FEB 03

While the U.S. Congress still debating wheather global warming is real, Germany is on full blown production on alternative energy.
Go Germany!!!

I think about 100 of these could power our city of Perth, Western Australia.

How much are they?

Quality invention,
every city should purchase 100!
They are not an eyesore, it could be the best addition to a city skylines since the pyramids were built!!

Maybe not an eyesore, but if they put those huges stuffs near my home I'm not sure to rejoice if they are noisy...

They can't really be called an eyesore when you compare them to that of a nuclear power plant. They take up less room, are far easier on the eye, and they don't render the land useless.
I'm all for them. ;D

The times they are a changin! Check out these residential wind turbines at a very affordable price for individual home owners. I considered geothermal energy but this is a far more viable and affordable option. This coupled with the Solcool solar air heater/cooler and solar water heater would be quite the green house for a fraction of the cost of other options. Why have such huge turbines when each house can support itself... Each Apartment building too!

Eh.... yes it would help to put the web address.
http://www.solcool.net/

If we could use the money some countries spend on the war against terror to get these Turbines going... what a beautiful world! ;) I reckon Cairns only needs 20 of these machines!

Very Nice.

Hundreds of these monsters should be sited in the Bass Strait, far from land, happily churning out electric power. A lot of that strait is only 50 m deep.

A line of them accompanied by a railway line and farms of solar panels would look pretty smart between Brisbane,Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide. This would revolutionize transport, and clean up our Carbon emissions act.

The main problem with these types of turbines are their inability to generate that peek performance level of 7 megawatts all the time. It’s a damn shame too, but as a nice addition to the power grid reducing the demand for base load and filling in for peek load when needed these are incredible innovations.

Just be careful not to think that every city in the world should jump on the bandwagon and aim for one type of power generation. 100 might be enough to power a large city, but if the wind stops blowing for a day in the middle of the summer then we have a big problem.

A mixture of solar, wind, geothermal, tidal (which is really neat in my opinion) and yes even nuclear (for base load support) and natural gas to fill in when wind, solar and other alternatives are not enough for peak load would probably be the best solution.

Tapping wind and other natural energy sources is very important as we have the "global-warming" threat. Major cities around the world should have these installed.

They should install an LED system on the blades so when the blades spin you can display messages, perhaps it could display the tons of coal not consumed.

Let's assume that each turbine costs $100 million (more likely $10 - $20 mil). The War of Terror has cost the US $500 BILLION thus far. That's 25 MILLION homes it could have powered! And that if they cost $100 million each, which I'm sure they wouldn't if mass produced. Methinks some decision makers policies are misguided.

These would be great off of the Cape Cod coast. But the Kerry's and Kennedy's won't allow it to happen.

They should install an LED system on the blades so when the blades spin you can display messages, perhaps it could display the tons of coal not consumed.
..that is possibly the coolest idea I have ever heard.. Huge smiley faces, or sunflowers in summer; You could charge for advertising which would go some way toward paying for them in the first place.

It is not called "turbine", but "windmill"...

Anyone know the actual cost to produce one of those giants? I think if they were fairly reasonably priced I don't know why the federal government here in the US, or at least some states wouldn't look into this.

I think it would be nicer if they put solar panels on the blades and all around the stem of the windmill. This would produce extra energy that they could get even better results. Now that that company is offering 1$ to 1 watt or whatever this could be amazing for our future power :)

until recently you could use the rule of thumb: 1MW=1Meuro. Noz it's more like 1MW=1.5Meuro... Mainly because of the increase of materials prices like steal..

Actually it's not windmill, it's wind turbine. Windmill is for the old types..

About the LED idea: the problem is that it rotates very slowly (~2-3 RPM), so you might not get the effect you are looking for.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/n...usat_x.htm

Cost to install 2x3=6MW where I live in Sweden, including civil works, is around 10-12 MUSD, so one of these 7MW installations should cost about the same.

"http://www.usatoday.com/news/n...usat_x.htm "

if these windmills were replaced with larger turbines spinning slower it probably wouldn't be a problem.

my comment is too short?

"http://www.usatoday.com/news/n...usat_x.htm"
If you build a wind farm in a bird breeding area, it's no wonder. Btw. millions of birds die by crashing into buildings every year. Should we live in stone caves because of this?

Actually it's really cool if you drive through the northern parts of Germany and see those turbines at the horizon. It gives me a positive "future" feeling (although it shouldn't because it's available and viable right now).

I drive cross country a lot and I have to say one of the most beautiful things is when you're passing by a windmill and its spinning as fast as it can. And you see the farm its in where a local farmer is being paid for the use of his land and you see houses that are benefiting from it right there not even a ½ mile away. Beautiful.

Also, driving by a nuclear power plant (even the one my father helped to design) scares the heck out of me and all I can think of is how bad it would be if that thing was compromised. What happens if a windmill fails? It stops spinning? It falls over in a field?


Also, too bad about the LED's. I think glow in the dark blades would be cool though

The Cape Wind Farm will be built. It's just a matter of time.

DAMN ... they are big !!!

What about all the birds that it will kill when they fly into it, are the bird lovers and tree huggers going to go at it now?

"driving by a nuclear power plant scares me"

You have a 100,000,000,000 better chance of dying in your car you hippie moron. I suggest you walk from now on.

Nuclear power is inevitable

I've driven by and through that area in southern CA that's packed with these things-- we always call it Wind Valley, I admit I'm not sure of the actual name for the area-- many times and they're rather beautiful to see; some of 'em have been painted brightly. This is an arid, rocky place with low habitability and difficult terrain-- perfect for the purpose. It's damn good to see a resource being put to good use that doesn't emit exhaust, wastewater or solid byproducts. Yeah, I know, what's done with the energy later on may do just that, but at least *this* part of the production's been cleaned up. Gotta start somewhere.

Someone asked if wind turbines are noisy. I can't say regarding the unit in the photos, but I bet it's no louder than the machines in central Iowa windfarms. Driving throught the area a few months back, I took a detour right though the windfarm and drove to the base of a turbine tower. Looked up along the plane of the spinning rotor. My wife and son were surprised at how quiet these machines are. Just a soft whoosh as the blade goes by overhead. I think you might not hear it from 100 yards (meters?) away. Also, whhile I haven't seen study data, it seems to me that, as slow as these turbines rotate, any bird that got hit simply was not paying attention! It's great to see some progess in energy alternatives!

Wonder what the carbon footprint of one of these babies is, and does it balance. IE the amount of concrete it's anchored in/the amount of land displaced and all those other calculations nobody is doing. >:(

german wind turbines rotate very slowly, it is highly unlikely if not impossible for them to crush a bird. obviously birds can fly into them and kill themselves that way. which is the same as with any other obstacle they are too stupid to avoid, e.g. closed windows

I pray to god that nobody will ever put LEDs or any other lights on wind turbines, beyond the required safety lights, and even those are pointless in my opinion. you aren't even allowed to fly that low with airplanes, and anybody who flies that low at night with a helicopter needs on-board radar anyway. constant light is a pollution like any other, it messes up your biorythm. if I could get away with it, I would break the street lights in our area, to see some actual night, night sky and landcape at night, instead of a brightly lit empty street

wind turbines have special surfaces to maximize efficiency and to minimize wind resistance and wear and tear, and the wings are as light as they are able to build them for the same reasons. putting solar cells on the wings seems counter productive. putting them on the tower makes sense to me

even at 2-5 rpm, I wonder if LED's on the blades would give the birds a more visible object to avoid

The tides move always. This is a huge recourse all but ignored. There are some plans and experiments that work. I hope people can talk more about this.

Older turbines were very noisy, these are so quiet you can't hear them if there are cars passing 100 metres away.

Have any of you even paused to consider how much coal is burned to fire furnaces to create these huge metal windmills? On top of that, all of the fossil fuels that are burned in mining the ores, refining, running cranes to lift pieces and put them together, emissions from welding torches, energy used to bolt pieces together, etc?

Unless these can produce far more clean power in their lifetimes than is used in producing them, they won't be worth it. I'm sure that with the ever-increasing efficiencies and lifetimes of these things, they will be soon if not already - but frankly it's unnerving to me how many people ONLY look at the end product.

Awesome. Let the Europeans have them. Nuclear power is 1,000,000x more efficient and that figure cleaner than a windmill, plus its safe and consistant. A windmill is subject to dynamic stresses that most Europeans can't comprehend, but rather a smart American engineer can.

They're cute I guess.

The question should be what improvements can be made to help protect the birds, without sacrificing effciency of the machines? For example, why could there not be some kind of a wire grate (yes, a big grate!) enclosure surrounding the blade assembly or the whole tower? Then birds would not get chopped up by the blade, and also be more likely to see the grate and avoid the thing altogether. Alternately, have they investigated using sounds or other non-harmful deterrents to steer birds away from the machine?

I doubt these turbines break even in less than 10 years. Maybe some day.

See what I'm talking about. No one can comprehend how one of these even works. A bird isn't going to be chopped up. How many air planes are in the air at any one time, and how many little birdies do people worry about? None.

But you put one stupid windmill in Europe, and all of a sudden its going to be a blood bath.

I have a solution. Lets build a huge wall in front of our huge windmill. Or maybe put up signs that say "Birds! Do Not Fly Into Windmill!"

Or maybe figure out whats worth worrying about in the first place.

these things do use up a lot of landscape - like any large structure will. right now i'm developing methods to visualize and gauge the impact of windmills for german decision makers.
people are getting more and more stuck up with windmills rising everywhere around them - especially here in northeastern germany, where the largest wind farms are operating.

one thing to keep in mind is that a centralized power plant uses up landscape only in one place, while a decentralized system like this also spreads landscape use.
there were times when this was not something to be considered, but that question is getting more important.

larger turbines like these are a part of the answer - one of them can replace up to 15 smaller, older ones! that the impact will be on the number of bird kills, needs to be monitored. unfortunately these kinds of reports are often politically motivated. right now i have to reports from (not by!) the german environmental agency, which yield totally different results on that question... energy, even renewable energy, is always a business.

still good land use plannung and zoning is the only answer to balance the numerous demands on the landscape - enery production, farmin, foresting, tourism, rereation, conservation.

Perhaps we should throw the people who are freaked over the birds into the windturbine.. see how they stand up too it..

I'll volunteer to help spin the blades faster

Wait, why aren't those blades spinning. Oh yeah, no wind during peak hours of the day... When we actually need the electricity. Good investment.

I am an owner of a 2.1MW wind turbine. We have had more bird deaths from driving out to our site than from birds flying into the blades, which spin at 15 rpm. The claims of the massive bird kills comes from the turbines in Altimont, CA in the 70's. Those spun MUCH faster than modern wind turbines and were placed in a migratory flight pattern. We did extensive environmental, historical and archeological studies before we moved a shovelful of dirt.

At some point the people that find fault with everything that anybody does to try to help with our energy problems will have to find a new argument. Until then, keep regurgitating that story from 30 years ago!

There are thousands of these in the north of Germany because it is close to the sea and the land is flat. both are very important for economical productive systems. in south germany you will only find very few windpowersystems on hilltops and most of these dont work economical productive. location is very important and "any town should by 100 of these" is a stupid comment.

The impact on the environment has been tested in many instances. direct impact of birds with the blades are no problem and turned out be be a unrealistic concern. but the noise and changing shadows, which are produced, can disturb birds and other animals, so it is not allowed to build any of these near a breeding area, or a protected wildlife area. for the same reasen these systems have to keep a minimum distance to communities (also depending on the direction of the shadows)

There is a big discussion going on in Germany, because the huge impact on the landscape. many people (especially old people) think these are ugly and destroy the traditional landscape. also the warning lights that are lit at nighttime are often considered anoying. Most Germans would prefer the sight of a nomal powerplant because on single facility can produce the same amount of electicity as hundrets, or in case of nuclear power plants, thousands of windturbines.
The main concern is, that there are simply to many turbines, and therefore they are polluting the environment. (the environment people live in)

unfortuately offshore systems are not costefficient yet.

the "no wind" problem can be solved with power saving facilities. such are copressed air stroages for short term regulation, and water power depos for long term regulation. by creating a network of windpowerfacilites scattered over very large distances and energy storage facilities, it has been proven, that a copletly renewable energy source can deliver the necesarry energy/time curve in a trustworthy manner.

Finally windpower systems together with other systems do make sense. But it cant provide enough energy to meet the demand, so other systems (such as nuclear energy) are still necessary. When solar energy becomes as "cheap" as windpower is today, then this might lead to a truly possible solution without nuclear engergy

when im talking about economical, i did consider subsedises. windpower is NOT cheaper than coal, jet.

the carbon footprint is better than any other renewable energy. The energy for the construction and transportation is regained in less than a year.

only nuclear energy has a lower carbon footprint.

So long as the full costs of all power generation systems are included, we should simply choose the cheapest, i.e. the most efficient. Nuclear plants should prepay the costs storing their waste for 25,000 years. As it is, the full costs of nuclear power are being passed on to our children and another 1,000 generations after them. On this basis, nuclear power is not cost-efficient.

Well I guess this is kind of neat. But I guess we won't need those here in Québec, with the exeption of one nuclear plant working 6 months in a year all of our power come from dam. But I guess not everyone can build those and as such those windmill are quite more valuable than coal based power plant.

1. As bird strikes are concerned, I can't imagine these blades spin very fast. Think of the size of this thing... It has a 413 FOOT diameter for a circumference of nearly a quarter mile! This is a hulking lumbering rotation. Any bird flying into something that big might not be that big a loss.

2. Aesthetically I find wind turbines very aesthetically pleasing. I'd drive out just to look at this thing and have a picnic under it. I can't imagine watching something that massive spinning.

3. For something entertaining, yet impractical, let's spend the U.S. military budget for a decade putting about one million of these things down in the middle of the Antarctic with insanely high wind speeds.

With fans that big - it sure would get windy!!

I work on data acquisition systems for a power utility. Several times a day, I look at the performance of the wind turbines parks we have. I often see 1-2 MW out of a nominal 100 MW for days. Very rarely do you see full power get out of those. And supposedly, they started with the best spots. If sites like this one could stop saying things like 'enough to power 2000 houses'. I call that a lie.

this is genius.
why the hell dont we have these things everywhere?

increible

peak output is not a viable number to use, but it sure gets the hippies riled up...

The biggest problem with energy is waste. we have an enormous demand for power usage, but most of it is wasted on disasterously inefficient home design and appliance design. Simply changing the types of homes we live in, and the appliances we use, would give us a 300% or more energy surplus; while making low-output systems like windfields and solar arrays far more usable.

http://www.monolithic.com is a great concept in durable, affordable, nearly indestructible home designs. Also, faster and easier to build than conventional designs. This change alone would be enough.

But instead we focus on producing the demanded power, rather than curbing the 75% waste of it? Renewable energy sources don't produce the huge volumes of wasted energy we 'demand.' But Solar and Wind would be far more than what we need if we'd stop wasting most of what we produce.

http://www.otherpower.com These people live just fine on solar and wind power alone. Why can't you?

No absolute no noise in 100 m distance...the hub is that high (more than 130 m from ground)...if it windy the trees (around the wind turbine )are noisier

So many people jump on the 'Turbines kill birds and bats!! Bad Bad!' wagon. I'm an ecologist and love those critters too but I don't see anyone about to stop driving their cars or boats or rechreational vehicles Which have killed so many millions of animals over the ages. What about we stop building houses, we need to make sure nothing had a home where it will be built or even the resources that go into the building (wood?), nothing lived in that tree or nothing fed from that tree? For crying out loud, even though animals will be lost by using these wind turbines (not windmills, windmills grind food) will enable us to live in a more sustainable way, lessening human impact on animals in the long run. Ah well, I had to say something, sorry. :o :o

People want wind power, but not near them examples Cape Cod, (Kennedy, Kerry, Walter Cronkite, etc don't want it near them) or along the mountain ridges in Vermont (Sanders, Leahy, and many who moved from NYC to Vermont) Until we have leaders who will encourage the development and placement near their homes and vacation home and have the moral leadership to tell their friends and financial investors of their reelection campaigns this it will never happen.

"every city should purchase 100!"

100 is not enough. It will take around 100 of these to match the output of the GRDA coal power plant at Chouteau, Oklahoma, and about 250 of them to produce as much electricity as the nuclear power plant in Russelville, Arkansas.

"I have seen the future"

You haven't seen the future yet. Wait for the battery powered power plant.

Unthinkable? "Think Again"

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omg wtf y would u need one that big

Sir,
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Wind turbines will generate an amount of electricity equal to the energy used to make them in less than a year, often times 3 months. Also, one must keep in mine that WT generate electricity, which is equal to about 3 times the BTUs in hydrocarbons.

Sevgili arkadaşlar çölleşmek üzere olan dünyamıza bukadar güzel,büyük ve güçlü bir rüzgar türbünü kazandırdığınız için size minnetdarım.Başarılarınızın devamını diler saygılar sunarım
(yabancı dilim olmadığından türkçe yazdım kusura bakmayın)

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THIS SHIZ IS CRAAAAAZZZY! :)
&& your mom smokes weed & im married okay?
so dont sue me
cz my husband is well ard and is a laywer

Green energy is a must. Thanks

I recently completed a science project were i tested the efficiency of wind turbines and where current wind energy generating stand, turbines are helping to eliminate 0.5 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions produced by coal generation each year.

When it said how it could power 5,000 homes, does it mean in a year?

You want to save the environment sell off all your electronics. Shut this website down. Go back to living in the bush. And go back to living like Cave Men then you will have ur supposed Green House Emission and save the planet. That is how you will reach your outlandish goals of inpratical and unrealistic.

There is some still out there have brains/common sense I do hope this current generations don't run the world into the meat grinder as they are proving so far that they are doing.

God, I hate the so-called "leaders" in my country. While they find ways to keep us on foul, world killing fossil fuels, the res of the world is heading into the future. I wish I could blame it all on the Republicans but the Democrats have done their share of damage to any meaningful climate change legislation. But hey, t least they get lots of money from the oil and coal industries.

Innovative ideas have to reach a tipping point, to get everywhere! Great post Thanks!