windfarms good for birds

[ChrisJB]

After watching the destruction of a once lovely expanse of moorland, where Dunlin, Golden Plover and Twite bred and Dotterel visited in early May and where Snow Bunting sometimes visited in winter, thanks to a shockingly situated wind-farm, people still need to be extra vigilant about them, especially the R.S.P.B.
How effective they are, I know not, but siting them on our magnificent uplands must be resisted. What I once knew as splendid peat moorland is now criss-crossed with service roads, and much of the moor is a rubbly wasteland, devoid of the glorious moor-birds that once could be found there.
Quite simply, this windfarm I talk of has destroyed a top-notch habitat.
I fear for the South Pennines. Sandwiched between the National Parks of the Peak District and the Yorkshire Dales, they are seemingly their poor relation in terms of protection from habitat and landscape barbarism of the like I have described above.

Regards, Chris

[eeyore]

Originally Posted by nightshade

I think you will find that the "micro" wind turbines will be the real "killers",
mounted on boats (for instance) alongside towpaths they will come and go so that Bats and Birds are exposed to them in a wide range of locations.
There is also a strong possibility that you will not need planning permission any longer to put up your own generator. So your neighbours will subject you to noise and transmitted vibration (with you having no say)
But you will be used to this of course if you live near a pub or club with the extended licensing (courtesy of the same government )
I believe there are some studies going on at the moment

maybe not - although collision is a problem for raptors it isnt what kills bats and small birds which generally avoid the blades

the problem for them comes from the partial vacuum behind the blades which causes a pocket of lower air pressure and thus causes them to get decompression sickness ( essentially the same as a diver getting the bends) - micro turbines are too small to have this effect.

on the nuisance front although you may not be able to object through the planning process, if you can prove that they are degrading your quality of life through vibration or noise you would have a case for "private nuisance" through the law of torts.

however before taking that stance you might also want to consider the relative nuisances of a bit of niose/vibration (probably no more so than that caused by urban traffic) and the flooding, bad weather, etc that results from not taking steps against climate change.

[Herd900rd]

Stronger magnets in the coil, or more windings, I used to be a physics undergraduate, would mean the rotor would rotate at a lower rate to produce the same power output.
That is the route I would take.

[Herd900rd]

Originally Posted by eeyore

...
the problem for them comes from the partial vacuum behind the blades which causes a pocket of lower air pressure and thus causes them to get decompression sickness ( essentially the same as a diver getting the bends)

...however before taking that stance you might also want to consider the relative nuisances of a bit of niose/vibration (probably no more so than that caused by urban traffic) and the flooding, bad weather, etc that results from not taking steps against climate change....

I wasn't aware of the vacuum effect. Anywhere there is turbulence there could be large pressure drops. That could possibly be designed out.
Build the towers even taller, study flightpaths chosen by birds, I don't know....

Never mind the nuisance value of the vibrations, what about the nuisance of educating a cohort of law students to deal with petty complaints?

[ogwen]

Slightly daft suggestion and probably should be left out of this thread all together but here goes.... Why not put a cage around the smaller ones like with our air conditionng fans. Not the big ones... thatd look rediculous.....

[Ted Pearson]

This will be satisfactory if the RSPB will take personal financial responsibility for the relocation or revenue loss of these agreed wind-farms if they change their minds in the future. As it stands, they are asserting themselves as proposed experts advising where these wind-farms may or may not be located, regardless of actual optimum placement. I can see this as a similar issue that involved Nuclear Power. The Nuclear Power plant is the obvious answer to our Green Energy needs, yet the Environmentalists do not want to use them. Now that the wind-farm has become questionable and resolved to be safe “according to the RSPB” this in no way means that some other ‘wildlife danger’ will not be identified in the future. With every step of the process, it is becoming clearer that Environmentalists are not interested in the people using clean energy; they are ultimately resolving us to use no energy. This is the scenario that will require energy providers to lobby Environmental organizations for areas to install very weak power generation sites. What an extremely lucrative proposition indeed!!!
As for the rest of the story reported in the BBC article; ‘RSPB calls for more UK wind farms’, they state the following.
“In 2007, just 2% of the UK's energy came from wind power, compared with 29% in Denmark, 20% in Spain and 15% in Germany.”
Denmark is doing very good, (if you can say that 20% is good) because they have in infrastructure heavy in hydroelectric power. This type of backup is a necessary to complement wind or solar power due to the massive ramp-up/down power losses encountered with the variable sources like wind and Sun.
Spain is a classic case of Green-gone-awry. They have resulted in spending 30 times more than initially projected for their project and now can’t afford to subsidize the power or build any more wind-farms. As it turned out, everyone wanted into the wind-farm business since the government pays for the construction, subsidizes the cost of generating the power, subsidizes the power grid and then the citizens must buy this green power. Every step of the way, the government (i.e. taxpayers) pays remarkable amounts of money as an investment to power that costs more to generate. In other words, the taxpayer is paying more to subsidize power so they can have the privilege to pay more for their power. They must also continue to pay more to build more wind-farms so more taxpayers can pay more for their power. Keep in mind that if one does not have a reliable backup like hydro, coal or nuclear, the ramping power-loss is 30-50% and power will cost even more (When you have it at all).
What good is green power when it is non-existent or too expensive? No Power at all yet you will still be taxed because of the subsidies……
The villagers have always done their best work when reduced to torches and pitchforks.

[eeyore]

Originally Posted by Ted Pearson

This will be satisfactory if the RSPB will take personal financial responsibility for the relocation or revenue loss of these agreed wind-farms if they change their minds in the future. As it stands, they are asserting themselves as proposed experts advising where these wind-farms may or may not be located, regardless of actual optimum placement. I can see this as a similar issue that involved Nuclear Power. The Nuclear Power plant is the obvious answer to our Green Energy needs, yet the Environmentalists do not want to use them. Now that the wind-farm has become questionable and resolved to be safe “according to the RSPB” this in no way means that some other ‘wildlife danger’ will not be identified in the future. With every step of the process, it is becoming clearer that Environmentalists are not interested in the people using clean energy; they are ultimately resolving us to use no energy. This is the scenario that will require energy providers to lobby Environmental organizations for areas to install very weak power generation sites. What an extremely lucrative proposition indeed!!!
As for the rest of the story reported in the BBC article; ‘RSPB calls for more UK wind farms’, they state the following.
“In 2007, just 2% of the UK's energy came from wind power, compared with 29% in Denmark, 20% in Spain and 15% in Germany.”
Denmark is doing very good, (if you can say that 20% is good) because they have in infrastructure heavy in hydroelectric power. This type of backup is a necessary to complement wind or solar power due to the massive ramp-up/down power losses encountered with the variable sources like wind and Sun.
Spain is a classic case of Green-gone-awry. They have resulted in spending 30 times more than initially projected for their project and now can’t afford to subsidize the power or build any more wind-farms. As it turned out, everyone wanted into the wind-farm business since the government pays for the construction, subsidizes the cost of generating the power, subsidizes the power grid and then the citizens must buy this green power. Every step of the way, the government (i.e. taxpayers) pays remarkable amounts of money as an investment to power that costs more to generate. In other words, the taxpayer is paying more to subsidize power so they can have the privilege to pay more for their power. They must also continue to pay more to build more wind-farms so more taxpayers can pay more for their power. Keep in mind that if one does not have a reliable backup like hydro, coal or nuclear, the ramping power-loss is 30-50% and power will cost even more (When you have it at all).
What good is green power when it is non-existent or too expensive? No Power at all yet you will still be taxed because of the subsidies……
The villagers have always done their best work when reduced to torches and pitchforks.

what errant and total rubbish

i'm not aware that the RSPB has ever taken a position against nuclear power - nor against any other form of generation per se - just about location where it is harmful to birdlife.

this sinister environmental conspiracy happpily exists soley in your imagination ted, and it becomes somewhat waring when it is trotted out on every thread you participate in regardless of the original topic

I understand that your basic position is that global warming theory is wrong - but even if you were correct oil and coal are still a finite resource and other energy sources will need to be found to replace them in the not to distant future

nuclear is indeed one solution - but the reason that many environmental groups are opposed to it is that no inteligent solution as to what to do with the radioactive waste has yet to be found

[Ted Pearson]

Originally Posted by svenrufus

Rubbish! Where does this stuff come from. I have just done some quick research, and found miriads of references for the payback period of the energy for wind turbines. Depending on which you read (they vary due to different base assumptions in energy yield etc) payback is between 3 months and 8 months. Given a useful life of 20 years + then the payback is generous, and swift.

I also found one rabidly anti wind turbine site that claimed that payback was 9 years. OK, let's accept that for the sake of argument (even though it is massively outside the range of all the other estimates, and questionable in terms of credibility) Even at 9 years, they pay back more than twice the energy invested in them, so where's your argument?

I get really wound up by people objecting to wind turbines who make unsubstantiated and fallacious statements about them. There are plenty who argue passionately against wind turbines from a position of prinicple, backed by facts, with whom I am happy to disagree and respect their views even though I beleive them to be wrong. The comment above though helps no-ones cause.

I think you have been taken in by the same fallacious statements you claim that ‘wind you up’. The 3-8month ‘payback’ being stated is specifically referring to the ENERGY required to install, manufacture, operate and retire the equipment. This is not the actual cost required to do all of these things. In plain language, the cost of a plumber to pop-by your house to install a new pipe in the basement requires very little money for the energy (pipe & fitting manufacture, petrol for transportation and a bit of breakfast). I think that when you receive the bill for this plumber’s 3 hour job, the actual cost is much more. This is the word game played by the wind-farm activists so please do not lecture anyone on the explicit evils of ‘anti-wind’, it screams of hypocrisy.
Here is a proposal for a wind-farm installation;
Energy return on investment (EROI), economic feasibility and carbon intensity of a hypothetical Lake Ontario wind farm - Encyclopedia of Earth
You will see here that project cost is $200M. Project life-cycle is 20 years even though some parts of construction are rated for 30 years. The estimated revenue is $13M per year. This analysis of real cost in dollars would only have a ‘payback’ after 15.4 years. Since the life cycle is 20 years, only the last 4.6 years of its life will be relatively low cost and then will need to be overhauled.
Even in this little dose of reality, I notice that nuclear and Hydroelectric power are lumped in with the CO2 emitters. This would only be true if they are counting the out-gas of CO2 from cement, but windmills have a remarkably large cement bases, so I can’t guess why they would be excluded from this category. Selective awareness?

[freefeet]

Originally Posted by eeyore

this sinister environmental conspiracy happpily exists soley in your imagination ted, and it becomes somewhat waring when it is trotted out on every thread you participate in regardless of the original topic

It's certainly becoming rather ted(ious).

I like windmills.

As an aside... i get my bread flour from Otterton Mill. It was built hundreds of years ago and it's still grinding flour using the River Otter as it's total power source. I'm sure at the time someone only expected it's useful working life to be a few decades, but with good maintainance it's still going strong and producing high quality organic bread flour hundreds of years later. I can't see that windmills would be any different. A steel tower windmill is not going to collapse after twenty years, it just needs a mechanical overhaul.

[Ted Pearson]

Originally Posted by eeyore

what errant and total rubbish

My dear, dear, eeyore. It seems that you have once again refused to (or displayed the inability to) do an ounce of comprehensive research on the subjects you talk about. With the exception of the RSPB not taking a stand against nuclear power, (a matter you may realize that I never alleged, if you re-read my post-slowly) you have missed the mark on each issue. I would not intend to berate any person for their lack of cognitive power over written English, but when one blathers on and becomes abusive in an attempt to make an unfounded point, I will show some patience by bringing information to them. I had hoped that you might have referred me to some bit of information to back up your assertions. Now I find you as a Lemming heading towards the cliff’s edge and when I call for you to stop, you only pound your breast and yell ‘rubbish’. So I leave you to your powdered wig and lap-dog freefeet, so you may go the way of the esteemed Cornwallace. Honorably, prideful and steadfast.
Cheers