United States Builds First Offshore Wind Farm

SeaBreeze

SeaBreeze

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I think it's a good thing to start utilizing renewable natural energy like wind and solar, it will be slow going at first, but will be beneficial in the long run, IMO.

 

I fully agree,wind, solar, ocean wave energy and anything else that would reduce our dependency on OIL.

Of course the oil producers wouldn't like it. SO..........TOUGH COOKIES!

Back to their camels and tents.
 
There are some major wind farms stretching from Central Kansas, down to Northern Texas. These have been in place for years, and supply good power, because that part of the country almost always has a pretty steady breeze. There are actually quite a few turbines located in the U.S. Initial costs and maintenance are probably the biggest issues keeping more from being installed....That, and a "Not in my Backyard" attitude from many people. Here's a map showing the locations of most of the installed turbines....

http://en.openei.org/wiki/Map_of_Wind_Farms

Strangely enough, some offshore turbines were proposed a few years ago off the coast of Massachusetts, but the local wealthy beachfront property owners squashed that proposal because it would "hurt their view".
 

I'm surprised there's not more of them in Wyoming Don, it's windy as all getout there! Would be a nice place to live if it wasn't for the wind. People can't have their cake and eat it too when it comes to green energy and hurting their view. Things are changing and some changes should be made in how we supply our energy.
 
Yeah, there are some pretty windy places in Wyoming, and Montana. However, too much wind can cause problems for turbines. When I was working, I took several calls at Westar energy in Topeka,Kansas and had some discussions about the turbines that were being installed in that area. Turbines operate best where there is a moderate steady breeze. If the wind gusts too high, the turbine blades may not adjust quickly enough, and any imbalance in the blades can quickly cause major mechanical problems, if they suddenly spin too fast. Plus, turbines are most cost effective when located near major population centers, due to the expenses of long distance energy transmission and the power losses associated with transferring that energy over longer distances....but then, you get into the "not in my backyard" syndrome, because these things are rather noisy. I guess most people would rather see a coal or natural gas fired power plant in the suburbs rather than dozens or hundreds of turbines "whooshing" at all hours of day and night.
 
I have never seen a windmill in the east. When ever we have driven past the wind farms in the west, it seemed only some of them were turning.

It would seem development of tide turbines would be better. Tides and sea currents never stop.
 
I'm hoping that Science can one day find a way to harness Nuclear Fusion...the power of the sun. If/when that day comes, we will have virtually unlimited and pollution free electrical energy.
 
You make some good points there Don about the wind, I didn't even think about things like that. Manatee, the tide turbines do sound like a better idea.
 
todalake said:
Ask the people of Fukushima, Japan that question. Also is your backyard ready for the nuclear waste?
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Fukushima was a disaster waiting to happen not because of the technology but because of the incredibly stupid location, Chernobyl because of a screw up, not even a mistake, a combination of the two in the case of Three Mile Island, and of course the infamous criticality that took place at Windscale was both unique and as a result of attempting to dissipate the Winger energy from the graphite moderator of a plutonium production plant.

Nuclear waste? Not the supposed innate risks of nuclear generation that the oil and coal industries have talked them up to be. Actually very near to my back garden in the Wlyfa nuclear power plant and that worries me not one iota.

In France there are a considerable number of nuclear power plants. Well built, well maintained, very reliable, and very safe. In Germany is one of the world's top notch nuclear plant manufacturers, Interatomic Atomicreaktorbau, while not the cheapest they produce the best.

I'll leave it there 'cos it's a subject about which I know even more about than sheep and I have intimate knowledge about sheep.

Allegedly much more so than I should and far too often!
 
The Great Plains are consistently windy and are a great place for wind turbines. The real problem is the lack of East-West transmission lines; electrical grids aren't interconnected so that electricity produced in Texas can't benefit Chicago.

Every part of the country has renewable energy potential from geothermal to wave power. One great untapped reserve is the Gulf Stream as it sweeps past Florida and up the Atlantic Coast. Canada is slowly starting to develop the massive tidal power of the Bay of Fundy.
 
I think the thing on renewable energy is got to start somewhere and it will evolve to something greater. Nothing starts out in the final form. Think first car, airplane, telephone, etc. We are at Wright brother stage for renewable energy. Many more things to happen just not in our lifetime.
 
More here.

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Floating Wind Farms in the North Atlantic Could Power the World

Wind-power generation in the North Atlantic would provide three times as much power as land-based systems, but costs remain a significant challenge.


The American Midwest is sometimes called the “Saudi Arabia of wind,” thanks to the mighty, turbine-twisting gusts that blow across the plains.
But that title might better apply to the North Atlantic, according to a new paper that provides fresh support for the developing field of floating wind power.


Wind farms in some parts of the North Atlantic could produce three times as much power as land-based sites, the study found, thanks to the particularities of weather patterns over the open ocean. In fact, the smallest floating wind farm considered in the new study — with a footprint of 70,000 square kilometers — could provide all of America’s electricity for 10 months every year.
At the upper end, the study concluded, the North Atlantic could generate enough energy to meet all of civilization’s needs, provided it could be utilized economically. You read that right: enough energy for everyone on Earth.


“The road might be difficult, but the prize at the end of the road is tremendous,” Ken Caldeira, climate researcher at the Carnegie Institution for Science in California and one of the authors of the new study, told Seeker. “Making these technologies cheap enough is the challenging part.”


The traditional, fixed-bottom wind turbines that are typically found offshore stand on foundations driven into the seafloor. That places a firm limit on how far wind farms can be built from dry land. Now, the race is on to move those turbines farther out into the open water by allowing them to float on the surface.


A major milestone in the field is about to be passed: The world’s first-ever floating wind farm is gearing up to begin commercial production in late 2017 off the coast of Scotland. Known as Hywind, the project aims to power about 20,000 households from a distance of 25 kilometers (16 miles) from the shore.


Floating, deepwater wind farms in the North Atlantic would produce more electricity because the individual turbines wouldn’t interfere with each other in the way they do on land, according to the paper’s lead author, Carnegie’s Anna Possner.


“The wind farms themselves generate substantial drag,” Possner told Seeker. That drag places an upper limit of about two watts per square kilometer for a land-based wind farm, Possner said.
But windspeed can recover more rapidly over the North Atlantic, according to Possner and Caldeira’s paper, published Oct. 9 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
“As you extract kinetic energy near the surface from the wind farms, this energy can get replenished from upper-level wind,” Possner said.


The question now, Caldeira said, is how to handle the engineering challenges presented by constructing a large, floating wind farm many miles from the shore in a way that’s competitive with cheaper forms of energy like natural gas. One problem, Caldeira points out, is that transmission cables would likely need to be laid across great distances of the ocean floor and then rise up to meet the floating turbine, stressing cables that would be difficult to repair if damaged.


“This is an industry in its birth stage,” he said. “It really does look like the open-ocean environment can sustain a lot more power generation than on land. But making these technologies cheap enough to compete will be challenging.”
Click to expand...
 
One of Sherman Alexie's stories is about a guy whose job is to clean up the dead birds around wind turbines. I didn't know it was an actual thing until I checked into it. It sure is.

I still prefer wind or solar power. I live in New Mexico where you would think solar power would be nearly universal. Not so, because many of the shysters who market the technology are as bad as anyone in the oil industry. I keep reading that cheap solar panels are coming, but I haven't seen them yet.
 

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