Wind turbines

[Birdseye]

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I personally think they are much more beautiful than a coal fired power station.

In that case water turbines are even more beautiful; you can't see them.

[Mike Borgelt]

A single wind turbine may not cause much of a problem but do remember that there are tip vortices off the blades. Now get an array of turbines and the right wind direction when you pull megawatts out of the air and some of the vortices align and reinforce. I'd give them about 5km clearance on the downwind side. At least. Maybe more under certain weather conditions- low inversion etc

 

As for environmental effects, they are noisy close up and within a few kilometers with infrasound as well. US DOE did a study on this about 20 to 30 years ago and the infrasound causes problems INSIDE houses which are worse than immediately outside. This study seems to have been buried. They kill raptors and bats but the companies get a free pass while a coal or oil or gas company would be heavily fined or shut down. You'd better hope that they produce more energy over their lifetime than went into manufacturing, transporting, installing and maintaining them or your civilisation runs down.

 

Nobody would consider putting up a wind farm (actually they are tax farms) if it wasn't for the subsidies and the fact that the RET means that the power companies MUST buy all the wind energy when it is available. Which means that the coal or gas power station must vary its output and can't make enough money to be economical as it would be happy running at close to full load 24/7. Gas plants which can't vary the load easily are combined cycle plants and are much more efficient than open cycle gas turbine plants which can.

 

With wind you need to provide backup for the times when the wind doesn't blow. Backup can be coal, gas, nuclear, hydro, pumped hydro or batteries. Factor in that expense and the price of electricity is many times that of coal or nuclear generation.

 

If you don't like CO2 go nuke.

 

BTW the climate has been about what it is now for around the last 10,000 years. Sometimes warmer, sometimes colder but on a cooling trend since about 8000 years ago (know as the Holocene optimum). Check out the Greenland ice core record. 20,000 years ago where Chicago is now was under a mile of ice (probably not a bad idea actually). The level of CO2 at the end of the last ice age was getting into the range where a whole class of plants gets stressed and much lower,die. Go to 100ppm and even the plants adapted to low CO2 die. Then all the animals, including us.

 

Now it may be feasible to go "Wind Farms + Solar Farms (PV & Mirror/molten salt) + pumped hydro & batteries" (with occasional blackouts and compulsory demand management) but any company making stuff will re-locate to other jurisdictions outside Australia where only lip service is paid to the green madness, if at all. There won't be any jobs here for you or your kids. The public service is not a wealth generator.

 

 

[Marty_d]

That's an interesting opinion. Pity no reputable scientist shares it.

 

 

[Jabiru7252]

All the wind turbines, solar panels and other 'green' energy supplies are a waste of time if we don't reverse our population growth. God help the kids who'll be around in 50 years or so.

 

 

[kgwilson]

The ANU study released last September identified 22,000 potential pumped hydro sites which could store 1000 times the energy that Australia could ever conceivably need. A tiny fraction of those could transition Australia into 100% renewable energy within 2 decades See Pumped Hydro Storage . The only issue is we have a government with no forward energy policy bankrolled by the coal and fossil fuel industries with right wingers who only think about getting re-elected so they sensationalise ignorant and incorrect (read fake news) information to the ignorant and gullible public.

 

The climate has always changed from ice ages to there being no polar caps, but has never changed at such a rapid rate as it is now with our help. You can't just take all the fossil fuel out of the ground that took many millions of years to accumulate & burn most of it in under 200 years and expect that there will be no effect on the climate.

 

Banks and venture capitalists are way smarter than politicians. None of them will have anything to do with financing fossil fuel energy and industries but they are falling over themselves to finance wind & solar. The new Liverpool range wind farm is a prime example. 267 turbines over 36km creating 1000MW enough to power half a million homes.

 

 

[Mick]

It still beats me how solar can be called “renewable” energy. Once those rays of sunshine have been converted to electricity or heat they are gone, used, kaput. There is no reusing or renewing that energy! The sun has a finite amout of energy. Once its gone thats it!!!!

 

 

[Methusala]

The Snowy 2.0 is a total crock! I have been interested in hydro power since I was a kid and dad worked for Kaiser on the Tumut developments. The mainstream media do not do the slightest of due diligence when reporting the outrageous claims made for this fantasy. eg. Whenever an article appears the length of the tunnel connecting Tantangara to Talbingo is quoted as somewhere around 27km. Any map reader shows that the shortest distance between these points is around double that. Many highly qualified engineers have given back of the envelope costings of over $8b but the jounalists stick doggedly to Turnbull's headline figure of $2b. The difference in elevation between Tantangara and Talbingo (head) is in excess of 750m. There are no hydro plants in the world that operate with this great a head. The only one that I am aware of is in Russia which suffered a catastrophic failure accounting for fatalaties. Then the distance involved puts extreme loads in regulating a column of water many, many km in length and over 12m dia with a velocity of 3m/s. There are many sites around Australia which are more practical for development of pumped hydro but they don't have the political cache of " The Mighty Snowy Scheme".

 

Don't be mislead, this is simply PR BS designed to make Turnbull appear to have substance!

 

 

[Guest Guest]

I flew over several wind farms today and saw no blades turning. Good flying conditions though.

That's cause most are out of diesel at the moment, there's a shortage on! -:)

[Guest Guest]

It still beats me how solar can be called “renewable” energy. Once those rays of sunshine have been converted to electricity or heat they are gone, used, kaput. There is no reusing or renewing that energy! The sun has a finite amout of energy. Once its gone thats it!!!!

...once it's gone then nothing else matters!! -:)

 

 

[tillmanr]

I have just finished driving through Nederlands, Belgium, France and Germany witnessing many hundreds of wind turbines,

 

There were thousands of live flying birds but no mounds of dead ones beneath the fans.

 

Further, it appears that Europeans are able to reside within a couple of hundred meters of the wind turbines without suffering mysterious ailments.

 

Maybe our birds deserve to follow natural selection and fly into the blades.

 

 

[Guest Guest]

I have just finished driving through Nederlands, Belgium, France and Germany witnessing many hundreds of wind turbines,There were thousands of live flying birds but no mounds of dead ones beneath the fans.Further, it appears that Europeans are able to reside within a couple of hundred meters of the wind turbines without suffering mysterious ailments.

 

Maybe our birds deserve to follow natural selection and fly into the blades.

This is Australia, we are behind with most things related to technology! Progress isn't in our Govts mantra!

 

 

[M61A1]

I have just finished driving through Nederlands, Belgium, France and Germany witnessing many hundreds of wind turbines,There were thousands of live flying birds but no mounds of dead ones beneath the fans.Further, it appears that Europeans are able to reside within a couple of hundred meters of the wind turbines without suffering mysterious ailments.

 

Maybe our birds deserve to follow natural selection and fly into the blades.

Maybe, but they still have nuclear and fossil fuel plants when when it's dark and still.

[boleropilot]

we need more pirates.....and less migrants - wait a minute - what if we only allowed pirates to migrate to Australia - let's face it, I'm a fkn genius.....

 

BP

 

 

[fly_tornado]

That's an interesting opinion. Pity no reputable scientist shares it.

I know a mate, who swears his mate knows of two pilots who have been blinded flying over solar farms

 

 

[boleropilot]

flying over solar farms is a bit like flying through the blades of a wind turbine - another two fun things on my bucket list to do while I still have an aircraft....

 

if I can't have DARWIN AWARD WINNER engraved on my tombstone there's sum fing wong

 

BP

 

 

[facthunter]

How can a solar array absorb energy and reflect more at the same time? If you flew near one of those reflective molten salt thingo's it would be another matter but that's not likely.. It's focused on the salt bit. The life of the Sun is not affected by how many solar panels we have. The same energy gets here and when we use the electricity it's final form is heat that remains. Look up entropy. Nev

 

 

[fly_tornado]

its like the ultrasonic vibrations coming from the tips of turbine blade, you can't hear or see them but they can easily travel 20 kms and damage you

 

 

[facthunter]

By ultrasonic you mean faster than sound, or do you mean above human hearing range/ frequency?.. Sound measuring equipment (and dogs) can detect that. Nev

 

 

[fly_tornado]

ultrasound is a silent killer

 

 

[Old Koreelah]

!

 

Maybe, but they still have nuclear and fossil fuel plants when when it's dark and still.

Just like the first few decades of coal-burners; we also had backup energy sources as the new technology was phased in.

[M61A1]

!Just like the first few decades of coal-burners; we also had backup energy sources as the new technology was phased in.

The problem I see with the current green mindset is that we will end up with poor solutions to the problem at great expense, both monetarily and environmentally, because they just want to implement anything other than coal, gas or nuclear. why cant we use more efficient models of fossil fuel generation, or just go modern nuclear, until we come up with a viable solution?The current "renewables" technology is not up to the task. The same people bitch about the F-35, are the ones encouraging our govt to do the same with electricity generation.

 

"Renewables" would be a great thing, but lets get it right, not end up committed to some half baked, expensive, yet inappropriate rubbish.

 

 

[fly_tornado]

The funny thing is all that coal, is it's full of heavy metals, which once airborne, ends up in the food chain. I was reading about the secondary pollution in China and how its working into the food chain around the world. The only way the Chinese can ensure their food stuffs are toxin free now is too import food, which means buying up Australian farms. My tip would be definitely not to buy farmed prawns from Asia.

 

 

[facthunter]

Heavy metals do get leached out from open cut mines. They use the water to spray around reduce dust but this concentrates the pollution further and it disperses in the dust.to surrounding areas. My grandfather died slowly from Silicosis from working in Newcastle's coal mines in the mid forties. Black lung disease is occurring again now. Nev

 

 

[Old Koreelah]

The problem I see with the current green mindset is that we will end up with poor solutions to the problem at great expense, both monetarily and environmentally, because they just want to implement anything other than coal, gas or nuclear. why cant we use more efficient models of fossil fuel generation, or just go modern nuclear, until we come up with a viable solution?...

I've been reading that rhetoric for about four decades: "today we burn fossil fuels, tomorrow we capture solar".When big business recognises that renewables are cheaper and more quickly brought on line than coal nuclear, why are our leaders still flogging the coal horse?

 

 

[fly_tornado]

Even a domestic solar system has got a 11% return on investment, imagine the sort of money those big solar farms are making