CLICK ON THE PICTURES TO SEE THEM FULL SIZED, YOU WILL SEE HUNDREDS OF THESE IN THE BACKGROUND.
It went on for miles and miles. I was amazed at what I saw.
At the bottom of each windmill was a little transformer about the size of a house transformer. 4X4'See it there? Now note the size of the generator, remember it's the size of a Chevy Suburban.
Suddenly as I looked around I noticed something was missing. With all those big generators all running at full tilt (a little windmill humor there) I began to ask myself:
WHERE ARE THE HIGH LINES?I've been to Hoover Dam. I've been to the Byron Nuclear plant, I've been to the coal fired power plants in western ND. They all have huge substations accumulating the generated electricity and then sending it out on huge powerlines into the energy grid.
I saw none. Nothing. Nada. For the naysayer among you, High Tension (that means lots of volts) can't be done underground. There is too much line voltage loss to go low voltage even if you were to use a very large shielded cable
There are no power lines leading away from this wind farm.
NONE!
Which only can lead me to this conclusion. It's all a scam. The only thing those big generators generate is making people feel good, Florida Power and Lights to generate real electricity because of the offset, government matching payments and the real reason to run those big generators;
TO POWER THAT LITTLE BLINKING LIGHT ON TOP
This is why government needs to stay out of the energy regulation and encouragement business. Ethanol is a big enough scam, this may be worse.
Just to put this all in perspective and helping to understand why this is so foolish, the whole world's capacity to produce electricity from wind power is 90 MW.
That assumes they all turn all the time which isn't the case.
That's in the whole world. Global. All of them. Together. Got it?
ONE NUCLEAR PLANT in Southport North Carolina produces 1875 MW. Over 20 times as much as all the wind power in the whole world.
NOW, contrast that to all the nuclear plants operating in the world. As of 2007, the IAEA reported there are 435 nuclear power reactors in operation in the world, operating in 31 different countries.
Where do YOU think we should be putting our resources and economic incentives?
How much bridge building money has been flushed down this sewer of windpower?
8 comments:
it is the likes of you that destroy the reputation of the internet as a source of accurate information.
facts:
- white wind farm
- soley independently owned by navitas, not government paid for
- 103 towers, not 1000
- not finished yet, as you can SEE blades on the ground in areas
- power is send via underground wired from each tower to the whtie substation, which is several miles from the wind farm and apparently the wires from that substation were too far away for you to see or you missed it
it took me about 15 minutes to research this on the web.
and you DARE to complain about biased media
Angry,
I'm not convinced it's the same farm. Look at how many towers are already up. I saw more than a hundred for sure. Maybe 1000 is hyperbole but I didn't count. I only know that I drove for 20 miles and saw tower group after tower group and there were never fewer than 20 towers in a bunch. I saw no substation. I still believe the physics of moving that much power (or not) underground doesn't really work.
On the other hand, lets suppose it's for real.
200 MW = 1/10th the amount one nuclear plant produces. And you despoil all that land. It looks like heck. I would think with all your prairie emphasis you wouldn't be happy about digging up native praire to do this foolishness.
And
It will provide 10-12 JOBS. Big hairy deal. A new McDonalds would provide more. This is just dumb and you know it.
It's all a scam for suckers who believe in the fairy godmother of windpower.
I think small windpower projects for small usage on site with less elaborate systems make sense. Pumping water, oil, compressing air for storage and generation.
This is just silly and a subsidy driven dumb program to get votes from stupid people.
It might be the Minn-Dakota project that has 50 towers in SD and about 100 in MN. But privately owned too, and not completed yet. All of these farms bury the cables from the towers to the nearest substation. Locating near a substation is as important a factor often as locating in a high wind area, as it is cost prohibitive to build new distribution systems.
It is hard to find information on them, so I see why Gene was so lazy. If it were a government scam, you'd think they'd spend a little MORE money promoting it?
Gene, as soon as you solve that little issue of nuclear waste, your way might make sense.
The wind farms are on about 100 acres. On the edges of agricultural acres. The land is still farmable, except for the tiny footprint of the tower. What land is 'despoiled'? As soon as SD cleans up the acres of rusted cars and farm machinery and sagging barns, I will feel sorry for them about the wind towers. Some find them beautiful. If indeed, it only takes 10 of these to equal a nuclear power plant, they are the best idea since sliced bread. There is more than enough acreage in JUST SD or JUST ND or JUST KS or JUST NE or JUST WI or JUST OK or JUST MN or JUST TX to replace ALL the nuclear power plants we have now or will ever need. And these wind towers pay for themselves in 2 - 3 months. You have it wrong on this one.
Suckers?
Foolishness?
Stupid people?
It is your blog but some civility might be nice.
You claim:
"Just to put this all in perspective and helping to understand why this is so foolish, the whole world's capacity to produce electricity from wind power is 90 MW.
That assumes they all turn all the time which isn't the case.
That's in the whole world. Global. All of them. Together. Got it?" Are you now certifiably insane? The link you give does not way anything at all LIKE that. In fact, the typical wind farm provides about 80 to 150 MW - about one MW per tower it seems and each tower takes about one acre of land. The world would overlay wind farms over farm land on vast acreages, producing more energy than we could ever use ultimately. I have never seen you make so many errors in one post. Nor have I seen you use such screamingly hysterical caps and red font. Were you drinking when you wrote this one? Mushrooms? This far exceeds your typical level of sloppiness.
Oh, give poor Gene a break. The chart at his link shows the 2007 woeld production as 90,000 MW and I am sure he read that as W not MW which is where he got his 90. It is just a minor order-of-magnitude in math thing. Well, there is the other minor error that this is 2007 and he made it into an all-that-is-possible-ever thing, but hey, he is just doing his job as an alarmist blogger, he isnt a real reporter held to ethics of accuracy or anything.
Nuclear is only another temporary solution. Where shall we put all of the waste? Seriously -- that is a problem. Hauling it all to Yucca mountain means dragging a lot of dangerous waste through populated centers across the nation and putting millions of people at risk. Also, to completely phase out other power sources and go fully nuclear means that the amount of waste generated will require another Yucca mountain-type facility every few years. Building a nuclear reactor now is incredibly expensive and there will not be enough built to keep up with those that will be phased out around the world. This means we need to start looking at other power sources.
I may be dumb and stupid to not believe wind farms are a joke and bad idea, but I think renewable sources of energy, such as wind, solar, water, geothermal, etc., are valid and important to begin developing. Just because our technology is young or flawed, or that we haven't gotten any further than dipping our feet into the water, doesn't mean it should be pursued.
There is going to be a large wind farm put in north of where I live, in Cavalier County, south of Langdon. I think the wind turbines are rather like sculpture, and I'm hoping this works out. Wind energy is a possibility, an alternative, like others, that shouldn't be tossed out in a rush to go all nuclear.
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