BS: People moaning about windmills

Subject: RE: BS: People moaning about windmills
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 26 Mar 06 - 08:59 AM

100!

Subject: RE: BS: People moaning about windmills
From: GUEST,DB
Date: 26 Mar 06 - 10:22 AM

We don't seem to like this planet we've inherited, do we? We just have to keep changing it, and tinkering with it, and ripping its surface layers apart to get at the wealth they contain (which, of course, we assume to be infinite). All this frantic activity generates heat though, and heat leads to the the fragile layer that we inhabit becoming unstable. Once it becomes unstable enough (ie. within the next few generations) it won't be habitable any more - then our species will become extinct.

I don't believe that there are ANY technical fixes for this situation.

We've got to radically re-think the way that we relate to the biosphere. Not a lot of time to do this in, though - we seem to be accelerating along the path towards melt-down whilst generating even more hot air.

Subject: RE: BS: People moaning about windmills
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 26 Mar 06 - 07:31 PM

Observer snippet about this ferrofluid story.

And Jeffrey Cheung's patent

Subject: RE: BS: People moaning about windmills
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 27 Mar 06 - 02:44 AM

Salter, the wave power pioneer, does not think the ferro fluid device can be scaled up.
Great possibilities for small generators eg navigation buoys.

Subject: RE: BS: People moaning about windmills
From: Michael B
Date: 27 Mar 06 - 03:05 AM

Change of subject;
                Any body got the words to the Magdelene Launderies as sung by Joni Mitchell with the Chieftans on the CD "Tears of stone"?
    Thanks, Mike

Subject: RE: BS: People moaning about windmills
From: Bunnahabhain
Date: 27 Mar 06 - 03:44 AM

A few points...

1. Pumped storage of water between high and low reservoirs. Takes lots of water, and a big height difference, so only useful in some areas.

Transmission losses in a power grid are a big problem. To minimise them, you produce the power close to where it is needed, and you transmit it at a high a voltage as possible. This is much easier with large power stations, rather than lots of small ones, which is waht renewable installations tend to be at the moment.


And biomass cannot possibly work on a large enough scale. The Brazilian ethanol fuel programme is the best example, and that only works as there is a very large area, which is suitable for a fast growing, energy rich crop. When people talk about Bio fuels for cars in the West, they are normally refereing to Palm oil, produced in South East Asia, on sites cleared of rainforest. Very green!
The energy demand of people on this planet is so large, that even if we could grow a very good fuel crop, and harvest it cheaply and efficiently, we would need many times more land in production to grow the fuel. Exactly how much land I'm not sure, but I recall a study showing that our current energy usage was 3-4 times the Net Primary Productivity of the Planet....


You want to get serious about CO2? Minimise usage, Nuclear power stations, and as many sensible renewables as possible, and a whole load of electrolysis plants. We can run everything on electricty and hydrogen if we try. The problems generated by nuclear waste are can be controlled far more easily than those from CO2.

Subject: RE: BS: People moaning about windmills
From: GUEST
Date: 27 Mar 06 - 04:03 AM

Travelling round Europe I see a lot of these windmills and at any one time at least half appear to be not working. The idea is good, the technology faulty. They don't really work well at all.

Subject: RE: BS: People moaning about windmills
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 27 Mar 06 - 04:06 AM

Lots of small ones allows generation close to user. Less transmission loss, and waste heat can be utilised.
If all buildings had solar roofs and wind generators, they would often have excess to feed back to the grid.
Most places have scope for micro hydro. Water power started Britain's industrial revolution.
Combined heat and power local stations. Many such already operating.
Bio mass as in coppiced and pollarded trees, agricultural waste etc.
Norfolk has a small station running on chicken shit!
Given the levels of investment poured in to nuclear power, alternatives are viable.

Subject: RE: BS: People moaning about windmills
From: Geoff the Duck
Date: 27 Mar 06 - 04:38 AM

In fact - if somebody could harness the bullshit herem mudcat could power the world...
Quack!
GtD.

Subject: RE: BS: People moaning about windmills
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 27 Mar 06 - 07:15 AM

The problems generated by nuclear waste are can be controlled far more easily than those from CO2.

Cross your fingers when you say that. "Solved" means sorted out safely for the next few thousand years. We haven't done that yet, and there are good reasons for thinking we never will be able to. As and when we have done that would be the time to talk about whether to take up nuclear fission as a way of prodiucing energy, not till then.

We've already got a first rate fusion plant in a safe place, and it is set to last us for billions of years, with no maintenance. It's called the Sun, and it gives out all the power we could possibly need.

It's just ("just") a question of organsing our arrangements for making that power available to do the things that we need it to do. And cutting out doing stuff that makes things worse in the present (fossil fuel), or stores up big trouble for our children and their children...(nuclear fission).

Those aren't easy things, but they aren't impossible. The pity is that the peoples with the power to make the changes that need to be made are the last peoples who are going to be hit by the damage caused by the failure to make the changes.

Subject: RE: BS: People moaning about windmills
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 27 Mar 06 - 07:24 AM

I used to have a soap on a rope of Windy Miller of Camberwick Green fame.
just thought I'd share that with you

Subject: RE: BS: People moaning about windmills
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 27 Mar 06 - 08:23 AM

Here's another share.... they have turbines made of lego bricks in Legoland Windsor....

LTS

Subject: RE: BS: People moaning about windmills
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 27 Mar 06 - 08:36 AM

Thank you for sharing Liz... now where's my sleeping tablet?

Subject: RE: BS: People moaning about windmills
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 27 Mar 06 - 11:51 AM

Windy Miller

Windmill World

Subject: RE: BS: People moaning about windmills
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 27 Mar 06 - 01:21 PM

Re: Multiple comments on existing windmills that are mostly not running.

Since wind input is a variable quantity, windmills generally can only be used as "peaking sources." The distribution systems require "base capacity" that is always available, and for this fueled generators, whether coal, oil, or nuclear, are about the only things available. Hydro power generally would be included in base capacity, but is only available in limited areas.

As long as the fixed generators can supply all the needed power, dumping additional power in from the windmills would be counterproductive, since it would require reducing the output of the baseline generators to maintain stable distribution network conditions. The fixed/baseline generators operate most efficiently at output near their rated capacity, and actually have little margin for "tweaking" output. A change in baseline output generally requires turning on/off individual machines/plants which is not just a matter of flipping a switch. Restarting a large generator can take several hours, and turning one off takes (often) about half as long as bringing one back on line.

Wind generators may be idle because there is insufficient wind available at a given time (or rarely if there's too much wind for safe operation at a given time) but since as currently used they can only supply "peaking power" when and as needed by the grid, they may be shut down during low-demand periods. It doesn't necessarily mean that they're not available to meet an increase in demand, or that they're broke down and/or inefficient.

A "windmill farm" generally contracts to provide a certain amount of power continuously, based on the minum wind expected, and must have enough individual windmills to "meet contract commitments" when there's little useful wind. Any time there is more than minimum wind, it's more efficient to run only part of the windmills at higher power, and turn off the ones not needed, than to run all of them at reduced output. IF the farm can find a buyer for an additional bit of power, more of them may be started up; but it depends on instantaneous market conditions whether it's profitable to do so.

Some maintenance, and downtime for safety inspections etc., is required, and a "typical" downtime allowance of something like 10% or a little less is "planned maintenance." This means that if 10% of the mills aren't running they're doing what they should be doing.

If 90% of them aren't running, it's more likely that it's inefficiency in the power market than that the windmills are defective. Europe, especially, does have some "early design" windmills that have had reliability problems; but you'd have to talk to the operating engineers to know if that's why they don't run more.

If, as may happen someday, there were enough widely dispersed windmill farms to depend realiable on "one of them somewhere" will always be able to provide at least X kw, then a fraction of the total windmill capacity could be considered part of the "base capacity" and you'd always be getting at least some of your electrons from wind. In some markets that point may have been reached; but I haven't seen confirmation of it.

John

Subject: RE: BS: People moaning about windmills
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 27 Mar 06 - 02:58 PM

The rigid distinction between "peaking sources" and "base capacity" rests on the assumption that there is not any satisfactory method of storing energy provided by the former. There is no shortage of existing or potential ways of dealing with that problem.

Subject: RE: BS: People moaning about windmills
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 27 Mar 06 - 06:58 PM

There are enormous inefficiencies in the conversion processes. Storing energy in a chemical accumulator also involves changing AC to DC and retrieving it to feed back into the AC grid also involves more inefficiencies.

There used to be large storage flywheels - some were used in buses a while ago - they may have the ability to to produce AC output, but you then need to have a very precise match between the frequencies or else you get severe problems that may cause destruction of the equipment.

Subject: RE: BS: People moaning about windmills
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 27 Mar 06 - 07:36 PM

Precisely - lots of different ways, some more efficient than others at this stage of development. And lots more which have never been explored or developed (or like those flywheels in public transport they have been abandoned prematurely), because burning up fossil fuel has always seemed cheaper, since most the cost of the damage caused has never been included in the price paid by the people doing the damage.

A rational accounting system under which those kind of costs had to be included would be the biggest single factor in putting us on the right road.