Is generating electricity by wind power relatively cheap to run?
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{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
actually it is very expensive –
at the moment – the windmills in in the US attract bats
with their frequency hum – and are killing them
which is allowing the insect population to soar
and I, for one, hate mosquitoes
all the best
Yes it is, tom4bus has no idea what he’s talking about.
Like all forms of renewable energy, it his a high start-up cost, but after that, you only need common maintenance, a cost which is negligible. Lubricating, tightening bolts, going through and making sure that the structure is sound – much of which can be done with a laptop and a USB connection.
You essentially just make sure that the blades are in the correct orientation, and let them blow. Many people think that these are some kind of little farm windmill pump from the 1920s. They’re not these blades are 80 feet, 100 feet or more long. They act like huge sails that spin up a turbine and generate electricity.
Further, with modern bearings, construction, materials, and engineering, even with these huge blades you can practically sneeze on it and make it spin. The biggest problem isn’t too *little* wind, it’s too *much* wind, ironically.
Modern turbines have sensors to detect when the spinning is approaching a velocity at which shear stress at the connection hub for each blade and centripetal acceleration is approaching a critical point that could damage the entire contraption by bending or breaking a blade. The computer, which is individually redundant to each tower, will shut down the blades. They will stop spinning… and it will look like they are doing nothing. And when the wind is blowing too quickly, they aren’t generating electricity. But when wind speed lowers, the hub will be unlocked, and the turbine will once more spin and fuel the grid.
We who put in various forms of renewable energy are not idiots. There are different types of turbines for different areas, environments and applications. If you see a wind farm that is “off” it is because conditions have become momentarily dangerous, not that they are non-functional.
This is a rare occurrence, because when we pick a place to put in a turbine(s), we select a construction appropriate to expected prevailing conditions.
When making uneducated judgment calls, like tom4bus did, you have to take into account the long-term effects, not the rare short ones. You’re not going to stay out of Hawaii because, “Sure, it’s nice, but I heard it rained there once.”
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