Squirels, possums, and armadillos have yet to figure out roads and its been nearly a hundred years, so I wouldnt count on it.
Yeah, no technology is wholly without environmental impact. But wind power has a lot less environmental impact than most other generation technologies.
I can’t remember the name of it right now, but there is an organization which collects money to build tunnels underneath existing roads for wildlife to use. I don’t think it is a bad cause, though I bet it is just loaded with enviro-weenies.
I wouldn’t be surprised if there is something that can be done with windmill design to get birds’ attention. If we can avoid killing things, I think that’s nice.
re: oil killing people- I’m thinking along the lines of our killing about 1 in 25 people in Iraq, just to make things ‘stable’. We’re there for the oil, right? I don’t want to hijack the thread mind you, but I consider it quite predictable that we’ll see more of that if we don’t wean ourselves off of oil one way or another.
re: TNSSAAFL- I don’t have a link now, but have you seen the bra that’s wired to generate a current from bouncing breasts? You (well, maybe not you or me) can recharge your cell phone just by walking. Talk about making every kilowatt count!!!
Probably not going to do any good. Animals have instincts developed by millions of years of evolution and they haven’t had enough time to adapt to human artifacts. A deer sees a highway and thinks of it as being a clearing in the woods - a safe place because it can see predators at a distance and has easy routes of escape. The same thing would happen with a tunnel under a road - animals are going to instinctively avoid the “dangerous” cave and stay on the “safe” clearing.
You’re probably right, but it doesn’t stop these guys from digging their tunnels.
Doesn’t mean we can’t make our technologies safer for animals; it just means that we have to be a little more clever about it. Maybe we can attach whistles to the windmills, for instance, that sound like something the birds have already evolved to fear.
So, death by wind turbine or death by smog. Decisions, decisions…
Drench the windmill blades in cat piss.
It is being looked at, actually. Not sure at what stage of development is in, but iti sdefeinitely something that has been considered.
Wonder how much it would cost to retrofit something like that on all of the existing wind turbines? I also wonder how practical the current design is from a cost perspective. Whenever I drive in Southern New Mexico near the Texas border I drive by a pretty large wind farm (not sure what it is but there seem to be a lot of the things), and, generally, some percentage of them are not in motion whenever I drive by. Presumably these are down for maintenance.
-XT
Denmark covers about 15-20% if its energy by wind power. Perhaps Denmark is a special case, but there is no discussion of any physical limit to windmill placement. They can go up just about anywhere. The only limiting factor is that neighbours will have to be compensated. Which is one of the reasons there are some large offshore projects being developed. We have hardly started to tap the potential for offshore projects in Europe. Let alone the rest of the world. Onshore, much of what is happening in Denmark now, is pulling down older windmills and replacing them with newer ones. Of which you only need a fraction to get the same output. Even if the space is limited, technology will ensure a continuing increase in output.
The CEO of Vestas (which btw. is investing heavily in the USA these years) was on the radio the other day. He commented that windmills actually have one of the highest technology break-ins of all forms of alternative energy. Meaning it was very hard to make an effective and competitive windmill. But once you had that down, there was big room for improvement. We have just broken in. Windmill companies may be mature but windmill technology is still in its infancy.
I could be wrong here (I’ll look it up later, time permitting), but I think the US actually has the largest number of wind turbines of any country in the world. I say this (assuming I’m correct) because there seems to be a perception that the US is behind other countries in developing wind power.
-XT
It can certainly be *part *of the big picture, along with increased geothermal, nuclear, solar, hydro … . It would be foolish to think there’s only one answer, especially not in a continent as geologically diverse as North America.
That’s a rather meaningless yardstick. Of course the USA has more windmills than Luxembourg. You need to measure it against something, like population size or GNP or the total energy production. And yes the USA is behind. Hopefully you will catch up.
I didn’t realize that Luxembourg was the only other country with wind power! I’m glad you pointed that out. 
Um…yeah. Hopefully we’ll catch up and have even MORE wind mills than every other country on earth!
-XT
Not that it means that much but Denmark generates 19.1% of its electricity from wind-power. Spain and Portugal around 11%. Germany and Ireland around 7%. The USA is pretty far down the list at 1.3%.
I was just poking at you…I understand your point. Of course, the percentages also are fairly meaningless, since you are probably talking about substantially less power needed than in the US…so, our 1.3% would probably be a much higher percentage in some of the other countries you listed.
I think there is still a lot of low hanging fruit available in the US for wind power that hasn’t been tapped yet. And I certainly think that wind is going to be part of the over all mix of technologies. I just don’t see it ever getting to be more than 5-10% of the total for US energy needs. Add 5-10 percent from solar and maybe as much again for geo-thermal and hydro, and you are still looking at something like a 60% gap…and the only thing I see filling that gap is nuclear at this point. I just don’t see how anything else comes even close.
-XT
Probably the best comparison would be from one power grid to another. Denmark may be getting 19% of their power from windmills, but I imagine that they also buy and sell power from their neighbors, which helps with load balancing. How many power grids are there in Europe, and what proportion does each of those grids get from wind?
Wind power may have more potential than people on this thread are crediting it with. This is from page 30 of a carbon free nuclear free energy plan (pdf):
How much of that potential can be put to use is still up for debate, but wind power does seem to be a trump card that America has yet to play.
The study also notes that nuclear’s share of total power generated is predicted to shrink in the coming decades.
There is even more potential in sun light…I remember seeing a similar cite before about how the total amount of sun energy that hits the US in a day could power the entire US for several years, blah blah blah. The problem with this kind of thing is turning that potential into reality.
Sure, there is still some slack in the system, still some untapped potential. But anyone who is saying that we’ll get more than 5-20% (max) of our energy needs from wind is delusional. Yeah, the POTENTIAL is there…but after you tap the really good places it becomes a game of diminishing returns, at least with the current technology. Also, it would take decades to ramp up to even the 5-20% mark…and hundred of billions of dollars.
Certainly…the prediction is probably based on the fact that we haven’t built a new nuclear power plant in decades in the US, and afaik there are no current plans in the pipeline to build a new one here. Sort of a self fulfilling prophesy, ehe?
-XT