Jobs! Jobs! Jobs! More Squeamish Stuff About Those Windfarms on the Ridges.

[NNadir]

I'll let them speak for themselves, although I will post one of their pictures here:



http://www.keepersoftheblueridge.com/gallery.html">Keepers of the Blue Ridge.

[Berry Cool]

1. Oh boy, real scary

I know I'm hiding under MY bed in fear. :rofl:

[TxRider]

2. Here are the pice for the squeamish

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=115&topic_id=225743&mesg_id=225760

[liberal N proud]

3. Sad thing is they don't have to destroy the environment like that

All they need is a small road to reach the tower sites.

[joshcryer]

5. Initial construction for the large (and future, superlarge) turbines, requires big roads at first.

Maintainance, however, should not require as much road-age, so you can expect planting projects to shrink the impact considerably, making them simple access roads one lane wide covered in lots of pretty grass with tire tracks.

This is largely a non-issue.

[Double T]

4. Wind turbines are a thing of beauty producing clean, pollution free electricity.

http://www.crownofmaine.com/panorama/mars-hill-windfarm/

[NNadir]

6. Unless you live near one, or give a shit about forests.

These are sure beatiful though:

[TxRider]

7. Which is why most aren't close to people and not in forests

Especially here in Texas

[madokie]

8. Off topic but

I'm telling you that drink is going to kill you. And the reason I post this is not because I care, I don't, but because I want to point out that these posts of yours lately have been reeking of etoh. Lately its been getting pretty bad. Just my observation mind you. Oh and when is the links to the peer reviewed papers of yours coming? A little more about that molten salt reactor invention of yours would be nice too. I'm an autocad kind of guy and can convert almost any drawing format so I'd like to see some of your drawing too.

[phantom power]

9. Silly rabbit. Environmental impacts don't count if they are in the service of wind or solar.

Metal mines concrete factories don't count if they're used to build wind turbines.
Desert ecosystems don't count if they're used to build solar farms.
Roads don't count if they're used to maintain wind turbines.
Cadmium doesn't count if it's used for manufacturing PV.
Benzene doesn't count if it was from NG drilling to compensate for our intermittent renewable future.
Oil leakage won't create superfund sites as long as it was for lubricating nacelle casings.

If you point out that actual people and ecosystems are affected by those things, you are a Larouchian nuclear nimby apologist, and should sit down and stfu. And also, all that nasty stuff is going to be fixed by the real renewable technology coming soon. In five years.

[kristopher]

11. Can you explain why the only people who post these exaggerated claims are nukenuts?

These posts are all attempts to draw a FALSE equivalency:
Nuclear power has environment consequences.
Renewable energy has environment consequences.
Therefore nuclear power is the same as renewable power in its impact on the environment.

That is a false statement since it doesn't rate based on degree of environmental impact. It is the nature of nuclear power that causes its environmental threat, not an unreasoning bias against nuclear power.

http://www.rsc.org/publishing/journals/EE/article.asp?doi=b809990c

Energy Environ. Sci., 2009, 2, 148 - 173, DOI: 10.1039/b809990c
Review of solutions to global warming, air pollution, and energy security

Mark Z. Jacobson

This paper reviews and ranks major proposed energy-related solutions to global warming, air pollution mortality, and energy security while considering other impacts of the proposed solutions, such as on water supply, land use, wildlife, resource availability, thermal pollution, water chemical pollution, nuclear proliferation, and undernutrition.

Nine electric power sources and two liquid fuel options are considered. The electricity sources include solar-photovoltaics (PV), concentrated solar power (CSP), wind, geothermal, hydroelectric, wave, tidal, nuclear, and coal with carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology. The liquid fuel options include corn-ethanol (E85) and cellulosic-E85. To place the electric and liquid fuel sources on an equal footing, we examine their comparative abilities to address the problems mentioned by powering new-technology vehicles, including battery-electric vehicles (BEVs), hydrogen fuel cell vehicles (HFCVs), and flex-fuel vehicles run on E85.

Twelve combinations of energy source-vehicle type are considered. Upon ranking and weighting each combination with respect to each of 11 impact categories, four clear divisions of ranking, or tiers, emerge.

Tier 1 (highest-ranked) includes wind-BEVs and wind-HFCVs.
Tier 2 includes CSP-BEVs, geothermal-BEVs, PV-BEVs, tidal-BEVs, and wave-BEVs.
Tier 3 includes hydro-BEVs, nuclear-BEVs, and CCS-BEVs.
Tier 4 includes corn- and cellulosic-E85.

Wind-BEVs ranked first in seven out of 11 categories, including the two most important, mortality and climate damage reduction. Although HFCVs are much less efficient than BEVs, wind-HFCVs are still very clean and were ranked second among all combinations.

Tier 2 options provide significant benefits and are recommended.

Tier 3 options are less desirable. However, hydroelectricity, which was ranked ahead of coal-CCS and nuclear with respect to climate and health, is an excellent load balancer, thus recommended.

The Tier 4 combinations (cellulosic- and corn-E85) were ranked lowest overall and with respect to climate, air pollution, land use, wildlife damage, and chemical waste. Cellulosic-E85 ranked lower than corn-E85 overall, primarily due to its potentially larger land footprint based on new data and its higher upstream air pollution emissions than corn-E85.

Whereas cellulosic-E85 may cause the greatest average human mortality, nuclear-BEVs cause the greatest upper-limit mortality risk due to the expansion of plutonium separation and uranium enrichment in nuclear energy facilities worldwide. Wind-BEVs and CSP-BEVs cause the least mortality.

The footprint area of wind-BEVs is 2–6 orders of magnitude less than that of any other option. Because of their low footprint and pollution, wind-BEVs cause the least wildlife loss.

The largest consumer of water is corn-E85. The smallest are wind-, tidal-, and wave-BEVs.

The US could theoretically replace all 2007 onroad vehicles with BEVs powered by 73000–144000 5 MW wind turbines, less than the 300000 airplanes the US produced during World War II, reducing US CO2 by 32.5–32.7% and nearly eliminating 15000/yr vehicle-related air pollution deaths in 2020.

In sum, use of wind, CSP, geothermal, tidal, PV, wave, and hydro to provide electricity for BEVs and HFCVs and, by extension, electricity for the residential, industrial, and commercial sectors, will result in the most benefit among the options considered. The combination of these technologies should be advanced as a solution to global warming, air pollution, and energy security. Coal-CCS and nuclear offer less benefit thus represent an opportunity cost loss, and the biofuel options provide no certain benefit and the greatest negative impacts.

[phantom power]

13. Because I hate Ukrainians, and I am also Larouchian. Why are you pro-benzene?

[kristopher]

15. Can you explain why the only people who post these exaggerated claims are nukenuts?

These posts are all attempts to draw a FALSE equivalency:
Nuclear power has environment consequences.
Renewable energy has environment consequences.
Therefore nuclear power is the same as renewable power in its impact on the environment.

That is a false statement since it doesn't rate based on degree of environmental impact. It is the nature of nuclear power that causes its environmental threat, not an unreasoning bias against nuclear power.

http://www.rsc.org/publishing/journals/EE/article.asp?doi=b809990c

Energy Environ. Sci., 2009, 2, 148 - 173, DOI: 10.1039/b809990c
Review of solutions to global warming, air pollution, and energy security

Mark Z. Jacobson

This paper reviews and ranks major proposed energy-related solutions to global warming, air pollution mortality, and energy security while considering other impacts of the proposed solutions, such as on water supply, land use, wildlife, resource availability, thermal pollution, water chemical pollution, nuclear proliferation, and undernutrition.

Nine electric power sources and two liquid fuel options are considered. The electricity sources include solar-photovoltaics (PV), concentrated solar power (CSP), wind, geothermal, hydroelectric, wave, tidal, nuclear, and coal with carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology. The liquid fuel options include corn-ethanol (E85) and cellulosic-E85. To place the electric and liquid fuel sources on an equal footing, we examine their comparative abilities to address the problems mentioned by powering new-technology vehicles, including battery-electric vehicles (BEVs), hydrogen fuel cell vehicles (HFCVs), and flex-fuel vehicles run on E85.

Twelve combinations of energy source-vehicle type are considered. Upon ranking and weighting each combination with respect to each of 11 impact categories, four clear divisions of ranking, or tiers, emerge.

Tier 1 (highest-ranked) includes wind-BEVs and wind-HFCVs.
Tier 2 includes CSP-BEVs, geothermal-BEVs, PV-BEVs, tidal-BEVs, and wave-BEVs.
Tier 3 includes hydro-BEVs, nuclear-BEVs, and CCS-BEVs.
Tier 4 includes corn- and cellulosic-E85.

Wind-BEVs ranked first in seven out of 11 categories, including the two most important, mortality and climate damage reduction. Although HFCVs are much less efficient than BEVs, wind-HFCVs are still very clean and were ranked second among all combinations.

Tier 2 options provide significant benefits and are recommended.

Tier 3 options are less desirable. However, hydroelectricity, which was ranked ahead of coal-CCS and nuclear with respect to climate and health, is an excellent load balancer, thus recommended.

The Tier 4 combinations (cellulosic- and corn-E85) were ranked lowest overall and with respect to climate, air pollution, land use, wildlife damage, and chemical waste. Cellulosic-E85 ranked lower than corn-E85 overall, primarily due to its potentially larger land footprint based on new data and its higher upstream air pollution emissions than corn-E85.

Whereas cellulosic-E85 may cause the greatest average human mortality, nuclear-BEVs cause the greatest upper-limit mortality risk due to the expansion of plutonium separation and uranium enrichment in nuclear energy facilities worldwide. Wind-BEVs and CSP-BEVs cause the least mortality.

The footprint area of wind-BEVs is 2–6 orders of magnitude less than that of any other option. Because of their low footprint and pollution, wind-BEVs cause the least wildlife loss.

The largest consumer of water is corn-E85. The smallest are wind-, tidal-, and wave-BEVs.

The US could theoretically replace all 2007 onroad vehicles with BEVs powered by 73000–144000 5 MW wind turbines, less than the 300000 airplanes the US produced during World War II, reducing US CO2 by 32.5–32.7% and nearly eliminating 15000/yr vehicle-related air pollution deaths in 2020.

In sum, use of wind, CSP, geothermal, tidal, PV, wave, and hydro to provide electricity for BEVs and HFCVs and, by extension, electricity for the residential, industrial, and commercial sectors, will result in the most benefit among the options considered. The combination of these technologies should be advanced as a solution to global warming, air pollution, and energy security. Coal-CCS and nuclear offer less benefit thus represent an opportunity cost loss, and the biofuel options provide no certain benefit and the greatest negative impacts.

[phantom power]

17. As I have mentioned before, I don't think enough renewables have been built...

to answer my favorite formulation of the question: "which energy sources have the least impact per terawatt-hour?" I think that when renewable energy has generated (say) 5% of the energy generated by nukes over the 60-year history of nuclear energy, then we will have enough experience and data to really make a robust comparison.

Nukes, hydro and fossil fuels all have the misfortune to have been actually used on a very large scale, for a long time. Long enough and big enough for everybody to have seen the good, the bad and the ugly.

And of course somewhere in there is NG, with its impacts. It's not renewable, but it seems to be part of the Renewable Plan. Transition, stop-gap, or otherwise.

[kristopher]

18. That still doesn't answer the question.

False and misleading information is routinely posted by those who are trying to make nuclear power look good. Why do you support that type of posting and why do you support nuclear power?

It isn't like we have no experience with renewables. Granted the scale isn't huge, but there is plenty of evidence over time to provide EXCELLENT insight into the potential problems. We certainly know much, much more about them than we did about nuclear when we launched the effort to go for nuclear power.

[joshcryer]

19. CO2 emissions from metal and concrete production *are* counted with turbines.

Desert ecosystems *are* being looked at when we consider building solar farms. The impact is considered in depth.

Roads *do* count when turbines are built, but the impact is negligible. Most wind turbines are built on farmland where roads will not have any impact beyond that of the farms which they are on, and on the seas where roads are a non-issue. The trees cut down by building roads are being sacrificed so that their brethren can survive since it helps mitigate seasonal changes.

Cadmium *is* counted and the EPA in the US has stringent policies on its environmental contamination. Fossil fuels are the *major* source of cadmium in the environment. Cadmium in solar will have stringent disposal and recycling policies (it would be more economical to recycle *anyway*).

Benzene does count as it is regulated as much as cadmium. A renewable future absolves the need for it and natural gas.

I have been vocal about making our production very recycle friendly and very environmentally friendly. I have come out against China's hypocritical environmental policies in the past. I have come out against natural gas.

But I'm not a fool. The objections made here are not true.

[Javaman]

10. Swing...AND A MISS.

oh how hard you try.

failed, yet again.

I see those multi-billion dollar nuke plants are just popping up all over the place. :eyes:

[bhikkhu]

12. Ok...here's a windmill question:

a common value given for an energy device is EROI, which is more or less the difference between the energy used to build or produce something vs the energy it produces. Windmills are often given an EROI of about 20, or produce 20 times the energy it takes to build them, but the formula is flawed because the inputs are cheap fossil fuel energy, and the outputs are very different.

So the question is: if you had a windmill up and running and needed more, how many windmills could you build using only the energy produced by the first windmill? That would fairly include the production of the metals and the concrete - all the materials and processes involved, and not consider an existing infrastructure of roads and mines and workers and so forth.

I know you can produce steel (or at least reprocess scrap steel) in an electric arc furnace, which could be run on windmill power, and you could burn limestone for cement in an electric kiln, but I don't know that anyone has worked out the EROI for a windmill using only windmill-power inputs. It would be a better answer to the question of whether wind power is really a practical replacement for fossil fuel energy, or whether its just another shell game.

[kristopher]

14. How is that in any way relevant?

Are you expecting to tear down and rebuild society from the stone age?

1) no one has proposed a 'wind only' energy infrastructure. All plans have a mix of various energy sources including liquid biofuels.

2) the EROI of wind you cite is an obsolete number. It is the only one published, but if you look at the data behind it, they are derived from from small (by today's standards) turbines. I did a back of the envelope calculation once and came up with an EROI of around 50:1 for well sited terrestrial turbines and 80:1 for offshore turbines. I think I only went up to either the 3.6MW or 5.0MW offshore rated turbines and a 2.0 for terrestrial. The size of terrestrial turbines are limited by the transportation infrastructure.

I think you are really concerned with the characteristics of different energy carriers. While EROI is extremely important, it isn't the metric to answer the question you've posed. Transportation is a good example. Why is gasoline good and bad? What are the differences between battery electric, hydrogen fuel cells, hydrogen combustion and natural gas?

Once a specific application is identified - transportation in this example - we can then look at the different characteristics of the energy carriers and how they work with various renewable or traditional energy sources.

That is what the analysis by Jacobson is all about.

http://www.rsc.org/publishing/journals/EE/article.asp?doi=b809990c

Energy Environ. Sci., 2009, 2, 148 - 173, DOI: 10.1039/b809990c
Review of solutions to global warming, air pollution, and energy security

Mark Z. Jacobson

This paper reviews and ranks major proposed energy-related solutions to global warming, air pollution mortality, and energy security while considering other impacts of the proposed solutions, such as on water supply, land use, wildlife, resource availability, thermal pollution, water chemical pollution, nuclear proliferation, and undernutrition.

Nine electric power sources and two liquid fuel options are considered. The electricity sources include solar-photovoltaics (PV), concentrated solar power (CSP), wind, geothermal, hydroelectric, wave, tidal, nuclear, and coal with carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology. The liquid fuel options include corn-ethanol (E85) and cellulosic-E85. To place the electric and liquid fuel sources on an equal footing, we examine their comparative abilities to address the problems mentioned by powering new-technology vehicles, including battery-electric vehicles (BEVs), hydrogen fuel cell vehicles (HFCVs), and flex-fuel vehicles run on E85.

Twelve combinations of energy source-vehicle type are considered. Upon ranking and weighting each combination with respect to each of 11 impact categories, four clear divisions of ranking, or tiers, emerge.

Tier 1 (highest-ranked) includes wind-BEVs and wind-HFCVs.
Tier 2 includes CSP-BEVs, geothermal-BEVs, PV-BEVs, tidal-BEVs, and wave-BEVs.
Tier 3 includes hydro-BEVs, nuclear-BEVs, and CCS-BEVs.
Tier 4 includes corn- and cellulosic-E85.

Wind-BEVs ranked first in seven out of 11 categories, including the two most important, mortality and climate damage reduction. Although HFCVs are much less efficient than BEVs, wind-HFCVs are still very clean and were ranked second among all combinations.

Tier 2 options provide significant benefits and are recommended.

Tier 3 options are less desirable. However, hydroelectricity, which was ranked ahead of coal-CCS and nuclear with respect to climate and health, is an excellent load balancer, thus recommended.

The Tier 4 combinations (cellulosic- and corn-E85) were ranked lowest overall and with respect to climate, air pollution, land use, wildlife damage, and chemical waste. Cellulosic-E85 ranked lower than corn-E85 overall, primarily due to its potentially larger land footprint based on new data and its higher upstream air pollution emissions than corn-E85.

Whereas cellulosic-E85 may cause the greatest average human mortality, nuclear-BEVs cause the greatest upper-limit mortality risk due to the expansion of plutonium separation and uranium enrichment in nuclear energy facilities worldwide. Wind-BEVs and CSP-BEVs cause the least mortality.

The footprint area of wind-BEVs is 2–6 orders of magnitude less than that of any other option. Because of their low footprint and pollution, wind-BEVs cause the least wildlife loss.

The largest consumer of water is corn-E85. The smallest are wind-, tidal-, and wave-BEVs.

The US could theoretically replace all 2007 onroad vehicles with BEVs powered by 73000–144000 5 MW wind turbines, less than the 300000 airplanes the US produced during World War II, reducing US CO2 by 32.5–32.7% and nearly eliminating 15000/yr vehicle-related air pollution deaths in 2020.

In sum, use of wind, CSP, geothermal, tidal, PV, wave, and hydro to provide electricity for BEVs and HFCVs and, by extension, electricity for the residential, industrial, and commercial sectors, will result in the most benefit among the options considered. The combination of these technologies should be advanced as a solution to global warming, air pollution, and energy security. Coal-CCS and nuclear offer less benefit thus represent an opportunity cost loss, and the biofuel options provide no certain benefit and the greatest negative impacts.

[madokie]

16. You lost me

I suggest you go back to whatever you were doing before you were interrupted

[bhikkhu]

20. It is a valid and reasonable question

The idea of it is that EROI gives you the value of an energy source based on the difference between the energy inputs - what is needed to build the device or fuel the process - and the energy output, the energy it produces. There are numerous ways to figure this, however, resulting in numerous claims that tend to support the claimants views, for or against. You get the best result if there is a great similarity between the type of energy input and the energy produced (an example being ethanol, which uses primarily petroleum inputs to generate a petroluem-like product - there is argument, but within a fairly narrow range).

Wind power is a little difficult, as it uses generally petroleum inputs vs an electrical output. In practice I believe all this is "monetized"; the petroleum inputs valued at and varying with the price of fuel, the cement inputs varying with the price of coal. and the outputs must then be given at the value of the electricity at market. The problem being these are all skewed figures, effected by supply and demand and whatever subsidies or accidents of the moment...it tells us very little about the absolute value of the process itself.

So...if you had an operating windmill and wished to know if it actually produced more energy than was required to build it, you could take its power output and direct it to the building of another windmill. It should be possible to work this out on paper, though I haven't done so. Then you would know, for instance, an objective EROI for the device and the value of the windmill as an energy source. You would also know whether it was a viable technology for a post-petroleum world, or whether it was just another dead end, impractical to build without fossil fuels.

[kristopher]

21. That's a bit different than your first thoughts...

What you want is often called energy payback. Recommend googling /energy payback wind/ or whatever type of system you are interested in.