Redpill me on wind turbines

It just seems like a government tax scam to me. They've put up hundreds with the intention of putting up hundreds more around where I live. They're affecting people's lives, but continue to build them because giving poor farmers 10,000 for each on their property is too hard to turn down. The land owners are the only ones benefiting from them, but everyone else has to look at them, hear them, and see their constant red blinking lights at night time.

Other urls found in this thread:

cleantechnica.com/2017/02/01/us-clean-energy-jobs-surpass-fossil-fuel-jobs-5-1/
gcaptain.com/germany-trumpets-first-subsidy-free-offshore-wind-farm/
arstechnica.com/science/2017/03/german-institute-successfully-tests-underwater-energy-storage-sphere/
youtube.com/watch?v=KTtmU2lD97o
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium-based_nuclear_power
youtube.com/watch?v=jY5rKYsmaMY
twitter.com/SFWRedditVideos

I know they're damn near useless over here where you get a moderately dry, hot day and they all freaking stop because there's no wind.

they kill birds

i completely support renewable energy and i know turbines work, but they should be isolated. i feel bro, trubines are ugly and annoying as fuck. wish we had a better energy source

Why not just put a little motor in there to keep it turning?

Kinda defeats the purpose, Chang.

Get fucked they do not make noise.

Just run the motor off the spinning motion
>being this Australian

Renewables collectively employ more people than the coal/oil industry and don't give the workers black lung nor do far less damage to the environment than killing some birds/ruining some views.

Not everything is a god damn conspiracy. And if anything, you probably don't like them because people you dislike do and simply find reasons to dislike them to justify it...which is petty as fuck, if true.

Some numbers:

cleantechnica.com/2017/02/01/us-clean-energy-jobs-surpass-fossil-fuel-jobs-5-1/

FUCK, THAT'S SUCH A GOOD IDEA WHY DIDN'T THE ENGINEERS THINK OF THAT?

Renewables employ lots of women to sit around air conditioned offices (snacking and getting fat) while sucking money out of do-nothing green government initiatives. That hardly counts.

Fuck you I was only pretending to be retarded

You don't need any practice.

I wasn't practicing dumbass
>being this American

>you probably don't like them because people you dislike do and simply find reasons to dislike them to justify it...which is petty as fuck, if true.

What a weird fucking argument to project onto me.

No one around here benefits from them besides the land owners. Anyone who lives close to them has to deal with the constant hum and their incessant blinking lights at night. They impact the wild life. They are also ugly as fuck to look at. I moved to the country for the quiet and scenery and now I have to look at those fucking things raping the sky line.

windows kill more birds every year than wind turbines

ban assault windows

They're interrupting migration routes. In the country the wild life is also a renewable resource that produces revenue through hunting licenses. These things are fucking up the goose and duck seasons. Not to mention fields once used for crops or nesting grounds for pheasants and turkeys.

I drove by a whole bunch of them between Indianapolis and Chicago last year, it looked pretty cool imo

what's the downside

>They're affecting people's lives,
>everyone else has to look at them, hear them, and see their constant red blinking lights at night time.
This is the first time I've ever heard of this complaint.

Are you sure you're not just being a little salty bitch because you're not a farmer gaining literally free money from the government?

they suck because their power generation cant provide a base load for the elecrical grid and cant reliably produce during peak consumption hours as wind patterns dont coicide with human activity, and we have no vaible grid level storage capability. If the wind is blowing and we're sleeping, then its power is wasted. So why not ship it to areas of need with power lines? We can but at resistive losses which can be significant. Furthermore, along with solar, is a diffuse energy source. It requires high acreage per unit of power produced.

Now for the engineering. There is a trade off between what percentage of time you want them to be turning and the amount of power they produce when they are turning. This is called the capacity factor. It is defined as the fraction energy produced over the maximum energy they could produce ( capacity ). a big wind turbine will produce lots pf power when it spins but will spin less often. By designing the size and blade pitch etc. you can engineer an optimal capacity factor for the environment of the turbine.

Presently, the highest capacity factors for wind turbines is about 30 percent. That means that they only produce 30% of their rated fucking capacity! When you hear a politician speak about renewable energy capacity, this is what they quote, the best the system could do of it was blowing all the time or if the sun was shining all the time.

Guess what the capacity factor for nuclear is.
C > 90

You're a fucking idiot. I bet OP lives in OK. These cock suckers are everywhere and they are distroying property values left and right and we don't even benefit from the electricity it's sent west.

Not at all. I live in a beautiful area. It's mostly farm land and forests. Imagine you buy a piece of property in the middle of nowhere and enjoy the seclusion and the natural beauty of a place that is far from he bullshit of big cities. Now imagine your neighbors sign off on building a dozen huge wind turbines right next to you and you can't sleep at night because there's a constant red flashing light in your windows and a maddening low hum that never stops. Not to mention your view now completely fucked by having these ugly ass things standing 100 + feet in every direction.

>claims to live in a place full of forests, farms, and nothing
>"im so secluded XD"
>his bedroom view is blocked by windmills
Calling bullshit

Post pics of bedroom view

Lots of fucking idiots in this thread, look up the number of Bald Eagle kill permits issued to wind farms every year, it's in the hundreds. Yeah, Bald Eagles are known for flying into windows.

The fact of the matter is the turbines are unsightly, negatively impact wildlife (the prairie chicken will go extinct due to wind farms, look it up yourself) and are horribly inefficient, if the wind isn't blowing they don't make power and the maintenance is astronomical.

Will someone please think of the explosive bats!?

1. Wind turbines are good stuff if built in windy areas.

2. Wind turbines power generation has a direct relationship with how much wind there is - but the relationship is cubed. In an area with half as much wind as a windy area, power generation is 1/8th. As a result, wind turbines essentially only make way off the coast of a country.

3. Germany is now building the first unsubsidized off shore wind park. gcaptain.com/germany-trumpets-first-subsidy-free-offshore-wind-farm/

4. You can save the excess electricity generated during peak wind times in large concrete underwater hollow balls. arstechnica.com/science/2017/03/german-institute-successfully-tests-underwater-energy-storage-sphere/

>It just seems like a government tax scam to me

It is, they still work and have potencial, but they take like 100 years to pay itself.

They kill shitloads of birds.

I too store my excess energy in my large balls.

>live in west texas
>turbines everywhere
>libcucks from the east & west coasts can't make sense of it

They're puzzled by how a backwards red state full of evil oil has been outpacing the rest of the country in adopting their coveted progressive "green energy" solutions. I don't think I'll ever get tired of their confusion.

As an Renewable Energy engineer I can tell you for a fact that if you can hear (to a level where it's actively disturbing) a wind turbine/wind turbine park working then the people that designed it have failed at doing their job because noise pollution and proximity to local residences are one of the first things researched when drafting up a proper wind park RE proposal. As far as looks and blinking lights go it's not really considered a factor due to subjectivity, I mean you can get anybody to say that anything ever looks bad, you can't deny progress off of that basis.

Now as far at tech goes, it's pretty sweet, one of the most advanced and better developed forms of RE harnessing. Great performance coefficient, takes little space relative to wattage given, for the most part easy maintenance (unless talking about offshore parks or high energy turbines), easy to scale for higher demand. If the terrain, elevation and wind potential (things that should be researched well beforehand by using setting up a net) are prime then it's a solid investment for both a state and a corporation to make assuming it has the infrastructure to support it, because it's tricky and the biggest negative of Wind Turbine technology.

>OP actually stopped posting when asked to post his window view

Better than solar for the environment, but still pretty shitty. Everyone should have their own (smaller) turbine.

Dude, i think you just invented overunity.

>ugly
Ugly compared to what?

It takes 20-30 years just to recoup the energy required to build them. That doesn't include the cost of maintenance.

A literal lie, the worst offenders when it comes to that are solar panels but even then you are looking closer to a decade that 30 years.

What's (((your))) agenda?

I dealt with a couple windfarm cos for Altamont.
Were unreliable to a point of insanity. Company after co went tits up. They have their act more together now, but without tax breaks and subsidies there'd be no wp.

Don't these things have a nominal output power of below 40% on avarage with some month being as low as 5%?
They are a huge fucking meme and I pity anyone who has to live near them.

The "problem" with RE projects is that many of the mandatory steps outlined in a study are skipped because of incompetence of just as likely greed (especially when government funding is involved).

Noise pollution, support systems, cost and accessibility of maintenance, environmental ramifications, motherfucking property rights/permission for where the park is being designed for, wind potential daily data for at least 1 year that give predictions about power production more accurate with current tech that people can believe, all of these are mandatory steps in a proper study that get outright skipped at times.

current worldwide energy consumption: 14 TW
if the whole fucking surface of the earth was covered in windturbines, ALL OF IT, they would max. produce 4 TW...

you should watch this video guys, quite eyeopening
youtube.com/watch?v=KTtmU2lD97o

>affecting people's lives
What? They're only loud right next to them and they purposely put them in isolated places or at seat to avoid that.

>seat
Sea even

Fucking this. Can confirm, I live in OK and fucking hate windmills. They've ruined my beautiful back country and are wildly inefficient.

Wind turbines are pretty aesthetic

I like wind turtles.

Also, they work and the industry slowly develops more cost-efficient models.

The main point about them is that you have to put them at a good height to get constant, strong winds.

They kill birdses.
Birdses shit on your car.

From what I researched, the limiting factor are cranes and their max height.

Up to 125m it's cost efficient to build taller wind towers, but at 150m renting the crane gets more expensive.

Ok why don't they put a series of incredibly heavy weights on threaded rods into the tower (maybe a wider base too) and have the wind power raise the weights before generating power. Then at peak hours you let the weights drop and turn the internal turbine at least for a bit

My dad works at Vattenfall (Swedish state electric company) and he says SAFE nuclear power is the only real sulotion for the ever growing population.

I thought it was funny, Japan. Good post.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium-based_nuclear_power

This shit could actually save this fucked up world.

youtube.com/watch?v=jY5rKYsmaMY

Energy is not created but transformed.
Howbmany of them are going to be build before wind thermals are affected?

we have some wind turbines in my country, they are good 'cause we have a lot of wind all the time, but only problem is that the strongest ones can only take 80m/s of wind. (179mph)
one broke a couple of years ago, but it was because of a error, (it didn't break or something.)
its only a matter of time before some of them will snap
anyway, its better than burning coal/oil
i guess hot countries should invest in solar power or something, something green.
(btw i dont give a shit about global warming, thinking more about getting ''free energy'' so that our ships and cars can run on oil longer)
you fuckers already polluted our whales and fish so i dont give a shit about half the countries going to shit because of global warming, floods etc. it wouldn't affect us as badly as you.

To what part of my post are you referring? If you are talking about the infrastructure part I was talking about power network comparability, not the actual construction of the columns (although depending on the location that can be a big deal as well and costly as fuck).

It is a fact that the power produced by wind parks is low quality especially in regards to it's frequency which can result in blackouts if not corrected before being introduced into the wider power grid (which has happened here in Greece more specifically in Crete during the boom in RE investment a decade or so ago.)

I'm glad France backed off from moving away from their nuclear power investments after the Fukushima scare. Better and more importantly safer nuclear fission reactors are a step forward but the real deal, the real breakthrough, is stable nuclear fusion. We are ways away from that one tho.

Hello my nordic brother/sister!

I love German engineering.

I love American humor.

Wow, someone on /pol actually pretending to give a shit about the environment. This is fucking rich, folks. I'm screencapping this.

If you read the link I posted, Thorium-based nuclear power is "stable"

I hear that Sweden and Norway are good at harvesting energy from water dams

Are you still pretending to be retarded, or do you believe fat women snacking on pretzels are developing (and building) windmills?

Guys.... Birds aren't that important.

Yeah but we harm the fish/life in the rivers by doing so. We build seperate ponds to keep the fish alive by the dams though.

No particular part. Maybe in general, if we could put them up at greater heights, they would work in any place in almost the world.

Wind is a business for companies. It's nothing for the individual pro-sumer.

you would need a really strong, constant force to do that and wind is not very strong and anything but constant

Developing and using thorium based nuclear reactors is an evolution of the currently existing fission technology, a big leap in regards to efficiency for sure, but fission is not the long term answer to solving the energy crisis permanently, fusion is.

Using thorium to produce the isotopes still carries all the negatives of conventional nuclear reactors (and a few more) that being the risk factor (both in the facility itself and in the more general sense of having nuclear power plants in untrustworthy countries) and the waste factor.

Another avenue that is criminally overlooked (at least when talking about high yield power production and not consumer grade residential technology) is high entropy geothermal power, but that is a different subject.

>see their constant red blinking lights at night time.
Try closing your eyes next time you sleep

I thought Thorium yielded less harmful waste that can't be weaponized.

I'm just an historian not a nuclear physicist, so my knowledge in the subject is VERY limited.

Are you off the grid? Cause if you don't need that electricity, I guess you wouldn't benefit from em. I agree about the blinking lights, the only thing I hate about em. Otherwise I reckon they are dang purdy, I see em most everyday. Oh, and cows love em for that shade.

Why is everyone on Sup Forums not believe in climate change or that the Earth is flat. I have a feeling a lot of you get bullied.

Delicious!

Yes 99% of our energy is hydro technically. But we sell energy surplus to europe, and buy energy when it's low.

They are a decent source of power, but summer from a huge case of diminishing returns.
When built in prime areas, they can produce electricity at competitive return on investment. That's why every first wind park built in most countries makes a profit. The problem is that the next one built will be in a slightly less ideal place, the thrid even less ideal, and very soon you reach a point where they are no longer profitable, and eventually cannot compete at all.
Offshore parks seem to be a decent solution, but you get the same problems here. To get full use, you need to build them in high-wind areas, but high winds mean bigger waves, more strain, and thus higher initial investment costs. Also, you need to transport the generated electricity to where it is used, usualyl on-shore, and building a subsea electrical cable is risky business, and the longer it is, the bigger the chance of a break is.
They are cool in concept and theoretically work, but in practice, they are too limited by geography to be a viable major source of power. They can work as an addition, but you will always need more relaiable sources as your primary source.

...

Sup Forums is natsoc and natsoc is pro conservation

... how is the fact more people are needed to sustain a power system a good thing? Unless the implication is that they are going to get paid next to nothing, that implies they are already going to involve five times the cost per kilo-watt in terms of labour than an oil plant, and that's just retarded.

We don't go around destroying looms because we want more people to be involve in the making of fabric for obvious reason, what makes anyone think we want that for our power?

The waste produced is low radio-toxicity waste but over time it can still be harvested into functional warheads or be used (via the use of laser and chemical treatments to be fair but that technology is still young with little vested interest right now but I easily see it getting a lot more interest if thorium becomes the standard) to supplement already existing uranium 233 stock to create a bomb.

Like I said, a step forward but not panacea.

>Renewables collectively employ more people than the coal/oil industry
We're fixing that

I want to stab your fucking dick for being so fucking stupid or a blatant liar.

Bump

Gas yourself

Pretty much agree to everything you said. On-shore hybrid stations and offshore wind parks are the easiest thing to implement with existing tech and logical next step in regards to RE applications.

What?

Uranium 233 for bombs?
Using Laser to separate 232 from the sludge rather than pyrolisis?
The thorium reaction generating enough material to build a bomb before it half-life decays it?

Nigga, you are the reason why we don't have nuclear power: because you are an absolute retard who doesn't know he is a retard.

U-233 can be used for bombs, but requires a much larger quantity to reach critical mass and is more prone to impurity thatn U-235.
As for half-life, U-233 has one of 160,000 years. The other materials in the Thorium process, Th-233 and Pa-233 have very short half-lives and are thus useless as bomb material, so while it is not ideal for bomb-making it is possible to use.

The issue isn't the 233, it's the 232 and it's decay line. The purities required to reach usable bomb 233 from a thorium reactor are two orders of magnitude greater than the one needed for plutonium, and even greater than that for uranium 238. Like saying you can make and arrow head with a spoon is technically possible, it's not practically possible or even engineerlingly possible. The issue is not the decay of 233, the issue is the decay of 232 and how it causes further decay, thus making it beyond difficult to accumulate enough 233 in a way where the 232 won't murder you before collecting enough for a bomb.

They generate around 49% of Denmark's energy and by god they're useless compared to some good old nuclear energy.

Wind, along with solar, were and are shilled by the oil industry in order to suppress the nuclear industry.

Oil/coal/gas was at real risk of being put out of business by nuclear, so they sponsored pro wind/solar campaigns, knowing full well that wind/solar would never be able to replace fossil fuels.

Environmentalist hippies took the bait because they're gullible idealists, and too dumb to understand how nuclear power works or do their own research.

Both wind and solar are great technologies with many useful applications, but they will never replace fossil as a primary energy source.

The end game is to have a diverse mix of renewable energy spanning a wide area, combined with storage. More renewable energy will push power prices down, since there's no fuel cost once the capital is built. Thanks to China, costs are plummeting.

Base load is a meme

>the only ones benefiting from them

except for all the people getting electricity without breathing in shit