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America's First Offshore Wind Farm In Pictures (businessinsider.com)
Last week, an anonymous Slashdot reader submitted a story from the Associated Press, detailing the United States' first offshore wind farm that is set to open off the cost of Rhode Island this fall. Business Insider issued a report today with some additional specifications and stunning pictures of the Block Island Wind Farm: "GE and Deepwater Wind, a developer of offshore turbines, are installing five massive wind turbines in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. They will make up the first offshore wind farm in North America, called the Block Island Wind Farm. Over the past several weeks, the teams have worked to install the turbines 30 miles off the cost of Rhode Island, and are expected to finish by the end of August 2016. The farm will be fully operational by November 2016." Fun fact: GE's offshore wind farm has turbines that are twice as tall as the Statue of Liberty. You can view the slideshow of images here.
"GE and Deepwater Wind, a developer of offshore turbines, are installing five massive wind turbines in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean."
The middle of the Atlantic ocean is thousands of miles from the nearest dense population center that needs that kind of energy. Why would they choose to place the wind farm there and then have to lay thousands of miles of high voltage undersea transmission line? And what of the safety issues with failed lines?
Seems that wind is not his thing...
That was painful to read
They are 4 miles off shore; who gives a shit.
I didn't think people like you were real.
On the Oregon Cost born and raised, On the beach is where I spent most of my days
Without government subsidy, they are unaffordable
The subsidies needed to make clean energies (wind, solar, geothermal) affordable are just a small amount compared to the subsidies of the other technologies (nuclear is heavily subsidized) plus the hidden costs of these "dirty" ways to generate electricity.
You're right, let's keep taking a dump into our air with your island's diesel generators. You can suffer a few whirlygigs and blinkenlights added to the view of multi-million dollar mansions.
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
From the linked article: [Turbine Nacelles- Factory in Spain], [Blades-Dennmark], [Nacelles- France], [Towers-Spain], [Shipping- I don't know, home port Willemstad], [Ratepayers-Ratepayers are expected to pay an above-market price of $440 million for the next 20 years],
You are wrong. It worked. The subsidies have brought down the costs of installing wind power to the point that it is becoming competitive with (and perhaps cheaper than) other forms of generation.
These 6MW turbines are actually small. 8MW turbines are being installed now. The effective cost will be higher because only a small number of turbines are being installed.
This is a recent article from someone who has been very skeptical about alternative energy
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Spreading FUD? Got an agenda? David Koch, is that you?
http://www.aweablog.org/fact-check-about-those-abandoned-turbines/ (Yeah, yeah, it's on the Internet, so it must be true.)
One failed wind farm is hardly a reason why wind farms are necessarily a bad thing.
Take a dump? Srsly? If not four miles off shore, where exactly would you put them?
Fucking NIMBYs. Fucking billionaire NIMBYs that think they can afford to keep pumping CO2 into the atmosphere.
Because they actually can afford it, and to hell with everyone else.
If it was 150 years ago they'd probably be whining about all the damn ships. With sails. Sailing through their view.
"A small amount", maybe, if you ignore the amounts of energy produced and twist the meaning of the word "subsidy". Per unit of energy produced, renewable subsidies are outrageously more than fossil or nuclear receive, and certainly not affordable or remotely economical. Loan guarantees and limited liability are not subsidies, nor are they concepts specific to nuclear.
I'll agree. Those pictures are about as pleasing as a triptych of oil refineries in NJ.
The core of the argument is sound though. It costs ~$500k to put up a 100kW wind turbine. With energy at about 12c/kWh, each hour at full power would generate only $12 and would thus break even after 5 years of full-time, full-power wind however the largest turbines catch wind only 20% of the time and are only 30-45% efficient, smaller ones even less. So you're looking at 50 years before they break even. That is off course if they never needed maintenance, these turbines are specced for 20-30years of service WITH maintenance but most of them last only half that long.
Wind power is a loss at this point in time unless we jack the price of energy like Germany does, we need way lower costs and way higher efficiencies but for that we need rare earth magnets and the like. Solar is better (less maintenance) but it still doesn't compare to a well-maintained nuclear plant or other forms of clean energy.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
This exactly. I'd just like to add that it takes a lot of "energy" to machine the damn things too. Those blades are magnificently large!
Politics; n. : A religion whereby man is god.
the murdered birds just sink down to the ocean floor. No evidence; no guilt!
We just turn them into chum. Sharks and whales gotta eat, too. The birds won't make it to the ocean floor. Big fish; No guilt at all!
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
While some Islanders are definitely unhappy, plenty more welcome this. Honestly, I'd be annoyed if this were my view and am surprised they weren't built further out as it's not only possible but already planned for a larger installation 15-20 miles out. ....."
But the dispute is far more nuanced than your claim that "this project was rammed down the throats
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
whoosh. hint if they require massive subsidies to be viable then they are NOT competitive. anything can be claimed as competitive if you ignore the costs of generation.
TFS says 30 miles, not 4.
Learn to love Alaska
No, it's not sound. It's historical.
Turbines being installed now are much larger: 6 - 8MW. The economics of these much larger, offshore turbines are very different to those of the old, small turbines. The largest offshore wind farms that are being installed now are close to the cheapest sources of electricity.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Whenever they have tried to build windfarms near land, especially wealthy areas like Long Island, the landed gentry have howled and bawled NIMBY! NOT IN MY BACKYARD! So they must build these far away to keep the landed gentry from calling in their congressmen to put a stop to us. http://longisland.news12.com/n...
Sad fact: Coal pollution is big killer. It kills more people from cancer than nuclear power which is no saint either. http://www.scientificamerican....
Well, I don't know about you, but I'm blown away by system, it's a breath of fresh air to see someone trying to do the right thing.Yes! Imagine the economics of scale if this gets popular.
You are wrong. It worked. The subsidies have brought down the costs of installing wind power to the point that it is becoming competitive with (and perhaps cheaper than) other forms of generation
If that were true, then we would be phasing out the subsidies as they'd no longer be needed. What in fact has happened is that Deepwater is receiving a special-case subsidy that is much higher than the already existing subsidies.
Coal already gets massive subsidies http://www.sourcewatch.org/ind... http://www.abc.net.au/news/201... http://www.climatechangenews.c... and that doesn't count the huge cost to health care and lost worker productivity: http://www.fastcompany.com/172...
:-)
DOE did a study on savings to date through the Clean Air Act (passed through Congress without a single vote against it!) which found the Act had a *net benefit* to the economy for that reason. Nuclear sucks too, but Coal kills more than Nuclear https://www.newscientist.com/a... If someone can get alternative up to coal and nuclear then all the more power to them!
Environmental policy used to be bipartisan https://www.washingtonpost.com... Fuck partisanship!
That 14,000 abandoned wind turbine claim is bullshit: They are old ones which were decommissioned and replaced, so it's like claiming the automobile is a failed idea because there are so many cars have gone to the wreckers. Just more Nimby bullshit. http://skeptics.stackexchange.... http://www.wind-works.org/cms/...
as if power-lines were not enough.
Just make a search on "birds killed by wind generators" and see images.
Can we use led lamps and live in modest homes; like not heating or air-conditioning ten thousand of square feet just to look prestigious? Or eat a bit less and drive normal size cars? Perhaps then there would be no need to make this wonderful planet's surface ugly with so many power-lines, wind turbines towers, and chimneys.
You ignore that there are actually more days of usable wind per year at sea than there is on land.
Well done to the USA for catching up with many other parts of the world.
Denmark, Germany, Holland and the UK all have significant offshore Generating capacity already operating. Thousands of generators are dotted all over the North Sea and beyond.
6MW is the nameplate capacity, the actual capacity is anywhere from 20% to 40% of that, depending on the local conditions.
The subsidies needed to make clean energies (wind, solar, geothermal) affordable are just a small amount compared to the subsidies of the other technologies (nuclear is heavily subsidized) plus the hidden costs of these "dirty" ways to generate electricity.
So you think we should do something stupid because we are already doing other things that are even stupider?
Offshore wind is one of the most hideously expensive methods of power generation. Here is a comparison of the levelized cost of generated electricity, in US cents per kWh, for various generating methods, projected for 2020:
Natural gas combustion: 6.9-15.6
Coal combustion: 8.7-16.0
"Advanced nuclear": 9.2-10.1
Hydro: 6.9-11.9
Geothermal: 4.4-5.2
Photovoltaic: 9.8-19.3
Concentrated solar heating: 17.4-38.3
Onshore wind: 6.6-8.2
Offshore wind: 17.0-27.0
These cost figures from the Energy Information Administration include all factors: amortization of the original capital investment, continuing investments, operating and maintenance expenses, fuel expenditures if any, etc. Only the cost of generation is accounted; not the cost of transmission. They are cost figures, so a business would have to mark them up to cover profit.
I don't claim that offshore wind is never worth pursuing in any situation, just that it is in general an extremely poor choice. For powering a remote island, if there is good reason why onshore wind is not practical, or is undesirable for some external reason (such as lack of available space, or protectioon of natural beauty of a resort area).
Incorrect. You can't get more than 6MW from these turbines, the capacity is limited by the mechanical parts (gearbox). And at high winds they actually have to be _stopped_ with blades at minimal pitch and motors electrically locked.
They are 4 miles off shore; who gives a shit.
Location doesn't matter, but if anyone cares about cost;
Yet when Deepwater proposed to sell its wind energy to National Grid, the cost was more than twice the going rate for electricity.
https://www.wind-watch.org/new...
Gosh, you'd think the engineers who have been doing this for decades would have thought of using small diameter turbines that work well in high speed flows, instead of designing huge turbine blades that are the most efficient in winds found close to the surface.
You're bitching that you can fucking see the windmills?
As a former resident of RI who still loves the damn state for all its political and economic faults and the goddamned provincial attitudes and is a former member of the 294/295 telephone exchange:
You, and everyone like you in RI is everything that is wrong with Rhode Island.
Go. Fuck. Yourself. From. Point. Judith. All. The. Way. Across. The. Sound. To. New. Shoreham. And. Then. Fuck. Off. Some. More. Hopefully. Out. To. Sea. Forever.
tl;dr:
Fuck You.
--
BMO
What's hilarious is that I /distinctly/ remember a fucking egg-beater windmill ON THE ISLAND ITSELF IN THE SEVENTIES.
The stupid. It burns.
--
BMO
If they were in my view, I'd be pleased. They're magnificent, certainly better than a flat empty horizon of only water.
This space intentionally left blank
Why weren't these made in the US, instead of in France then shipped over here? Nonetheless its a good idea to use ocean wind farms to supply power, its basically free energy.
Give me a 500 kph wind and I'll design you a small-diameter turbine to use it, Professor.
In general, doing things that are less stupid than the things we did before would be an improvement.
So then they changed the price they charged.
You really don't get this idea of selling things above cost to make a profit do you? It's called capitalism. You may not be used to it from where you are from "Comrade" but it's the way the world is working now.
Fewer people to complain.
These are going to make a great fishing spot. Fish love structure.
30 miles off shore is international waters, correct? (Though still in the exclusive economic zone.)
--fatboy
How much did the first steam generators cost compared to how much energy they made? Horses were cheaper.
How much did the first cell phones cost compared to how much they cost now? How capable were they?
How much did the first computer cost? How many people had access to it? How capable was it?
Jesus, it's like no one on Slashdot has never had to build prototypes or v1 of anything.
From the article:
"It will emit about 40,000 fewer tons of greenhouse gases per year than fossil fuels would to generate the same amount of energy. That's the equivalent of taking 150,000 cars off the road."
According to economists, about 80,000 - 150,000 people come of age each month in America. (This is the number used to see how many minimum jobs need to be created in a month to have an effect on unemployment.) How many of those people do you think have a car? Statistically, in America, 63,760 - 119,550 of them will have cars. (797 cars/1000 people in the US. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...)
From a greenhouse gas standpoint, the whole effort of building this windfarm is wiped out by 1.25 - 2.35 months of population growth.
Don't worry, it's far enough offshore that no one can see the birds getting whacked.
Though, if you care about birds, you should be calling for restrictions on the cat population. Less birds smack into wind turbines even than buildings. It is a non issue that is only used as a bludgeon for NIMBYs.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
I'm with you on this. I love the sight of turbines. I'm in central Ohio so there's not many around, but there is a giant wind farm in the northern part of the state that always impresses me when I drive by,
Central Ohio Home Theater Installation - The Theater People
30 miles from Rhode Island, 4 miles from Block Island.
An AC above linked this picture.
https://www.bostonglobe.com/me...
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Not incorrect, you are simply not informed.
First of all: that turbines have no gearbox.
Secondly: they wind speed when they stop is high, indeed.
So, it is a GE wind turbine and GE is traditionally a bit thin on giving out specs.
So what we can intelligently guess is:
cut in wind speed: about 3 - 3.5 m/s
rated wind speed for 6MW power production: about 10 - 11 m/s
cut of wind speed: exceeding 25 m/s average over a span of more than 10 minutes
emergency cut off wind speed: 75 m/s
So: at wind speeds of 24 m/s (to lazy to calculate it precisely) the energy would 159MW. So my wild guess in my previous post was accidentally nearly perfectly right.
Anyway, your point is right, the generator won't yield so much power, so as safe bet again, we can assume that power is cut at about 4x rated power (by turning the blades to make them less effective), which would be 24MW.
It is well known that all big wind parks exceed their rated power production by more than a factor of 4 for extended periods of time.
Here: http://www.energy.siemens.com/...
Very similar turbine/generator, I copy the facts for you:
Grid Terminals (LV)
Nominal power 6000 kW
Voltage 690 V
Frequency 50 Hz
Operational data
Cut-in wind speed 3-5 m/s
Nominal power at 12-14 m/s
Cut-out wind speed 25 m/s
Maximum 3 s gust 70 m/s (IEC version)
So, now we could ofc google for a long term wind measurement at the site :D and could calculate the expected long CF for those turbines. I would really be surprised if it is significantly below 50% - 55% nameplate.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
and the windmills are wayyyy off the coast near the lighthouse. They are not block anyone's view of anything. Gorgeous looking structures. Massive things. they will certainly save Block Island a metric fuckton of money on power as BI is the most expensive power consumer in the US. The damn island imports mountains of diesel fuel to power generators FFS. That style went out in the 60s.
/would buy a house there //rent it for the summer ///live in the winter ////Blue Pottery Coffee cups are the bomb.
Now if the cranky bastards who mandate that every house looks like Amnity out of Jaws and would let people put Solar Panels up on their houses this wouldn't be so bad, but the fuckers who say "OH THIS MUST BE HISTORIC LOOKING!" refuse to let any innovation come to the island. People can't have Sat dishes on their roof, has to be on the side of the house buried. Want internet? EL OH EL DSL 5/1 at a staggering amount of cash.
Block Island is pretty but it's technologically backwards. If only they'd have more cell towers as Cell phone service is GREAT and you can get 4G/LTE everywhere, now let me use 4G/LTE as full blown internet there phone carriers. It's make the curmudgeon town council happy that no more wires would have to be run to their drab and dull looking houses.
Wheel of Time: Book by Book and Sumview (summary review) Bigdady92 style: http://bigdady92.blogspot.com/
Why don't you read the GE prospects of those wind turbines?
They are specced fro 50 years of service, like any installation that big.
but most of them last only half that long. That is nonsense.
and are only 30-45% efficient there is not much you can do about that. And I doubt your numbers are right anyway. The only improvement in efficiency I expect is in low wind speeds.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Go to page 5:
http://www.energy.siemens.com/...
Yet when Deepwater proposed to sell its wind energy to National Grid, the cost was more than twice the going rate for electricity.
My understanding is that this was built where it was because it is replacing local diesel generation on Block Island, and so the barrier to entry was lower since the costs locally were much higher than in the national grid.
So a direct experience. A personal friend was a relatively wealth older fellow. Towards the end of his life he'd have lunch regularly. One day he shared he was trying decide what to do with one of his investments. At some time on the past he'd bought a wind turbine near Palm Springs. With tax incentive's, what it made by selling power and depreciation it made him a small but steady income. He had some sort of arraignment with a company there to look after it. Some small regular fee for a maintenance contract. But his accountant had just told him that with changes in tax laws and the fact the turbine had finally "depreciated" to zero value on the books it was no longer going to be a sure income source. He had been an engineer during the brief period of his life he actually worked and he hated the idea of shutting down a perfectly functional energy source. It really pained him but in the end fiscal "responsibility" won out and he had it decommissioned. I always wondered if its still sitting there today.
In the end its always the dollars that drive the decisions.
Yes, and they all increased significantly the cost of energy in the EU to the point of it being a major political problem.
With the Brexit and the uncertainties regarding EU subsidies for "green" energy projects, Siemens has decided to halt all wind projects in the UK.
Because the reality is, those projects are just NOT viable without heavy taxpayer subsidies.
The point being that windmills have been a fixture on the island itself for going on 40 years /at a minimum./
It doesn't matter if the eggbeater type sucks or not. Windmills have been in use and we have a so-called resident of Adrian Block's island who has his frilly panties and his delicate sensibilities in a twist about them.
He should GTFO the island if that's the case.
BTW, the island makes its money exclusively on tourism and it's likely that he thinks that this is going to affect the tourism negatively. Windmill farms in other parts of the world have shown this o not be the case.
--
BMO
Oil is less than 1% of the electric generation in the USA.
So come again?
Offshore wind may be still too expensive, but onshore wind PPAs in mid US are 2-2.5 cnt/kWh and it is BELOW wholesale electricity price. What more self-sufficiency do you want?
There still is 2.3 cnt/kWh subsidy for grid connected wind power, but it ONLY applies if you do not take 30% tax subsidy when building it. Both are going to expire in few years. Even if resulting cost will go up to 4-5 cnt/kWh, it would still be typical wholesale PPA price. More likely it would not raise that much, as cost of wind turbines is going down in recent years.
People who replicate this "abandoned wind turbines" nonsense are morons from the woods with IQ of a monkey.
How dumb it can go? Nobody generates electricity from diesel in mainland US, only in few islands.
Natural gas cost defines low electricity prices in the US and isn't related to oil price. Natural gas cost has nowhere to go but up, as bottom is supported by natural gas liquidification and export terminals that are going into production now. Natural gas is much more expensive in the rest of the world.
Capitalism with some federal assistance sprinkled on top, and expensive.
whoosh. hint if they require massive subsidies to be viable then they are NOT competitive. anything can be claimed as competitive if you ignore the costs of generation.
There are an impressive amount of issues with this statement, considering its only 3 short sentences. In rough order of importance...
Because that's when you need that little bit more of extra capacity.
Because demand is not a square wave and those coal units are huge. It takes many hours to bring a thermal unit online, even the tiny ones (eg. 120MW for something really old).
Running costs are not zero compared with idle/reserve costs. Spinning a heavy generator instead of freewheeling wears them out a lot more quickly.
There is a crossover point where it's better to bring a coal fired unit online instead of more windmills. Below that point it's cheaper to run windmills, above that point you are getting the low cost per MW that thermal generation can provide when running at full capacity.
That's the real reason why wind, gas turbines etc don't run all of the time. They are used to cover peaks and better follow demand than thermal units at 500MW or so. Apart from hydro all of the base load types of generators are far more effective running 24/7 than covering peaks so all the other types of generators have to take up the slack. So all the "wind is more expensive" types are trying to bluff you by not taking real usage into consideration. It doesn't matter if wind is more expensive per MW of capacity if you need 50MW and the other choice is a 500MW coal fired unit that is cheaper than 400MW of wind. In that situation it's cheaper to bring some windmills online for 50MW of wind than 500MW of coal.
In general, doing things that are less stupid than the things we did before would be an improvement.
But the less stupid things are in addition to the more stupid things, not a replacement. Each project should be evaluated on its own merits, not on a relative scale of stupidity.
Yes I get it mister planes can't fly because all that fuel sloshing about will fuck them up.
I get that you hate the "reality based community" and just keep on pushing whatever the current party line defined by donors is. You are as fucking annoying and clueless as a cold war commie but just do not seem to get that you have fallen into exactly the same trap as those losers.
Machines don't have politics you tool.
The core of the argument is sound though. It costs ~$500k to put up a 100kW wind turbine. With energy at about 12c/kWh, each hour at full power would generate only $12 and would thus break even after 5 years of full-time, full-power wind
You are talking about the full site establishment costs there. Energetic costs to host subsequent generations of turbines at each site become the cost of replacing the wind turbine with a crane.
however the largest turbines catch wind only 20% of the time and are only 30-45% efficient, smaller ones even less. So you're looking at 50 years before they break even.
This is why "measures" like "Capacity Factor" are bogus measures, every power generation techniques has characteristic. For example, nuclear reactors only us 0.3% of the energy in the fuel so they are relatively inefficient too. Inavailability of a reactor to produce power due to maintenance or some other reason that keeps them offline. Once the reactor is available there is also the utilization of the power it produces, they may produce a good base of power, but that doesn't mean a nuclear reactor can follow demand that well.
That is off course if they never needed maintenance, these turbines are specced for 20-30years of service WITH maintenance but most of them last only half that long.
That is a good platform for the incremental advancement of wind turbine technology. You cannot do that sort of advancement with operational nuclear reactor technology until you build a new reactor.
Wind power is a loss at this point in time unless we jack the price of energy like Germany does, we need way lower costs and way higher efficiencies but for that we need rare earth magnets and the like.
Well it would be devestaing if wind power melted down and spread radionuclides into the environment however it would seem the worst they do is overspeed and catch fire. I see as more wind power installations are deployed the grid itself will change in the way it responds to availability, demand and utilization.
Solar is better (less maintenance) but it still doesn't compare to a well-maintained nuclear plant or other forms of clean energy.
It would be difficult to imagine a large scale solar plant having more maintenance issues that a nuclear power plant.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Another poinltless rant, a way of avoiding the facts regarding the very high cost of this wind project.
https://www.thecourier.co.uk/n...
The problem is that they are theoretically only up to 50-something% efficient and that is 'at rated wind speed' but as you know, the 'rated wind speed' is a single (constant) speed but the wind is never constant.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
The problem is that people abuse the word efficiency.
In terms of windmills it means: only 50% of the energy in the wind is transformed into energy.
It does not mean that a 6MW windmill only produces 3MW. If that was the case: they would name it a 3MW windmill.mIt is as simple as that.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
The only reason I could see for decommissioning it would be that it costs more in upkeep and maintenance than it provides in income from selling the energy. If the only thing that made it "profitable" was the tax subsidies and depreciation write-off then it likely never actually made any money in the first place.
Still, I do have to wonder if it was actually bought up cheap by someone and is still standing.
(1) Where the distance cited is 30 miles, it should read 'less than 3 miles' off the shore of Block Island. (2) Block Island Power Company's existing diesel generates are rated at about 4.3 MW total, so the 30 MW turbines produce quite a bit more than needed for the island.
They were built close in so permitting could be done without Federal approval, which was perceived to be too slow. It was slow anyway.
Take the high cost up with the energy utilities that think it is a good deal because those tiny little generators save them money but putting off when they have to start building very capital intensive large units.
By taking a blind political approach you are making yourself look very silly, especially when in a few years time the political cheerleader you follow will be getting money from wind farms and telling useful idiots like yourself how wonderful it is.
I follow nobody politically, but it does appear you follow me, injecting irrelevencies and rants. Meanwhile you get very defensive when someone brings forth simple facts like the cost of a partcular project. Its not me who is responsible for that cost so rant to others. It certainly is a much higher cost than many here claim for wind power when making the case for high percentage wind generation in our energy mix. I dont see you calling them that. In fact you never seem to consider the cost of these projects, you cheer them blindly no matter how much. If this project were 10 times its already high cost you would still defend it with the same irrelevant points, or simply attack the person who dare discuss it. Now that is what is truly silly.
My apologies for offending you by pointing to the high cost of this project.
Your "attack everything that looks green" bullshit is stupid, immature and obviously based on politics instead of rationality. Grandpa had windmills to pump water - machines don't have politics you tool.
It's about the topic.
I know a lot about it from decades in the electricity and mining industries and you sometimes go on with ignorant bullshit as if it's real and attract my ire.
Post less ignorant bullshit on the topic and suddenly the illusion of me following you will vanish.
I never said windmills don't have a niche, in fact I can be found on record here on /. stating wind and solar both make sense at the right levels in the right places, but I also make people aware of the cost because many idiots either don't realize the true cost, or don't care (like you). I don't attack anything 'green'. I attack 'stupid' or 'misinformed', or simply point out the truth that many solutions are a lot more complicated when you get into the details.
I am critical by nature, you'll see my similar posts regarding things that have nothing to do with 'green', pointing out some of the realities when headline hype solutions appear on this site. You just tend to pick and choose to ATTACK ME and NOT MY FACTS only when it happens to be something to do with what YOU call 'green'.
Windmills, flow batteries and that's just this week. You post a LOT of attacks on anything you think may have some sort of connection to something "green". Your handle stands out so it's been very obvious for months.
Ah yes, the amusing "my facts" thing where it's assumed you can make up shit and call it a fact like your pretended idiocy over fluids swishing about, as if great grandpa hadn't worked it out. That really disgusted me how you pretended to be so stupid just so you could pretend you had a point until others worked to prove the obvious.
By the way, I'm attacking your very obvious political bias in the face of reality and not you. It's tedious having to wade through political shit every time someone mentions a different way to do things. It's especially tiresome when they show how they wasted their time at school and university in some sort of mass debating club and try weasel tricks like pretended stupidity to just argue and hope others will give way under the sheer weight of bullshit.
Perhaps you should read this post instead of all the pointless tilting at windmills.
https://slashdot.org/comments....
Ranting at windmills is just as stupid as ranting at motorbikes. Sure, trucks move a whole lot more stuff about but other vehicles make sense at times.
The thread linked was about windmills but it applies from my experience with gas turbines. Gas turbines can be stupidly expensive to run when the fuel costs are high (as it was in the 1990s when I had something to do with them), but if you only need to run a few and generate a lot less MW than the smallest thermal unit offline then it ends up cheaper.
Wind competes with gas and to some extent solar - coal, nukes, hydro are not in the same solution space at all for covering peaks. In Europe the gas mostly comes from Russia which makes a lot of people nervous about price and continued supply so windmills are considered more of a viable option there than they are in other places. In the US the current coal seam gas situation makes gas turbines look like a vastly better option than windmills in most situations but since units are expected to last for decades some companies are building windmills in the expectation that the gas price will be much higher in the future - probably a safe bet. In China they want a few of everything to provide a robust generating network and so that if an external provider of a resource tries to do some price gouging they can extend a middle finger.
So there you go - no politics just plain old simple capitalism behind it.
Quote one single attack, please, prove yourself.
Seriously? You don't remember where you pretended to be an utter idiot as some stupid form of debating tactic to attack flow batteries?
Are you pretending to be stupid again just to get me angry?
Just as I thought, you are unable to demonstrate a single quote from me attacking windmills or batteries. Just generalized accusations with no basis. This is a great example of what you do......
WTF?
Are you just here to play some silly little mass debate game where all the matters is the current post even when evidence is in the same thread?
Your post attacking flow batteries obviously. I'm starting to think that you are not just pretending to be stupid for effect (I really hate that shit) and I'm trying very hard not to look down on you as if you are an imbecile.
Like I said, you can't back up your assertion by quoting any alleged attack from me. Just another empty response...
Please, quote the words, if I attacked either, please quote it, or STFU. I somehow think you are not capable of either.
Since I'm going backwards - first the bit AFTER it was pointed out to you how ridiculous your bit about it liquids cars being a massive problem:
So you stand by your attack despite having no evidence - attacking just for the sake of it because you don't like "green" stuff as if machines are people with politics. Blind luddite politics trumping reason.
So here are your quotes: https://slashdot.org/users2.pl...
https://slashdot.org/users2.pl?page=3&uid=3395377&view=userhomepage&fhfilter=%22home%3AMr+D+from+63%22
https://slashdot.org/users2.pl?page=2&uid=3395377&view=userhomepage&fhfilter=%22home%3AMr+D+from+63%22
https://slashdot.org/users2.pl?page=1&uid=3395377&view=userhomepage&fhfilter=%22home%3AMr+D+from+63%22
Fuck you post a LOT of shit and just keep on attacking over and over and over almost as if you were paid for it - which makes people like me who do live off coal money look really bad when we get compared to utter pricks like you.
WTF is your problem?
You've won your stupid fucking game of making me jump to "prove" what you already know so fuck off and don't bother me again until you are prepared to act your age instead of like a stupid kid.
Not a single attack anywhere in there, nobody reasonable would consider the quote you provided to be an attack, nor my other discusuions which, if they had any real attacking statements you would have quoted them. Just discussion of the challenges for particular apllications. . I see your problem now, it is inability to exit your super defensive posture when discussing anything that YOU place in your green bucket.
It must be frustrating getting called out on your accusation, and then only having that weak response to back it up. A response that is more your words than mine. Your a funny guy.