RLJ

Here in Texas windmills (power not water) are becoming common, especially in West Texas.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/unwiredben/14425149/

The link show a high altitude photo of a string of power production windmills. The blades on each windmill is about 60 feet in length (that 2 blades = 120 feet).

Wind is viable...but hardware cost, space, dead birds can each present issues.

Personally I wish a small H2 generator was viable. I do remember some years ago reading about someone that had commercially produces a welding rig that used H2 generator. It was produces as 'Brown's Gas'. I thought for a while someone would take this and do something but nothing that I have heard of.

Also, I seem to remember from chemistry class (early 1970's) my instructor talking about H2 production and said that it did not matter if you used 1.5vdc or 300vdc that the production would not progress faster with more voltage. This had always bothered me because logic says different but I never had a chance to test this. Does anyone know if this is the case?

RLJ

3v0

Noise is not an a real issue because as I said in my post most of the prime areas are populated in square miles per person not people per square mile. And the cows do not care.

In regard to the weather pattern. Power generation from wind is very passive. Think about the huge amount of heat released by a coal fired power station. That would have a much larger impact then slowing the wind down bit.

Wind is driven by existing heat energy. By harvesting that energy instead of burning carbon ... what ?

ericgibbs

hi,
One the problems we are experiecing in the UK with wind turbines, is the accumulation of dead 'bugs' on the leading edge of the blades.
The dead bugs provide a soup for the build up of micro organanisms, which cause a large drop in efficiency by spoiling the aerofoil section of the blade.

They have had to install anti bacterial sprays on the towers to spray the blades from time to time.

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jpanhalt

You know, the windmill farm could be made even more productive by locating a nuclear waste dump on the same site. Afterall, there is no one around to be bothered by it

I don't believe that low population density is a very acceptable excuse for doing something as disruptive and potentially disruptive to the environment and fauna as would be produced by widespread use of windmills. Not-in-my-backyard logic has a way of becoming everyone's problem.

It is a straw-man argument to justify wind power based on comparison to a single alternative: inefficient coal-based plants with lots of heat loss. There are other alternatives, including but not limited to nuclear and gasification.

As for the effects from "slowing the wind down a bit," I am less optimistic they would be negligible. A 1 °C increase in global temperature, which is less than a 0.5% change, has been predicted to have an enormous impact. Turbulence and direction of wind also affect weather, not just velocity. John

RLJ

I know this is off topic a little but here is possible reply to the last post...

http://www.quietrevolution.co.uk/qr5.htm

RLJ

3v0

How can one person be so wrong about anything?

What disruption! You must be thinking of the propaganda dreamed up by big energy.

How do you see this as a "Not-in-my-backyard" deal when the people who own the land want the turbines. If you do not own a pasture or a wheat field you have no reason to live in one. The people who own this land would greatly benefit form the income. Population centers are often 20 or more (much more) apart. Lots of room for turbines.

How do you see the a wind turbine as causing global warming. You are uninformed.

Global Warming, Clean Energy Solutions: Wind Energy
The Sierra Club
Underline is mine.

And as pointed out by RLJ in the previous post quited turbines are possible for areas where that would be a problem. That makes them even more of possible solution.

jpanhalt

Sorry to have confused you by giving an example of how a small change in average temperature (i.e., less than 0.5%) is predicted to have a big impact on our climate and life in general. That comment was made in reference to your comment that any effect of on winds would be small. My statement was:

I did not mean to imply that large-scale use of windmills would produce global warming. They may affect the weather, which was my point. Whether that effect will cause cooling, warming, or have no effect on temperature is unknown, so far as I know. In retrospect, I should have added a few extra word to make the comparison clearer. John

3v0

It is difficult to take you seriously when you toss out remarks like the following.
You will have a difficult time convincing anyone that your statement below is not about global warming.

Wind is a result of solar heating. Any solar energy collection device, including turbines, will reduce wind. Should we abandon all forms of solar energy for that reason.

Large building block the wind, vast expanses of pavement trap rather the reflect the solar energy. What about deforestation of the rain forests. The farmland that replaces it will have a vastly different heat absorption rate then the trees. The point is we effect the solar/wind of the planet in many ways and directions.

Current thinking is that there will be increased violent weather due to global warming. Maybe reducing the wind speed a bit would moderate that. It would be nice. We know buring less carbon will help moderate it and wind farms will help with that.

If you think there is a real problem with the possible wind slowing due to turbines find some evidence to support it, then put it perspective. To say so without is fear mongering.

Collected and re-purposed solar/wind energy is about as close as you can come to zero environmental impact.

crashsite

Be vewwwy careful of those carats (><) in your posing, young man! You can <b>reveal</b> your secrets....as I just did........

wmmullaney

Ha, doesn't work, does it? (I had the same problem)

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crashsite

I don't usually use the "advanced" option and just put in my own HTML tags but, they themselves seem to be inside a quote and need the square brackets. Also, there's seems to be a fairly limited number of tags supported but, plenty enough for [font color=#ff50a0]me[/font]. See, not all the tags work.

wmmullaney

Ya, read your post.

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William Mullaney

"HOPE for the best, EXPECT the worst, ACCEPT whatever comes."

http://wiliamsville.myminicity.com/
http://wiliamsville.myminicity.com/ind/
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Oznog

Small H2 generators don't have significant viability problems, except the fact remains that to create significant masses of H2 requires sigificant electricity.

"Brown's Gas" is the mixture of H2 and O2 you get out of electrolysis when you don't capture the bubbles forming on the 2 electrodes with 2 separate jars. It doesn't have any of the magical energy properties touted by the "free energy" crowd.

The rate of gas production depends primarily on current. Current does increase with increased voltage, but voltage alone doesn't increase the rate. For example using an electrode of half the surface area will require more voltage for a given current, but the extra voltage to produce say the same 5 amps will not increase the rate of gas generation.

__________________
I thought what I'd do was I'd pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes.

crashsite

Which, of course, is why you need a "free" energy source such as solar or wind or water. Something that can just sit there and convert, convert, convert day in and day out. A little water, over a short time can wash out a road but, a little water over a long time can create the Grand Canyon.

I guess I have a little trouble believing that "baby steps" are useless. I'm thinking that 20 million homes, each with a 100 Watt solar panel could pump an average of 100 MegaWatts into the power grid (5 Watts per panel with most of the power being generated during peak load (industiral max) times). Same concept with home hydrogen generation.

Where's that darn Yankee ingenuity we Americans keep bragging about (and others keep insisting that they do even better)?

wmmullaney

But what if there's no wind? We get wind every 3-4 days, what if it's overcast?

__________________
Regards,
William Mullaney

"HOPE for the best, EXPECT the worst, ACCEPT whatever comes."

http://wiliamsville.myminicity.com/
http://wiliamsville.myminicity.com/ind/
http://wiliamsville.myminicity.com/tra/