Your PC's fan probably makes as much noise as you'd get being at the base of a wind turbine. You can barely hear the one in Toronto over the noise of the freeway nearby.
Re:Does Wind Power Really Scale?
on
A Mighty Wind
·
· Score: 1
> I was surprised at how slowly they were rotating
They would be big turbines, then. If you do the sums, the blade tip speed is remarkably high.
We have gearboxes or inverters to scale the rather slow rotation speed up to grid frequencies.
Re:Problems with wind power?
on
A Mighty Wind
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Regarding bird kills:
No matter how extensively wind is developed in the future, bird deaths from wind energy are unlikely to ever reach as high as 1% of those from other human-related sources such as hunters, house cats, buildings, and autos. Wind is, quite literally, a drop in the bucket.
Oil leakage is an old-technology problem,and then only in the case of poor maintenance. New turbines, like the Lagerwey we built in Toronto, don't use hydraulics.
Turbines failing in high winds seldom, if ever, happen. New generator technology allows wind turbines to generate -- small amounts of power, admittedly -- in winds you can barely feel. There's nothing generates bad feeling like a stopped wind turbine.
Quieter than the Gardner Expressway. Seriously, it can be going flat out, and you can easily have a conversation underneath.
> Have any of the neighbours complained?
No. I've yet to meet someone who didn't like it.
> Have you had trouble with vandalism?
No. The site gets a lot of traffic, which deters lurking vandals. Someone might've written their name on it in Sharpie, but we clean that off pretty quick. Damage to the turbine itself would be difficult.
> Why do people have to buy in chunks of $2500?
They don't; the minimum membership is $500 (5 shares) + $1 membership share.
> Why can't someone buy more than $25k?
WindShare is a co-op. We want as many people in Toronto to be a part of the project. If we let a few big investors take all the shares, it wouldn't benefit the largest number of people. Plus, I think, the maximum investment is intended to generate the same revenue as the average home's hydro bill. We had hoped to get nett billing for our members, but that hasn't come to pass (yet).
> What's the point of having separate "membership shares"?
For legal reasons. The $1 is for membership of the co-op, and gives the member a vote. One member can only have one vote.
I'm pleased to say that the first turbine is sold out; 421 people bought into it. But we'll be opening a new share offer soon for the Ashbridge's Bay turbine.
WindShare -- the first urban wind turbine in North America -- is currently only for Toronto residents. We're investigating a scheme to widen membership, but community involvement will always be at the heart of any development.
(None of the above constitutes official WindShare policy or advice; for that, check with the WindShare office [contact details on the website]. I'm just this wind/linux geek who happens to be a director of the project, eh?)
Re:Am I the only one...
on
A Mighty Wind
·
· Score: 1
one of the ones I worked on, I'm pleased to say. Spent more cold windy days up on Dun Law than I'd care to say. Glad you like it!
I miss the 60/- in the local pub, though.
Re:Renewable Energy Policy Project
on
A Mighty Wind
·
· Score: 1
The results are positive, by the way.
... In
fact, the study found that "for the great majority of projects the property
values actually rose more quickly in the view shed than they did in the
comparable community. Moreover, values increased faster in the view shed
after the projects came on-line than they did before."
The above quoted from the AWEA (American Wind Energy Association) news release.
Re:Wind Farms don't work
on
A Mighty Wind
·
· Score: 1
Please name your sources, Anonymous Coward. I work in wind energy, and have never heard those stories before... except from paid shills from the nuclear industry.
Re:Am I the only one...
on
A Mighty Wind
·
· Score: 1
No, I think they look cool too. That's why I've been working with them, on and off, for years.
The Midwest was, until recently, mostly dismissed by wind developers as a marginal resource, as they were off gathering the low-hanging fruit in California. Recent, and may I say very cool, technology has allowed marginal sites to become profitable: mating long blades on high towers to variable speed/frequency generators. This is all cleaned up for grid consumption with some very nifty solid-state power electronics in the shape of back-to-back inverters.
You can put wind turbines in urban settings; we did. Isn't our turbine lovely?
Re:Hidden consequences?
on
A Mighty Wind
·
· Score: 1
Shutdown conditions from over wind speed are very rare; at most, a handful of hours a year.
The UK, where it looks like you're posting from, is a bit small (sorry -- I used to build wind farms in Britain) to benefit from vastly distributed wind farms. A good chunk of its area, though, does constitute the windiest country in the world (Scotland), with over 25% of Europe's exploitable wind energy.
They don't use much land at all. The base of a wind turbine is a few square metres. The rest of the land is usable for its original purpose.
Re:Long term care or wind farms
on
A Mighty Wind
·
· Score: 1
Never been much of a fan (NPI) of Mitsubishi units. There have been problems with hydraulics leakage in the US, and noise (though mostly due to naÃve siting) in Wales.
They're old technology. The new machines are much cooler.
Hugh's design uses a truck brake drum lined with permanent magnets. It is in use the world over, and is extremely reliable.
Using high performance magnetic materials has increased the power output considerably. I don't know if scavenged hard drive magnets are quite the right shape.
OF course, some of us get to play with rather larger permanent magnet alternators, like this one (480x512 JPEG image) belonging to WindShare in Toronto...
In the late 1980s and very early 1990s, I freelanced as a
reviewer for a few magazines in the UK. It was probably the time
that magazine reviews held most sway in a game's future, since there was no internet for the masses. Some weird
stuff went on.
In those days, it was an unwritten rule of sales that if a game
got <80%, it would lose money, or just scrape by. 80-90% would be a reasonable
earner, and >90% meant a winner. Games publishers were desperate
to find out what a game had got so they could judge sales, and plan
advertising.
So I got to review one of the earliest virtual world games,
where you could play god to a civilization, and see it grow or
fail. I thought it was okay, but not life-changing, so gave it a
solid score in the 80%-range.
Bad move. The publisher (enormous) had bet the farm on this game
going huge. I'm told they faxed my editor a copy of their monthly
advertising invoice from the magazine -- in the thousands of pounds -- along with a note saying something to the effect of "Want to
lose this income?".
By a strange coincidence, the game was reviewed again in the
next issue, with some kind of placatory note saying that the
reviewer didn't really like this kind of game. Lo and behold, the
game got over 90%, and sold by the truckload. Whether people played
it much after they bought it is not recorded.
Being a freelancer at the other end of the country from the
editorial office, I missed most of the excesses of the industry. My
only perk was being sent a modest-sized bottle of champagne after
reviewing a game I particularly liked.
I did hear rumours of game publishers offering the services of,
um, obliging young ladies to reviewers in exchange for good
reviews. But the names and circumstances are long forgotten.
But yeah, it was hard making up superlatives, or indeed saying anything charitable about some of the real dross games. At least we knew we could mess with the system; you're talking to the author of the first >100% game review...
The difficulty is not the copying. Everyone, of course, remembers to copy all their data from their legacy system to their new one, right? And keeps multiple checksummed copies in separate locations? And checks them frequently? Hmm...
The main problems are ensuring that the data you wrote years ago is still what you meant it to be, and maintaining a conduit system to run legacy applications for data transfer.
Somewhere in the world, there will be someone who wants to read their ancient Tasword word processor files into their <current_machine>. That's not going to be easy.
while it's true that PostScript and Forth use Lukasiewicz (Reverse Polish) notation, the former bears little resemblance in syntax to the latter. PostScript's a lovely and subtle language, but gets interesting when you're debugging an 800MB imposed printing plate...
Slashdot Mirror
Your PC's fan probably makes as much noise as you'd get being at the base of a wind turbine. You can barely hear the one in Toronto over the noise of the freeway nearby.
They would be big turbines, then. If you do the sums, the blade tip speed is remarkably high.
We have gearboxes or inverters to scale the rather slow rotation speed up to grid frequencies.
-- from the AWEA FAQ, 2002, emphasis mine.
Oil leakage is an old-technology problem,and then only in the case of poor maintenance. New turbines, like the Lagerwey we built in Toronto, don't use hydraulics.
Turbines failing in high winds seldom, if ever, happen. New generator technology allows wind turbines to generate -- small amounts of power, admittedly -- in winds you can barely feel. There's nothing generates bad feeling like a stopped wind turbine.
Quieter than the Gardner Expressway. Seriously, it can be going flat out, and you can easily have a conversation underneath.
> Have any of the neighbours complained?
No. I've yet to meet someone who didn't like it.
> Have you had trouble with vandalism?
No. The site gets a lot of traffic, which deters lurking vandals. Someone might've written their name on it in Sharpie, but we clean that off pretty quick. Damage to the turbine itself would be difficult.
> Why do people have to buy in chunks of $2500?
They don't; the minimum membership is $500 (5 shares) + $1 membership share.
> Why can't someone buy more than $25k?
WindShare is a co-op. We want as many people in Toronto to be a part of the project. If we let a few big investors take all the shares, it wouldn't benefit the largest number of people. Plus, I think, the maximum investment is intended to generate the same revenue as the average home's hydro bill. We had hoped to get nett billing for our members, but that hasn't come to pass (yet).
> What's the point of having separate "membership shares"?
For legal reasons. The $1 is for membership of the co-op, and gives the member a vote. One member can only have one vote.
I'm pleased to say that the first turbine is sold out; 421 people bought into it. But we'll be opening a new share offer soon for the Ashbridge's Bay turbine.
WindShare -- the first urban wind turbine in North America -- is currently only for Toronto residents. We're investigating a scheme to widen membership, but community involvement will always be at the heart of any development.
(None of the above constitutes official WindShare policy or advice; for that, check with the WindShare office [contact details on the website]. I'm just this wind/linux geek who happens to be a director of the project, eh?)
I miss the 60/- in the local pub, though.
The above quoted from the AWEA (American Wind Energy Association) news release.
Please name your sources, Anonymous Coward. I work in wind energy, and have never heard those stories before ... except from paid shills from the nuclear industry.
The Midwest was, until recently, mostly dismissed by wind developers as a marginal resource, as they were off gathering the low-hanging fruit in California. Recent, and may I say very cool, technology has allowed marginal sites to become profitable: mating long blades on high towers to variable speed/frequency generators. This is all cleaned up for grid consumption with some very nifty solid-state power electronics in the shape of back-to-back inverters.
You can put wind turbines in urban settings; we did. Isn't our turbine lovely?
The UK, where it looks like you're posting from, is a bit small (sorry -- I used to build wind farms in Britain) to benefit from vastly distributed wind farms. A good chunk of its area, though, does constitute the windiest country in the world (Scotland), with over 25% of Europe's exploitable wind energy.
They don't use much land at all. The base of a wind turbine is a few square metres. The rest of the land is usable for its original purpose.
They're old technology. The new machines are much cooler.
I can beat that -- I worked at a publisher that was still using 3.3 on 68K Macs in 2002 ...
Hugh's design uses a truck brake drum lined with permanent magnets. It is in use the world over, and is extremely reliable.
Using high performance magnetic materials has increased the power output considerably. I don't know if scavenged hard drive magnets are quite the right shape.
OF course, some of us get to play with rather larger permanent magnet alternators, like this one (480x512 JPEG image) belonging to WindShare in Toronto ...
In those days, it was an unwritten rule of sales that if a game got <80%, it would lose money, or just scrape by. 80-90% would be a reasonable earner, and >90% meant a winner. Games publishers were desperate to find out what a game had got so they could judge sales, and plan advertising.
So I got to review one of the earliest virtual world games, where you could play god to a civilization, and see it grow or fail. I thought it was okay, but not life-changing, so gave it a solid score in the 80%-range.
Bad move. The publisher (enormous) had bet the farm on this game going huge. I'm told they faxed my editor a copy of their monthly advertising invoice from the magazine -- in the thousands of pounds -- along with a note saying something to the effect of "Want to lose this income?".
By a strange coincidence, the game was reviewed again in the next issue, with some kind of placatory note saying that the reviewer didn't really like this kind of game. Lo and behold, the game got over 90%, and sold by the truckload. Whether people played it much after they bought it is not recorded.
Being a freelancer at the other end of the country from the editorial office, I missed most of the excesses of the industry. My only perk was being sent a modest-sized bottle of champagne after reviewing a game I particularly liked.
I did hear rumours of game publishers offering the services of, um, obliging young ladies to reviewers in exchange for good reviews. But the names and circumstances are long forgotten.
But yeah, it was hard making up superlatives, or indeed saying anything charitable about some of the real dross games. At least we knew we could mess with the system; you're talking to the author of the first >100% game review ...
Mind you, leaving the area is a sign of great intelligence ...
If Velcro had been part of the space program, how come it was developed in the 1940s by a Swiss inventor walking his dog?
The main problems are ensuring that the data you wrote years ago is still what you meant it to be, and maintaining a conduit system to run legacy applications for data transfer.
Somewhere in the world, there will be someone who wants to read their ancient Tasword word processor files into their <current_machine>. That's not going to be easy.
while it's true that PostScript and Forth use Lukasiewicz (Reverse Polish) notation, the former bears little resemblance in syntax to the latter. PostScript's a lovely and subtle language, but gets interesting when you're debugging an 800MB imposed printing plate ...
It's worked fine for me on Solaris and Linux for years, despite what The Register might say. Maybe they couldn't be arsed actually trying it.