I wonder how electricity generation would be more cost efficient than using these turbines 😉

hi bob
how is ur mum
bc i fuked her last nite rekt o

What a load of rubbish. With 30 odd turbines within 5km of my home, there are no dead birds around any of the towers. And we visit them quite regularly

The decline is all to do with the cheap oil prices that we
now face. Still, I hope that with Climate Conference ongoing next week
in Paris we will see attractive incentive afterwards in place to boost
wind energy.. also for the smaller men.. to have easier incentives to
set up and produce your own wind energy.

BTW, while you’re searching for data keep your eyes open for the study that found that migratory birds avoid offshore wind farms.

You’d need to show me some objective evidence that “Birds are attracted to wind turbines,”.

Without it I might assume you’re just making stuff up….

You are correct that not all places are great for turbine placement. That’s why careful impact studies are done before wind farms are built.

sadly, Birds are attracted to wind turbines, and it mostly affects migratory beds. so some regions arent the best for wind farms.

Pretty doubtful that we’d go 100% wind. I’d guess that we’ll end up getting 10% to 20% from hydro, tidal and geothermal. Solar is likely give us 30% to 40%. Wind will likely be in the 40% to 50% range.

Thanks, Bob. That is about one 3MW turbine per 800 people. We have about one motor-vehicle per capita in the U.S. so one turbine for every 800 people sounds manageable.

I will copy and paste your reply for future reference!

Would you mind if I answered using 3 MW turbines? (I’ve already done that math and can just copy it over. Along with land requirements.)

In 2010, the US used 4,143 TWh (terawatt hours) of electricity. (11,300,000 MWh per day.)

The average wind turbine is around 3 MW in size and median capacity is now 43%. So, 3 MW x 24 hours x 43% capacity = 30.1 MWh per day from each 3 MW turbine.

It would take 375,415 3 MW turbines to produce 4,143 TWh of electricity.

The footprint of a wind turbine is typically around 0.25 acres. This includes the tower foundation, roads, and support structures. 375, 415 turbines would require 93,854 acres or 147 square miles.

147 square miles is 0.004% of all US land area. 3.13 Disney Worlds. 6.5 Manhattan Islands. 39% of Los Angeles. 12% of Rhode Island. 0.7% of San Bernardino County, CA. 0.02% of Alaska.

BTW, we are now testing 7.5 MW turbines. Land area doesn’t increase much with increases in turbine size so we could cut land use in half if needed.

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Peak demand is hot summer afternoons when air conditioning is sucking down the power. That’s when we have our brownouts. And that’s where solar panels will make immense differences quickly.

We’ve seen a modest amount of PV solar simply destroy peak demands in Germany.

I imagine the answer is “varies”.

I’m sure there are example when neighbors have received a “sweetener” payment. I seem to remember that one wind farm bought the house of someone who was very upset about how loud the (yet to be installed) turbines would be.

I doubt it happens often.

The important issue, IMO, is setback. Most locations have by now, I would imagine, regulations about how close to a (non-owners) home or property line a turbine can be placed. Seems like a half mile is a common distance.

Obviously if a turbine was located just a few feet from your house you’d likely suffer equity loss. But with reasonable setbacks equity loss does not seem to happen.

Nine major and statistically reliable studies covering roughly 270,000 property transactions by different respected and independent organizations in three different countries spread over fifteen years have found no correlation between operating wind turbines and negative property values (in fact, three found slight but statistically insignificant improvements). Another low reliability study — due to small available sample size — in Australia found no impacts as well.

http://cleantechnica.com/2014/03/10/many-studies-will-take-people-believe-wind-farms-dont-harm-property-values/

The large complaints seem to come from people who don’t like to look at a turbine where they saw one before. But, as I’ve learned a couple of times, if you want to control what you see you need to own your view.

We don’t compensate people if someone legally builds a commercial building, highway, airport, open pit mine or anything else “in their view”.

Seems like a motor/generator clutched to a series of spinning iron or other suitably heavy material is far simpler, cheaper, more energy dense than any of these other solutions. I may sound biased, but have an open mind. Just by the face of it, the structure and interfacing just seem fairly straight forward, low maintenance, no environmental impact. Bearings would seem to be the only real consumables. Bearings, if properly lubed ‘love you long time!’.

I wonder how this would compare with grid level flywheel storage…

When a turbine goes up near a residence, do the owner’s receive compensation for any loss of equity? Surely, like living next to high tension lines and railways, the property is worth less than it would be otherwise (I suspect). If so, proper compensation may alleviate such complaints.

Im ALL for renewable green tech like SOLAR / WIND / GEOTHERMAL / OCEAN ENERGY and similar, but one of the most promoted and funded forms of WIND power in the World is probably one of the WORST ever for people, animals and the environment….

Heres some unpleasant, rarely published (and almost NEVER broadcast) FACTS that proponents and promoters of those gigantic “wind machines” either havent yet LEARNED about, or just plain IGNORE….

– THOUSANDS of birds are violently KILLED every year by the massive blades of these gigantic wind machines….and theres NO WAY to prevent it because any type of bird-protecting shroud on the blades (even using the very lightest high-tech materials) would be too heavy for the multi-ton steel mast to support.

– There isnt a SINGLE person on Earth who wants to continually SEE these colossal machines where they live….and because of their extreme size, theres NO WAY to hide ’em or disguise ’em. But of course, the manufacturers, corporate Washington lobbyists and investors of these machines ALL live very, very far away from these ugly giants.

– The ENERGY EFFICIENCY of these gigantic machines has got to be one of the biggest CORPORATE LIES than about any other form of energy….even on windy days, many of the rotors of these huge machines in the many “wind farms” across the U.S. arent even MOVING at times (or very slowly)….i’ve seen it myself several times, as thousands of others obviously have….

– And as for the DESIGN EFFICIENCY of these mega-machines ?….NO, apparently BIGGER is NOT BETTER with these things….theres NO WAY to increase the number of blades, because ANY extra weight would cause it to soon FALL OVER (instantly totally destroying itself, and thus necessitating replacement, PLUS the $$$$$$ cost of LONG-DISTANCE DELIVERY of one of these behemoths).

– The PRICE for just ONE of these mega-machines is OVER A $MILLION….and a SINGLE service call to FIX one (which is probably OFTEN) is probably at least SEVERAL THOUSAND DOLLARS….How on Earth that can be “cost efficient” (without MASSIVE federal subsidies from taxpayers) is plainly a MASSIVELY SUCCESSFUL CORPORATE LIE.

So WHAT should be done about these mega-machines ?….Philips, GE, and the other super corporations (that are being subsidized by taxpayers) who make and promote these INSANE mega-machines should instead be REPLACING ’em with SMALL (barrel-size to shed-size) MAGLEV WIND MACHINES (with rotors that rotate to super high-velocity on energy-efficient frictionless magnets), which China and other asian countries are already starting to do, mounting these along the top edges of tall office and residential buildings (which America and other countries have THOUSANDS of)….Just another example that proves “SMALLER TECH is BETTER TECH” * !

These cost a TINY FRACTION of a mega-machine, are much cheaper to service or replace, and can also be easily HIDDEN with decorative panel vanes, and with the wind-intake sides net-shrouded to protect birds….So with the above said, my only question is….

WHY, on a website on RENEWABLE ENERGY, isnt ANYONE here saying ANYTHING about ANY of the above ???!!!

( * Another “SMALLER TECH that is BETTER TECH” : Non-Stop POD MONORAIL (such as the SkyTran system, now being co-developed by NASA)….compared to it, the wonderful Disneyland Monorail system looks like a slow antiquated old dinosaur….but that is my next important GREEN TECH topic i will share here soon.)

Please, don’t drop links with out some explanation of why we should bother looking.
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And – do you see any performance data? Or only claims?

New, astonishing wind turbine designs appear from time to time. They seem to be ideas with no data to back up the claim and fade away.

We’re in Salt Lake City, so we do have some hills to contend with, and we run the heat or A/C as needed, but a big thing there is running the environmental controls off shore power and then keeping everything sealed tight to maintain that conditioning as long as possible. My Wife primarily drives the LEAF to and from work, about 12 miles each way, and if she’s running late will take the freeway but she tries to stick to the surface streets as much as possible. And, believe it or not, we’ve found running in drive mode provides better results than eco, so long as you’re very throttle aware. It allows for more gliding without the regen braking being cranked to high as it is in eco. When I’m driving, I’m really comfortable slapping the shifter between eco and drive as needed, so I can get the best regen when coming to a stop and then not having to fight to accelerate again.

That’s really low, Michael. What sort of driving conditions do you have that let you get away with using such a small amount?

Almost never need heat/AC, fairly level ground, little highway speed driving would be my guess…

As a reference, my Wife and I currently get 5.5mi/kWh pretty regularly in the LEAF. That’s .181kWh/mi if my math is right.

I’d caution you to be aware that there a number of small turbine manufacturers who promise very much more than they deliver. Several fancy looking units, (especially vertical axis, eggbeater looking) turbines that just don’t produce much electricity for the money.

Paul has a very good section – Household Size Wind Energy

http://www.wind-works.org/cms/index.php?id=1

And here’s a commercial site which seems to be helpful…

http://www.windenergy.com/

Finally, here’s a magazine site which is highly informative and trustworthy…

http://homepower.com/home/wind turbine

I am new to this site and found it while trying to investigate home wind power distributors in Nicaragua – I live on a huge lake and the wind energy is maximum.
Any information or assistance on how to install a home system that has a very economical set up cost would be welcome. Thanks

huh? we’ve got a twitter button in the top right side of our website.

Thanks for the comment — concise and very useful. And, yes, that whole argument (absurdly widespread in the media and in comment threads) should really be tossed in the trash by now. Working on it…