Wind Scam

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MSimon
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Wind Scam

Post by MSimon »

I have a couple of posts up on the wind energy scam:

http://powerandcontrol.blogspot.com/200 ... reens.html

http://powerandcontrol.blogspot.com/200 ... -scam.html
Once you start screwing with the market ever more laws are required to make up for the distortions created by the previous set of laws. It never ends and only gets worse.
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.

rnebel
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Post by rnebel »

I don’t have strong opinions about wind power one way or the other, but I suspect that they are going to have some difficult logistics problems. One example of that is Illinois, where M. Simon lives. It’s flat and it has a lot of wind potential. It also has close, large markets in Chicago and St. Louis which makes it attractive.
However, it also has a lot of high quality farmland. Two of my uncles are retired farmers and there is a proposal to put a large wind farm in their area, part of which would be situated on their property. Neither of them is sold on the idea. They are being asked to tie up their property for two generations for these devices. This is a new thing to them and they don’t really know what the downside is going to look like. Their business is farming and they don’t want something that is a pain in the butt and a major distraction, particularly if it is a commitment that’s going to last for two generations. There are a lot of unknowns to them, like what it will do to their property values, what it will do to their tiling systems, and in general just how compatible it will be with their farming operation. Right now, I don’t think either of them is going to sign up.
If wind power is going to be greatly expanded, I suspect that there will be a lot of eminent domain issues. This could get nasty. It probably isn’t a good idea to forcibly place expensive windmills on the property of people who are hostile to it. If they want to develop wind power, they’re going to have to do a lot better selling job than they have to date.

vankirkc
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I agree...

Post by vankirkc »

rnebel wrote:I don’t have strong opinions about wind power one way or the other, but I suspect that they are going to have some difficult logistics problems. One example of that is Illinois, where M. Simon lives. It’s flat and it has a lot of wind potential. It also has close, large markets in Chicago and St. Louis which makes it attractive.
However, it also has a lot of high quality farmland. Two of my uncles are retired farmers and there is a proposal to put a large wind farm in their area, part of which would be situated on their property. Neither of them is sold on the idea. They are being asked to tie up their property for two generations for these devices. This is a new thing to them and they don’t really know what the downside is going to look like. Their business is farming and they don’t want something that is a pain in the butt and a major distraction, particularly if it is a commitment that’s going to last for two generations. There are a lot of unknowns to them, like what it will do to their property values, what it will do to their tiling systems, and in general just how compatible it will be with their farming operation. Right now, I don’t think either of them is going to sign up.
If wind power is going to be greatly expanded, I suspect that there will be a lot of eminent domain issues. This could get nasty. It probably isn’t a good idea to forcibly place expensive windmills on the property of people who are hostile to it. If they want to develop wind power, they’re going to have to do a lot better selling job than they have to date.
Hmm. These don't sound like the words of a man who is about to solve the global energy problem... This makes it seem as though the upside potential of the polywell technology is still very much in doubt, or at least far enough away that practical applications might not be seen anytime soon.

I wonder if we could use the freedom of information act to wring the latest results out of the Navy.

Betruger
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Post by Betruger »

That kind of comment's probably very encouraging for Dr. Nebel to keep posting on this forum.

MSimon
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Post by MSimon »

Here is a YouTube about a wind eminent domain problem:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-sDpASK-YM

The near by turbine is high noise and has made the gentleman's house uninhabitable. Jo Daviess County in Illinois.

Wind farm noise:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucpfqFFf ... re=related

More wind farm noise:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTZtNwp6 ... re=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mablINxg ... re=related

Comment from the above video: I worry about the wind turbine blades coming off and killing me.

A wind turbine failures:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3FZtmlHwcA

Property devaluation:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_utFV2uk ... re=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNxvkrgo ... re=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOd5tSZF ... re=related

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/08/1 ... 19529.html
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.

tomclarke
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Post by tomclarke »

Probably most of the bad things about wind turbines were said about roads, electricity pylons, ...

But wind power is not great - average output much smaller than peak and difficult to see how technology can do much to improve efficiency. Whereas solar is still up for grabs. Even if installation/maintenance cost is more or less fixed, increases in efficiency can win, and are hapenning. No fundamental reason with printed thin-film why they should cost much at all.

I wish ppl were not so prejudiced about fission - it has got a lot better than it used to be...

Tom

MSimon
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Post by MSimon »

tomclarke wrote:Probably most of the bad things about wind turbines were said about roads, electricity pylons, ...

But wind power is not great - average output much smaller than peak and difficult to see how technology can do much to improve efficiency. Whereas solar is still up for grabs. Even if installation/maintenance cost is more or less fixed, increases in efficiency can win, and are hapenning. No fundamental reason with printed thin-film why they should cost much at all.

I wish ppl were not so prejudiced about fission - it has got a lot better than it used to be...

Tom
Road noise is a problem. However, it can be ameliorated with noise barriers. I don't see that possibility with wind turbines. What can be done is to design the turbines with low noise blades. However, the scam nature of the wind industry probably prevents that due to the fact that the scam runs its course in about 5 years and low noise blades are probably less efficient in energy collection. By the time the issue is decided in the courts the issue is moot due to the failure of the turbines.

It is your standard design problem. The turbines are designed just well enough to last until the scam money is collected and after that who cares?

I think the wind subsidy has been a good idea in order to get experience with a lot of wind turbines. Now that we see what the results are it is time to phase out the subsidy.

BTW for every doubling of turbine size the cost per KWh is reduced by a factor of .66 or so. So larger turbines are more economically efficient. This is the same learning curve conventional power plants went through from 1900 to about 1950 when the size of plants reached 1 GW. It seems that diseconomies of scale then set in. Since then maximum power plant size has only marginally increased. In fact, currently the preferred plant size is on the order of 50 to 100 MW.

As Vincent Page of GE has pointed out - even if ITER works - the utility companies have no use for 15 GW plants that would be required for economical power generation. And ITER itself is already at the 500 MW level.

So should we quit working on ITER? Not yet. It is still the fusion energy plant design most likely to succeed. Maybe in 2 years we will have a better alternative.

If ITER was located near the ocean, excess power could be used for water desalinization. Given that desalinization is a thermal process only a fraction of plant power need be converted to electricity. What could be done is to use turbines with high exhaust temps (lowering the cost of turbines) and using the exhaust for desalinization. However, that limits where the plants can be located. Considering that most of the US population is near the coasts it could work out. If we ever get 2 MDVC transmission lines even that might not be a serious limitation.

In any case a lot of the research being done on ITER has application for Polywell. The first wall problem and large high B field magnets being a couple of cases.
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.

Helius
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Post by Helius »

tomclarke wrote:Probably most of the bad things about wind turbines were said about roads, electricity pylons, ...

But wind power is not great - average output much smaller than peak and difficult to see how technology can do much to improve efficiency. Whereas solar is still up for grabs. Even if installation/maintenance cost is more or less fixed, increases in efficiency can win, and are hapenning. No fundamental reason with printed thin-film why they should cost much at all.

I wish ppl were not so prejudiced about fission - it has got a lot better than it used to be...

Tom
I figure the power density of wind is about equal to a hamster in a squirrel cage. 1/2 lb hamster cranking 2 watts is equal to a 1000 ton wind system crankin' 0.8MW (on a good day). If you slap a Fancy GE generator on a donkey wheel, are we going to compete with the Chinese? Are we going to refine aluminum?

Clearly the goal ought to be to *BEAT* coal, not tax it to subsidize a clearly substandard method of Electrical generation. I simply can't believe we're going to redesign energy delivery in this country to accommodate weak intermittent wind. Improved efficiencies in Nuclear power is the clear next step, with continued research in systems as fascinating as Polywell.

MSimon
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Post by MSimon »

Helius wrote:
tomclarke wrote:Probably most of the bad things about wind turbines were said about roads, electricity pylons, ...

But wind power is not great - average output much smaller than peak and difficult to see how technology can do much to improve efficiency. Whereas solar is still up for grabs. Even if installation/maintenance cost is more or less fixed, increases in efficiency can win, and are hapenning. No fundamental reason with printed thin-film why they should cost much at all.

I wish ppl were not so prejudiced about fission - it has got a lot better than it used to be...

Tom
I figure the power density of wind is about equal to a hamster in a squirrel cage. 1/2 lb hamster cranking 2 watts is equal to a 1000 ton wind system crankin' 0.8MW (on a good day). If you slap a Fancy GE generator on a donkey wheel, are we going to compete with the Chinese? Are we going to refine aluminum?

Clearly the goal ought to be to *BEAT* coal, not tax it to subsidize a clearly substandard method of Electrical generation. I simply can't believe we're going to redesign energy delivery in this country to accommodate weak intermittent wind. Improved efficiencies in Nuclear power is the clear next step, with continued research in systems as fascinating as Polywell.
The deal works some better if you don't have to feed the hamsters.

And the Chinese are going for wind. And coal. And nuclear.
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.

IntLibber
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Post by IntLibber »

rnebel wrote:I don’t have strong opinions about wind power one way or the other, but I suspect that they are going to have some difficult logistics problems. One example of that is Illinois, where M. Simon lives. It’s flat and it has a lot of wind potential. It also has close, large markets in Chicago and St. Louis which makes it attractive.
However, it also has a lot of high quality farmland. Two of my uncles are retired farmers and there is a proposal to put a large wind farm in their area, part of which would be situated on their property. Neither of them is sold on the idea. They are being asked to tie up their property for two generations for these devices. This is a new thing to them and they don’t really know what the downside is going to look like. Their business is farming and they don’t want something that is a pain in the butt and a major distraction, particularly if it is a commitment that’s going to last for two generations. There are a lot of unknowns to them, like what it will do to their property values, what it will do to their tiling systems, and in general just how compatible it will be with their farming operation. Right now, I don’t think either of them is going to sign up.
If wind power is going to be greatly expanded, I suspect that there will be a lot of eminent domain issues. This could get nasty. It probably isn’t a good idea to forcibly place expensive windmills on the property of people who are hostile to it. If they want to develop wind power, they’re going to have to do a lot better selling job than they have to date.
The wind power companies pay farmers royalty checks based on power produced, and the turbines and other facilities really take up very little land area. I've talked to a number of farmers who are in this sort of arrangement and they say they feel like they are just farming a new crop: wind, one which doesnt take any capital or labor for them, so its a nice source of revenue to smooth out the income in the hard times with other crops.

There was a good story a while back about some of these projects, the reporters went looking for farmers who didnt like the sight or noise. In every case the complainer was a relative of the land owner who didnt get the checks...

The main problem with wind is that it is unreliable. For every megawatt of standard power plant you get rid of, you need 4 megawatts of wind capacity to replace it due to the consistency issues.

That said, I don't see how anybody can say that wind generators are unsightly. I think they are very attractive.

What I find so amusing are the democrats around Nantucket/Cape Cod who are so big on green power but so opposed to the offshore windfarm project there.

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Post by MSimon »

That said, I don't see how anybody can say that wind generators are unsightly. I think they are very attractive.
Me too. But not everyone feels that way about it.
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.

jgarry
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Post by jgarry »

As an Illini, I have been interested to hear all the complaining about wind turbines. They sure seem to be popular enough in Iowa and Wisconsin.
They're not going to be a long term solution.
Our main goal really has to be to get mankind off this rock. For that you need solutions like a polywell that can take man's ability to generate energy to another level.

Helius
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Post by Helius »

jgarry wrote:As an Illini, I have been interested to hear all the complaining about wind turbines. They sure seem to be popular enough in Iowa and Wisconsin.
They're not going to be a long term solution.
Our main goal really has to be to get mankind off this rock. For that you need solutions like a polywell that can take man's ability to generate energy to another level.
Wind *is* another level. It's just in the wrong direction.

MSimon
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Post by MSimon »

jgarry wrote:As an Illini, I have been interested to hear all the complaining about wind turbines. They sure seem to be popular enough in Iowa and Wisconsin.
They're not going to be a long term solution.
Our main goal really has to be to get mankind off this rock. For that you need solutions like a polywell that can take man's ability to generate energy to another level.
Wind energy makes sense when its costs are lower than the alternatives. With the subsidies that is almost never the case.

If you will read the articles on my blog I posted the links to you will see that the turbines are built to collect the subsidy. When they fail after the subsidy is collected they are abandoned.

http://powermag.com/issues/departments/ ... _1851.html
The study calculates that the programs creating those jobs resulted in the destruction of nearly 110,000 jobs elsewhere in the economy, or 2.2 jobs destroyed for every "green job" created. The report notes that Obama’s estimates of job creation gloss over jobs lost due to lost opportunity in the private capital market or the higher efficiency of private capital employed in renewable energy investment. Álvarez concluded that each "green" megawatt installed destroys 5.28 jobs on average elsewhere in the economy: 8.99 by photovoltaics, 4.27 by wind energy, and 5.05 by mini-hydro.
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.

genemachine
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WIND SCAM - Right of Way Grid = Polywell = decentralize grid

Post by genemachine »

The Wind Scam is correct.
I worked on EMS/SCADA for PNM/FPL wind farm in Eastern NM.
Right of Way issues are killing Solar and Wind Farms in US.
The largest barrier to Green Power is right of way issues.
http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/503/index.html

Much of the stimulus green power money will be wasted on lawsuits over right of way issues. Why not spend it on polywell?

PNM in Santa Fe, NM had to put a gas turbine on Richards Ave. to avoid right of way issues. All over the West gas turbines are being placed to avoid pulling cable.

Polywell will solve right of way by allowing power plants at all substations.
Semi trailer fitted with polywells could be moved to substations and plugged in. Allowing redundant local power.
Decentralizing the grid. The Polywell concept will allow fast replacement of gas turbines with minimal changes to the grid. Cost for power companies will be very attractive world wide.

Coal power from remote sites (coal by wire) will become expensive. California has begun to restrict coal by wire. Gas Turbines are being built to replace coal by wire. This will decentralize power and allow polywell to quickly replace the gas turbine when the technology is proven.

My son and I recently completed cartoon of polywell and world power grids:
http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/GeneMachine/77493
http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/GeneMachine/34906

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