The Black Vault

by **greeney2** » Tue May 19, 2009 8:47 am

Pretty obvious they all are best when the conditions will allow it, or there is no alternative. Hydroelectric in California with all our water is great, but we are also earthquake country. We have several wind farms, but all are in notrious wind areas, not normal winds. We also have great use of solar, more at a home level because we are sunny California.

by **Tairaa** » Tue May 19, 2009 11:15 am

Wind turbines also interfere with your ecosystem. They cause significant internal hemorrhaging in bats. Substantially fewer bats been exponentially more insects. Since we typically build them in fields, this means that there are going to be more insects in your fields, and more pesticides to stop them from eating all of your crops.

I dunno... They just don't seem like a good idea to me. Solar trumps wind IMHO.

Geothermal is a good option! I strongly suggest we utilize it! It's nuclear fuel in which we don't have to handle any nuclear contaminants.

by **Aquatank** » Tue May 19, 2009 7:08 pm

Tairaa
The Bat study was describing HAWTs not VAWTs. That's a big difference in environmental impact.

Greeney2
The recent Irish breakthrough on turbines means electricity is generated at 2.6mph much like China's VAWT which generates at about 3mph. I'm not sure there many places that avoid those kind of low wind speeds, and if the Irish are correct in their estimates that means power 350 days a year.

by **Tairaa** » Tue May 19, 2009 7:57 pm

Ahh, then I stand corrected.

by **greeney2** » Tue May 19, 2009 8:02 pm

That is a major advancement of wind if they can generate at 2-3 MPH. The lonly I nknow of in California are horrendous wind areas. One is near my daughter who lives in Indio, which is low desert near palm springs. Winds of 30-50 gusts are common.

by **Aquatank** » Tue May 19, 2009 8:12 pm

Tairaa
The problem with VAWTs is there are not enough of them in comparrison to HAWTS to do a decent study on yet. Further complicating this is the many VAWT designs, some may be bad for bats some might not be. Generally though Birds avoid collisions with VAWTs the bat issue needs to be studied more.

Greeney2
The windfarm out here generally produce electricity at 8mph and our average wind speed is 13mph. Gusts in the 30s or high aren't unheard of but they are rare outside of March, and generally preceed thunderstorms. I did have a 110mph gust blow a tree onto my deck during a bad storm though about 7 years ago, but such land hurricanes are rarer than the more frequent tornadoes here.

by **greeney2** » Thu May 21, 2009 5:16 pm

Just when you thought windpower is harmless, read this, it surprized me.

Wind turbine noise suspected of killing 400 goats
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Delicious Digg Facebook Fark Newsvine Reddit StumbleUpon Technorati Yahoo! Bookmarks Print AP – FILE - The Oct. 30, 2008 file photo shows a wind turbine standing in front of a brown coal power station … Thu May 21, 12:30 am ET
TAIPEI (Reuters) – Late-night noise from spinning wind turbines on an outlying island of Taiwan may have killed 400 goats over the past three years by depriving them of sleep, an agricultural inspection official said on Thursday.

After the eight turbines were installed in the notoriously windy Penghu archipelago in the Taiwan Strait, a neighbouring farmer reported that his goats had started dying, Council of Agriculture inspection official Lu Ming-tseng said.

"If noise at night can keep people awake, then it could also keep the goats awake, and when the wind kicks up it makes a louder noise," Lu said.

Agricultural authorities would make tests to rule out any other causes of death, Lu said, adding that if the giant power-generating turbines proved to be at fault, Taiwan Power had promised to compensate the farmer.

(Reporting by Ralph Jennings; Editing by Chris Lewis)

by **Aquatank** » Thu May 21, 2009 5:27 pm

They've been working with the noise problem with active noise supression using noise to disrupt noise. Some devices work better than others.

by **Dark-Samus** » Fri May 22, 2009 2:00 am

And when it comes to water based technologies it disturbs the ecosystem around it.
Hmmm...I hope someone fixes these problems.

by **Aquatank** » Wed May 27, 2009 6:12 am

Now why didn't they come up with this one sooner? Its not a total fix but its sort of equivelent to my ideas about equipping flatroof and parking lots with solar panels. Paint all the roofs (and color the asphalt) white.

Apparently if it was down right it'd be the equivelent of taking all the cars off the road for 11 years carbon emmision wise.

I suppose Jaack is going to call it a liberal conspiracy to sell paint. He might be right, but I think the albedo effect might help the cooling trends like glaciers do.

The question is why weren't white roof tiles pushed as an energy saving (gainst Air conditioner electricity use) way back in the 1970s? Does it really take 30+ years to figure that one out? I'll tell you why, because it snows in North America, and black helps melt the snow off the roofs. For flat roofs this is either smaller airconditioning bills or roof collapse repairs.
http://green.yahoo.com/news/afp/2009052 ... inchu.html

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