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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"
Last time I checked, 144 square miles would be 373 square kilometers. Remeber is 1.609*1.609 *144...
Lisa, in this house we obey the laws of thermodynamics!
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
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.
Oh arse
"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.
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?
--
make install -not war
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?
Scarecrow. Duh.
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?
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.
"Sacrifice for the good of The State" - The State
Mans activity contributes to a vast number of bird deaths every 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."
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.
Eagles, Hawks and Owls. Three types of birds with eyesight ten times better than mine.
I can see the blades spinning...
This post contains benzene, nitrosamines, formaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide.
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.
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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.h
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.)
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.
wind power is rather good in that respect:n vestment_(EROI)_for_wind_energy
http://www.eoearth.org/article/Energy_return_on_i
Yes, I'm left. You have a problem with that?
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).
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.
Intron: the portion of DNA which expresses nothing useful.
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.
Yes, I'm left. You have a problem with that?
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!
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.
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