# Wind power, schmind power **URL:** \ **Category:** Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports\ **Created:** [June 14, 2014, 10:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wind-power-schmind-power/690763 "2014-06-14T10:37:33Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![levdrakon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/49beb7/32.png) [@levdrakon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/levdrakon)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2014, 2:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wind-power-schmind-power/690763/41 "2014-06-17T02:30:41Z")
> [@ruh-roh](#): > > So you had no problem coming up with, and keeping straight 100 to 150 names? Apparently you had no appreciation for night-sky viewing (meteors, satellites, the dance of the planets, a thin crescent moon), when a 100 strobe lights are going off every few seconds within a couple of miles of you. Was your view across the land where you could “see for miles and miles” better after the 100 windmills were put up (not to mention the other hundred+ a few miles in the other direction). > > Would you have named them and slept as blissfully if they had been among the many abandoned windmills (dead guardian angels)? There is none of your tax dollars available for tearing these things down (like there is to make them “profitable”), and no money set aside to do so. Would you sleep so well in the U.S. knowing that your tax dollars are going directly into the pockets of corporations who build not to help the planet, but only for the money? > > Do an internet search on “abandoned wind farms”. You will get a lot of hype and out right lies from both sides of the story, but also a lot of pictures of these “peaceful and tranquil” structures. You can then judge for yourself. > > I’d love to save the planet, but wind energy can’t do it, and is sucking huge amounts of money and attention away from research finding ways to really make the difference. Wait, aren’t you Foghorn Leghorn? Abandoned windmills are cute. ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2014, 3:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wind-power-schmind-power/690763/42 "2014-06-17T03:23:26Z")
About those blinkin’ strobe lights atop the windmills: I’ve noticed something in at least one wind farm that seems peculiar to me. Having driven through the Montezuma Hills farm several times at night (that’s the farm just west of Rio Vista, Ca.) I’ve noticed that, as far as the eye can see, from horizon to horizon, _the lights on the towers all blink simultaneously._ They’re all wired together with just one blinker timer somewhere. It’s odd that they aren’t all just separate independent blinking lights. Is it done that way for a reason? Would a sea of independently blinking lights be disorienting to night-time airplane pilots, or something? ---
**Author:** ![Ranger\_Jeff](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ranger_jeff/32/2065_2.png) [@Ranger\_Jeff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ranger_Jeff)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2014, 3:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wind-power-schmind-power/690763/43 "2014-06-17T03:49:05Z")
FTR, all the wind turbines I’ve seen had red, not white, lights on them. Less light pollution, IMHO. ---
**Author:** ![crucible](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/5f8ce5/32.png) [@crucible](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/crucible)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2014, 11:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wind-power-schmind-power/690763/44 "2014-06-17T11:47:41Z")
the right sort of nuclear plants could solve all this. The transmission networks are already in place. Avoid more coal trains, oil pipelines, gas pipelines, etc. just build new nuclear plants on old coal sites (if they are appropriate). I believe the modern nuclear plant design is far safer and more reliable and cheaper than anything from the past. If you can’t make the public smart enough to accept nuclear, then, at least, build solar farms in the south as fast as the panels can be manufactured. We should be talking about building a few hundred one square mile facilities in the next ten years. the recent Shia/Sunni war in the middle east spotlights the need to get out of the energy import business once and for all. ---
**Author:** ![UncleFred](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/f0a364/32.png) [@UncleFred](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UncleFred)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2014, 11:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wind-power-schmind-power/690763/45 "2014-06-17T11:52:52Z")
On the subject of ‘switching coal on and off’ - I worked some with electric utilities and part of their cost control strategy is to supplement ‘base load’ generation using coal with more expensive oil powered generation during periods of high demand. Apparently there is a bit more flexibility in turning oil generation on/off. (You can switch off the oil feed, you can’t blow out a coal fire.) ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2014, 12:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wind-power-schmind-power/690763/46 "2014-06-17T12:46:00Z")
> [@](#): > > Quoth **ruh-roh** : > > When they first starting burning trees, they probably thought “look how freakin huge those forests are. We can cut more whenever we want and it grows back”. When they started mining coal it was “hey, this stuff goes on forever, we can always dig more.” It’s all just a matter of scale, and we keep adding people (energy suckers) to our side of the scale. One of James Fenimore Cooper’s books has the leader of a small town strongly hoping that they’ll discover a nearby coal seam soon, because the forests they’re currently using to provide fuel will quickly be depleted, but a coal seam would last the town forever. Rather quaint, from our point of view. > [@](#): > > I’d love to save the planet, but wind energy can’t do it, and is sucking huge amounts of money and attention away from research finding ways to really make the difference. Wind energy can’t do it, because no single technology can do it. Put many of them together, though, and we can. Wind power might not be the whole solution, but it’s certainly a part of it. ---
**Author:** ![Try2B\_Comprehensive](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/try2b_comprehensive/32/65_2.png) [@Try2B\_Comprehensive](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Try2B_Comprehensive)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2014, 2:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wind-power-schmind-power/690763/47 "2014-06-20T02:16:39Z")
Too bad Cecil doesn’t mention costs associated with diseases and deaths caused by the extraction and burning of fossil fuels, not to mention things like rising sea levels and so on. The externalized costs of coal and natural gas, if accounted for, probably tip the scales in favor of wind. > [@watchwolf49](#): > > [Better batteries](http://cleantechnica.com/2014/04/29/floodgates-open-vanadium-flow-batteries/) Those are cool, but unless vanadium becomes much cheaper, those will probably only be able to fill a niche. A [1 Megawatt-hour flow battery made out of cheap iron and chromium](http://www.technologyreview.com/news/527516/a-battery-made-of-iron-could-improve-the-economics-of-solar-and-wind-power/) is being tested right now- it seems to work and the manufacturers claim it will last for 20+ years. They claim these will cost 20% what a vanadium flow battery costs. Cheaper still, but more in the realm of research, is the [quinone flow battery](http://www.technologyreview.com/news/523251/new-battery-material-could-help-wind-and-solar-power-go-big/). These could potentially cost less than $100/kwh and be scalable to virtually any size, so whether you are backing up intermittent sources like wind and solar or just trying to cut down on your coal burning, they look like they could be a winner. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2014, 7:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wind-power-schmind-power/690763/48 "2014-06-20T07:17:13Z")
> [@UncleFred](#): > > On the subject of ‘switching coal on and off’ - I worked some with electric utilities and part of their cost control strategy is to supplement ‘base load’ generation using coal with more expensive oil powered generation during periods of high demand. Apparently there is a bit more flexibility in turning oil generation on/off. (You can switch off the oil feed, you can’t blow out a coal fire.) Is it that big a difference? I thought coal-powered plants ran on pulverised coal, continuously fed to the burners almost as if a fluid anyway. ---
**Author:** ![stw004](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b5e925/32.png) [@stw004](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/stw004)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2014, 10:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wind-power-schmind-power/690763/49 "2014-06-20T22:51:31Z")
Wind PPA’s for new facilities on the Great Plains are being signed currently at $20 MW/H, unsubsidized that’s $43 MW/H. We are talking about facilities that are getting +50% NCF. This last spring ERCOT integrated +40% wind into the grid more than once. Yes, there are still technical challenges to high levels of wind penetration, but RTO’s are being forced to figure it out purely because wind is becoming more and more economical. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wind-power-schmind-power/690763.md?page=2)