Windpower: Is it really a good replacement?

Factual Questions
1

Over at treehugger they keep going on about how wonderful wind generated power is. Apperntly it’s being pushed in a big way in Europe as a viable alternative to more traditional power generation.

Now, I’ve been around a couple of wind turbines that had been set up for test purposes a couple of times. For example the one in the Toronto Exibition, and while I have heard good things about it generally I have personally found that if Im around it for any length of time, the “hum” it produces (can’t tell if its an electrical hum or the vibration from the blades themselves) really gets on my nerves. Not pleasant.

Has anyone done any sort of study regarding how these things affect the general population in terms of noise? I’venot done too thorough a search, but I’ve not found anything regarding it.
Anyone know more?

2

They put wind turbines where it’s windy. This is not necessarily in people’s back yards. The hum isn’t going to bother anyone if the turbine is in a mountain pass or offshore.

The objections I’ve heard have been mostly aesthetic and environmental – people don’t want to look at a windfarm and they worry about birds flying into the blades. As energy prices rise, I suspect they’re just going to have to learn to live with the view.

3

One of the recent issues of National Geographic has an article on energy sources including a bit on wind and why some in Europe are actually opposing wind turbines, particularly in Germany. I don’t recall noise being brought up as an issue but the ultra size turbines they talked about (as tall as 600’ with 400’ diameter turbines) aren’t placed directly in populated areas. Most of the objections had to do with them being eyesores and posing a danger to birds.

4

I like them, aesthetically - really like them - I’d be more than happy to live with one in full view of my house (not likely to happen though). My experience of them is that they are rather quiet - certainly less of a noise problem than a busy road or even overhead power cables.

One genuine problem is that they can interfere with radar, which may have military and aviation implications.

The impact on wildlife is a genuine concern; wind farms are sited (obviously) in places that have reliable winds; these places are often the favourite habitat of birds of prey (which utilise the winds to hang motionless in the sky while hunting).

5

I saw that…it seems to be the same people who didn’t want nuclear power in the 1970s. I understand the objections, but what can we do? Mere conservation only delays the inevitable. I don’t think wind or any of the alternative sources being touted will be enough by itself, and we’ll probably have to use a little bit of every kind of energy we can get.

6

I think it is generally agreed, even by opponents, that it’s unusual that windpower creates much noise 400 yards from the base. Concern BEFORE a proposed windfarm is built, much more so.

Modern wind turbines are less noisey than 10 or 20 years ago, and that’s not always appreciated by those who oppose it based upon noise.

7

In Devonshire, where a few major wind projects are targeted, it seems that every sentence about how “we must do something to increase renewable energy” is followed by a sentence saying “but not here - it will spoil the view”. :rolleyes:

8

Bigger issue - Wind power is unreliable, costly, and available only on a small scale and/or in limited locations. In sort, it might be worth investing in a small way, but without going ino the numbers, ther’re far more cost-effective ways to get more juice.

9

You almost never hear about how much space that would have to be filled with turbines to generate any real power. I just imagine that eventually there will be a problem be cause some rare cricket or something lives in an area that is a prime wind power generation area.

10

I happen to really like how these things look. But I can hear the hum it makes for a loooong distance (def. over 400 meters). But I can hear electrical hums from flourecent tubes, transformers, etc. that no one else seems to hear so maybe its just me. (Once spent almost a week trying to find out what the heck was making this humming noise before finding it was the transformer of the plug on my roommates cordless phone. Drove me nuts but he couldn’t hear it at all.).
This is why I was asking about noise. I’ve heard of all the complaints about aesthetics, danger to birds, etc etc but nothing on noise polution.
I like the concept. Think it would be viable, but I know that I for one would definitely be affected if it made that electrical hum near anywhere I lived. Which makes me wonder if it would affect wildlife with more sensitive hearing or at the least limit where these things can be built.

11

The major problem with windpower is the unpredictibility of it’s availability. There is no practical way to store the energy generated, so it can only offset use of alternatives when it is available.

In order to meet demand at any time, a utility must have a backup for all of it’s wind capacity. Thus investment in wind machines is in addition to, not instead of, investment in conventional generation sources.

In all cases, this capital expenditure is a significant percentage of the total cost of generation. So the fact that the “fuel” is free doesn’t offset the cost nearly as much as the naive presume. In the case of gas fired generation, the fuel is expensive, and the plants relitively cheap, resulting in high fuel expense, but that is worst case.

In the case of nuclear power, for example, it was quoted to be by the chief engineer of the Ringhals, Sweden power station, that fuel (Pu) cost was less then 5% of thier total cost of production. The reactors were deliberatly run at reduced effiency in order to minimize required overhauls, and maximize longevity, lowering total cost.

12

Every elctric system needs a good portion of dispatchable energy, energy that can be called on when needed. Wind does not really fit this need.

13

Wind power isn’t a black and white issue.

The positive aspect include it has no fuel costs, variable costs (routine maintenence) are very low, and capital costs are managable.

The negative aspects are that it may not be available when it is needed the most (not much of a breeze blowing when the temperature hits 100), other generation must be available to instantly supplement the variable output of a wind plant, and it suffers from NIMBY issues.

But each utility can accept a small portion of its generation from wind and benefit both economically and environmentally. The trick is trying to determine the correct percentage of wind power in the total generation mix.

That small portion per utility adds up to thousands of megawatts of wind capacity that can still be developed in the USA. That’s thousands of MW that don’t put smoke into the air. Hence, happy tree hippies.

14

Anyone done any studies on how these things may or may not just fsck-up the environment? The butterfly effect and all…

15

I raised this point on Una’s board, and none of the [extremely qualified] energy professionals thought it would be a problem.

Intuitively, I think there almost has to be a problem in sucking gigawatts of energy out of the atmosphere. What about downwind hydrographics, temperature, etc. What impact will all of that have on local flora and fauna?

The TANSTAAFL philosophy and all that.

16

I can’t quite tell if you’re being serious in your “butterfly effect” reference. But as I understand it the whole point of the “butterfly effect” is to illustrate that small changes in a system can have drastic, unpredictable results in the long term. Emphasis on unpredictable. The thing is, a butterfly flapping it’s wings would probably be just as likely to prevent a hurricane from occuring as to cause one. Same with a windmill spinning. So in the long run, on average, building a bunch of windmills isn’t likely to have some sort of disasterous impact on the global environment, at least not due to chaotic effects. (I don’t really know about Cerowyn’s “sucking energy out of the atmosphere” comment, but I kind of doubt we’d be able to build enough windmills to affect global windpatterns in a significant way.) I think the worst we’re looking at here is a bunch of chopped-up birds.

IANACTEEME (I Am Not A Chaos Theorist, Environmental Engineer, Meteorologist, Etc.)

17

Anyone done any research on how the cross sections of all the buildings in the US affect the wind patterns of the environment? I’m guessing that any windfarm would be insignificant compared to, say, a major city with skyscrapers.

18

My company owns a windfarm and I’ve stood underneath them while they were operating. I could hear a distinct wooshing sound (kind of like a muted bottlerocket) with every spin of the blades. I think you wouldn’t notice it for very long and I don’t see anyway that someone from a distance could hear them. As for being aesthetically unappealing, I would assume that people used to say that about power lines as well.

In addition to being unreliable and more expensive than coal-generated electricity, our windfarm produces the most electricity in the spring and fall when we need it the least.

19

Where we live there are hundreds of wind turbines around.

They’re ugly but then the alternative is to stare at brown slopes which aren’t that eyecatching anyway. The only time I really notice them is at night when instead of a nice dark star-filled sky, you see a nice dark star-filled sky with hundreds of red flashing lights on the hills.

I think they would irk me less if I knew the power was being used locally but I’ve yet to see any proof of that. My husband’s theory is that they can only create enough power to flash those little red lights.

On one of my falconry lists someone posted an article about birds adapting to the turbines, even using them to get away from predators but I can’t find it now. Sorry!

Puget Sound Energy to buy 2nd wind farm.

20

Can we collectively please stop using the term “butterfly effect” and the associated (but not synonymous) “chaos theory” in the wildly inappropriate fashion to indicate that some minor, unforeseen modfication will result in an out-of-control positive feedback loop? The term “butterfly effect” pertains to a specific technical concept (the Lorentz “strange” attractor) that posits that in complex interdependant systems development is based upon high sensitivity to initial conditions and that the resultant behavior is progressively more difficult to predict with time despite the fact that the underlying mechanics are deterministic.

The famous (and excellent) Ray Bradbury short story which has given popular enthusiam for the notion of “chaos theory” as a radical instrument of change used Loretz’ nomenclature for dramatic effect, but wasn’t any more realistic about the theory than it was about time travel. There’s no reason to believe that natural selection, for instance, is so perturbative that the premature death of a single insect would radically alter evolutionary history, and indeed modern most evolutionary scientists argue strenuously against the notion that a single incidence of a mutation would or could race through a population resulting in a radical alteration.

Similarly, a small, local alteration of wind patterns isn’t going to cause a massive shift in climate any more than taking a canteen of water from a stream is going to cause a massive drought at the terminus; indeed, chaos theory (or complex adaptive theory, as it has grown into) observes that large systems are often predictable in their gross behavior even though their localized or detail behavior is chaotic. The “butterfly effect” speaks to our inability to predict future behavior rather than the implied radically unstable nature of complex system.

So for all that is good and holy, please stop perpetuating the misuse of these terms.

As for the OP; windpower is clean, no doubt, and cheap, but maintainence is labor-intensive, output is variable (though with the proper location not as badly as may be imagined), ideal locations are sparse, and the footprint is enormous compared with traditional centralized powerplants. The noise pollution is a factor, as are local environmental impacts which further limits site selection. Ultimately, wind is and will remain a good alternative source which is completely renewable but unsuited to the energy requirements of dense populations. As a power supply for off-grid applications, or as a supplement to other sources it deserves attention, but conventional wind-turbine generators are not going to provide for foreseen needs and on that basis lack sustainability.

Some undervalued uses of windpower, however, might be in the use of industry–essentially high tech windmills–which can accomodate variable winds and production capacity, and as supplement propulsion for ocean-going transports. If nanoscale energy generation ever becomes feasable, wind powered nanoelectric-generators, utilizing pressure differences or magnetoaerodynamics might be sprayed on building surfaces or suspended in the air to make electricity or act as power sources for chemical reactors to build fuel, but such technologies are highly speculative, better suited to the back pages of Scientific American rather than above the fold in the Wall Street Journal.

Stranger