Omega Owners Forum
Chat Area => General Discussion Area => Topic started by: Dusty on 27 August 2008, 17:22:38
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A few weeks ago I noticed several wind turbines appear in the distance about a mile away. I've counted a dozen in total.
In my opinion I find them fine. They do not bother me in anyway, yet I know that many find them aborrent.
Saying that I do not have to live with them close up, they are far enough away to not be nuisance. I don't know how I would feel if they were within 100 yds of my home.
I know opinion has changed over the years and windfarms seem better suited to the coastal areas, lying just off the land and far enough away.
Overall I find windfarms to be for the greater good, and I find their elegant design quite attractive to look at.
I'd be interested to know your opinions :-* :-*
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It seems the do-gooders are all for them, unless its in their back yard.
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Given the choice between a nuclear power plant and a wind farm in my back yard, I know which one I would prefer !!!!
I guess, many moons ago the populace felt the same way about windmills --- now we love them !!!!
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There are quite a few hereabouts in the uplands of Hiraethog; I find them quite attractive, and almost hypnotic to watch.....and now, there are plans for very-many more on the hilltops across the valley.
Local people aren`t generally too pleased; change is often threatening....but, better the 'big-fans' than other more ruinous pollutions. ;)
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Love them
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There is one on the site where I work. Its huge (you can go and stand next to it) and completely silent. 2MW rating I think I recall although I doubt it ever really produces that.
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Love them, but wouldnt want to live within listening distance of them.
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There is one on the site where I work. Its huge (you can go and stand next to it) and completely silent. 2MW rating I think I recall although I doubt it ever really produces that.
Seen that one a few times. Probably not the windiest spot in the Thames Valley...
I think Mr Madejsky is playing one-up with the neighbours that have those little ones on the roof.
;D ;D
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There is one on the site where I work. Its huge (you can go and stand next to it) and completely silent. 2MW rating I think I recall although I doubt it ever really produces that.
Seen that one a few times. Probably not the windiest spot in the Thames Valley...
I think Mr Madejsky is playing one-up with the neighbours that have those little ones on the roof.
;D ;D
See him quite often up at the stadium. Mr 2 Bentleys - JM1 and 1JM :y
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They have a small part to play in a diverse portfolio of generation. Like it or not we need new nuclear (in fact we should have started building them about 5 years ago).
2MW each - based on current UK winter demand figures = 28286 turbines in total....
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I think public opinion goes in 3 distinct stages
1.We are against them.
2.We accept them , but dont really like them.
3.We love them.
I think as time goes by people will become very fond of these elegant giants..........Perhaps.. :y
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They have a small part to play in a diverse portfolio of generation. Like it or not we need new nuclear (in fact we should have started building them about 5 years ago).
2MW each - based on current UK winter demand figures = 28286 turbines in total....
Or more DRAX :P
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There is one on the site where I work. Its huge (you can go and stand next to it) and completely silent. 2MW rating I think I recall although I doubt it ever really produces that.
If i am correct thats the largest privately owned wind turbine in Europe ;)
Im for them.......even if they were close by to my house......youd get use to noise made them......I can hear the M4 from where I live .....probably a mile as the crow flies......but after a while you dont notice it :y
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My preference!
Of cause I could start on about load factors, availability, frequency response capabilities and grid fault tolerance capabilities but I might bore a few readers. Solar, wave and wind all have their place but none of the above have a 250 foot lump of steel with a diameter of 3 meters at one end spinning at 3000rpm and we all know how important a fly wheel is in a car engine.
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I like them, i think they are very majestic to watch, as for the noise, after living under a flight path the noise soon becomes part of everyday life. More windmills please :y
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I'd much rather have them than a barron waste land where nothing grows :( :( :( :(
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They have a small part to play in a diverse portfolio of generation. Like it or not we need new nuclear (in fact we should have started building them about 5 years ago).
2MW each - based on current UK winter demand figures = 28286 turbines in total....
And, as someone else said, 0.05% of a nuclear power station.
Nuclear power has big risks for quality of life, wind power has much smaller risks.
It's not a risk but a certainty that our quality of life will severly be affected if we do nothing, in most of our lifetimes.
In that context both Wind Turbines and Nuclear get my vote. Yes, I would live next to either if I had to. And I probably SHOULD have to, like it or lump it.
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if my leccy bill is anything to go by, I need my own nuclear power station >:(
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Personaly I think we should build giant hamster wheels underground and use the growing prison population to walk round all day and earn their keep ;)
but i'm sure some euro do-gooding tw4t will say it's against human rights or some crap >:(
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if my leccy bill is anything to go by, I need my own nuclear power station >:(
;D ;D
As you know TB, i could manage with a hamster & wheel :y
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They have a small part to play in a diverse portfolio of generation. Like it or not we need new nuclear (in fact we should have started building them about 5 years ago).
2MW each - based on current UK winter demand figures = 28286 turbines in total....
And, as someone else said, 0.05% of a nuclear power station.
Nuclear power has big risks for quality of life, wind power has much smaller risks.
It's not a risk but a certainty that our quality of life will severly be affected if we do nothing, in most of our lifetimes.
In that context both Wind Turbines and Nuclear get my vote. Yes, I would live next to either if I had to. And I probably SHOULD have to, like it or lump it.
Totally agree Bandit if we want to continue using electricity in increasing quantities. If we want a life powered by electricity, and just imagine what life would be without it, we all need to accept all forms of power generation running on the technologies available currently. :y :y
One day mankind will create very advanced, completely clean and totally non-polluting methods of generating electricity, but until then we live with what we have. :y
In my lifetime there has been a constant promise of a very cheap, realible, and totally clean produced electricity (yes, nuclear power was presented as this once!), but it hasn't happened yet and I think I will be well gone when it finally arrives! ;)
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I have many thoughts about wind turbines - unsuitable for base load or peak load so you either need to change how you use it or need lost of fast cycle gas turbines to fill in.
A small cluster looks nice, but a lot ruins the scenery.
We NEED the following.
Better usage, following the wind if you like so use the electricity when it is there, less wasteage, a lot more nuclear, some more modern coal fired stations.
We cannot use wind alone as every lake in the country would be needed for storage.
The Severn barage must not be built - it will ruin the whole estuary.
I would rather live 2 miles from a nuclear plant than 2 miles from a coal plant
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i like the look of them and the noise it something i could live with.......
However there does come a point where they could become too overpowering, and 28000 would certainly be well past that point
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Exactly as Martin says, they look like they're doing a great job, but in fact are as much use to our national grid as a choccy fireguard.
Dumping loads of cheap energy into the grid when the wind happens to be blowing, without a means to store it to cover peak demand, just encourages the proliferation of less efficient, more dynamic fossil fuel plants to cover the load when the wind isn't blowing. Net effect on CO2 emissions, global warming, acid rain or whatever "myth of the day" you subscribe to - bu66er all. ;)
Statistically the country's peak electrical energy demand occurs in around mid February - a time of year when we can have calm conditions for a week at a time. There have to be other plants on standby, burning fossil fuels, ready to cover for this eventuality so why bother with wind? Invest in something like nuclear that gives us some promise of energy security rather than the 3 day weeks that'll happen if Russia tightens the screws on our coal and gas supplies and the wind 'aint blowing.
Kevin
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I never had a problem with them until an planning application was submitted in the next village 1m away and I read the campaign to halt progress. Very interesting reading.
Did you know the noise and shadow affects have been linked to sleeping disorders and all production has ceased in France pending more research....http://www.againstnewlandswindfarm.co.uk/
So yes I still like them.......... in someone elses back yard ;D
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I never had a problem with them until an planning application was submitted in the next village 1m away and I read the campaign to halt progress. Very interesting reading.
Did you know the noise and shadow affects have been linked to sleeping disorders and all production has ceased in France pending more research....http://www.againstnewlandswindfarm.co.uk/
So yes I still like them.......... in someone elses back yard ;D
The effects on sleep of having no heating in February and a cold bath/shower to get up to are probably more disturbing on sleep than a big rather fan.
That we have to do something is not optional. The rest is in the detail. And it will certainly involve your back yard and mine, one way or another.
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I never had a problem with them until an planning application was submitted in the next village 1m away and I read the campaign to halt progress. Very interesting reading.
Did you know the noise and shadow affects have been linked to sleeping disorders and all production has ceased in France pending more research....http://www.againstnewlandswindfarm.co.uk/
So yes I still like them.......... in someone elses back yard ;D
The effects on sleep of having no heating in February and a cold bath/shower to get up to are probably more disturbing on sleep than a big rather fan.
That we have to do something is not optional. The rest is in the detail. And it will certainly involve your back yard and mine, one way or another.
I'm ok though - just a stones throw from Sellafield :P
I think their output is equivalent to 3 or 4 windy fans.
Joking aside, the site is opportunistic and no where near windy enough for 3 turbines - which can hardly be called a farm, and is just a firm out to make a quick buck.
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Exactly as Martin says, they look like they're doing a great job, but in fact are as much use to our national grid as a choccy fireguard.
Dumping loads of cheap energy into the grid when the wind happens to be blowing, without a means to store it to cover peak demand, just encourages the proliferation of less efficient, more dynamic fossil fuel plants to cover the load when the wind isn't blowing. Net effect on CO2 emissions, global warming, acid rain or whatever "myth of the day" you subscribe to - bu66er all. ;)
Statistically the country's peak electrical energy demand occurs in around mid February - a time of year when we can have calm conditions for a week at a time. There have to be other plants on standby, burning fossil fuels, ready to cover for this eventuality so why bother with wind? Invest in something like nuclear that gives us some promise of energy security rather than the 3 day weeks that'll happen if Russia tightens the screws on our coal and gas supplies and the wind 'aint blowing.
Kevin
That is very true as much as Russia needs to sell this fuel for the cash it requires for it's expanding economy. The problem comes when it proves to be politically timely to Russia to "blackmail" us into accepting what their aims may be at that particular time. The Georgia issue is very small compared to what they could get up to. ::) ::)
Thank goodness we still have a "nuclear deterant" weapons system and we still have wind turbines and nuclear powered electricity generating plant available to us ; but we are just going to require a lot more of it for our future security! ;) ;)
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The only reason for the existance of wind turbines Government grants
They produce an output for 23% of the time. For the rest they take from the power grid, and that's when they are positioned in the very best places they are not and never will be efficient.
If you happen to live in a built up area then, as proven quite recently they are completely useless. The wind behaves in a completely different way.
The saddest part of this debate concerning nuclear, coal, gas, or oil, fired, we as a country no longer have the engineering capacity. Regarding nuclear we no longer have the ability.
But of course we dont need it now, it's all the Service Industry, arent we going to regret it, youd better believe it.
Even sadder we allowed the sods to do it.
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The saddest part of this debate concerning nuclear, coal, gas, or oil, fired, we as a country no longer have the engineering capacity. Regarding nuclear we no longer have the ability.
We have gone from being the pioneers of this, and many other technologies in the 50's and 60's to being totally at the mercy of overseas companies today. >:(
Kevin
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A friend of mine works commisioning these big fan things. He always goes on about it being an absolute joke.
They are very inefficient - producing AC at the top which is converted to DC down to the bottom, then back to syncronised AC to pipe onto the national grid which results in a big energy loss.
He pipes on about how it makes him laugh that the 'green' brigade support them-the parts get transported all over the world to put them up and how he gets flown all over the country to fix them at least twice a week.
Nukes all the way for me :)
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A friend of mine works commisioning these big fan things. He always goes on about it being an absolute joke.
They are very inefficient - producing AC at the top which is converted to DC down to the bottom, then back to syncronised AC to pipe onto the national grid which results in a big energy loss.
He pipes on about how it makes him laugh that the 'green' brigade support them-the parts get transported all over the world to put them up and how he gets flown all over the country to fix them at least twice a week.
Nukes all the way for me :)
Yep. You have to be pretty determined to ignore the big picture to see much benefit in this sort of thing. Cue the cretins in Westminster, and the nut muncher brigade...
Kevin
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id rather look at a windmill than a pylon
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id rather look at a windmill than a pylon
Now that is interesting as you mention it! :-? :-? I have yet to see a series of pylons trailing away from these "wind farms"! Why is that? :-/ :-/
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They are underground to the nearest sub station, then the pylons
I would rather live 2 miles from a nuclear plant than 2 miles from a coal plant
Why?
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Love them...love watching the one next to the M25, circa junction 20-ish. There's an arable farm that starts 5 metres from my back garden - I'd have no issue at all with the farmer applying for permission for a windfarm.
With the price of fossil fuels so high, I find it worrying how much money is flooding into unfriendly governments, e.g. Russia, Iran, Venezuela, and the only-semi-friendly Arab states. We should worry more about the power of these countries' sovereign investment funds and the assets they are buying up than any perceived side effects of wind farms.
I was also very glad to hear that the London Array (to be the biggest offshore wind farm in the world) has been rescued after Shell showed its true colours and decided it would back out and spend its money digging for more oil instead.
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Love them...love watching the one next to the M25, circa junction 20-ish. .
Thats a firm called RES, they have a wind turbine and solar panels and an office with plenty of insulation, they produce more energy than they use, even in the winter (i fitted the solar shading over the windows about 4 years ago!!)
'Wind Farms' are a bit of a sore subject with me, i like them, but the Thames Array means 'fishermans gat' will be closed and put about another 4 hours on the sail to France!!
They have been fighting the one at Bradwell, these were going to be 121 meters high, and looks like they have won, they will possibly be building a new nuclear power station next to the old one at Bradwell instead, which the locals prefer as they have had one there since 1958!!
As it was water cooled it raised the temp of the river Blackwater by 2 degrees Celcius! Another bonus ;D
I can't see any problem living next to one, to be honest its better because if it does melt down surely its better to die straight away in the mushroom cloud than 20 years later!!! :D
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They are underground to the nearest sub station, then the pylons
I would rather live 2 miles from a nuclear plant than 2 miles from a coal plant
Why?
Emmisions.
2 miles is far enough away for any radiation or physical building size, but a lot of CO2 comes out of a coal fired station, no smoke from nuclear
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With the stack at 650 feet, you would have to be a lot further away than 2 miles to see the effects of CO2 emissions.
Dust and noise emissions are much more likely to affect but these are all heavily policed by the environment agency.
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They are very inefficient - producing AC at the top which is converted to DC down to the bottom, then back to syncronised AC to pipe onto the national grid which results in a big energy loss.
Clearly he knows not what he is talking about.
As somebody who many moons ago worked on DC link design including the control electronics (AC-DC-AC), the conversion stage will be 90% plus efficient.
And its a must, it has to be done because its the only way you can insert the power into the 50Hz grid!
Consider the variable AC frequency of a wind turbine and the rock steady 50Hz mega power behind the grid....you cant just connect the two together!
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With the stack at 650 feet, you would have to be a lot further away than 2 miles to see the effects of CO2 emissions.
Dust and noise emissions are much more likely to affect but these are all heavily policed by the environment agency.
Lol, they got Rugeley working again yet?
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Bit of a sore point that.
http://www.internationalpowerplc.com/ipr/news/press/pr2008/2008-08-22/
£70M, wonder if we are going to get a bonus this year...
What a monumental cock-up by a certain OEM.
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Bit of a sore point that.
http://www.internationalpowerplc.com/ipr/news/press/pr2008/2008-08-22/
£70M, wonder if we are going to get a bonus this year...
What a monumental thingy-up by a certain OEM.
So, whats the route cause?
Given the cost I am guessing turbines?
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Bit of a sore point that.
http://www.internationalpowerplc.com/ipr/news/press/pr2008/2008-08-22/
£70M, wonder if we are going to get a bonus this year...
What a monumental thingy-up by a certain OEM.
So, whats the route cause?
Given the cost I am guessing turbines?
Do you mean what does Rugeley use to generate power? It's coal powered IIRC.
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Bit of a sore point that.
http://www.internationalpowerplc.com/ipr/news/press/pr2008/2008-08-22/
£70M, wonder if we are going to get a bonus this year...
What a monumental thingy-up by a certain OEM.
So, whats the route cause?
Given the cost I am guessing turbines?
Do you mean what does Rugeley use to generate power? It's coal powered IIRC.
Lol, yes I know that, with 2 off 500MW prime movers.
More interested to know what the failures are that have caused such a long term outage on both setups
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imo the turbines are blots on the landscape.
realisticaly, it would seem that nuclear is the way forward.
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I dont mind them but then i dont have them in my back garden :y
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They are very inefficient - producing AC at the top which is converted to DC down to the bottom, then back to syncronised AC to pipe onto the national grid which results in a big energy loss.
Clearly he knows not what he is talking about.
As somebody who many moons ago worked on DC link design including the control electronics (AC-DC-AC), the conversion stage will be 90% plus efficient.
And its a must, it has to be done because its the only way you can insert the power into the 50Hz grid!
Consider the variable AC frequency of a wind turbine and the rock steady 50Hz mega power behind the grid....you cant just connect the two together!
I just passed your comments on to him and his response was "do your homework, read up on elongated turbine systems - these are what I work on, notoriously inneficient & unreliable - obvious from the amount of heat the invertors give off and the fact that one of them has to be oil cooled!"
Just the messenger....
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They are very inefficient - producing AC at the top which is converted to DC down to the bottom, then back to syncronised AC to pipe onto the national grid which results in a big energy loss.
Clearly he knows not what he is talking about.
As somebody who many moons ago worked on DC link design including the control electronics (AC-DC-AC), the conversion stage will be 90% plus efficient.
And its a must, it has to be done because its the only way you can insert the power into the 50Hz grid!
Consider the variable AC frequency of a wind turbine and the rock steady 50Hz mega power behind the grid....you cant just connect the two together!
I just passed your comments on to him and his response was "do your homework, read up on elongated turbine systems - these are what I work on, notoriously inneficient & unreliable - obvious from the amount of heat the invertors give off and the fact that one of them has to be oil cooled!"
Just the messenger....
Ow dear, another fitter who does not understand.
Efficiency is not directly related to heat output. If the turbine is producing 500KW of power (i.e. a big one) then the converter may well get hot due to the dissipation of 10KW of heat.....but, its still very efficient (in this example 98%).
The biggest loss will be in the distribution grid which approaches 40%
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Bit of a sore point that.
http://www.internationalpowerplc.com/ipr/news/press/pr2008/2008-08-22/
£70M, wonder if we are going to get a bonus this year...
What a monumental thingy-up by a certain OEM.
So, whats the route cause?
Given the cost I am guessing turbines?
New turbines fitted, now being removed. Old ones going back in. Think it might be a case of a decimal point in the wrong place by some design engineer!
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Bit of a sore point that.
http://www.internationalpowerplc.com/ipr/news/press/pr2008/2008-08-22/
£70M, wonder if we are going to get a bonus this year...
What a monumental thingy-up by a certain OEM.
So, whats the route cause?
Given the cost I am guessing turbines?
New turbines fitted, now being removed. Old ones going back in. Think it might be a case of a decimal point in the wrong place by some design engineer!
Lol, not a metric-imperial conversion error then!