Your Questions About Wind Farms

adminsta answers:

Firstly, they are uneconomic – even when there is a supply of wind farms there will still need to be backup power stations for the frequent occasions when there is no wind.
Secondly they are an environmental disaster – ruining beautiful landscapes, and emitting a slight but disturbing, steady noise.
Using the technology and material needed to make them has an adverse environmental effect. It takes nearly 200 years, under optimum conditions, to save the energy involved in their manufacture.
I could go on – but the main point is that the fad for wind farms is making certain companies – who have got onto the gravy train – very rich.

adminsta answers:

Yeah.
Anything to help the environment.

EDIT: well, i live in Boston. Most people at the vineyard oppose wind farms because it makes their land look “ugly”. Come on now. We cant complain about global warming & yet not do anything about it.

adminsta answers:

Large wind turbines are 2-5 MW each. Take 3 MW as average…

Wind farms vary from 2 turbines to dozens, so stick to the individual turbines.

Total nuclear capacity worldwide is 360 GW for about 450 reactors, so the average power is 780 MW

Nuclear plants develop power 24 hours a day, every day. Wind turbines do not. So you have to multiply by a usage factor, usually assumed to be about 30%.

So, on the average, it would take (780/(3*.3)) or 800 large wind turbines to replace one nuclear plant. How many wind farms that is depends on how you break them up. Probably 10 each, or 80 wind farms.

adminsta answers:

According to the Danish Wind Energy Association, there are more than four thousand onshore turbines – but I can’t find how many ‘farms’.

Http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/denmark/7996606/An-ill-wind-blows-for-Denmarks-green-energy-revolution.html

http://www.aweo.org/problemwithwind.html

adminsta answers:

On the fence at the moment, i would agree that the sighting wind farms is a major problem with wild life and noise and i have seen a paper saying that some are sighted not in windy enough places. And a nation security could be at risk due to radar inference has well. So if we do not want wind power how about the government funding for putting solar panels on every house? And for those who have the solar panels they would get there money back

adminsta answers:

Of course its possible but think about it: You want to locate wind farms where it is consistantly windy most days of the year and the stronger the winds are the better. OTOH, you want to locate solar panels where the sun shines longest and strongest.

These two conditions are rarely co-existant. Wind farms located off the coast of Massachusetts generate a lot of electricity but are frequently in overcast conditions. The sun shines strong in the desert but the air is nearly calm by comparison most of the day, not conducive to wind power generation.

I suppose if you can find a windy, sunny place you can have both projects co-existing, but you still need to leave room and seperation so that each can be serviced and maintained by workmen with equipment.

Ocean going sailboats carry both wind and solar power generation systems to keep batterys charged, but usually only one system is producing while the other is near idling.

Whenever you “harvest” something you need to locate in an area where your “crop” can proliferate. Both solar and wind are only marginally efficient processes at best (I believe solar is about 16% efficient) under ideal conditions. Operating a marginal process at a marginal location makes the technique unsubstantial, which is to say it may cost more to build and operate the apparatus than it ever will be capable of generating over its lifetime. The optimum conditions for solar and wind are not exclusive, but rarely occur in the same place.