

Re:"renewable" energy?

[slim]

The tides aren't renewable. Geothermal isn't renewable. Solar isn't renewable. These are all forms of energy that are simply used.

(snip)
 
  Trees are renewable. Trees are just a particularly slow form of solar power. If solar isn't renewable, then neither are trees.

Re:"renewable" energy?

[BlackPignouf]

How can you tell us such a non-sense and still be rated "Informative"????

The definition of renewable energy is basically : "If you can use an energy today without preventing mankind from using it tomorrow, then it's renewable. If you end up depleting the source after a *very* long time, it's sustainable. Otherwise it's just as good as coal, oil or uranium."

So, biomass is only renewable if you mind planting the same amount of trees you used. Standard nuclear fission isn't renewable, while fusion and breeding fission are. Wind/solar/tide/wave/hydraulic energy are renewable too, while geothermal energy is only considered sustainable.

Using your definition, even you and me are "renewable". We just have to wait till someone looks like one of us!

Re:"renewable" energy?

[ScentCone]

Well, you seem to be actually agreeing with me. Sustainable and renewable (in terms of practical use) are indeed two different things, but similar, certainly. Things like solar energy aren't renewable, per se. They're simply in vast abundance, and are relatively speaking free to use (not counting the mechanisms we have to build to use them). Any discussion among intelligent nerdy types should either make the distinction, or (instead of misusing "renewable" as a catch-all), go ahead and call it "green." Which, while also not technically correct, doesn't stand any chance of teaching people that the word "green" no longer describes certain wavelengths of light that we interpret as that color.

Yes, language changes. But when it changes in a way that reduces clarity, that change should be resisted.

Re:"renewable" energy?

[ScentCone]

First off, language is about communication, and requires transmitter and receiver to agree on the meanings of symbols/words. "Renewable energy" is a well recognised term, and does its communciation job perfectly well, even if it doesn't quite match your idea of what "renewable" means

There's nothing at all wrong with language evolving. What I don't like is when it devolves - when two distinct words/phrases used to make the distinction between two similar but importantly different concepts are replaced with one word to cover both of them. Leaving both people in the conversation less able to be sure that the information being exchanged is actually meaningful.

"Renewable" (in practical terms, things like crops for fuel) is not the same thing as "abundantly available" (like radiation from the sun). Can a lot of conversations be had without needing to make the distinction? Sure. Does the average citizen's already feeble grip on precision in communication (especially as it relates to technical and scientific matters - things that many people feel they then must keep in mind while voting or spending money, etc) get damaged by dumbing it down? Very much so. Quit treating people (especially kids) as too dumb to know that similar but subtly (or substantially) different things deserve their own bits of the language, and they won't end up too dumb to be considered articulate when they grow up. More words, more clarity, more synapses in the ol' meat computer. It's good all the way around.

Re:"renewable" energy?

[geobeck]

Trees are just a particularly slow form of solar power.

You could say that about coal and oil too. After all, if it weren't for the Sun, there would have been no plants to die off and be metamorphosed into coal, and no dinosaurs to get squashed into oil.

Come to think of it, nuclear is a form of delayed solar power too, just not from our Sol.

Re:"renewable" energy?

[toddestan]

Trees have to be replenished when they are used up. If we keep are usage below or at the replenishing rate, the resource is continually renewed - it's "renewable".

Solar energy is different. We don't have to worry about moderating our usage of the sun's output - the sun will shine for billions of years even if we use 100% of its output. Nor do we have to worry about renewing the sun as a resource (atleast, not anytime remotely soon).

Re:"renewable" energy?

[Peldor]

Meanwhile all of your renewable examples are merely storage mechanisms for solar energy. And grotesquely inefficient ones at that. Keep thinking critically!

Re:"renewable" energy?

[ScentCone]

Meanwhile all of your renewable examples are merely storage mechanisms for solar energy.

The difference between solar energy (as directly converted to electricity through solar arrays, or used to heat water, etc) and trees (or other crops) don't happen on their own in large, efficiently harvestable forms. If we take down a bunch of trees to use them for lumber or energy, we have to take action to renew that resource if we want to use it again any time soon (or easily).

Re:"renewable" energy?

[Man Eating Duck]

You go on, the rest of us will accept the established concept of Renewable energy.

"Renewable energy is energy which can be replenished at the same rate it is used."

Further down, "...wind, water, and solar power...".

If you have to start your arguments by redefining common concepts, I can only wish you good luck. If you need to employ questionable linguistics in order to do so (linguists will disagree with you, by the way), you need it even more.

I think you're just quarrelsome. Or IMHBT.

Re:"renewable" energy?

[ScentCone]

Renewable energy is energy which can be replenished at the same rate it is used.

And the fact that we don't need to take any steps to renew wind or solar, and that there is likely to be vastly more of it available than we could possibly effectively use... the contrast between that and things like forest/crops doesn't strike you as an important distinction?

Re:"renewable" energy?

[Man Eating Duck]

the contrast between that and things like forest/crops doesn't strike you as an important distinction?

I don't get what you're driving at here. "Forest/crops" are generally not viewed as an efficient source of electrical energy, which wind power is. They are also not covered by the wikipedia quote, and now I guess that you'll claim something completely irrelevant such as that it depends on how slowly you use them. Or that you can convert crops to methane by bovine intervention, in order to create CO2-neutral fuel.

This is futile. As an excercise in futility:

But that's my point: "renewable" resources are those things that we can work to keep bringing back or putting in place. There is no such option or need when it comes to tides, wind, etc. The phrase may not be sufficiently detailed when it comes to trees, but it's just plain silly when it comes to wind.

I submit that "Renewable energy" is a perfectly adequate category in which to put wind energy. It seems to me you feel the need to make a distinction between something you need to cultivate in order to renew, and something which you need not, in the process attacking a definition which everyone else I know has no problems with whatsoever.
Oh, to hell with it... Don't bother replying, you won't get a response from me.

At least I got to use the term 'bovine intervention'.

Have a nice day!

Re:"renewable" energy?

[ScentCone]

Don't bother replying, you won't get a response from me

Fine. Then this is for anyone else who stumbles along.

"Forest/crops" are generally not viewed as an efficient source of electrical energy, which wind power is.

Millions of people use wood stoves to heat their homes. Endless discusssions right here in this forum cover things like corn-based ethanol or saw-grass products, etc. These are not sources that, the day after you cut them down, will be there the same way that wind and solar radiation will. We have to act, plan, zone land, and do a lot of other things to re-new those products... we have to do nothing to wake up in the morning and continue to use tides, sunshine, and wind. Action required, action not required.

An aeroplane wasn't enough

[Anonymous Coward]

These guys are now trying to cross the channel with the whole island!!!

England....

[Anonymous Coward]

About time!

Predictions

[Anonymous Coward]

Sea birds in the area start to die in large quantites due to collisions with rotating blades. Large sea creatures temporarily florish to eat the dead birds, but also eat all fish in the area. Large sea creatures die horribly suffering from brain hemmorages due to the low frequencies emitted by the turbines.

Environmentalists are miffed.

Re:Predictions

[montyzooooma]

But it will only kill off the stupid sea birds. I for one welcome our... oh god just shoot me....

Re:Predictions

[owlnation]

The funny thing about the birds angle is that it is probably just being used by the RSPB as convenient publicity. Birds, and sea birds in particular, have two perfectly good eyes and are quite capable of avoiding great hulking windmills. It's not like they're transparent, and the blades don't move that fast.

I did read one study a few years ago - and apologies for not having any details of it - but someone looked into the actual evidence of bird kills and it was globally something like 6. No, not thousand, not hundred... six... just 6.

Probably they represented the avian equivalent of the Darwin Awards. Named after Darwin the Galapagos Finch who discovered scientists.

All in all, wind farms are hell of a lot better than oil slicks for our feathery friends.

Such specific numbers, blah.

[mobiux]

"Enough to power about 1 million homes."

How about a MW output. That's a specific number that can be compared to other forms of electric generation.

Is that one million homes in the late spring (mildest time of year), when no one is running a/c or heat?

Or is that one million homes in the middle of summer when whole power grids collapse from the strain?

Specifics please.

Re:Such specific numbers, blah.

[LizardKing]

How about a MW output.

1.3GW according to the Register article.

Re:Such specific numbers, blah.

[simm1701]

Following the link to the london array project gives 1GW peak power for 271 turbines which could power 750,000 homes (I assume the other array must produce 500MW to power the other 250,000

This should mean that the new media mesurement of 1Hp (House power) is equal to 1.33KW peak power....

Re:Such specific numbers, blah.

[SnarfQuest]

Just enough to run my Delorian.

Re:Such specific numbers, blah.

[Anonymous Coward]

Most houses in the UK do not have air-conditioning as it simply does not get hot enough, often enough to warrant it ;) Also, most use natural gas based central heating systems in the winter. So generally speaking the electrical usage of most homes would remain fairly constant through the year with maybe a smallish increase in winter due to additional lighting etc.

Re:Such specific numbers, blah.

[NSIM]

> How about a MW output. That's a specific number that can
> be compared to other forms of electric generation.

According to the Register, it's 1.3GW

> Or is that one million homes in the middle of summer when
> whole power grids collapse from the strain?

You are confusing US power requirements with UK. Vast majority of UK homes don't have A/C so you don't see that massive summer energy consumption spike, in fact quite the reverse, with fewer houses needing heat and daylight from 6am-10pm (give or take) the electricity requirements in the UK typically drop during the summer.

Re:Such specific numbers, blah.

[bdonalds]

"Enough to power about 1 million homes." How about a MW output. Specifics please.

Maybe I can help. It will supply enough power to fill the Library of Congress two times over.

Re:Such specific numbers, blah.

[Anonymous Coward]

Is that one million homes in the late spring (mildest time of year), when no one is running a/c or heat?

Or is that one million homes in the middle of summer when whole power grids collapse from the strain?

Barely any homes in the UK have air conditioning. Domestic power usage decreases in the summer.

Re:Such specific numbers, blah.

[radl33t]

1 - 1.5 kW is a standard average number used for home electricity demand (void of natural gas heating energy)

The numbers are interesting. Wind is typically rated in peak capacity. The capacity factor for excellent wind resources is about 40%.

Re:Such specific numbers, blah.

[Citizen of Earth]

1.3GW according to the Register article.

I'm confused. What is that in megaelephant square football field lengths per cubic femto-femto universe ages?

Re:Such specific numbers, blah.

[terrymr]

Not 1.21GW ?

Re:Such specific numbers, blah.

[Citizen of Earth]

Wind is typically rated in peak capacity. The capacity factor for excellent wind resources is about 40%.

Actual power isn't quite as snappy in the brochure.

Re:Such specific numbers, blah.

[el_womble]

We also take insulation more seriously: use brick/breze block cavity walls almost across the board and have double glazing - but compared to Scandiavians we're still savages when it comes to heat efficiency. I was in Stockholm a couple of weeks ago and the room was so hot because of the insulation I had to put a fan on to keep me cool.

What I don't understand is that a wealthy and educated country like America sees air-conditioning as the solution to being too hot and not quadruple glazing. Insulation keeps you cool too (and makes it cheaper to run said air-conditioning if nothing else).

Re:Such specific numbers, blah.

[xfmr_expert]

1.3GW? If I read Warwick Energy's page correctly, the planned capacity for each array is 300MW, for a total of 600MW. Diablo Canyon Nuclear Plant, by contrast, operates two 1,100MWe reactors... Wind power enjoys a lot of support from various interests, and the tax breaks and subsidies make it worthwhile. However, there aren't many places where wind power is truly viable. Forget solar, that will never happen. Peak demand in the U.S. for 06 was about 840GW. About 71% of NERC area capacity (US/Canada) is Oil or Gas. 13% is Hydro. 12% is Nuclear. About 2% is "Other" where wind generation falls. Now, I'll admit that this is installed capacity. What is actually utilized at any given time depends upon pricing and whatnot. The point is, the vast majority of electricity generation is still from fossil fuels, hundreds of GW. It would take a huge investment to replace that. Nuclear power is the only technology that has a chance in hell of providing the needed capacity. Hydro helps quite a bit. Wind power, despite the hype, barely makes a dent. The long and the short of it is that we will be relying on coal and oil for at least my lifetime. Nobody really wants a solution. We know alternative energy isn't going to do it. Even as the environmentalists are yelling about pollution and what not, they bitch about birds and wind turbines. Plus, nobody wants a wind farm in their backyard. They don't want nukes, because of the potential hazards, which in my opinion can and have been minimized. Storage of spent fuel is always an issue, but not insurmountable if everyone would check their emotions at the door. But even still, we have maybe 5 nuclear projects in the works. It takes years to get approval. If all five were approved this decade, we could add maybe 15GW? So, coal is all we've got, in the near-term anyway.

Re:Such specific numbers, blah.

[radl33t]

I don't know what this means. Wind is highly variable; proponents claim this variability is not a problem. I am skeptical of this as wind grows as an energy source. Capacity factor really only tells us how much total or annual power we convert. Even on windy days this is highly variable. The output from these multi MW turbines can vary between megawatts and kilowatts over the course of a few minutes. But when the wind blows, power is converted. When 750k homes rely on a gigawatt windfarm and the wind stops (even temporarily), I would imagine that gas turbines are the only thing that can pick up the demand quick enough. I find this unsettling, but necessary. Ultimately, I think wind/solar + (syn)gasification of biofuel, waste, or DME can make for pretty robust power generation.

Re:Such specific numbers, blah.

[Deadstick]

Just apply the standard conversion factor:

1 home = (PI/e) * (1 VW Beetle) * (1 football field)

rj

Re:Such specific numbers, blah.

[Colin Smith]

What I don't understand is that a wealthy and educated country like America sees air-conditioning as the solution to being too hot and not quadruple glazing. Insulation keeps you cool too (and makes it cheaper to run said air-conditioning if nothing else). Energy is cheap. Who cares how much is used.

Re:Such specific numbers, blah.

[SatanicPuppy]

Well, where I live, A/C is pretty much a given. With Summer temperatures running in the mid 90s to the mid 100s (35-39c), there is no amount of insulation short of ~20 feet of earth thrown over your house that will make a difference. You're going to need something, and while insulation means that it'll be cooler until ~13:00, after that it just means it'll stay warm longer.

Still, the first thing I did when I bought my new house was to put another layer of insulation in the attic, and get a quote for having more insulation put into the outside walls as well.

It only makes sense to add extra insulation...In the north you get a lot of people talking about the insulation, because in their minds insulation keeps you warm, and they think about that. It's not so much the case in the south, because people think of insulation as keeping you warm and thats the LAST thing they want. It's more a problem of education than anything else.

Re:Such specific numbers, blah.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Well, where I live, A/C is pretty much a given. With Summer temperatures running in the mid 90s to the mid 100s (35-39c), there is no amount of insulation short of ~20 feet of earth thrown over your house that will make a difference."

I presume you are being deliberately over the top!

You might want to have a look at some of the research done into straw bale construction, a traditional building form in Arizona. It has excellent thermal properties and can dramatically cut the requirement for a/c. (The downside is that it only really works for single storey buildings) Stone can also be very effective and many traditional houses in Southern France (where it also gets hot) can remain cool in summer without air conditioning. Add in other traditional measures such as shutters and awnings and more modern devices such as glass which rejects some of the light spectrum, smaller windows on the southern faces, and passive air conditioning and you can reduce electric a/c requirements quite considerably.

Some of these techniques are more expensive than the typical postwar US house construction which were used when energy was cheap, but as energy costs increase they will pay back the investment. The problem is that people don't want to pay the extra few percent on the home cost unless it is explained in detail. As you say - it can be an education problem.

Re:Such specific numbers, blah.

[Anonymous Coward]

Where I live we have the same temperature range in summer (which is now, actually), humidity of 80% or so is normal. What *really* matters is that it becomes cool during the night, if it doesn't, AC is the only thing that will save you, since at my house we respect the laws of thermodynamics ;)
  At night, we open doors and windows and let the cool air in, at around 10-11am we close everything (including most blinds), and it remains cool for the whole day. Our walls are about 20cm of brick (normal width) and we have single pane windows (well, my cousin lives 30 minutes from town and he has double pane).
  We do have an AC, but it doesn't cool the whole house (it's a large house). Old houses (my mother's accounting studio is actually an old house) have very high ceilings (6 metres or so), which also help.

Re:Such specific numbers, blah.

[Anonymous Coward]

He'd have to convert the DeLorean to a boat first. Hasn't done that yet, has he.

Back To The Future IV: It Was Good Enough For Milling Wheat.

Re:Such specific numbers, blah.

[Kool Moe]

"Forget solar, that will never happen"
Why not? Maybe not in your lifetime but, what, the sun is going to expire before Solar becomes viable? It already is a decent alternative with improvements every year. Why should it just be forgotten?

"Storage of spent fuel is always an issue, but not insurmountable if everyone would check their emotions at the door."
Checked. So what's your solution?
the waste is my only objection to nuclear energy. It's a HUGE problem. Substitute localized smog for radiation? Great improvement. Let's solve the problem before we jump onboard. Wait, what am I saying?! This is America! Later generations can deal with the 'fallout'.
KM

Re:Such specific numbers, blah.

[TobiasS]

On a recent trip to austria i went to seminar about passive houses (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_house)
They claimed that you can reduce the cost of heating (rooms, water, etc.)for a ~1000sqft house to rougly 300 Euro per year (using solar and geothermal heating, heat pumps and of course superior insulation).

If anyone has any good resources on passive housing in the states please let me know.

Re:Such specific numbers, blah.

[SatanicPuppy]

I used to do that when I lived in New York...That was completely effective, you could close all the windows at 7:00am, and the house would stay decently cool until around 2:00 or 3:00, and then you'd open all the windows and sweat until 5:30 or 6, when it would start cooling off.

In Georgia, however, the nights are almost as miserable as the days because the humidity in the air traps the heat...it's literally like a sauna...and leaving your AC off for hours means it has to work harder to cool things back off when you finally cave in and turn it on. It's probably still a net savings, but in July I don't even consider it.

I'm always interested in better insulation...The house has too many damn windows though, and I'm not planning on living there long enough to make my money back on replacing them, which is an issue. I've still done a few, but it's ~200.00 per window, not counting installation, so I'm not in any hurry.

Re:Such specific numbers, blah.

[EvilErik]

That's senseless. I lived in Australia for 17 years with temperatures that peaked around 45-47c and I've never had A/C. Before Australia I lived in Papua New Guinea, guess what... no A/C. Oh and before that it was South Africa; have a wild guess at the A/C situation then.
I'm not attacking you as your outlook makes a lot of sense, but the culture of energy usage that I see in other countries makes me twitch to say the least.

Re:Such specific numbers, blah.

[budgenator]

Actually the type of construction your talking about is pretty poorly insulated by american standards. Our windows are universally double pane, often with argon filling to reduce heat conduction, exterior wall are 15 cm thick with the wall filled with fiberglass insulation, and the attic has 30 to 45 Cm of insulation then the whole house is wrapped in plastic to prevent infiltration losses. Right now my thermostat is set at 62F and by opening the drapes to let some sun in the house stays between 65 and 68.

Re:Such specific numbers, blah.

[iroll]

Straw bale isn't any more traditional than a geodesic dome. It's a nifty idea that has been touted by the nifty idea crowd for a while now. "Traditional" Arizona houses were brick, wood framed, or adobe. Baled straw didn't even exist until the 20th century.

If you use straw bale exclusively (as the only support for your roof), then yeah, you're limited in height. Most (modern, anyway) straw bale houses are still framed, because the frame also helps keep you from having problems as the bales settle. This also eliminates the height limit. /Arizonan from the old school //Helped build a strawbale house

Re:Such specific numbers, blah.

[Rei]

In many areas, wind power is about as economical as nuclear power. So I don't know where you get the idea that nuclear is always great, and wind always bad. The reason wind has such a small share is that the tech hasn't always been there. One of the biggest innovations was the use of blades that rotate in very high winds to reduce the force on the tower and turbine. You used to have to build your towers and turbines much stronger or put them in weaker winds to be able to withstand the force when high winds come through. Now they can build them lighter and have the blades rotate whenever there's high winds. Not only does lighter make them cheaper, but it also makes them more responsive to gusts and lets you build with larger rotor diameters.

Solar is especially interesting. It is possible, although we'll need to see it running to be sure, that solar-thermal is cost effective present-day. If so, expect to see widespread adoption in the desert southwest -- especially in California, where electricity prices are high. However, the really interesting tech is one that's not cost effective at all currently: photovoltaics. The interesting thing about photovoltaics is the convergence of technologies that have been increasing its cost efficiency on a Moore's Law-type curve since the effect was discovered. Not as fast as Moore's Law, but the changes have been dramatic, and promise to continue to be (I could rattle off no fewer than a dozen new techs that, if any alone are as promising as they look to be on paper (let alone combined), they would make photovolatics competitive).

nobody wants a wind farm in their backyard

I sure do. I cared enough that I made a spreadsheet to crunch the numbers for me. Won't work out where I live (darned suburbia limiting what I can build), but if I was out in the countryside, it'd definitely be economical, and I'd be starting on the preparations right away.

Hydro helps quite a bit

In the industrialized world, hydro is on its way out. Once seen as a "green" option, it's now widely hated by the environmental community. It even contributes to global warming -- in some cases worse than an equivalent-power coal plant.

Re:Such specific numbers, blah.

[iroll]

Well, there's also the matter of latitude to remember here, when comparing Europe and the USA. I live in Phoenix, which is at approximately the same latitude as Baghdad. Most of the USA lines up with the Mediterranean, not with Scandinavia.

At high altitudes in AZ, you can get away with passive cooling if you have excellent insulation. You can open the doors and windows at night, and close them during the day, and keep your house livable. At low altitudes like Phoenix, however (~1500'), that's a fool's errand. Summer nights may not dip below 90 F for weeks, and can sometimes be 100 F. You would have to live in an underground bunker to get any kind of passive cooling. The only solution to "being too hot" is AC.

Of course, it's nice during the winter, because we can do passive heating ;) Can you guys do that? Stop wasting energy on heat, ya savages!

Re:Such specific numbers, blah.

[Esben]

Well, a typical modern turbine gives 3MW when the wind blowes more than 12 m/s. 341 of them gives approximatele 1 GW.

Re:Such specific numbers, blah.

[Sloppy]

That's enough power to deflect an asteroid of how many Texases?

Re:Such specific numbers, blah.

[Anonymous Coward]

The secret in Georgia is to not cut down all your trees. My last house had several tall old growth trees that created a canopy over the house.

No sun hitting the roof means little heat getting into the house.

This was in a house from the 40's with absolutely NO insulation ANYWHERE in the house. I ran the A.C. in late July - September and only after 3pm or so to bring it back down a bit and it would hover in the lower 70's all day. Now, heating the bitch in the winter cost me nearly $200 a month (natural gas), but my power bill would raise maybe $10-$15 during the summer tops. I suspect that with proper insulation and windows a house under trees wouldn't need the A.C. much if at all.

Re:Such specific numbers, blah.

[VanessaE]

This is not entirely true. Sure, things like double-pane windows might be common in your area, especially in new construction, but they're far from universal. Case in point: in 2003 when my husband and I came to Florida, we chose a small stand-alone cottage of around 430 sq ft (no time to find anything better) in St. Petersburg. Guessing about 20 years old, it was equipped with single-pane wood-framed glass windows, very little insulation, carpet of the type normally found in places of business, cheap exterior doors, and no central A/C or heating system, just wall/window units. Not sure of the amount/type of insulation in the attic, but the walls were certainly thin enough (probably just thick enough to meet whatever the building codes said back then). The house had wood siding and no plastic wrap as you've described. In other words, it was an old house that I doubt meets any modern building code.

Winter that year brought temps in the 34-36 degree range outside, and the inside temp was intolerably cold (maybe 40-45 degrees) without the heaters running. Similarly, inside temps during the Summer were unbearable if the A/C was off. We opted to add ceiling fans to help save energy, but this didn't help much.

When we moved into our next place, the windows there were also single-pane. Insulation was fair, temps were ok, but not something we could easily tolerate without heat/air. No ceiling fans (and no authority to install :( ). Central heat (electric...weird) and air. Ground-level. Eventually the electricity got too expensive for us to live there (plus they wanted to raise our rent), and the management wouldn't do anything about the noisy upstairs neighbor.

The next place after that, on the second floor in a multi-unit apartment of about 30 years old, was single-pane windows and central heat/air. I'd say the temps stayed fair in Winter or Summer but not something I'd like to put up with (in other words, turn that A/C on!). Moved to another unit in the same building - NO windows at all but it was ground-level. Had two large sliding glass doors that might have been double-pane, however old they were. This unit performed badly in summer - intolerably warm without the A/C.

The apartment we live in now is similar to the one with the electric heat. Ground floor, built a year or two ago (Google Earth still shows when this unit was under construction), and has central heat/air, but the windows are still single-pane (but with metal framing). Insulation is a little better, but the floors here are all hard vinyl tile (the kind you usually find in grocery stores). So far, Winter has been warmer than in previous years, so I can't say how well this building will handle it.

Re:Such specific numbers, blah.

[SatanicPuppy]

I think there is a happy medium.

I used to know a guy who had this huge heated pool, and he was forever complaining about the cost of keeping it warm, etc, etc. So I talked him into setting up a solar heating setup, which cost hardly anything to set up (sun's been heating water for a long time), and worked beautifully for practically nothing. Now, I didn't refer to it as solar, because he's tech illiterate, and since it didn't use any "solar panels" I didn't want to confuse him.

At some later point, while splashing around in his nice warm pool, I made reference to Low-E glass coating for his big picture windows, and some supplemental solar for his big roof.

His exact words: "Don't buy into that...Solar just isn't efficient!"

For me it just makes economic sense to try and use the least amount of energy possible.

Re:Such specific numbers, blah.

[winnabago]

You may be interested in the annual Solar Decathlon, although specific passive technologies aren't the focus, there are definitely good ideas in terms of conservation, design, solar use, etc. to keep an eye on. You may also want to research the Australian architect Glenn Murcutt, who is doing very great things in the low sun angles over there.

You can also order a prefab house that uses less waste, responsible materials, and can even be LEED certified. Remember the initial cost and environmental hit of construction, and this starts to make sense. Over the long term, forgotten methods like geothermal heat pumps and rammed earth are real, yet unpopular options today.



The funny thing is that passive building was very common in the past, given the ease of doing things like orienting houses properly on a site, and the inherent efficiency of a heat pump system. Today you won't find a builder who will touch those crazy green ideas with a ten foot pole. There are a few firms if you look, but they are under the radar of the general population.

Re:Such specific numbers, blah.

[smithmc]

  What I don't understand is that a wealthy and educated country like America sees air-conditioning as the solution to being too hot and not quadruple glazing.

If quadruple-glazing and other advanced insulation techniques were cheaper than A/C, don't you think Americans would do it? In today's market, houses are already expensive enough to build with the relatively cheap materials we do use.

Re:Such specific numbers, blah.

[smithmc]

  They claimed that you can reduce the cost of heating (rooms, water, etc.)for a ~1000sqft house to rougly 300 Euro per year (using solar and geothermal heating, heat pumps and of course superior insulation).

But what does it cost to install all that stuff? How long does it take to pay for itself in reduced operating costs? Is that payoff time longer or shorter than the average time that a person/family stays in a given house?

Re:Such specific numbers, blah.

[TobiasS]

I think herein lies the core of the issue.
In europe most people build a house and stay in that house until they die or pass it on to their children (at least from my experience living there 20+ years)

In the states houses are an investment or temporary situation until you move into a bigger house, the US as a whole is a much more mobile society as well.

Of course the intital cost is higher to build a passive home, however, at least in austria you qualify for tax credits, subsidies (up to 35% iirc, on solar heating, geothermal pump, etc.) and very low interest loans (20 year term iirc) that mitigate some of the upfront investment.

The other factor that is pretty significant is that by reducing your monthly energy cost you can take out a higher mortgage (without impacting your budget).
The example the guys there mentioned was that a same size traditional built house needs roughly 3000L of oil to heat water and rooms throughout the year (heating oil i think runs about 90 euro cents per litre).

In summary, if you plan on building such a house and staying in it for 15+ years the savings can be very real.
If you move on before that it probably is not such a smart investment.

That put aside i think it would be incrdibly satisfying to live in a house like that knowing that you did your part to have as little negative impact on the environment as possible. On the geeky side, these houses are fairly tricked out as well :)

Re:Such specific numbers, blah.

[el_womble]

I think it's an interesting side effect of the cannis cannid edit society America has chosen to develop. Choosing not to have a welfare state and to make it (relatively) easy to hire and fire means that Americans work longer and harder, and expect little. It's part of what makes your country great and is in part due to the fact that your ancestors recent fight for survival is still within cultural memory. But I'd also say that it forces many Americans to make short sighted economic decisions.

Faced with the problem of 'I'm hot and I can't sleep/think' do you go for the cheap, instant solution that you know you can afford now and you won't be repaying for the next 3 years, or do you go for the long ranging decision that may save you money in 10 years time?

With ever looming threat of unemployment, expensive illness and horrendous legal fees should you prang the wrong car, I know which option I'd go for. "So what if Manhattan's summer heat is magnified by the exhaust of a million ACs, I'm getting a good nights sleep that will mean I keep my job tomorrow!".

I don't think its the raw market value. Yes its cheaper to buy a window AC unit than a new window, but the benefits of better insulation make it much cheaprt in the long run and Americans (no matter what the international press say) are bright enough to relise that. What American's don't like is the associated risk, which is much higher than for your softer European cousins.

Re:Such specific numbers, blah.

[geobeck]

Just enough to run my Delorean.

You need a tune-up. It's only supposed to need 1.21.

...although that might be the conversion factor from jigawatts to gigawatts. Never mind.

Re:Such specific numbers, blah.

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.enertia.com/

Re:Such specific numbers, blah.

[budgenator]

That is criminal, in my city they wouldn't even be able to get a rental permit for those places.

Re:Such specific numbers, blah.

[Anonymous Coward]

I was in Stockholm a couple of weeks ago and the room was so hot because of the insulation I had to put a fan on to keep me cool.

Sigh. Leave it to Americans/Britons to find completely novel ways to waste energy. Why didn't you just open the window instead? ;)

Re:Such specific numbers, blah.

[couchslug]

Americans buy the home with the largest square-footage they can get and efficiency be damned. Our building codes do not encourage efficient new construction, and buyers do not demand quality components as are often used in Europe.
As long as energy is cheap, they will continue to do this.

Re:Such specific numbers, blah.

[mrchaotica]

In the industrialized world, hydro is on its way out. Once seen as a "green" option, it's now widely hated by the environmental community.

On a large scale, yeah. But what about small hydro, on the same scale as you putting a windmill in your backyard? Personally, I've always wanted to go build a house up in the mountains and power it with a water wheel, which shouldn't disrupt the associated stream too much.

It even contributes to global warming -- in some cases worse than an equivalent-power coal plant.

How do you figure?

Re:Such specific numbers, blah.

[mrchaotica]

I am skeptical of this as wind grows as an energy source. Capacity factor really only tells us how much total or annual power we convert. Even on windy days this is highly variable.

It's always windy somewhere; therefore, if we put wind mills everywhere and hook them all to the same grid, we'll have stable power! ; )

Re:Such specific numbers, blah.

[Bo'Bob'O]

Those only run on JiggaWatts, not GigaWatts.

Re:Such specific numbers, blah.

[el_womble]

Crime.

Re:Such specific numbers, blah.

[khallow]

California is pretty sloppy too. That's not unusual for places that are mild most of the year. I spent a couple of years a relatively uninsulated apartment (single pane windows, etc) in the bay area (southwest of San Jose). I never used AC or heat (despite some high summer temperatures, I had a first floor apartment opening to the northeast that never got the full summer heat) so I had $15 per month power bills. Not bad.

Re:Such specific numbers, blah.

[rubycodez]

I have this nifty bolt-on aftermarket kit for mine, now it only needs a beer can and banana peel

Re:Such specific numbers, blah.

[gfreeman]

... the attic has 30 to 45 Cm of insulation
... thermostat is set at 62F

Mix and match Metric/Imperial. I have to wonder, do you work for NASA?

Re:Such specific numbers, blah.

[Rei]

Methane. Dammed lakes lead to plant waste decomposing to methane instead of CO2. Methane is much worse for global warming than CO2.

Re:Such specific numbers, blah.

[gwyrdd benyw]

With Summer temperatures running in the mid 90s to the mid 100s (35-39c), there is no amount of insulation short of ~20 feet of earth thrown over your house that will make a difference...

Well, how about it? Why are there no underground homes? Cut-and-cover (dig, build below ground, then heap the earth back on over top) can't be *too* exorbitantly expensive.

Wind Farms != an answer

[jibster]

From TFA this is the worlds biggest windfarm but will generate 1% of the UKs electricty needs. If you want a viable answer to the worlds energy needs I think we need to think outside this particular box.

Re:Wind Farms != an answer

[Anonymous Coward]

Wind farms may not be THE answer but they may well be PART of the answer. Coupled with modern nuclear power, hydro electric damns, tidal power and solar panels we might well have workable solution for the UK.

Re:Wind Farms != an answer

[simm1701]

Yep, the biggest wind farm has a peak - yes peak, ie only when there is wind which is not all the time - output that would barely match 1/4 of Drax (the UK's largest coal power station)

Not to mention the question of what to do on a no wind day... or worse several days of no wind (since for short term lapses gavity batteries using hydro electric generators could be used, pumping water up hill when power is plentiful, using it when power is needed, a system already used to provide peak power boost in the UK)

Re:Wind Farms != an answer

[jibster]

I'm tired of hearing this repeated. What part of the answer are they? 1%? I hope only 1% of our research funding is going to this crack pot idea.

I see wind being useful in the countryside for self generation on a small scale. Large scale developemnts will eat out coastline and our birds.

I agree we need an answer, that's why we need focused, data driven research and less blue skies PR stunts.

Re:Wind Farms != an answer

[CmdrGravy]

I always thought Drax was a great name for a power station, especially such a big powerful one.

Re:Wind Farms != an answer

[Rik Sweeney]

If you want a viable answer to the worlds energy needs I think we need to think outside this particular box.

We'll get there in the end, but for the moment I think we need to accept that even though it's not perfect, it is a step in the right direction.

I reckon we should get Microsoft to design a solution though. Then it's guaranteed to work after the third attempt...

Re:Wind Farms != an answer

[Jeff DeMaagd]

Of course. I think the attention should be given to diversification of energy sources, so this is good. Every bit of diversification helps reduce the instability in the energy markets.

Re:Wind Farms != an answer

[Cervantes]

From TFA this is the worlds biggest windfarm but will generate 1% of the UKs electricty needs. If you want a viable answer to the worlds energy needs I think we need to think outside this particular box.

You're right. Obviously we've been building windfarms on too small a scale up until this point. It's about time we fully embraced the technology and started building windfarms that can provide a comparable percentage of electricity needs. Let's get out of this "little windfarm" box and start making them the size they should be.

Re:Wind Farms != an answer

[mypalmike]

From TFA this is the worlds biggest windfarm but will generate 1% of the UKs electricty needs. If you want a viable answer to the worlds energy needs I think we need to think outside this particular box.

And barley isn't the answer to world hunger. It's probably part of it though.

Re:Wind Farms != an answer

[Retric]

"In Denmark around 20% of our power come from wind, expected to grow to 25%."

FYI: 1% / power plant * 20 power plant = where Denmark is now.

Re:Wind Farms != an answer

[afidel]

We haven't used this new bypass procedure to save more than a couple lives, it will never work!
My giving $10,000 only feeds .0000001% of the African population for a year, I should buy another plasma!
etc.
Just because we haven't done much of something does not mean we should not do more of it, and just because a solution does not solve the whole problem does not mean you shouldn't try to make it part of the solution.

Re:Wind Farms != an answer

[mrchaotica]

It's the world's biggest, but it's still not all that big. There's plenty of room around England to build 99 more of them, and if that happened they would generate 100% of the UK's electricity needs*. Not so insignificant anymore, eh?

(*give or take wind variability -- that's beside the point)

What about scavengers?

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't they LIKE the increased bird kill rates?

Good

[CmdrGravy]

I hope this really really annoys a lot of the anti nuclear crowd who campaign eternally for "alternative energy" until someone comes and builds a wind farm outside their delightful rural cottage within commuting distance of London.

Personally, at the moment, I quite like Wind Farms because they're unusual and interesting to look at but once every square metre of the countryside is covered in them I suspect this opinion might change.

I really wish our government was brave enough to invest properly in a predominantly nuclear soloution to our energy problems but I fear they will do too little and what they do do will be far too late.

Re:Good

[SnarfQuest]

Personally, at the moment, I quite like Wind Farms because they're unusual and interesting to look at but once every square metre of the countryside is covered in them I suspect this opinion might change.

They're also a great place to get "chicken" burger. Catch it before it hits the ground, so you know it's fresh.

Re:Good

[neimon]

As someone who lived within glowing distance of Three Mile Island when it leaked, I say this with the best of intentions:

Fuck you.

Re:Good

[CmdrGravy]

I'm sorry this experience seems to have stunted your brain growth but with modern technology events such as 3 mile island will be an awful lot less common.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

You missed the word "offshore" in the article ;-)

A much better energy solution (than nuclear) is used in a few places in Europe already: Combined Heat and Power (CHP). Current coal power stations are less than 40% efficient, because of all the wasted heat (the steam from the cooling towers is wasted heat, and they're usually far away from cities which leads to transmission losses). Building small power stations in towns than run on biomass etc means the transmission losses are removed, and the heat from generation can be piped around nearby buildings :D

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

As someone who lived within glowing distance of Three Mile Island when it leaked, I say this with the best of intentions:

Fuck you. Right, we should all feel for you. You lived nearby when a major accident happened which did not cause anyone any physical harm. I am sure that Katrina survivors, or Tsunami survivors would love to switch places with you.

Also in the news

[Anonymous Coward]

238 rural residents of Cleve Hill, UK, gain powers of electromagnetic flying, shooting lightning from their fingertips

Re:Also in the news

[exspecto]

Maybe Stephen Hawking will be called in to battle them...

Mobile Farms

[Doc Ruby]

Why don't they put these wind farms on barges floating around the seas offshore, where the winds blow steady and reliable? Relocated when economical according to satellites tracking the seasonal winds.

Barges covered with solar cells. And reverse-gyroscopes that generate power from waves and currents. They anchor landmines, don't they?

Re:Mobile Farms

[Mad Dog Manley]

Why don't they put these wind farms on barges floating around the seas offshore

Hmm, maybe you should have read the submission text, let alone the article. Let me quote for you:

According to the BBC website ehe UK govt has just given the go ahead to two large offshore wind-farm projects

Offshore, meaning, you know, not on land. On the water.

Re:Mobile Farms

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the point he was trying to make was regarding mobile windfarms not offshore windfarms.

Re:Mobile Farms

[Mad Dog Manley]

Sorry, I misinterpreted you on my first reply.

I believe that the additional cost of installing windmills on a barge would not be economically feasible.

To mount a windmill on a seaworthy barge is no small feat. These windmills are very, very heavy and require a very stable surface to be mounted on. Most large windmills require thousands of tons of concrete as a base. You would require the same foundation for a barge with a windmill on it.

To relocate thousands of tons of windmill x 1000 windmills as the seasons change would be a massive undertaking. The energy cost would be enormous, and would cut into the small margin of efficiency that windmills currently enjoy.

Re:Mobile Farms

[RAMMS EIN]

From what I've heard, the sea is too aggressive an environment to build windmills in. Well, you can build them, but you'll have to repair and replace them so often that it's, effectively, not a good idea.

Re:Mobile Farms

[Colin Smith]

Cables?

Re:Mobile Farms

[Doc Ruby]

The point is not so much the offshore location, as their mobility, as you could tell if you read my post's Subject. Mobile, as in moving. On the water.

Side point: solar/gyro. Power stations capturing all the power passing through its point, not just the wind.

Re:Mobile Farms

[Elessar]

One of the biggest problems with offshore electricity generation is how you hook the power you generate back into the grid. Obviously there has to be some kind of cable going from where you are generating back into some form of onshore infrastructure to distribute the electricity to where it needs to be to be useful.

Re:Mobile Farms

[Doc Ruby]

I'm sure they ship the windmills on barges. Making those barges anchors for erect windmills is just more engineering. The kind that makes the current expensive immobile anchors work.

I'm not so sure that the windmills can't retain generating efficiency while bobbing up and down, so long as they're facing the wind and remaining perpendicular to its direction. If anything, it's just more engineering to accommodate the extra degrees of freedom of motion for capturing its energy.

As for relocation energy, they can use sails. That gets maximum wind efficiency, more than electrical generation, without external power input.

I envision several "colonies" of heavy solid anchors rooted in the sea floor, chained to topple-proof docking barges at the surface. With windmills on light barges sailing among them through the seasons. The tradeoff is the energy to sail among them, vs the energy to manufacture redundant windmills that sometimes stand in calm.

The real question is the difference in available energy in different places, or whether there's one place that gets that energy passing through year round. Satellite wind graphs in the article's map could make my whole vision moot.

Re:Mobile Farms

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not just fill France entirely with them. They seem to blow a lot of hot air over there. It could raise the bar from 1% to something more substantial.

Re:Mobile Farms

[Doc Ruby]

I bet geodesic construction, tensile strength rather than compressional, is seaworthy. If Buckminster Fuller designed these today, he'd use nanotube fiber composites, and maybe synthetic diamond bearings/joints. The diamonds are still power-hungry manufacturing, but the fibers can be made fairly cheaply. And the investment would reduce the costs even further.

Re:Mobile Farms

[Doc Ruby]

The British are experts in undersea cables, having laid them literally around the world since the Victorian Age.

We have the technology.

But I do think that windmills all suffer from electric transmission losses (up to 30-50%), located far from the humans who consume their power. It's one reason I prefer coating every roof with solar panels, in a localized grid that minimizes transmission.

But I wonder whether these windmills could be more efficient driving seawater and air through a cracker to generate ethanol. We've already got a huge fleet of barges which could transport it very efficiently to existing infrastructure. Cheap, clean, domestic power that actually sucks extra CO2 from the atmosphere (generating extra O2). Why aren't the oil shipping corporations all over this new market of local clients for their services?

Re:Mobile Farms

[Mad Dog Manley]

I believe that movable offshore platforms are a solution looking for a problem. Offshore winds are generally very stable year-round, and even with some seasonal changes, are still continuously profitable. If there is another location with higher winds during a certain period of the year, it is likely far more efficient just to build wind farms in both locations. The wind will continue to blow even in the off-season.

What about bringing power back to land? Currently, offshore platforms transmit generated power back to land via undersea cable. Undersea cable and transmitting equipment adds to the already hefty cost. It would be prohibitively expensive to run cables while the barges are travelling, so the power generation would have to be shut down while in transit between locations.

It's not that power generation on barges is an impossible concept. Its just that it would be extremely expensive. It's already expensive enough to install fixed towers. If you have more money than brains, go ahead, but any investor with any sense will go for fixed stations that have a fraction of the cost and generate the same amount of power.

Re:Mobile Farms

[Doc Ruby]

Your AC comment was posted from the Flyover States of the US, no doubt.

Re:Mobile Farms

[tomknight]

Please mod parent up as funny!

Re:Mobile Farms

[tomknight]

Because that would be a stupid thing to do. They'd fall over unless you anchor/stabilise them *so* securely that you'd never move them again.

Re:Mobile Farms

[owlnation]

IIRC, one of the original plans (in about 1998) was to use decommissioned oil rigs in the North Sea as wind farms. Not sure what happened after that, did the debacle of Greenpeace lying about Brent Spar possibly affect those plans?

Re:Mobile Farms

[Doc Ruby]

Only if you're too stupid to anchor/stabilize them in every direction except up and down.

Re:Mobile Farms

[nschubach]

I've always favored the solar panel roof theory for some time, but the one thing that keeps it from being funded is the lack of the electric companies being able to charge people for it.

Re:Mobile Farms

[Doc Ruby]

How would Greenpeace's irresponsible public statements about bad measurements, that were admitted before Shell even released its own 3rd party audit, affect a plan to use Brent Spar as a windmill platform?

Re:Mobile Farms

[Doc Ruby]

If economics really worked as rationally as "free market" proponents claim, then every population cluster would feature a coop that invested in the rooftops and sold the energy to the houses and back to the grid.

Still a good biz opportunity.

Re:Mobile Farms

[Dan Ost]

Could you please point me to a site that explains how seawater + air + electricity yields ethanol?

That sounds interesting.

Re:Mobile Farms

[Doc Ruby]

Seawater is mostly H2O. Air is mostly N2, some O2, and 0.04% CO2. Ethanol is C2H6O.

The windmill can power electrolysis, which cracks the (pairs of) H2O into (2) H2 and O2. CO2 can be cracked with other processes, including photosynthesis (or synthetic analogs). That means the platforms can take H2O + CO2 -> C2H6O.

The cracking process might not be the most efficient, especially splitting CO2. The windmill might be used to power extra lights (and climate control) that grow biomass, like bluegreen algae which are about 10% efficient. Those can be fermeted into ethanol.

Re:Mobile Farms

[Anonymous Coward]

Not quite floating barges, but this has been proposed for very big turbines: http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx? id=16801&ch=biztech&sc=&pg=1 http://www.technologyreview.com/player/06/05/09Bul lis/3.aspx With coal and nuclear not options in California, wind, biomass, tidal, and solar thermal are the likely generating resources of the future. Tidal and solar thermal are the most promising in the long run. Prices of solar PV will likely not drop to viable costs and natural gas will continue its long price escalation, (besides it emits greenhouse gases that the others don't).

Re:Mobile Farms

[Doc Ruby]

Interesting reports on floating wind turbines. Especially with so many people complaining in reply to my posts that they're impossible - just because their imagination is too limited to think about them.

But how are you so sure that "Prices of solar PV will likely not drop to viable costs"? The materials research into PV has barely begun - mostly stalled since a brief spike ended over a quarter centry ago. Before the semiconductor revolution had really exploded, and reached such huge scale economies. Or compared to the old energy tech's now obvious costs and threatening disappearance, which should motivate a lot of investment by a lot of new global players. Unless there's some other macroeconomics or physics in the way, I'd expect PV's total lifecycle energy costs to beat petrofuel (and therefore nukes, too), and probably the less mature, more complex mechanical techs like wind/tidal or maybe even biomass. Though, as I pointed out in my "solar windmill platform", there's plenty of combination uses to harvest the KW:m^2 falling at solar Noon on the Earth, so long as the PV manufacturing/maintenance/disposal cycle is cheap enough.

Re:Mobile Farms

[Anonymous Coward]

Wind is currently $40-60/MWh and solar PV is currently $180-240/MWh. The only thing supporting PV is subsidies. Use the Calif Energy Commission solar calculator and take out the subsidies; PV doesn't pencil out as economic. For distributed systems (roofs) the biggest cost component is labor for installation which will go up rather than down. Large systems can eliminate the labor component but PV hasn't delivered on dropping costs. Recently, entry of many new manufacturers may make prices drop until the weaker players go broke and prices go back up -- can you say DRAM? Solar thermal has some storage that extends generation past daylight and the Stirling systems lend themselves to mass production of modules that will drive costs down. Watch the solar thermal projects in southern CA for there progress and viability. You should see the graphs of wind. One of its weaknesses is its variability and difficulty in scheduling. Long term wave power looks to be a major player if the nuclear fanatics and utilities that see billions of dollars in profits can be beaten back.

Re:Mobile Farms

[Doc Ruby]

I didn't say PV was better than wind, but I did say that they can both be used in the same place, sharing components (even if just structural and transmission infrastructure) for better economics.
In fact, there might even be wind enhancement from solar panels casting shadow, and resulting temperature differentials for pressure gradients.

I did say "Prices of solar PV will likely not drop to viable costs", and then I detailed how PV research has been left to stagnate for over a quarter century. Where is the reason that PV tech can't get big improvements with new R&D, into exactly the kinds of materials where the past quarter-century has seen a revolution? Among the especially motivated, even wider field of players?

Your numbers are interesting. If PV is really early-1980s tech, but still only 3-4x as expensive as 21st Century wind tech, then I'd expect serious modern R&D to offer at least a 50% improvement, if not 200%, within the first 3-10 years. And since most PV costs are in manufacture and deployment, while most inefficiency is in transmission (after the initial 85% loss in DC conversion) I'd expect that another 50-100% improvement just from a more distributed, localized grid rather than the brittle, centralized petrofuel/AC we use today.

The PV subsidies would be good if invested in making the tech more economical, not just more worthy of subsidies. How much would petrofuels or nukes cost without their subsidies (all the way up to "national security" costs)? And if invested in making wind deployments generate even more power, multi-mode.

Re:Mobile Farms

[h2_plus_O]

Which would be more efficient: generating from wind and losing some on the line, generating from wind offshore and losing some in the process of cracking ethanol, or generating from solar cells and losing some due to PV cell efficiency issues? Each presents trade-offs in terms of energy efficiency, but remember that energy efficiency isn't the bottom line here- after all, power isn't what's scarce. I know, we've inherited the thinking that there's an "energy shortage", but energy isn't in short supply and never has been. What there's a shortage of is a means to capture, store, and deliver in usable form the energy that's abundant all around us.

Even if 60% of the power were lost just in transmitting the power to shore, it wouldn't matter if the power that did make it to shore could be sold at a net profit. The important concern should not be energy efficiency, but rather cost efficiency- how many kw/h can be delivered per dollar of capital investment? (yeah, that's probably what you meant, but I just wanted to rant a little.) :-) We should also recognize the value of diverse sourcing- in other words, instead of worrying about which is better between on-the-roof solar versus offshore wind, we should do both- the wind blows in the dark, after all, and the sun shines on calm days.

Also, if cracking to produce ethanol is on the table, shouldn't we also consider electrolytic h2 production as a means to store surplus? It might be more difficult to store h2, but environmentally it could be safer. Any idea on the relative efficiency of cracking ethanol vs electrolyzing hydrogen?

Re:Mobile Farms

[Doc Ruby]

The full costs of petrofuel electric delivery aren't reflected in its price. They include environmental and military damage, and other costs hidden by global geopolitical economics. And then there's the actual subsidies to the energy corps.

The main limit to supply/demand of energy these days is the delivery capacity of oil producing nations. Which are tuned to deliver close to the demand, to maximize prices even when Mideast wars aren't creating "risk premiums" that just enrich the risktakers. Global consumption is about 85Gbbl:d the past year, and production is about the same. The Saudis just announced they're cutting production. In fact, it looks like oil production peaked globally for all time back in 2005.

It's all very complex. But as I said, and you've now repeated, actual energy is abundant near Earth's surface, where we live. We shouldn't choose: we should harness enough wind until we can at least guess we're screwing up yet another complex environmental feedback system. Same with tide, geothermal and solar - which all have a lot more slack compared to even modern civilization's consumption rate. Solar especially should directly power DC devices, including remote radio equipment, rather than DC/AC/DC conversion and long lines transmission.

In the future, Americans will never get out of our cars (if we survive). Because we'll all be consuming around 5KW continuously, and we'll need to carry the batteries. We need to get the energy biz out of the Industrial Age centralization and into the distributed Info Age. Any which way we can.

Eventually we'll face the entropy glut Larry Niven envisioned his advanced civilizations dealing with: radiating all that waste heat. I hope we live to have such problems.

Re:Mobile Farms

[RealGrouchy]

Why don't they put these wind farms on barges floating around the seas offshore?

Because they'd blow away?

- RG>

Re:Mobile Farms

[Doc Ruby]

No, that's not why.

Re:Mobile Farms

[tomknight]

Oh, I get it now... you're some sort of Eliza/Alice. I fell for it, I thought you were a real person. Now I know I'll look out for more of your amazing posts and see how many other people are fooled.

Re:Mobile Farms

[tomknight]

Astounding, mod this up "Informative" someone, please!

Re:Mobile Farms

[Doc Ruby]

Only if you're too stupid to recognize a real person.

Or so stupid that you can't recognize your own stupidity, while spewing it on others.

Re:Mobile Farms

[Doc Ruby]

It's certainly more informative than the post to which I replied, "Because they'd blow away?", is, say, "insightful".

Look, just because you tried to call me stupid by couldn't get away with it without getting spanked with your own paddle, doesn't mean you can salve your wounded ego by making weak insulting comments elsewhere in reply to mine.

You've got a much more promising career as an anonymous slashstalker. Save your mod points!

Re:Mobile Farms

[greginnj]

Barges covered with solar cells. And reverse-gyroscopes that generate power from waves and currents. They anchor landmines, don't they?

Actually, no ... they don't have to. Landmines pretty much stay where you put them until they detonate.

Re:Mobile Farms

[Doc Ruby]

I was thinking "naval mine" while typing "landmine".

Weird how no other Slashdotter castigated me before you, considering the large traffic that message got.

Re:Mobile Farms

[greginnj]

I know, I figured as much, but I couldn't resist making the nerd-ween joke. Which says a lot about where I'd be found on the Slashdot bellcurve, compared to the people who read it and said nothing...

OTOH, if you considered my previous post 'castigation', you're much too thin-skinned to be posting to Slashdot. I'd class it at the 'friendly gibe' level, myself.

Re:Mobile Farms

[Doc Ruby]

I hope by "ween" you meant definitions 4 or 6, and not 5.

I was kidding a bit about "castigation". My cyberskin knows too well how Slashdot "castigation" goes. Usually more like the gibbering of the infinite monkey at its keyboard.

Re:Mobile Farms

[BovineSpirit]

Why don't they put these wind farms on barges floating around the seas offshore, where the winds blow steady and reliable? Relocated when economical according to satellites tracking the seasonal winds. Wiring, have you seen the cableing required to carry 1.3GW? It's not the kind of thing you can move around. Thus the plan to build multiple wind farms arpund the coast. If you race in one of the Around Britain races you are practically garaunteed to hit a gale at some point. There's always a lot of wind somewhere on the British coast. Something to do with our love of curries, I suspect.

Tides

[pubjames]

I've never understood why the power of tides is not exploited more. In a short streach of coast around the UK, hundreds of millions of tons of water must be moved every 24 hours. I'm sure there must be a lot more energy in that than in the wind in the same area. Why isn't that exploited? Anyone know?

Re:Tides

[simm1701]

iirc it is. In scotland

However I also beleive that there is a huge engineering challenge in order to anchor the generators effectively and economically

Re:Tides

[CmdrGravy]

The best place to harness tidal power is in river estuaries which tend to support large eco-systems dependant on the tides.

Unfortunately I think most devices capabale of turning tidal energy into electricity tend to need to be built on a pretty large scale to worth while and this tends to totally destroy the eco systems in the immediate vicinity.

At least that is what I learned in Geograpgy lessons 15 years ago so things may have moved on since then !

Re:Tides

[pubjames]

But tides also act off shore (i.e. the depth of water changes), so I see no reason why the energy shouldn't be harnessed their. Of course, it might be easier to do it on a rive, but of course there are the problems you mention.

Re:Tides

[Mad Dog Manley]

Most of the water that is being moved by tides isn't moving very fast, or very far. Tidal power is most efficient where the world's largest tides can be found, such as the Bay of Fundy in Canada.

There is tidal power being generated in the Bay of Fundy, there has been a 20MW generator operating for the last 20 years. However, it is expensive (operating in salt water isn't the most friendly enviromnent), and expanding it would put a large strain on the ecosystem.

This isn't a lot of power though. 20 large windmills could produce the same or more power, for much less cost. Incidentally, Nova Scotia, which borders half of the Bay of Fundy, has some of the world's strongest and most consistent winds.

Re:Tides

[hcdejong]

I'm sure there must be a lot more energy in that than in the wind in the same area.

Maybe that's part of the problem. Building a structure that can withstand tidal forces for 30+ years, including watertight compartments for the electrical parts, isn't cheap.

Re:Tides

[CmdrGravy]

I'm not sure but I suspect most of the energy is created from tidal currents rather than the simple height difference of the water at high and low tide so there are some areas which have much stronger currents than others based on their geography which make it far more economical to site generators where nature has naturally concetrated a lot of power than build a massive generator over a wider area to capture a similar amount of power.

Re:Tides

[pubjames]

Most of the water that is being moved by tides isn't moving very fast, or very far.

No, but there is a lot of it.

Re:Tides

[Anonymous Coward]

I've heard that water wrecks the turbines so fast, it's very expensive (at least for waterfall-style generators). Not sure if that's true anymore, of if new technology can alleviate this problem.

Re:Tides

[Anonymous Coward]

Wave/Tidal power IS being used

http://www.wavegen.co.uk/what_we_offer.htm

There is also a large project in Chile using wave-powered electricity generation. It's a growing technology, it just hasn't been widely embraced yet.

Re:Tides

[Derek Pomery]

Made me think of the Bay of Fundy. Wikipedia had some interesting info, as usual.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bay_of_Fundy#Tidal_el ectrical_power_generation

Re:Tides

[J-1000]

The best place to harness tidal power is in river estuaries which tend to support large eco-systems dependant on the tides. Unfortunately I think most devices capabale of turning tidal energy into electricity tend to need to be built on a pretty large scale to worth while and this tends to totally destroy the eco systems in the immediate vicinity. At least that is what I learned in Geograpgy lessons 15 years ago so things may have moved on since then !

Perhaps the answer is to widen the mass distribution of these machines instead of concentrating them all together. Instead of one large tidal collection center, imagine a strand of cable three hundred miles long sitting on the bottom of the ocean, with small energy collectors, only a foot or two in diameter, along the whole stretch. You could even layer these in parallel to multiply the effect. Or even create a large web-like structures that could span enormous portions of the ocean. Such an arrangement would ensure redundant power links back to the mainland, and would make each collection point independently serviceable without affecting the whole, like modern day Christmas lights.

Re:Tides

[asuffield]

Marine-grade engineering is difficult, which means expensive. Very few things will last in a salt water environment without constant maintainance. Furthermore, the structures would have to be extremely large.

Basically, tidal power on a large scale is usually so much more expensive than other methods of power generation that it just isn't worth bothering. Exceptions occur when the tide/coast are abnormally convenient (large, long tidal rivers are good - a huge volume of water passes for a comparatively small power plant), or alternative power sources are not available, for whatever reason.

Re:Tides

[Anonymous Coward]

actually, the best place for a windfarm would be in my pants, but this was discontinued at the trial stage because every time i sat down the turbines broke

Re:Tides

[o'reor]

This isn't a lot of power though.

Maybe not for the Bay of Fundy, but take a look at this one , the Rance tidal power plant. Granted, it is (to the best of my knowledge) the biggest of its kind in the world.

240 MW is pretty good. However, it's only 1/4 of what a basic single reactor (900 MW) in a nuclear power-plant can produce. But there are other technologies, similar to windmills, that can be deployed at a lower cost, and without the disadvantages of building a dam on the estuary of a river : take a look at this study.

Re:Tides

[Dan Ost]

How do you mitigate transmission losses when you have smal scale generators far away from the consumer?

Re:Tides

[J-1000]

How do you mitigate transmission losses when you have smal scale generators far away from the consumer?

I know almost nothing about electricity, but I can tell you made a good point. Good point! Perhaps there is still some creative solution, though. The first thing that comes to mind is to keep them all relatively close to the coastline, and have whatever land-based equipment spread out at certain intervals as needed. I don't even know how they solve problems like this even on land, so perhaps you'd be better at answering the question.

Towing London

[aproposofwhat]

Personally, I'd stick the windmills on barges, tether them to the Houses of Parliament and wait for a good strong westerly - release the anchors and tow the politician buggers to Holland.

Re:Towing London

[Anonymous Coward]

Nah,

Put them inside the Houses of Parliament, plenty of hot air in there!

Re:Towing London

[b0s0z0ku]

Put them inside the Houses of Parliament, plenty of hot air in there!

And lock all other exits. If the MPs want to leave, it's through the blades. Arrrrr, matey!

-b.

Re:Towing London

[hal2814]

I got about halfway through the article before realising the "wind farm" they were talking about wasn't Parliament.

Um.

[neimon]

Gee. Take that much power out of a surface wind? Makes you kinda wonder what happens when you take that much energy out of a system that determines a lot of weather and water temperature and moves it inland to, say, make toast.

Doh.

Re:Um.

[b0s0z0ku]

Gee. Take that much power out of a surface wind?

Don't worry - the windmills aren't actually that efficient, nor do they cover a large percentage of vertical cross-section. They're spaced quite a bit apart and aren't that tall, vertically speaking. Chances are they don't end up being more disruptive to air currents than, say, the skyscrapers in NYC. And the weather in Brooklyn isn't *that* different than in the rest of the region.

-b.

Re:Um.

[Henneshoe]

Exactly

All "renewable" energy has an environmental cost. The only reason they seem more environmentally friendly is because they are used on such a small scale.

Solar panels absorb heat from the sun and on a large enough scale would cause global temperature to drop.
Tidal generators will destroy ecosystems, either in river estuaries or on the ocean floor.
Fission power generates nuclear waste which I think we can all agree is bad.
If we could create Fusion power it would have its own problems, like our hydrogen supply would be used up in quick order.

No matter how we pull energy out of a system, that system will be affected by that loss of energy. We have to look at the side of my bottle of Jack Daniels to learn the real solution to our energy problems. "Enjoy in moderation."

If you will excuse me I have to go run some errands in my Hummer H2 now.

Re:Um.

[Deadstick]

That much power...yeah. Like to generate ten or twenty gigawatts? Figure out a way to extract the energy output of one average thunderstorm.

rj

Re:Um.

[Bender0x7D1]

You obviously have no idea what you are talking about.

Fission power generates nuclear waste which I think we can all agree is bad.

I don't agree. A lot of people don't agree. Sure, I would prefer if there were no waste. However, the fact that there is waste doesn't instantly make it a bad thing. It actually creates less nuclear waste than burning coal. Also, from a scientific/engineering view, it is easy to handle. It is politics that gets in the way of handling this problem - no one wants a "nuclear waste dump" in their state/country. Heaven forbid we grind the waste into dust, mix it with a million tons of sand and sprinkle it across the entire Atlantic. We would irradiate all the fish! Right. Like a few tons of waste would completely irradiate the Atlantic. Just so you know, the estimate of Uranium that is dissolved in seawater is 4,300,000,000 metric tons.

If we could create Fusion power it would have its own problems, like our hydrogen supply would be used up in quick order.

Right... We are going to use up our supply of the most abundant element in the universe. Do you know what water (H2O) is made of?

Look, I agree with you that there are costs associated every type of power generation. Just make sure you have an idea of what those costs are before you talk about them. It is uninformed opions that have held back a lot of advances in power generation. Just look how a lot of people are starting to push nuclear power again. It is safe, clean and scalable. People need to realize that advances have been made and the dangers everyone is afraid of don't exist anymore.

Re:Um.

[Anonymous Coward]

"You obviously have no idea what you are talking about"

Bollocks to you, this is about my Country. I do not agree with you at all.

If "the fact that there is waste doesn't instantly make it a bad thing" is true then why is the procurement of the siad elements involved priced by how much it costs to get rid of?

Are you hearing me? This stuff costs what it costs to get rid of? Not what it costs to get, as an engineer you should have no problem understanding the difference "especialy" when it comes to dangerous or very hazardous materials/elements. It's cost is that of disposal, nobody wants it! Except if it's good enough, then you can PAY someone to take your carp after because if you can afford it there is going to be someone STUPID enough to take it.

"It actually creates less nuclear waste than burning coal" , yep I believe that, particularly whaen you are mining your coal from a Uranium mine, but that's not realy relivant when were talking about windpower etc unless your factoring in manu which is going to be quite small, I beieve.

Got any Prussian blue?

What other fuel is priced by its disposal costs?

Why is it priced this way, is it because it is soooooooooo dangerous?
Or perhaps ecause it needs armed convoys?
Or perhaps because it can be used for terrorism?
Or perhaps because if it is a certian type it can be refined?
Or perhaps because it has a history of problems in the development stages that have been... patched?
Or perhaps because some power stations don't mind changing thier name to disguise problems to the uneducated?
Or perhaps because CANCER KILLS.
Or perhaps because nobody REALY wants to handle any waste, no matter if it is thier own or someone elses?
Or MAYBE it's because SOME people have a very blinkered way of looking at things and we cannot stop certian PR folk from commenting on /. due to freespeech which is supported in our "Free World".

Just because Uranium is disolved into the sea or ocean does not = no harm to humans. In fact, do you have knowledge that there is no negative interaction between human life and the amount of Uranium in the sea?

"It is uninformed opions that have held back a lot of advances in power generation"

This maybe so, but there is a history of uninformed idiots, madmen, uneducated who have given us the World we have today from science to every other heart warming system we could aspire to.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leukemia - my half brother died from this.

"is safe, clean and scalable. People need to realize that advances have been made and the dangers everyone is afraid of don't exist anymore"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_civilian_nucl ear_accidents

When it IS safe, I am sure we will hear about it in a big way.

It is not safe so do not pretend to know what u are talking about by quoting some abstract figures, there is also "fish" in the oceans I like tuna which I like, but just because there are TUNA^lots does not equal my death by CANCER, but if someone dumped a fraction of that tuna on my head I would be flattened, death by tuna.

The only way it is safe is when you convolute your ideas to work with cost against life, something I will NEVER EVER subscribe to.

Say, do you have shares in BNFL? or what?

WAKE UP.

Re:Um.

[inviolet]

Right... We are going to use up our supply of the most abundant element in the universe. Do you know what water (H2O) is made of?

Actually the problem with fusion power is that the containment vessel gets irradiated. Hard radiation causes practically any material to degrade, weaken, or otherwise become brittle. That means the containment vessel must be periodically replaced. Used containment vessels are radioactive waste that is roughly comparable to the wastes produced by fission.

Re:Um.

[Bender0x7D1]

Bollocks to you, this is about my Country. I do not agree with you at all.

That's fine, you don't have to. However, if you would like to learn a few things, I would recommend you read this. It does a nice comparison between coal and nuclear including a comparison of radioactive wastes (broken down by type), radiation exposure and consumption levels. It also points out how various regimes could use coal to get their weapons grade material.

Now, you can choose not to believe a scientist from Oak Ridge National Labs, but they are experts in the field. If you still don't believe them, check their references.

Re:Um.

[Anonymous Coward]

Kudos, I eat my words... ungrammaticaly speaking,

Every windmill saves the planet even more now!

Whilst your talking about it I would be interested to know how near is your nearest either/other facility? Do you have a waste plant within 100 miles that maybe has accepted waste from others, do you have a powerplant or two within 200 miles or even a weapons facility? It's all interesting because around my area mistakes propogated from human error in these facilities tend to cause problems larger than what 'other' larger areas may experience. Do you understand?

It is my own opinion that we have been forced into this position and that this position is not a good place to be at all.

They say humans are the top of the food chain, sometimes I realy do wonder.

Re:Um.

[meringuoid]

Solar panels absorb heat from the sun and on a large enough scale would cause global temperature to drop.

Care to explain the thermodynamics here? Plating large parts of the earth's surface with materials designed to absorb sunlight would cool the planet?

Re:Um.

[Henneshoe]

Yes I can explain thermodynamics here.

First Law of Thermodynamics: Energy can be changed from one form to another, but it cannot be created or destroyed. The total amount of energy and matter in the Universe remains constant, merely changing from one form to another. The First Law of Thermodynamics (Conservation) states that energy is always conserved; it cannot be created or destroyed. In essence, energy can be converted from one form into another.

Therefore converting heat energy to electrical energy will cause a drop in the total heat energy of the system (Earth). Therefore, sense earth would have the same number of molecules and less heat energy = lower temperature.

Re:Um.

[Anonymous Coward]

And what do you think happens with the generated electrical power?
Ever notice how anything that uses (or even converts) electrical
power produces heat?

Eventually all energy ends up as waste heat. You'd know that if you
really knew your thermodynamics.

Re:Um.

[meringuoid]

Therefore converting heat energy to electrical energy will cause a drop in the total heat energy of the system (Earth) Alas, here we see how the ability to quote definitions does not a physicist make...

A solar cell does not convert heat to electricity. That would require a heatsink at lower than ambient surface temperature; look up the Carnot engine in your thermodynamics textbook. A solar cell converts light to electricity.

Now, the Earth at present is mostly blue and white, and quite reflective. Much of the sunlight falling upon the Earth is reflected away into space - I think it's something like 30%. Now, suppose we plate the Earth with solar panels. By design, these absorb as much light as possible. Now the Earth, covered in solar panels, is almost black, and almost all the sunlight falling upon it is absorbed. Do you still think it's a cooler planet?

Perhaps you do. Very well. Solar panels are very inefficient things; of the energy that falls upon them, only a fraction is converted to electricity, the rest becoming, you guessed it, heat. But let's allow that we have magnificently efficient photovoltaics and neglect this. So, the whole of this infalling sunlight is converted to electricity. A cold planet? Not a bit of it. Remember, the electrical energy does not leave the planet! Instead it is run through machines which do work, and all work produces waste heat. Every joule absorbed will, after some number of conversions, become heat. Unless the solar cells are supremely efficient and channel all that power to a massive laser of some kind to pump the sunlight back off the Earth, they'll heat the planet.

Far from cooling the area, if we put a whole lot of solar cells in the middle of the desert, they'll make it hotter.

Perhaps you should check the next chapter in the textbook you got that definition from. You'll learn about a second law of thermodynamics...

Re:Slashdot got a green light?

[Kagura]

Won't somebody please think of the birds!

Horror movies?

[SnarfQuest]

Will we be getting hundreds of horror movies from this, like they do with nuclear power plants?

"Sheltered from the destroying wind by the turbine farm, the flesh eating larva thrived in the darkness created by the solar panels, coming out at night to feast on human flesh...."

Re:Horror movies?

[gfreeman]

You bastard! You just leaked the next Doctor Who story!

ehe UK govt

[SlayerDave]

Uhhhh... Run that by me again.

Re:ehe UK govt

[Anonymous Coward]

govt = government

144 mi^2 != 103.5 mi^2

[mypalmike]

From the article:

The larger London Array project covers 90 sq miles (232 sq km) between Margate in Kent and Clacton, Essex.
The second wind farm, called the Thanet scheme, will cover 13.5 sq miles (35 sq km) off the north Kent coast.

I'd call it 103.5 sq miles (267 sq km).

Re:144 mi^2 != 103.5 mi^2

[SNR monkey]

I'd call it 103.5 sq miles (267 sq km). And you'd be wrong. You're right that the total area is 103.5 sq miles, but the summary says:

The larger London Array project covers 144 sq miles (232 sq km) between Margate in Kent and Clacton, Essex The wording is right out of the article, but 144 square miles in the summary is wrong. It should probably say 90 square miles (and refer only to the London Array, which is the world's largest wind farm) or 103.5 sq miles and indicate that it is the total. Or both, and indicate that the London Array is 90 sq miles.

House SI Unit

[toddhisattva]

Learn it, use it, love it -- the incredible new unit fresh from the SI, the house.

One house is roughly equivalent to 1 kilowatt, but here the resemblance to the watt ends.

Because, if the reporter likes the way the energy is made, a house can be as little as 500 watts. So the reporter can double the number of houses powered by the project!

"One million households" sounds like a lot. But, using the maximum allowable value of 1kW/house, it is really only about 1 gigawatt, which is stupidly tiny by today's standards.

Using the minimum discovered value for house, the windmill scheme might be as small as 500 megawatts.

I am looking forward to the fair and balanced press to begin using the "blow dryer" and "microwave oven" SI units, which are bigger (!) than a house, and used only to describe coal and nuclear plants.

Re:House SI Unit

[Martin Blank]

A gigawatt, while small in the scheme of things, is still a respectable power plant output. Many of the units that go up in the US are between 500MW and 1GW. Hopefully, in the next few years, we'll see nuclear plants coming online at the 1GW per reactor level (like we used to see), with two or three reactors per plant.

Re:House SI Unit

[ronanbear]

So by that logic a house uses half the power of a kettle. Modern fast boil kettles use 2kW. That'd be a good way to get people thinking about conserving power.

Re:House SI Unit

[Anonymous Coward]

Okay, but where do I get the extra .21?

Re:House SI Unit

[smithmc]

  So by that logic a house uses half the power of a kettle. Modern fast boil kettles use 2kW. That'd be a good way to get people thinking about conserving power.

I suppose it would be... if people ran their fast-boil kettles 24/7. How long does a typical fast-boil kettle run? 1-2 minutes at a time? 2 kW times 1 minute = 0.033 kWh, costing $0.0033 at $0.10/kWh.

disagree

[Anonymous Coward]

The global energy market disagrees with you, that is why you are seeing this article instead of your alternative which is ...nothing. Ignoring the problem doesn't work, actually doing something about it beyond talking is the only solution that can possibly work right now.

  The alternative energy solution is "all of the above", solar, wind, geothermal, biofuels, etc, etc, all of it in total. There will probably not be any one solution any time soon, we need the combination of vastly more energy efficient buildings and vehicles (really the number one place we should be working on) combined with alternate sources of energy combined with the traditional energy sources. That's the only silver bullet. Backyard mr. fusion is here if you recognize that the Sun works, it just works, and it is our only practical fusion power. Solar PV, Solar thermal, biofuels, and wind are all mostly factors of the Sun's output. If you are waiting for man-made ITER type reactors to save you you'll be shivering in a cold dark house for decades to come. Not to say we shouldn't still try and develop it, but reality indicates we need solutions to start now, not wait until it hits OMG crisis mode.

Many environmentalists do!

[benhocking]

Of course, many do not. Probably more do not. However, Al Gore (the anti-enviros favorite whipping boy) does. That was one of the things I really liked about him in 2000. He understood technology and respected the environment. (Not that I want him to run in '08. I think it would detract from his current campaign.)

Re:Many environmentalists do!

[phaggood]

> anti-enviro's whipping boy

I thought that was Jane Fonda? Or maybe it's Donald Sutherland?

Re:Many environmentalists do!

[Shakrai]

However, Al Gore (the anti-enviros favorite whipping boy) does. That was one of the things I really liked about him in 2000.

Be careful. Lest you provoke a "Al Gore invented the internet!" or "Democrats are the same as Republicans" rant that seems to pop up on /. anytime his name is mentioned. I actually respect the guy and wish he could get elected. Or should we give Kerry another try?

Re:Many environmentalists do!

[smithmc]

  Be careful. Lest you provoke a "Al Gore invented the internet!"

Al Gore invented carbon dioxide!

Sure would be nice if the editors would EDIT

[Anonymous Coward]

"According to the BBC website ehe UK govt"

Dear editors: is this, or is this not, WHAT YOU ARE PAID FOR?

Chrissake, it's not some obscure homonym or esoteric finer point of grammar you could be forgiven for missing; it's a typo which leaps out at you on first glance, and would take you about 0.2 seconds to correct. And you ask people to subscribe to this site? LMAO.

Such an environmental nightmare

[mangu]

When will people realize that being "alternative" is not the same as "environment friendly" as power sources go? At 144 sq.mi. for 1.3GW, I cannot imagine how this could be considered a viable alternative. This is at least one thousand times as big as a nuclear plant with the same capacity.

Think of all the materials processed in building this windfarm. One would think that making all the concrete, metal, plastics, etc, involved in the manufacture of all the generators will put a large burden on the environment. Not to mention, as many already have, all the birds that will die during the operation. And what about long term effects? Suppose we start to drain a significant part of the wind energy. How will this affect the weather in those regions?

No, I cannot imagine how people can equate wind energy with "environment friendly". It may not be as harmful as burning coal, but it's certainly worse than nuclear power.

Re:Such an environmental nightmare

[spacefight]

but it's certainly worse than nuclear power
Facts, anyone?

Re:Such an environmental nightmare

[cyfer2000]

maybe he/she was talking about fusion.

Re:Such an environmental nightmare

[petaflop]

You might think that making all the concrete, metal, plastics, etc, involved in the manufacture of all the generators will put a large burden on the environment, but actually compared to the energy investment in building, running, and decommissioning a nuclear power plant, the environmental burden is quite light: http://www.eoearth.org/article/Energy_return_on_in vestment_(EROI)_for_wind_energy

Re:Such an environmental nightmare

[DerekLyons]

Not to mention the effects of all the anchors and mooring cables on the seabed.

Re:Such an environmental nightmare

[An Onerous Coward]

> When will people realize that being "alternative" is not the same as "environment friendly" as power sources go?

Probably the moment you invoke the word "dam".

> One would think that making all the concrete, metal, plastics, etc, involved in the manufacture of all the generators will put a large burden on the environment.

One would think that. But we're talking about 341 turbines and the electrical cabling necessary to link them together. It probably only requires a fraction the materials of needed to put up, say, your average skyscraper.

Bird kills aren't nearly as big a problem for modern installations as they are for first-generation installations (like California's Altamont Pass, which still uses 80's-era turbines with fast rotors, and just happens to be located on a major migration route). Modern windfarms constitute an inconsequential fraction of the bird deaths resulting from human activity.

Before warning us about the potentially huge consequences of removing wind from the ecosystem, would you mind estimating for me just what percent of the total available windpower this installation will be pulling from the surrounding area? Consider the fact that only the wind hitting the blade itself is actually contributing. If you came back with a number as high as 0.1%, I'd be suspicious of your math. In short, I can't imagine this being a serious objection.

> This is at least one thousand times as big as a nuclear plant with the same capacity.

If you want to tout the benefits of nuclear energy, go right ahead. But of the objections I've heard to nuclear power plants, I've never once heard anyone grousing about how much land they take up.

Surface area estimates aren't terribly informative, because nothing about this wind installation prohibits other uses of the area, by people or by wildlife.

If you're going to push nuclear energy, then try and actually make a positive case for it. The "windfarms will eat our babies" routine is hardly convincing.

Re:Such an environmental nightmare

[Anonymous Coward]

Just look at how the windmills caused vast flooding in the Netherlands. It is all below sea level now. Won't someone please think of the children.

Re:Such an environmental nightmare

[Anonymous Coward]

Who needs facts when we have truthiness?

Re:Such an environmental nightmare

[mangu]

I wasn't trying to make any definitive assertions on the relative benefits or harmful effects of different energy sources, I was just pointing some facts that occurred to me and seem to be overlooked. I happen to have some knowledge on the matter, having worked in the long-term planning department of a large power company operating nuclear, hydro, and thermal power plants.

However, the link you pointed seems to be rather suspect: "The motivation behind the Encyclopedia of Earth is simple. Go to Google and type in climate change, pesticides, nuclear power, sustainable development, or any other important environmental issue. Doing so returns millions of results, some fraction of which are authoritative. The remainder is of poor or unknown quality" .

In other words, "don't try to get all the facts, come to us for the truth".

Re:Such an environmental nightmare

[SnarfQuest]

If you came back with a number as high as 0.1%, I'd be suspicious of your math.

But that will cause GLOBAL WARMING! Total destruction of the Earth in 7 years! Massive extinction rates! We must think of the children! We have a consensus! Brad Pitt says so, so we must believe! What if it were true! We cannot take a chance and wait for proof! Stop the madness!

Re:Such an environmental nightmare

[budgenator]

What everybody forgets is these darned things are attached to the Earth! We have prevailing winds that blow from the west to the east and the new fangled bird shedders are attached to the EARTH which is going to shorten our days! The only way this is going to work is for every wind turbine in the Northern hemisphere to have a counter-ballancing wind turbine in the southern hemisphere where the prevailing wind blow east to west just like we do with flush toilets.

Re:Such an environmental nightmare

[mangu]

Facts, anyone?

As I mentioned, 144 square miles of land or sea are needed to produce 1.3GW of power. That's a fact. A nuclear reactor that produces 1.3GW will occupy something like 144 square yards. That's another fact.

Of course, a nuclear power plant is larger than the reactor itself, but the total area needed for a 1.3GW nuclear plant, included the space needed to store the spent fuel, is on the order of magnitude of 0.1 square mile.

People often forget or try to ignore another fact: the biggest cost in building and operating a nuclear power plant comes from regulatory restrictions. It seems like legislators try to regulate power plants with the same set of rules that regulate nuclear weapons. That's like regulating wind power plants with the same rules that regulate cruise missiles, just because both use turbines.

We see so many people here in Slashdot complaining how the 9/11 paranoia about terrorism is being used to erode our liberties. Well, how about nuclear paranoia? Trying to put spent fuel from civilian power plants in the same class as spent cores for nuclear bombs is in the same level of paranoia as prohibiting people from carrying bottled water in airplanes because once a traveler was killed by a nitroglicerine explosion.

Re:Such an environmental nightmare

[imsabbel]

You are totally missing out the fact that these reactor:
a) needs space on secure land, not in the see
b) need uranium mining/element building/ect facilities, all with large space needs
c) waste disposal are needs

and last but not least the fact that the houses that use those GW need far more space.

Re:Such an environmental nightmare

[gfreeman]

*sigh*

It's not East/West in either hemispehere, It's Clockwise/Counterclockwise. Which means that for every Easterly, you have a Westerly.

I hope you were joking, but judging by other serious comments saying pretty much the same thing, I'm doubtful.

Re:Such an environmental nightmare

[budgenator]

That's why I threw in the toilet thing, so it woould be obvious anybody with with any education.

Another Idiotic decision...

[OneSmartFellow]

... made by people who refuse to think clearly!

Talk about immediate environmental impact. WAKE UP people - wind farms take energy directly out of a very complex self-regulating system. Let's see how long it takes the greenies to realise this is NOT a long term solution,

As I have repeated said, energy efficiency is the only soultion to our energy problems. Until manufacturers are required to produce more efficient products, we are on the wrong path.

Re:Another Idiotic decision...

[Anonymous Coward]

Are these http://www.londonarray.com/about-us/ the 'greenies' your talking about? Might want to get your facts straight. :-)

Re:Another Idiotic decision...

[mwilliamson]

Basically, this boils down to giving up your air conditioning. Mankind evolved without HVAC...seems like a silly waste of energy IMHO.

Re:Another Idiotic decision...

[Jeremi]

Talk about immediate environmental impact. WAKE UP people - wind farms take energy directly out of a very complex self-regulating system.

Good. Maybe that will offset a bit of the extra energy being added to that same system via the greenhouse effect.

Let's see how long it takes the greenies to realise this is NOT a long term solution

Probably some time after the alleged deleterious effects become apparent. The reason you don't mention any of those effects is because (barring the occasional insignificant bird kill) there are none. Come back when you have more than half-panicked hand-waving.

As I have repeated said, energy efficiency is the only soultion to our energy problems.

Nothing is "the only solution". There are many partial solutions that will help, and we can implement most of them in parallel -- it's not a one-or-the-other decision. Maybe a little clear thinking is in order for you also.

Re:Another Idiotic decision...

[An Onerous Coward]

I'm all in favor of energy efficiency, but I don't see how the environmental effects caused by taking energy out of the atmosphere are any worse than the alternatives we already use to produce electricity. Or how it's worse than any of the other things we do that affect the weather (putting up buildings, laying down roads, knocking down forests, etc.)

My worry here is that, due to the offshore-ishness of the farm, it will be very difficult to find bird corpses, and hence it will be very difficult to estimate just how many birds are being killed. It would make sense for them to select a site that wasn't near any major migration routes, and the map seems to place it far enough offshore that it would be well away from shoreline birds. But how are they going to find out if there is a problem?

Re:Another Idiotic decision...

[Bryansix]

In the US we have a program designed for that purpose. http://www.energystar.gov/

Re:Another Idiotic decision...

[nmos]

wind farms take energy directly out of a very complex self-regulating system.

1. We're talking about a fairly small percentage of the total available wind energy here. Wind power is unlikely to ever be more than 10-30% of our total power usage due to our need for power when the wind isn't blowing so the percent of available wind energy that is captured will remain low. How is this worse than bridges, buildings, trees (or lack of them) etc? I'd be willing to bet that the impact of a blacktop parking lot has more impact on the wind than a windmill due to the updrafts created by rising hot air. Also, we're not taking energy out of the system, but just shifting it around since all of the energy generated will ultimately end up as heat.

As I have repeated said, energy efficiency is the only soultion to our energy problems.

Effeciency is certainly important but, like wind power it's only one small piece of the solution. Even if the world suddenly became 20% more effecient tommorow that would only buy us a few years before growth used up the savings. Sure we could continue to get more effecient for a while but there are limits to effeciency.

Re:Another Idiotic decision...

[GigsVT]

Who cares?

Any bird stupid enough to fly into a loud wind turbine wasn't fit anyway. Natural selection at work.

Re:Another Idiotic decision...

[LQ]

Talk about immediate environmental impact. WAKE UP people - wind farms take energy directly out of a very complex self-regulating system. Let's see how long it takes the greenies to realise this is NOT a long term solution.

Back of envelope estimates from some figures off Wikipedia:
Energy reaching earth from sun = 170,000 TW
Say 2% converted to wind = 3,400 TW
One estimate of theoretical potential for wind power = 72 TW (which is 40 times the current electricity use.)
So if we covered the planet with turbines we might manage to take 2% out of the total wind energy. Is that going to change the weather?

Re:Another Idiotic decision...

[Man Eating Duck]

In addition, people should be more careful with tidal power. Harnessing it pulls the moon closer to the earth, eventually making it come crashing down through the atmosphere. Or something.

As long as we are not renewable energy in amounts sufficient to cover our needs, I completely agree with you about energy efficiency.

Serious question: Where DOES actually the energy from tidal power plants come from, originally? Rotational momentum of the Earth? My lunatic hypothesis? :)

Re:Slashdot got a green light?

[butterwise]

They already have.

What, Pray Tell ...

[bperkins]

will power this green light?

Re:What, Pray Tell ...

[zmod3m]

This is similar to what I thought when I read the headline. Why would a wind farm need a stop light?

The Problem with Wind Energy

[RAMMS EIN]

The problem with wind energy is that it's output is unreliable and unlikely to match demand. For electricity, it is essential that supply match demand very strictly. Essentially, this means that wind farms have to be backed up with other, reliable, fast-switching power sources. This, of course, means you've still not solved the energy problem - what do these other plants run on? Also, it adds to the cost of electricity from wind - which is already very high.

Re:The Problem with Wind Energy

[cyfer2000]

I think they will store energy when the wind is strong and get the stored energy out when the wind is weak. There are many ways to store energy, my question is which one do they use and why?

Re:The Problem with Wind Energy

[LizardKing]

I think they will store energy when the wind is strong and get the stored energy out when the wind is weak. There are many ways to store energy, my question is which one do they use and why?

Hydro power. In Scotland and Wales, there are a number of installations that pump water into reservoirs during periods when demand for electricity is low, and then release the water through turbines during periods of peak demand. I saw the construction site for one of these projects as a child, and it was impressively huge - plus it was completely invisible from the outside as it was inside a Welsh mountain.

Re:The Problem with Wind Energy

[RAMMS EIN]

``There are many ways to store energy, my question is which one do they use and why?''

AFAIK, they use none, because none are good enough.

Storing energy when you produce more than needed and releasing it when you produce less seems like the obvious solution, but then, for every complex problem there is a solution that is clear, simple, and wrong.

Re:The Problem with Wind Energy

[LizardKing]

A couple of links to hydro storage installations:

Dinorwig

Ffestiniog

Not sure if these were the ones I saw as a kid, although the first one fits the time frame.

Re:The Problem with Wind Energy

[pkulak]

You're right. If it doesn't completely solve the problem, it's not worth doing. I was going to buy a pellet stove so that I would save thousands of dollars a year on my electric bill, but then I realized that I couldn't even plug my microwave into it! What a sham!

Re:The Problem with Wind Energy

[RAMMS EIN]

``You're right. If it doesn't completely solve the problem, it's not worth doing.''

I never said that. I just pointed out that wind energy has some problems, because I know many people aren't aware of these problems and think wind energy is more of a solution than it actually is. I don't actually know if wind energy is worth it; I've never done the math. Personally, my faith is in biofuels - grow plants, optionally process them to get fuel out, burn fuel, generate electricity, use waste and emissions to grow plants. Works as long as the sun shines, although you do have to pick the right crops.

Re:The Problem with Wind Energy

[pkulak]

It's much more difficult to make a case for biofuels then for wind. Apart from there not even being enough land in this country to generate any substantial portion of our energy, there's debate as to weather you can even get more energy out of the stuff then it takes to refine it. Middle men are very expensive here: we need to focus on producing electricity, not some other random substance that will later to turned into electricity.

Re:The Problem with Wind Energy

[Anonymous Coward]

Wind farms, since you cannot control the output must be used to apply to the 'baseline' electric demand. That means there is a cap on how much of a % wind power you can have on the system at one time. If you have too much, you would have to short out a farm and lose the power that you are getting for free.

Also, with a high percentage of wind power, what will you do on a windy day? Back down on your fossil and nuclear units? Back down a fossil unit too far and it becomes problematic, they burn the starter oil not the coal to maintain a steady flame. Backing them down to 40% output is going to be very inefficient and use alot of oil. As for nukes, it is preferred to change their output as little as possible... the less you rev the plant up and down, the less chances there are for mistakes. That and running a nuclear unit below capacity IMO is a waste of the fuel.

In summary, wind is a nice solution but too much of it will introduce supply and reliability problems into the system. I think we should add as much as we can, just there is a limit as to how much is feasible.

Re:The Problem with Wind Energy

[RAMMS EIN]

``Apart from there not even being enough land in this country to generate any substantial portion of our energy''

That may be true if you use maize, soy or rape seed as energy crops, but we're only doing that (and heavily subsidizing it) to make the farmers happy. Certain types of algae have much higher yields (orders of magnitude) and grow on salt water (no good land required). Using these, you can produce enough fuel for electricity generation and transportation in the USA, using just a fraction of the land area.

``there's debate as to weather you can even get more energy out of the stuff then it takes to refine it.''

Again, this is a misconception which exists because of research done using unsuitable energy crops. Perhaps, if you grow maize and process it into ethanol, you don't get out more energy than you put in. However, that doesn't mean biofuels are a bad idea. It just means that particular means of production isn't a good idea.

Re:The Problem with Wind Energy

[legirons]

The problem with wind energy is that it's output is unreliable

Not when the wind turbines are in different places

and unlikely to match demand

Cold winds -> lots of electricity to heat houses. Plus, UK houses can turn their heating on and off when the electricity company sends them a radio signal, which means you can modify the demand whenever you want.

Essentially, this means that wind farms have to be backed up with other, reliable, fast-switching power sources.

Like Dinorwig power station? (hydroelectric, very rapid switching). You can also do it with a building full of fuel cells.

This, of course, means you've still not solved the energy problem - what do these other plants run on?

Does it matter? You already said they only need to match the difference in demand, to cover short-term fluctuations. And as mentioned above, those plants can run on electricity from the wind turbines if you want.

Re:The Problem with Wind Energy

[spun]

You have your facts wrong. We've been storing energy by pumping water into reservoirs for a long time. See the post above yours for some links.

Re:The Problem with Wind Energy

[spun]

The main problem is in breaknig down cellulose. Cellulose is not easy to convert to energy, just look at cows. They require four stomaches, special enzymes and help from bacteria to do it. Most plant matter is cellulose. If we could find a way to break dowen cellulose economically, then any crop would be suitable. Without that, then almost no crops are suitable. As to the land area, there are no crops that produce enough energy to remove this as a concern. We would need to more than double the amount of land we cultivate in order to meet our energy needs.

Are any of these issues insurmountable? Of coursed not. Biofuels are a promising line of reasearch. But they won't, by themselves, solve all our energy concerns.

Re:The Problem with Wind Energy

[Anonymous Coward]

Ireland has 560 MW installed of wind turbines.

The maximum total output last year was 520 MW.

The minimum total output last year was 10 MW.

Wind power is unreliable. That doesn't make it useless if you supplement it with, for instance, a gas fired power station (which is quite fast to bring online), but at best it an addition to the grid, not a replacement.

Re:The Problem with Wind Energy

[parramatta_kiss]

Firstly, let me introduce a new way of thinking about wind: shaving demand. That is to say, the demand for electricity seen and the generator/network side is highly erratic anyway (this is available here in Australia from NEMMCO, the national elec market). So, essential, by adding in variable supply such as wind farms, it is much useful to compare it to the most variable part of the supply chain, the demand side. Whilst variable supply does add a degree of complexity to the supply of electricity, despatch of electricity is set up to respond to the varying demand ultimately seen on the generation side, some of which can be mitigated by the production from wind. Secondly, gas-fired highly responsive generators have lower capital costs than base load coal (which has high capital costs and low fuel costs). That is to say, it is feasible to pair appropriately place wind farms with a gas generator when it is known that the generator will not be running a lot of the time. Numerous examples exist of this in small scale pairings of micro-wind turbines with diesel gensets, where the fuel savings make the hybrid arrangement viable. Thirdly, the assertion that wind costs are already high is not accurate, at least in the European and Australian context, where wind power costs approach that of coal, and are actually cheaper than coal for high wind sites (a cost that is coming down with enhanced scale economies). Finally, everyone is missing the boat on energy efficiency. Energy efficiency promises far more immediate, proven, cost-effective and capital-outlay-reducing potential than any other 'renewable' technology. If your company office or factory has not explored energy efficiency, have an audit done now. Start finding out about how you can reduce energy use in your home.

Re:The Problem with Wind Energy

[MtViewGuy]

The best way to improve energy efficiency is to modify our tax laws to encourage energy efficiency. Everybody would be putting up thermopane windows, putting in more house insulation, and buying Energy Star-certified consumer electrical/electronic goods if the cost could be deducted from your income taxes. Likewise, imposing excise taxes based on engine displacement and physical size of vehicle would do much for automakers to make a lot more small, fuel-efficient vehicles (they're already doing that in Europe and Japan).

Economical!

[Anonymous Coward]

Okay let's do a little straw math.

Let's convert the funny money into real money. To make it easy, say, three billion dollars to build this puppy.

Now, let's divide that by the number of customers served. One million.

So that makes a cost of $3,000 per customer.

Spread that cost over only one year... $250 a month. That's about 2-3 times my current electricity bill. And after the first year there is only maintainence and salary to pay...

Shoot! Where do I sign up?

Wind power NOT significantly harmful to birds

[Anonymous Coward]

Birds don't really often get killed by wind turbines, the blades move quite slowly and predictably and are clearly visible so the birds can avoid them. Some birds even have nests on top of turbines.

Rather birds tend to fly into ordinary power lines and die. Climate change and pollution are also big threats to birds as other wildlife too, and their effect is often global.

Furthermore, bird enthusiasts even in America are supporting wind power, here is a link to a statement from the Audubon Society:
http://personals.salon.com/blog/1976/post_32241.ht ml?dcb=personals.salon.com

It's one of the perpetual myths against wind power that surface every time the public discusses about it, I was sure it'd pop up here on slashdot...
Now just waiting about the "will the turbines ever recoup their construction energy cost?" (They will in a few months.)

Re:Wind power NOT significantly harmful to birds

[edgr]

the blades move quite slowly

I'm not sure about the rest of the post, but this is wrong.
 
According to wikipedia, the tips of the blades spin up to 6 times the speed of the wind. Considering that, also according to wikipedia (Beaufort Scale), a "strong breeze" is around 44 km/h (27 mph), the tips of the blades could be spinning at 264 km/h (162 mph) on a reasonably windy day.
 
That's not exactly what I'd call slow.

Wind farms are part of an answer

[Per Abrahamsen]

In Denmark around 20% of our power come from wind, expected to grow to 25%. That is probably the maximum, as you need power when the wind isn't blowing as well. Wind power is not the answer, or an answer, but can be a significant part of answer.

I wonder why so many people (in particular Americans for some reason) feel that such a complex issue as energy supply need a single source as an answer. Some even dismiss all discussion of conservation with the "argument" that you can't totally eliminate the need of energy that way. Even though just going to EU/Japan level of conservation would eliminate 50% of the energy consumption. Maybe it is because people have been brought up in a world where only answers that can be expressed as sound bites are considered relevant by the media.

Re:Wind farms are part of an answer

[Anonymous Coward]

People with basic education know that if a single source of energy is more expensive per kWh than other options, then it should be 0% of the grid. If it's less expensive than other options, then it should be 100% of the grid. This is a simple 1D linear program. And before you ask, yes "environment costs" are counted in the expense, as any sane accountant would do.

Re:Wind farms are part of an answer

[jez9999]

And if the environmental costs of the best solution rise, the more widely that solution is deployed...?

Re:Wind farms are part of an answer

[Gnavpot]

In Denmark around 20% of our power come from wind

No, around 20% of the electrical power comes from wind.

Only around 3% of the total power production/consumption in Denmark comes from wind.

Re:Wind farms are part of an answer

[Anonymous Coward]

It is sound bites in a way ...

As an American, I'm sad to say most of my fellow citizens lack the ability to understand issues in any other way than black and white, good or bad.

Re:Wind farms are part of an answer

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a considerable ignorant view of Americans and this article doesn't even compare to the wind project I'm working on in the mid-west US which will be the worlds largest wind generation nation in the world by 2015, not to mention to push the nation to 20% on alternative enegy by then. This British plan doesn't even compare.

Please excuse my AC as I'm in Europe discussing export deals to Europe considering we also produce the largest wind turbines in the world currently. :) So please stop with the ignorant Euro trash talk about Americans, we see a problem and we're dealing with it and quite quickly than people realize.

Re:Wind farms are part of an answer

[Anonymous Coward]

Using pumped hydro storage wind could comprise 100% of electrical power easily.

Re:Wind farms are part of an answer

[dlanod]

The idea you need a lot of back-up power for "when the wind isn't blowing" is a bit misleading. Given that you can spread your wind turbines over an area the size of a country, chances are there'll be wind blowing somewhere.

Re:Wind farms are part of an answer

[Anonymous Coward]

You make the basic error of assuming that costs for something remain the same on all levels. but for instance wind energy only remains cheap for as grandparent has said 20-25% level, after that price goes up. This can lead to a situation where it is cheaper to get sources for the amount they deliver cheaply and thus argue for a mixed strategy in some cases.

Re:offshore

[shucks88]

Luckily these windfarms are off-shore - so no square metres of countryside to worry about.

The question nobody's asked.

[Torvaun]

Is it worth it? Over the complete lifetime of this windfarm, are we going to get energy out in amounts greater than what we had to put in? Manufacturing uses energy from burning coal. Is putting that energy here a waste like with solar power? People talk about green energy without checking to see just how green it really is.

Re:The question nobody's asked.

[polar red]

wind power is rather good in that respect:
http://www.eoearth.org/article/Energy_return_on_in vestment_(EROI)_for_wind_energy

Re:The question nobody's asked.

[petaflop]

The question has been asked and the anwser is yes for both wind and solar. (The answer used to be no for solar, but with concentrators and cell technology improvement it changed. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_energy_gain).

Re:The question nobody's asked.

[Intron]

According to this California white paper, the payoff is within the first 4-6 months of operation. Also the cost per kWH is lower than most other alternative energy sources.

Re:The question nobody's asked.

[Rei]

I'm more bothered by people complaining about people not checking about energy return on investment without checking to see whether the people they're complaining about check on energy return on investment.

*breathes*

Re:The question nobody's asked.

[Alioth]

Modern photovoltaic cells pay back energywise in 3 to 6 years (depending on how sunny the area they are in). It's been years (decades maybe) since it took more energy to make PV cells than they make. Also, quite a lot of the refined silicon used for solar cells is waste from the semiconductor industry.

Re:The question nobody's asked.

[afidel]

All but the worst solar cells will repay their manufacture and transportation energy costs in significantly less than their design lifetimes in all but the worst environments (I happen to live in one of the few places in the continental US where this is not true, NE Ohio). The best economically feasible solar cells on the market repay their energy cost in ~7 years (on average) vs a 20-30+ year design life. As this wiki article mentions thin film cells currently in development achieve a return of ~50x their manufacture cost over the lifetime of the cell.

Re:The question nobody's asked.

[Intron]

Think how much energy is wasted on complaining about wind and solar power. If only we could collect it.

who cares about seagulls

[eggywat]

The turbines will be out at sea so endangered land based birds are safe unless they try to migrate through the blade paths. As far as I'm aware seagulls are not endangered. If a few die I don't mind. Less smelly gull poo on the pier. http://bymyreckoning.com/

Re:who cares about seagulls

[WillAffleckUW]

Albatross!

sorry, obligatory Monty Python reference.

.

wouldn't be surprised if we see a few seabirds unable to understand that, just as with a boat, heading into the large rotating thing with blinky lights is NOT a good idea ... but that means more fish for us!

Re:who cares about seagulls

[eggywat]

You're right there Will :-)

Makes me wonder if we'll inadvertently skew natural selection in favour of a super race of droll gulls with an appreciation for British comedy from the early seventies?

http://bymyreckoning.com/

Re:who cares about seagulls

[WillAffleckUW]

Makes me wonder if we'll inadvertently skew natural selection in favour of a super race of droll gulls with an appreciation for British comedy from the early seventies?

Either that or seagulls with really big hairdos, that like to fly as a Flock of Seagulls. And with a devil-may-care attitude "Let's all see how close to the wind turbine we can get while high on mackerel!"

Gee, how did I know...

[pkulak]

Gee, how did I know that this wasn't going to be in the US? Deep down I knew this was going to be another story from Europe, but for some reason I still had a little glimmer of hope when I clicked the link.

Re:Gee, how did I know...

[/dev/trash]

I see wind farms all over the place here in Pennsylvania.

Re:Gee, how did I know...

[Retron]

The wind farm will be built just a few miles away from where I live - a fair way from London, initially I thought it'd be pretty galling if all that power went to the capital rather than the households of Kent!

However, the way the UK works is that we have a "national grid" set up for power. If the system's reaching capacity, older "mothballed" power stations can be brought online, to pump extra power into the grid. I believe there are trans-Channel connections too, so that we can import power if the worst comes to the worst. There are even "green" suppliers that promise to pump as much energy into the grid as you consume, from renewable sources. Of course the cost is higher and it's likely the actual power you're using came from coal/oil/gas/nuclear, but the option's there.

Amusingly most of the locals are against the plans, citing how ugly those turbines will look. Apart from the fact they'll be pretty small to the naked eye (they're not exactly putting them 100 yards out to sea), there are far more ugly things out there - traffic along the sea front roads, for example. There was also a concern about noise, but considering that a) they're a fair way out to sea, b) there's an airport nearby as well as a dual carriageway and c) there are frequent explosions from Shoeburyness, the other side of the Thames, I can't see that being an issue either.

Here's hoping they go ahead, it'd be a nice "trophy" for this deprived area to have.

Re:Gee, how did I know...

[nogginthenog]

there are far more ugly things out there
Like Margate chavs, for example :-)

Re:Gee, how did I know...

[Anonymous Coward]

That's another reason i have to emigrate to America. At least they don't come up with such stupid ideas...

Re:Gee, how did I know...

[rmelton]

Anybody have a link to a google earth mockup? I'd like to see a virtual view of what it will look like.

How often do YOU make a cuppa?

[Anonymous Coward]

1kW over 24 hours. Or 1 kettle boiling 12 hours of the day.

Re:How often do YOU make a cuppa?

[Anonymous Coward]

You'd have to have a really serious tea habit to need the kettle on that much!

Re:How often do YOU make a cuppa?

[meringuoid]

You'd have to have a really serious tea habit to need the kettle on that much!

Which country is this building a giant windfarm again?

Non-linear cost

[Per Abrahamsen]

So your point is that it require more than just basic education to realize that cost is rarely linear? Providing 100% of the power in Denmark would be much more than 5 times as expensive than providing 20%. Does that concept really require a higher level of education to understand?

Anyway, EU could probably get its entire energy supply covered cheaply by buying gas from Russia. Somebody whose level of intellect is on pair with a 1D linear program might think that would be a good idea.

Re:Um. Environmentalists against everything

[moeinvt]

"All "renewable" energy has an environmental cost."

"Solar panels . . ."
"Tidal generators will destroy ecosystems . . ."
"Fission power generates nuclear waste . . ."

So, where does the electricity you're using to power your computer come from? Got a life-cycle hooked up to a generator under your desk? Careful! Don't you know about the butterfly effect? Your breathing and movements are causing environmental catastrophies a hundred thousand years from now!!!

There is a contingent within the so called "environMENTAList" movement that is against EVERYTHING. Everything except giving up their personal technological comforts and automobiles. I get really pissed at these people who obstruct any sort of energy project, bemoan the fate of the environment, and yet demand cheap electricity and gasoline for themselves. In my neck of the woods people are obstructing wind power projects on grounds that it will be "unsightly" and wreck the "scenery". Oh yeah, it's going to kill a few birds and bats too. Bunch of bloody whiners. Go live like an animal out in the woods, come up with an energy proposal of your own, or STFU.

Anyone else notice?

[Anonymous Coward]

The turbines are approved but the substation was not? You can build the biggest wind generation site ever, but you can't connect it to the grid? hah

Yes, in the article it says they are appealing to the town board... Just thought it was interesting to point out.

Now you're only encouraging them...

[benhocking]

Yes, I have noticed that some people post such original thoughts quite frequently. If I thought he'd win, I'd love to see him (Gore) run. However, I don't think he'll win, so I think that if he ran it'd just detract from his environmental message. As for Kerry, I didn't like him in '04 (although I preferred him to Bush), and I don't want to see him run in '08. Not sure who I do want in '08, but that's how it freakin' should be in 2006!

Re:Now you're only encouraging them...

[Shakrai]

Yes, I have noticed that some people post such original thoughts quite frequently. If I thought he'd win, I'd love to see him (Gore) run. However, I don't think he'll win, so I think that if he ran it'd just detract from his environmental message.

I don't know if he'd win or not. I also didn't really like Kerry from the get-go although I voted for him anyway on the theory that he couldn't be worse then Bush.

A lot of /.'ers are known for suggesting electoral reform that includes IRV, easier access for third parties, etc, etc. What I'd like to see is a reform of the Presidential Primary process. It's absolutely infuriating that the combination of Iowa/New Hampshire and the media get to appoint presidential candidates. I didn't want to vote for Kerry -- but by the time the primary got to my state nobody else was running besides Edwards... and my state has a fairly early primary!

produced wind?

[Anonymous Coward]

Since when do wind farms produce wind? Don't they harvest it?

catastophic effect on environment!

[straponego]

I can't believe they're even considering this. It is intuitively obvious that these wind farms will slow down the rotation of the Earth. Or maybe speed it up-- I dunno, I'm not a details guy. Anyway, either would clearly trigger massive global climate change.

Re:catastophic effect on environment!

[gfreeman]

But all these huge skyscrapers that block winds - they're OK, right?

Not Americans - American ENERGY COMPANIES!

[maillemaker]

>I wonder why so many people (in particular Americans for some reason) feel that such a complex issue as
>energy supply need a single source as an answer.

Americans don't really care where the energy comes from. They, like everyone else, just want to turn on the light switch and watch the lights come on.

The drive for a single source energy comes from the energy companies who currently enjoy the benefits of a monopoly on a single source of energy - oil. They want a neat package they can control and profit from.

Once the technological genie is out of the bottle for how to cheaply harness alternative energy sources, anyone will be able to do it. And the people with the money to invest in alternative energy technologies are afraid of that.

Steve

Have you ever watched a wind turbine?

[msobkow]

Any bird stupid enough to fly into something that moves so slowly and gracefully was a brain-damaged genetic flaw deserving of it's Darwinian end. :p

Apparently there were proposals to build a similar facility off the shores of Connecticut, but the NIMBYs with their mansions complained it would destroy the view. How sad. Your view is more important than the environment. :(

Parent NOT offtopic!

[Anonymous Coward]

How the fuck was the parent post off-topic? While I think this subtopic is lame, even if it is tongue in cheek, it is most certainly on-topic!

Green Light power consumption

[ke4roh]

On a calm day, the wind farm will only generate enough power to illuminate the green light itself, because it is of the incandescent variety. They had considered using an LED green light, but the initial outlay was too much.

Manufacturer

[AugustZephyr]

Does anyone know who got the contract to build this wind farm. I look forward to seeing something on a project of this magnitude on Modern Marvels sometime in the next few years.

read George Monbiot's book "Heat"

[Michael Wardle]

Off-shore wind farms are a key part of the solution to global warming according to George Monbiot's book Heat.

Serious Security Needed

[Maxo-Texas]

This is a very easy target if it is just floating out there with protection.

I'm not sure they are including the cost of providing military security in their costs but they probably need to.

Re:Serious Security Needed

[meringuoid]

This is a very easy target if it is just floating out there with protection. I'm not sure they are including the cost of providing military security in their costs but they probably need to.

Any enemy capable of wholly destroying so large and diffuse a target just off the east coast of England, having got past the NATO forward radars, God knows how many sonar buoys, a large selection of allied nations, the Royal Navy, and the RAF, could probably just nuke the whole country flat anyway if they wanted to.

Vandalism or terrorism might be attempted, but these things are a fair distance apart. I doubt anything short of a major military strike, or a natural disaster, would be able to take out more than a few.

Ted Kennedy Killed Our Project

[Anonymous Coward]

We could have had a large off shore wind farm if Ted Kennedy hadn't killed it because of nimby. What a blow hard, we could have powered a few homes off of him alone!

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2006/04 /27/kennedy_faces_fight_on_cape_wind/
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/06/26/sunday/m ain560595.shtml
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion /oped/articles/2006/05/07/kennedy_doesnt_play_by_t he_rules/

What was the engery doing before?

[dzeaiter]

It's good news that should be applauded, but seeing something like this makes me think: what was all that wind energy doing before? I mean, now that all the energy in the wind is being used to turn windmills, what's missing out? And is it something important?

I know it sounds stupid, but it's a serious question. And waves being used to power turbines, same thing. What were the waves doing before that they're not doing anymore?

Re:What was the engery doing before?

[Deadstick]

what was all that wind energy doing before?

Turning into heat.

now that all the energy in the wind is being used to turn windmills

Try one-zillionth of hardly any percent of all the energy. As I mention elsewhere in the thread, one average thunderstorm develops tens of millions of kilowatts of wind power. Significant winds exist as high as twenty miles above the surface; the largest wind-powered generators are a few hundred feet. Draw your own conclusions.

What were the waves doing before that they're not doing anymore?

Turning mechanical energy into heat, again on a scarcely imaginable scale.

rj

The American Mind (or lack thereof)

[BaronElectricPhase]

Why do we crank the air-conditioner, instead of using better insulation materials/tehniques? Because we are brain-washed consumer americans. Insulation is a buy once item... power consumption (derived from our favorite word "CONSUME" ) is a buy constantly service. Not to mention owning an air-conditioner is a status symbol. And of course if you own one, then you must use it as well... or you are just a wanna-be.

slow moving rotors

[bobkoure]

There's a big difference between fast moving rotors (old tech) and much bigger, slower moving ones.

on the D side....

[zogger]

...this guy has announced

http://www.kucinich.us/

personally, I won't vote D or R, but I might make an exception for Ron Paul, but he has said he doesn't want to.

  My sort of political wish list is a stealth third party coup, where a lot of already elected folks (fed/state/local) who are Constitutionally bent and 100% pro *middle* class in outlook all decide one day to withdraw from their various parties and form a new centrist/populist/nationalist party, then run their own candidate for prez and shake things up. And I don't mean they just join an existing third party, but start one from scratch with guys already in office.

Re:on the D side....

[Shakrai]

And I don't mean they just join an existing third party, but start one from scratch with guys already in office.

Why not take over an existing party? If the religious right can take over the Republican Party then why can't Progressives take over the Democratic Party over the same length of time?

Re:on the D side....

[zogger]

The "religious right" doesn't run the R party, the globalist businessmen do. They just use the RR for votes. IMO, pretty similar to how the D party has faked out and used a lot of the Union vote over the decades. The political phrase used-I didn't invent the term but it fits-is "useful idiots".

I've been in politics a long time, I started in the 64 election, and I tell you, there is no magical formula using any combination of D party congress and prez or, R party congress and prez, or combination of the two, which will result in anything but more of the same as you see today. The only major difference with those two parties is which hand they use to pick your pocket with, leaving the other hand free to slap you acrossd te face when it comes to which born-with rights they want to infringe. The system as it stands now is *broken*, hideously and completely broken, corrupt, out of control, and the crime cartel has rigged the system to prevent existing third parties from getting much notice, getting on ballots, getting into so called debates, and so on. That's why I think the stealth coup is a workable solution, at least as it comes to the press and mindshare and instilling hope, etc and a renewed and EFFECTIVE activism.

Both parties still contain very small numbers of more or less sort of honest and thinking people, but they are in the minority, get little to no press, and they have the population just completely faked out that to do anything but support either wing of the power sharing and corrupt political cartel is somehow a wasted vote and wasted action. I disagree from the benefit of the long view.

  Bad car analogy time. I have heard the refrain "work from within" (I have been in both parties actually, same deal) and so on for decades now-and it just slap doesn't work and is not going to work. I am not going to keep buying a pinto or a yugo from those used political car salesman, and just keep back and forth trying this model or that model of the pinto or yugo. All they do is keep spray painting different colors on the political car and tell me that is "new and improved this time! Trust us!"

Bull and hockey. We need plan B or C now.

Re:on the D side....

[Shakrai]

and the crime cartel has rigged the system to prevent existing third parties from getting much notice, getting on ballots, getting into so called debates

You know I hear the ballot access thing all the time and I just don't see how it holds true. I've never seen an election that didn't have third party candidates on the ballot. Perhaps the lack of money and support hurts them more then ballot access does? When this guy manages to get on the ballot for state wide office, I have a hard time buying the argument that it's too hard to gain ballot access for third parties.

getting into so called debates

Which "so called" debates are you referring to? The Presidential debates? Parot got into them. Do you think the 15% requirement is prohibitive? He managed to meet it. And why are third parties always trying to win the Presidency? Shouldn't they build a base and start locally (all politics being local) first? Pretty much anybody can get on the ballot for most local races. Hell, if I wanted to run for State Assembly all I'd need is 500 signatures. Money is also less of a factor when you can campaign door to door and the debate is held on public access.

Are you joking or not?

[MattskEE]

I'm honestly not sure if you're trying to be funny or are just clueless.

There are certainly a lot of places with well-constructed and well-insulated buildings. They are in the vast minority once you visit the average American home or apartment. Double paned windows are quite rare in all of the locations I have lived in or visited in California and a lot of the Western states. Sure, a certain small percentage of new buildings have the double panes, but not many. The use of a more insulating gas in between the panes such as argon is remarkably rare.

Fiberglass insulation is a bit more common, but older houses and apartments are still in the majority in America, and few have been refitted with better insulation. Furthermore, not all new buildings are built to these specification, especially in lower priced areas.

Re:Are you joking or not?

[budgenator]

I'm in Michigan, and I don't think I can even get single pane exterior windows unless it's by special order, and I'd never pass inspection with them. Even old construction has blown in insulation in the wall or foam, unless it a tenement in Detroit. Still I don't think primative areas like California, New York and Florida define average for the United States.

Get lost frankly.

[jotaeleemeese]

You are one of those people that when they cut themsleves just a bit when shaving, start slashing themselves with the blade to quench their anger.

Or something like that.

Re:Get lost frankly.

[ScentCone]

Get lost frankly.

Is that like getting lost earnestly? Or more like getting lost candidly?

Frankly, I'd like to thank you for actually making my point. Even being a smart-ass works better if you use all of the language's horsepower and richness to your advantage.

Your sholdiers killed in Iraq perhaps?

[jotaeleemeese]

The thousend of civilians killed there as well in order to protect your interests?

Or the people in countries that will dissapear when sea levele raise?

We do know you guys in the US don't give a damn mostly. but that does not mean nobody cares.

No, it is crooked

[zogger]

Ballot access differs state to state widely, and in no state do either the D or R party have to pay a plugged nickle or gather signatures to be included, whereas all third parties have to jump various hoops. Now I am not sure which constitution you read, but mine has no mention whatsoever of two for-profit organizations that are allowed to hijack and own the government like they do now. No place does it say we are supposed to have a locked down gerry mandered carved in stone "two party system" or racket as I prefer real words.

    It is a power sharing jobs racket..that's it. And if you doubt me at all how crooked and corrupt and bogus it is, just remember,and you can go over and argue with these folks, it was the League of Women Voters who sponsored the national debates for generations, and then *quit* doing that because they said it was unfair what the Ds and Rs did to the requirements after Perot scared the shit out of the Ds and Rs with his populist showing. Heck, they wouldn't even let some third party candidates into the audience when they had legitimate tickets, let alone on the rostrum, had them "detained" by the bulls.

Screw that, tha't s obvious police state action, along with their "free-speech zones" that both parties used to stifle and minimize dissent.

Sorry, I'll repeat my statement-you will see no cleaning up of government or a return to government of and for the people until the D and R gangs are out, destroyed, smashed, gone, exiled, run out of town on a rail, the leaders arrested and impeached for serious crimes and malfeasance in office, and the political process yanked back to the people. Just the entire concept of full time career politicians is bogus.

    Both parties have said they would clean up their act as long as I can remember, over and over and over again, and neither has. There is no differing of the levels of crime and corruption today then there as in the 60s. We had a full d president and combined D legislature back then, and lookee here at the history books, a big fat war for profit based on outright lies.

Not seeing any difference whatsoever, no matter the so called "balance of power" in the branches or anything. There's a globalist party with two slightly different wings, both out to pick your pocket and strip your rights in favor pf themselves and someone else. If one party doesn't want to rip you off and give your loot to some big corporation, the other wants to do it for illegal aliens or the three eyed flying toad. if one party doesn't want to strip you of your self protection tools, the other one wants to tap your phone and read your mail and make you smile for the street corner big brother camera. And so on, I could run a huge list right now. Up and down and sideways with the huge list of *crap* from those goons. ENOUGH! I do NOT trust organizational liars any longer, it is beyond ludicrous to think it is going to change with the way the system is setup now and with the folks in power.

Charlie Brown-football-Lucy. That's it in a nutshell. Charlie Brown is an idiot if he keeps falling for Lucy's promise to hold the ball nice.

Comes a time one has to call it like it is in reality. I used to think, for around 25 years or so before I had to sit down and start from scratch thinking about it and be honest with myself based on all the empiricial data-I used to think it was possible to try and patch-up the system or at least one of those parties, now I think for the most part all it is is a crooked power sharing jobs program, a big fat mafia like organization, and they use their grassroots activists as the aforementioned "useful idiots" and throw those phony elections as political drama to keep the rubes amused and faked out that there is an honest political process. Others may still think it is possible to "reform" it, but I don't from the longer range perspective. If I thought it was possible, I am certainly not shy at all and would say so,and I would be advocating and working towards something quite different, but I just don't see it as even being remotely possible at this time.

Re:No, it is crooked

[Shakrai]

Ballot access differs state to state widely, and in no state do either the D or R party have to pay a plugged nickle or gather signatures to be included

OMG! Gathering signatures! What an oppressive burden that can't be overcome! You do know that most anybody running for office needs to gather signatures, right? The election law of my state (NY) reads that the party committee gets to appoint one candidate that doesn't need to meet the signature requirements. Anybody that wants to run against him in the primary needs to gather signatures. The winner of the primary is automatically on the ballot in November. This law applies to all parties, not just the two big ones. The Greens, Working Families, and Conservative Parties are treated just as fairly as the Republican or Democratic. Why is this a problem?

There are many things that you can rightfully bitch about in our political system (like gerrymandering) but ballot access really doesn't seem to be a major issue in most states.

Re:No, it is crooked

[zogger]

As I stated, the ballot requirements differ greatly state to state and some places it is quite difficult and expensive to get on the ballot
Here, thou mayest educate thyself, several to choose from

http://www.google.com/search?q=ballot+access%2C+th ird+parties&start=0&start=0&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8

Centralized energy in any form is a non starter

[jotaeleemeese]

All new homes should be installed with small wind turbines, solar panels by law and properly insulated by law.

THe more power can be produced close to the source were it is needed, the better.