Would you agree to have a windturbine in your neighborhood

[tesla]

I saw this documentary online how in Scotland they want to have 100% of electricity being Wind generated, but getting a lot of opposition from people (80% of the projects get blocked because people don't like how they look)

I'm from the city so I can't relate at all, but was wondering what others think about this. Also I don't agree because 100% of the country will feed of this so I don't think it's up to a bunch of people in a remote location to block the whole country from getting this power source.

P.S: Hope I'm in the right section

[Joseph C.]

Do we get free electricity?

Edit: Welcome to Endless Sphere, interesting first post.

[o00scorpion00o]

Thorium!!!

L.F.T.R

[Kingfish]

I have to vote no cos we have all sorts of birds here, including eagles and migrating geese, and I'm right here butted up next to town, so it would not be very practical in an urban setting, particulary when we have hot air balloons landing nearby.

There are however many useful places yet to be explored. I can only imagine how much power could be generated from correctly-designed turbines in the Columbia Gorge, or along the Straits of Juan de Fuca.

~KF

[liveforphysics]

I have to vote no cos we have all sorts of birds here, including eagles and migrating geese, and I'm right here butted up next to town, so it would not be very practical in an urban setting, particulary when we have hot air balloons landing nearby.

~KF

I cant tell if youre being serious or not, and my applogies if you are. This has to be one of the dumbest posts on ES.

Do you know how much mercury goes into the air and water that the birds and fish get poisoned? Its 10rpm on the blades. High voltage power lines and trees are threats to hit air balloond, but seriously you would need to be insane to not want clean wind power vs having increased dangers to hot air balloners??? Seriously???

Im guessing you were kidding my friend.

[ohzee]

Honestly I was reading KF's post and agreeing with him until I then read your post and thought about it which
did put it all in check.. I guess I have heard so much or read about birds dying from collisions with wind turbines
I just assumed migration routes would be a bad idea.

Id love to have any kind of power that's good for the environment and yea now I am sorta taken back and thinking about it.

[Joseph C.]

I haven't heard anything about birds but plenty about bats. The sudden drop in air pressure kills them as they fly past.

[Gordo]

I have to vote no cos we have all sorts of birds here, including eagles and migrating geese, and I'm right here butted up next to town, so it would not be very practical in an urban setting, particulary when we have hot air balloons landing nearby.
There are however many useful places yet to be explored. I can only imagine how much power could be generated from correctly-designed turbines in the Columbia Gorge, or along the Straits of Juan de Fuca.
~KF

Kingfish,
The fear of bird kills no longer holds water. The open towers in CA, built in orchards or veggy farms, did/do kill birds. Office towers with the lights on kill millions of birds annually. I have personally killed a lot of birds when under certain conditions, they ran into the rigging of various vessels I've owned. The solution was to recognize these conditions and turn the lights out.
There is no longer any basis for thinking wind turbines kill birds, contrary to what the eco-lunatics would have you believe. The towers are smooth and the entire structure is designed to prevent birds nesting. Migratory birds are not impacted at any of their sites. This company hired 25 employees (some of them protesters) to monitor the number of birds killed on one project; http://www.innergex.com/en
Most of the monitors quit from boredom years ago. Not one bird has been found. Those still employed by the company have become tour guides, at their own initiative, to combat boredom. I have visited several of the sites over the years and know these facts first hand. Call up the site. The only people in the field office are the dead bird counters (now tour guides).
Of coarse I am a little biased,
INE share price;

INE 19.JPG

(48.82 KiB) Downloaded 4 times

[ohzee]

Great information - I feel educated thanks.

[Kingfish]

Birds: Hmm, well – I can only report what I have seen firsthand at Altamont Pass near Livermore, CA. And it wasn’t like I was looking for it: The two shortest paths to bike from Livermore to Tracy go right through the farm. I think the physical placement of that particular farm could have been better planned. I understand that years later several of the problematic turbines were replaced.

Now we take Redmond, WA: It’s right in the migratory path. I consider myself liberal on energy, an advocate shy of extreme. But I don’t know of anyone that will accept a wind turbine here; whether modern designs are bird-safe or not, it’s a non-starter.

Don’t get me wrong: I am a wind-turbine advocate. Years ago I had a farm out in the country between Monroe and Duvall. The plan was to be “energy-independent”, and I investigated placing one or two wind turbines – we’re talking small, not industrial. But the problem there was height, and even though I lived near the top of the hill, I wouldn’t have been able to clear the trees. That’s a physical problem altogether different than birds. Then there’s the noise and neighbors to contend with. Not all turbines are quiet, and not all neighbors want to see them. (And then there’s approval from HOAs). Lots of issues to consider.

But the Poll doesn’t give us a choice of voting Yes/No and Maybe. It doesn’t specify details; instead it leaves it to us to imagine: In the ideal world, Yes – without hesitation, of course. But I don’t live in “Far Far Away”. Thus, if it were a ballot measure, I’d have to vote No. Then I stated why.

In my neighborhood, it would not be practical: A wind turbine, in a forest, within the city, nestled between two large inland urban estuaries (major bird attractors), with plateaus on either side. Seasonal airborne recreation inbound as Hot Air balloons lift from Snohomish County, flying south over the top of Redhook Brewery in Woodinville, sometimes overshoot and land just past my hill at either the field at the bottom or at Marymoor Park. A few years ago, one crashed into my neighbors’ back yard – taking out the fence. I have no control over balloons whether I like them or not. Given that, I simply don’t want to see anyone, or anything shredded just to save a few cents or reduce carbon footprint. I think we can do better with other technologies and behaviors – in Redmond.

Last Words:
I don’t get how my statements are dumb when it’s firsthand knowledge. What do you want: An apology for dissention? I don’t have a problem with the poll. I voted, and then lent my opinion.

With forethought, KF

[Gordo]

I almost voted no because of a 10KW turbine which belongs to a friend. Over 15mph wind the dam thing goes WOP, WOP, WOP and no one with in 2 miles downwind can get any sleep. Then I realized the question was on the 1MW turbines which I spoke on.
I've stopped at that windfarm near Livermore in the past 3 years. Some of the turbines are missing a blade and many are in disrepair. I asked some locals about the mess and they said some were built with grant money and never completed in the first place. The ones with the crisscross braced towers are a natural for birds to nest in as are many of those turbine housings. Lots of resident predator birds were visible in the area. There are millions of miles of power lines which present a far higher order of magnitude risk to birds. And there is the odd bare tree, hiding on a hill in the dark, waiting to slaughter migratory birds.
Maybe one day the eco-nuts will stop all development, oil, water power, coal, wind, cutting of trees etc and our food source will collapse. Then we can all starve or freeze, without shelter, together

[Lock]

I've seen 300 birds killed in one day striking the mirrored glass of one building during migration. Another day, a dozen hummingbirds snapped their necks against the same building during one hour. (Different songbird species move on different days during migration based on weather conditions.) Between buildings and domestic cats, pretty sure wind turbines are waaaaaay down the list of hazards for birds...

Dunno why Joby dropped out of the race but other folks are still working on airborne wind turbines that might be a solution re strikes and bats as well...

Lock

[liveforphysics]

I almost voted no because of a 10KW turbine which belongs to a friend. Over 15mph wind the dam thing goes WOP, WOP, WOP and no one with in 2 miles downwind can get any sleep. Then I realized the question was on the 1MW turbines which I spoke on.

The little ones can be quite obnoxious with poor blade designs, and don't make much sense on a maintenance and investment vs returned energy perspective.

The big ones (>1MW) are silent, and only turn at 10rpm.




So, when you DON'T put a 1MW wind turbine up, but you do use the same amount of energy you used before, does anyone want to know how much coal it requires to produce that same 1MW of energy?

~645lbs of coal per hour...

That's 5.6 MILLION pounds of coal per year to generate 1MW of power. Now, how many animals and damage do you think is caused by mining, transporting by trains and trucks, processing and burning 5.6MILLION pounds of coal over the course of a year?

Do you think it could by chance be a worse harm than a hot air ballooner having an additional obstacle not to hit, along with buildings, trees, powerlines, radio towers, landing over water, etc?

The birds and wind turbines thing was a pseudo-fear created for the purpose of fighting coal alternatives. There are actually teams of paid environmental "experts" who are hired to come up with false concerns as to why we can't implement alternative solutions that don't involve burning things for energy. Don't fall into their trap.

[liveforphysics]

Currently, humans burn ~7 BILLION TONS of coal per year on the earth.

Yes, 7 BILLION TONS!

That's like ~2,000lbs of coal being burned every year for every human on the planet...


And it blows my mind that humans can even create a reason to oppose something, anything, that can help to reduce this.

What harm can you possibly make a rational argument for to be greater than burning 7 BILLION TONS of coal every damn year.

To put that in perspective, if Mount Rainer that I know we both fondly look upon when it's not covered by clouds were entirely made of coal, from my estimations, the entire mountain would be burned and put into the air in 5.2 years...

Yes, if the mountain were entirely made of coal (I used a density of 2100kg per M^3 for my estimation), it would be all burned and put into the air in 5.2 years. That's the scale we mine, transport, and burn coal.

[Gordo]

Currently, humans burn ~7 BILLION TONS of coal per year on the earth.

Yes, 7 BILLION TONS!

That's like ~2,000lbs of coal being burned every year for every human on the planet...


And it blows my mind that humans can even create a reason to oppose something, anything, that can help to reduce this.

What harm can you possibly make a rational argument for to be greater than burning 7 BILLION TONS of coal every damn year.

To put that in perspective, if Mount Rainer that I know we both fondly look upon when it's not covered by clouds were entirely made of coal, from my estimations, the entire mountain would be burned and put into the air in 5.2 years...

Yes, if the mountain were entirely made of coal (I used a density of 2100kg per M^3 for my estimation), it would be all burned and put into the air in 5.2 years. That's the scale we mine, transport, and burn coal.

Maybe you are a little off? Something told me <1000kg/M^3..... I think coal is @ 1400kg per M^3
1M^3 of water is 1000kgs. Coal Specific gravity @ 1.4 (.83-1.51 depending on type) 1M^3 of dry gravel is @1500kgs.
Anyway, a crime against humanity no matter how you calculate it. But think of the dickie birds and ballonists

[neptronix]

I have no numbers on how much coal is needed to produce X amount of megawatt-hours per day...

But i do live in a town, which retardedly has a "clean" coal plant 1 mile from downtown, and is right next to a lake. You can smell the emissions in the air as you pass, has kind of a musty odor.



Skip to about 2:00 and you'll see it's feed.. i believe this train comes through twice a day, to supply ~500,000 homes.

[Drunkskunk]

Think of all the coal miners and train engineers you'll be putting out of work with clean wind energy!

Think of all the unemployed Lobbiest for the coal industry!

But most of all, Think of the Children! All those poor children dieing in gutters because their unemploid Coal miner and lobbiest parrents can't afford to feed them!

Clean Wind energy is dirty with the blood of dead lobbiest children!






err, yeah.

[Xanda2260]

There are 3 turbines in my neighbourhood. And one is the largest in Europe.or it was at least.
In fact, make it 4, work has a baby one too...

[K Renner]

Not only would I agree to it - I'd put one up myself if my landlord would let me.

To those expressing concern about birds: I have read stats that indicate more birds are killed by collisions with windows in houses & other building each year than by collisions with wind turbines. In any case, VAWT designs would pretty much eliminate that concern.

[StudEbiker]

Wow, I completely missed this thread before. Classic.

Birds and hot air balloons! LOL!

It always seems like it's like that.

I LOVE clean energy and being green, but not if it means I have to SEE a wind turbine! We might kill a bird or two don't you know!

Ted Kennedy was a classic example.

The most notable opponent of Cape Wind was the late Sen. Ted Kennedy, a champion of green energy who, to the dismay of environmentalists, fought against the wind farm. The Kennedy compound will have a view of the wind turbines.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/04/28/cape ... index.html

Mary Jo Kopechne was not available for comment.

[kevo]

I don't mind SEEING the turbine. I think they both are and look lovely. Though Donald Trump would pay millions/(billions?) to disagree.

[MitchJi]

Hi,

I can't tell if you're being serious or not, and my apologies if you are. This has to be one of the dumbest posts on ES.

You are unusually intelligent and well informed (on some topics). If someone isn't as well informed as you are it doesn't mean they are dumb. Also not every site is suitable for large wind turbines.

So, when you DON'T put a 1MW wind turbine up, but you do use the same amount of energy you used before, does anyone want to know how much coal it requires to produce that same 1MW of energy?
~645lbs of coal per hour...

That's 5.6 MILLION pounds of coal per year to generate 1MW of power. Now, how many animals and damage do you think is caused by mining, transporting by trains and trucks, processing and burning 5.6MILLION pounds of coal over the course of a year?

Do you know how much mercury goes into the air and water that the birds and fish get poisoned?

http://www.kadamsphoto.com/nature_recreation/fraser_fir_forest.htm

Take a drive along the backroads of western North Carolina, especially through Ashe, Watauga, and Avery Counties, and you will find the birthplace of all those Christmas trees that show up in roadside stands the week before Thanksgiving. To many people, the neat rows of carefully pruned Fraser fir, Abies fraseri, trees create a picturesque scene, but for raw, natural scenic beauty, you need to climb a little higher in the mountains and visit the true origin of all those trees. The natural Fraser fir forests that blanket our highest peaks are cool, dark, hauntingly beautiful places.

Or, at least, they used to be.

Only a few decades ago, the Fraser fir natural community—generally found above 6,000 feet in elevation—was a seemingly healthy ecosystem, with a tight canopy of fir trees, an understory of American ash and a few shrubs, and a thick ground cover of moss, ferns, and herbs. Today, that ecosystem no longer exists. In its place is a jungle of skeletons, with dead gray boles lying scattered about like so many pick-up sticks. Many of the dead trees still stand as sentinels to something gone wrong. The resultant opened canopy has completely altered the ecosystem, allowing plants that don't belong here to become established. Where you once needed snowshoes to walk over the luxuriant moss without sinking in, today you need leather chaps to wade through the thick blackberries and other weeds....

...In the mid 1980s, Dr. Robert Bruck of N.C. State University studied the forests on Mount Mitchell, and although he suspected that air pollution was a contributing factor to the forest decline, he had no hard evidence. But one day in 1987 "serendipity struck" as Bruck recalls. "We were up on the mountain on a beautiful June day taking pictures of bud break. That night, a heavy cloud came in and sat on top of the mountain. It stayed there for the next 15 hours, through the next day...We sampled continuously and found the cloud had an average pH of 2.71. That's 940 times more acidic than clear rain water-almost the acidity of vinegar. The next afternoon, the sun came out again, and these young needles all over the mountain started to turn brown."

Dr. Bruck collected bushel baskets of the needles and took them to the EPA lab in Raleigh, where tests showed the brown areas had 17 times more sulfur than the healthy areas. The sulfur was in the form of sulfate, for which there are only two airborne sources: volcanic eruption and the combustion of fossil fuels. "And there weren't any volcanoes erupting", Bruck recollects....

Talk about Canaries in a Coal Mine. We are killing entire forests (it's worse in Europe)!

And people. I just sent off a sample of my urine for Heavy Metal Analysis. From the instructions:

Fish and shellfish contain relatively high levels of mercury and arsenic. It is recommended that you omit fish and shellfish from your diet for one week prior to collecting the urine specimen.

But for those of us who have or had Mercury fillings (aka "silver" fillings - 55% Mercury) environmental exposure is the least of our worries in terms of our own health.

[Pure]

Wile the massive 3 blade 1Mw turbans might be a bit out of place in an urban environment. The turbans that are a vertically mounted tubes work well and are not bothered by changing wind directions, and are easily avoided by birds and balloons.

[Joseph C.]

Wile the massive 3 blade 1Mw turbans might be a bit out of place in an urban environment. The turbans that are a vertically mounted tubes work well and are not bothered by changing wind directions, and are easily avoided by birds and balloons.

[kevo]

Joseph C. wrote:

Pure wrote:

The turbans ... are easily avoided by birds and balloons.

LOL

Always nice to see humor injected to a serious subject...