Wind turbines and neighborhoods just don’t mix It seems. Would you want one of these to do this when a wind storm comes your way? Wind power has it’s pluses and minuses, just like any energy solution. But like a coal or nuclear power plant. They really shouldn’t be sited next to/within population areas. – Anthony
Wind turbine’s deadly ice shower
From the Peterborough UK Evening Telegraph
Resident Peter Randall, whose son’s house lies a stone’s throw away from the turbine, said: “Somebody is going to get killed. There was huge lumps of ice shooting off and landing everywhere.
“No one wants to leave the house because they are frightened and worried about the ice falling.
Maria Clark, who owns King’s Dyke Karpets, based yards from the turbine, said: “It has been really frightening, the turbine has been stopping and starting all morning. The ice makes such a loud noise when it shatters we thought a bomb had gone off in the yard.
“It scared a customer away. They were in the shop when it landed and said they did not want to risk their car and ran out.”
Last month The Evening Telegraph revealed how residents had lodged complaints with the environmental health department at Fenland District Council due to alleged noise pollution and had demanded the turbine’s removal.
The huge machine, which measures 80 metres at its hub and 125 metres when one of its three blades is vertical, was put up in August.
A spokesperson for Cornwall Light & Power said: “We received a report of an ice shedding incident near our Whittlesey turbine on Saturday morning and immediately made arrangements for it to be switched off.
“The turbine will remain stopped until we have a clear understanding of what happened and any safety concerns have been fully addressed.
“Cornwall Light & Power is a reputable operator with a proven track record of generating clean electricity safely and we will act quickly to resolve this issue.
“In the meantime, any local residents who have concerns can call us directly on 01872 226930.”
MP for Cambridgeshire North East Malcolm Moss said the turbine should remain closed until a new risk assessment could be made, as the problem could also have national implications.
He said: “I had no idea this turbine was going up, it came out of the blue really and I am surprised they put one so close to homes and businesses.
“I assume that a risk assessment was put with the planning application, but if it was not then a full inquiry should be undertaken.”
Whittlesey councillor Ronald Speechley today said he would by lobbying the council to find out what can be done.
He said: “I have received a lot of complaints and the fact that ice has fallen off should be brought to light. This should have been thought of before they put the turbine so close to houses and the road.”
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By the way, here is CO2Science.org’s response to the EPA’s ANPR for CO2…
http://www.co2science.org/education/reports/epa/CO2ScienceEPAComments_Full.pdf
But its global WARMING, WARMING i tell you, how can there be ice?
I blame the skeptics!
I see a Bond movie coming with the bad guy being pulverized by a wind turbine.
Here are some videos of our friend the wind turbine
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3FZtmlHwcA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RtgBWNKwBkE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKkTUY2slYQ&NR=1
Last month The Evening Telegraph revealed how residents had lodged complaints with the environmental health department at Fenland District Council due to alleged noise pollution and had demanded the turbine’s removal.
But more importantly, they probably cause brain cancer. And I can’t wait to see the bleak Environmental Impact Studies for sitings on Public Land and Seas. These large rotors and turbines no doubt not only confuse whales, they bomb them. My friends, I do believe our only moral option left standing will be solar.
I understand that the cost of a KwH is 5.4p for onshore windpower in the UK compared to 2.2p for Gas, 2.3p for Nuclear and 2.5p for Fossil Fuelled.
Moreover the total output from all the wind turbines (>2000) in the UK is about half of a medium sized power station.
There are therefore a number of challenges to whether wind turbines are a good solution to the problem of creating cleaner sustainable energy.
I have also spoken to engineers who think that there is a question mark over the end to end carbon footprint of these machines.
All in all it’s not looking like such a great solution at the moment.
“My friends, I do believe our only moral option left standing will be solar.”
Are you kidding? Don’t you realize that the sun is radioactive?!?
The solution to icing ( a problem that should disappear with continued global warming) is to adopt available aviation deicing technology.
Big jets deice the wings and engine inlets with hot air bled from the engine compressor stages. A small aircraft power unit installed in each wind turbine base would suffice. They could run on piped in natural gas.
Small recip aircraft use other technology, such as rubber boots (skins, sleeves, …) on the wing leading edges. These can variously bleed antifreeze solution, intermittently inflate to break off growing ice, or be electrically heated.
There are computerized sensor systems that can detect actual icing, so the whole thing can be automated, or it could be run regardless when the temp/humidity meet specified conditions.
Or, more cheaply, danger zones could be marked out around the turbines. Insurance should be available for injuries.
Don’tcha love it?
I have seen the results of a risk assessment for ice throw from a turbine of hub height 80 m and blade diameter 90m. Ice could be thrown nearly 700m. The probability of someone getting hit in an urban area such as this seemed rather high.
Pretty scary
To keep it in perspective, here’s more scary stuff
http://stuckincustoms.com/2007/02/02/nuclear-winter-in-chernobyl/
Are you kidding? Don’t you realize that the sun is radioactive?!?
Oh noooooooooo!
Earth to J. Peden… hate to break the news, but wind energy is SOLAR.
I could suggest Jim that to assuage your moral fears, that you try a little elbow grease energy instead. How about rowing around in a dory or something, to get rid of all that excess energy that comes from too much food.
But you chaps in the North East Freezeland, will likely have to do something this winter to keep the ice chunks out of your backyards. But hank tough; the fall makes it all worthwhile.
George
It gets worse. The turbine blades are balanced and if there’s more ice in one of the blades, it can break off and clobber someone. Especially true if our northern hemisphere’s climate gets colder and snow and ice becomes more the norm in winter.
To keep it in perspective, here’s more scary stuff
Well, that certainly does it for Nuclear, and, of course, the French.
My friends, let’s all just finally face up to it: it’s simply not safe to be alive, if you didn’t already know it from driving motor vehicles, or climbing ladders, not to mention getting out of bed, or staying in bed*.
h/t Mark Twain
Wind turbines (bless their hearts) point out one of the intrinsic problems of “renewable green energy”. The turbines maybe have a more pernicuious form of the problem but they nearly all exhibit it.
The energy comes at a highly non-uniform rate. Now if you have a reservoir for storing water, and it rains intermittently in your area, that isn’t a big deal, the lake will eventually get full if the rainfall exceeeds your usage. The intermittency is not too troublesome except in drought years.
But normal rational powers stations of the electricity producing kind, are designed to run under constant conditions. With variable output loading, the fuel input (coal, oil, natural gas, hydro water flow, can be controlled by the operator.
With solar powered systems (besides Hydroelectric), you take the solar energy as it arrives. With PV systems, electroniuc wizardry can convert a reasonable range of generated outputs to the constant AC Violtage needed by the grid.
Wind turbines on the other hand are at least one more step removed from the incoming solar energy. They are actually gas turbine engines in which solar heating drives the working fluid (the atmosphere), and the propellor pretty much has to take whatever wind shows up. In a dumb system (fixed pitch prop) the unit is designed for some nominal wind speed. If the wind speed drops in half, you have lost 87.5% of your generating capacity. If the wind speed doubles, your fan and tower are subjected to four times the loading that they receive in normal operation.
Variable pitch props ease the problem somewhat, and nobody would ever build a dumb system at any useful scale.
This icing problem simply adds a new dimension to the negatives. Worldwide experience with wind turbines indicate that the actual utilization factor isonly 15-25% range, and mostly less than 20%. Lack of wind, and maintenance headaches seem to be the major operational problems. they have a natural self destruct mechanism, due to wind shear. The blade passing at the bottom of the rotation sees a considerably lower wind speed, than the blade going over the top, and the axial thrust on the propellor and tower varies as the square of that wind speed, so each blade is subjected to a once per rotation cyclic thrust variation. The larger system blades are mostly fiberglass or carbon composites, and this constant vibration can ultimately lead to fatigue failure. If you do some simple calculations, you find that the propellors run quite close to mach 1 tip velocity. Well propellor engineering and aerodynamics relegated prop planes to lesser tasks with the development of jets.
Those big megaWatt class turbines are quite substantial, with maybe 80 tonnes or more of mass in the nacell on top of the tower. If you raise the tower height to reduce the wind shear problem, then the tower becomes increasingly massive and costly.
So there will be lots more such systems built, and some of these problems will be resolved, but it is always going to be a difficult way to connect to the solar energy spigot. If you work out the Carnot efficiency of the whole system; you will find out justhow poorly connected to old Sol these things are. That translates into more space required; not only for the tower and fan itself, but you need an input duct and an exit duct to allow laminar flow of the working fluid through the system; ergo lots of land in front and rear, that isn’t useable for a lot of things like buildings.
Yesterday, the UK Committee for Climate Change, under the guidance of Lord Turner, produced their proposals for reducing our carbon emissions. As quoted by Lord Turner himself in the Daily Telegraph, “The reductions required can be achieved at a very low cost to our economy: the cost of not achieving the reductions, at national and global level, will be far greater.”
“He acknowledged that the higher electricity and gas prices created by investment in renewables could push a further 1.7 million households into fuel poverty – but said 400,000 could be lifted out by energy efficiency measures in their homes. ”
So that’s all right then ! Low income families look like being subsidised by the tax payer. Businesses and middle and higher income earners will be saddled with bearing the costs not just of the subsidies but also the acknowledged higher costs of fuel. Tax payers will no doubt push for higher wages. Businesses, in order to maintain profits will need to pass these higher costs onto their goods and services making them increasingly uncompetitive within both the UK and for their exports abroad !
And to top it all, because of the inefficiencies of generators such as wind turbines, and with the lack of investment in traditional coal fired generators, we, in the UK can expect a bright future of power cuts !
Stop the world, I want to get off !!
I don’t know Dan, does this keep this in perspective or do just the opposite? Is anyone proposing using nuclear plants with no containment vessel that have graphite moderators and control systems that don’t have a safe default position?
Perhaps you are pointing out that, even when something as stupid as Chernobyl is included in the calculations, nuclear still easily beats wind in terms of risk per Kilowatt actually produced?
Wind power is an environmental disaster in the making, and we haven’t even mentioned the biggest part of this problem… storage.
Reality always seems to intrude on these Green Dreams.
Windmills are so pretty – and now deadly as well to human life and property {though the effect on birds is by now well known}. In addition to the seemingly high maintenance requirement of windmills, what good are they if there is no wind?
Rooftop solar panels? Have to keep trees away or trimmed down so they don’t obstruct the sun. And what if you’re in an area where snowfall is commonly measured in feet? Solar panel farms in the desert? Environmental impact studies make that a no-no – the desert is a fragile environment.
Other than coal, it seems that the alternatives proposed can never amount to anything other than niche providers, where taxpayer funded subsidies mask the true costs of the alternatives.
Reality can be such an unforgiving thing.
Low-level aviation weather in layman’s language.
Weather near the ground
http://www.stlouishelo.org/Weather%20Near%20The%20Ground%20-%20Karsten%20Shein%20-%20Professional%20Pilot%20-%20February,%202005.pdf
The NOAA National Climatic
Data Center
Data availability, WDC-A, and
GCOS data sets
http://neespi.org/web-content/meetings/Helsinki_2008/Day_5_2_Shein.pdf
But, but, but, the wind turbine owners are simply trying to save the planet. That is ALL that matters, don’t you see? Saving the planet is required, immediately. If some humans are inconvenienced by this, too bad; they should move. Humans do not count; the planet comes first. SAVE THE PLANET!
Monitoring the Health of Weather and Climate Observing Networks
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/hofn/index.html
AGW/Climate change is a hoax
Solar, wind and bio-fuels are a hoax solution.
These alternative energy sources will not be able to fulfill the energy requirements of a modern industrialized society, unless you want to dismantle it.
People must accept the doctrine of the real agenda behind the UN objectives.
This objective is to reduce human productivity, human consumption and finally population growth.
As a consequence the world will be turned into an eco-socialist/communist society.
The type of society that we were fighting against during the cold war.
This time the enemies of humanity operate from within.
In the USA two attempts to serve the eco agenda failed.
(Gore 8 years ago, Kerry, four years ago)
Now Obama will lead the UN green agenda and speeding up a process that will destruct the world’s carbon fuel energy system, a doctrine based on lies and pseudo science. The policies will be a disaster on land use and habitat conservation and a disaster for humanity.
It undermines the ethics of science, the ethics of politics and the ethics of human prosperity. In short, it’s a crime against humanity http://heliogenic.blogspot.com/2008/12/crime-against-humanity.html
It will cause mass starvation caused by famine and disease.
It will set back further technological development and end our freedom.
The future of men will be a return to the dark ages.
This is what is happening.
Any questions?
I’ll bet there aren’t any wind turbines within 700 meters of Al Gore’s house.
I want to see 200 entries on this thread debating whether the formation of ice on wind turbines ultimately leads to anthropogenic global cooling, warming or no net effect.
I know you’re up to it ;<).