I ask this because the concept of “reducing our carbon footprint” seems inversely proportional to the physical footprint of these massive installations.
It puzzles me that people calling themselves environmentalists are willing to stand back and watch so many scenic areas get desecrated. A recent trip through the area along the Columbia river in eastern Washington was a bummer. Turbines have industrialized the landscape for dozens of miles, turning it into a bleak, robotic view, and that’s only a small part of future plans for the world.
I’m not “pro oil” but I see wind turbines and large-scale solar plants as a Faustian bargain where the soul of the landscape is being sold to meet energy needs.
Does anyone have a total acreage calculation for what it would take to replace oil & coal usage with these invasive structures? A recent U.S. government report cites 675,000 acres under consideration for solar plants alone. I don’t understand how anyone can keep a straight face and call that “reducing our footprint.”
Noah H, I’d actually rather see that 100×100 mile square ALL in one place, purely theoretically. It could be a designated industrial dead zone.
The whole problem is that nature is being desecrated far and wide, especially with wind turbines looming over natural features and becoming visible from areas where you used to get a wilderness feel. Turbines are the most prominent man-made structures outside of city skyscrapers, and their movement adds further to the disruption.
Why must turbines always be stark white? Some sort of bird-friendly camouflage would at least help reduce their blatant contrast.
Rudydoo, it’s always seemed that every possible roof should have a solar panel, and they could subsidize that a lot more, vs. centralized power delivery. Maybe there’s a way for power companies to rent the space on people’s roofs and call it a wash for the monthly bills. Included in the rental contract would be maintenance done by the power company. A great way to minimize using unspoiled land.
As for wind turbines vs. power lines, the turbines being white and spinning, and very tall, simply stand out a lot more. If you climb a mountain with turbines on the horizon they almost always stick out a lot more than gray power lines or regular power plant smokestacks. Few things in nature are that white and spindly. They look like bleached trees. They take up a lot more acreage for the same amount of power, and in that acreage are access roads and other disruptions. It’s just not a visually benign way to generate electricity.
I wouldn’t mind a few huge maglev turbines, though, which could c
More Pages:
- Solar Turbines: Why Cant We Install Wind Turbines And/or Solar Panels All Throughout America For Our Energy Needs? (5/21/2011)
- Solar Power: Facts About Renewable Energy? (solar, Wind, Etc) Please Answer? (5/29/2011)
- Solar Turbines: PLEASE..SMART PEOPLE ONLY!..SERIOUSLY? (5/6/2011)
- Solar Turbines: Wind Turbines? (5/21/2011)
- Solar Turbines: What Are The Drawbacks To Using Wind Turbines Or Solar Panels For Providing All Power To A Home? (4/24/2011)
{ 9 comments… read them below or add one }
i forget where i saw the illustration but it showed that the amount of land needed to power the globe with solar power would be the size of maybe Colorado. the thing is that solar farms are not a necessity if solar panels are distributed throughout the world. They could be on rooftops, tops of parking structures, incorporated into existing power lines, etc. I agree that any disruption or scarring of the land should be avoided. we literally remove entire mountains to obtain more coal. it’s sickening! we would not be doing the world any favors if we change the land drastically for any reason.
I am not certain in the validity of my reference, it may be larger. i saw it in my environmental class/
peace!
Lets say you put solar panels on everything that isn’t moving. How many trees would you have to cut down to keep them from shading all the solar panels?
A few years ago Popular Science ran an article that suggested that an area 100 miles by 100 miles would be enough to power the US via solar. Of course all of that area wouldn’t have to be in one place. It could be spread out in much smaller areas and atop of every home and building etc. Wind power has other citing problems, but could be incorporated in several widely scattered locations….in short….no problem. Couple all of this with natural gas and hydro, coal goes down for the count. Let’s be real…coal is a 19th century technology that’s had its day….except that the coal mafia needs the bucks. Currently China is moving into this industry big time, and we’re not…how pitiful is that in a time when we need to add a few million jobs in the next decade. Wind and solar could do this…so what’s the hangup?
Hey Reality, Edward and Noah are exactly right here, but let me give you some other numbers and perspective on this, “Faustian,” situation. There is enough wind power in North and South Dakota alone to power the entire US. It would be stupid to do that, because then we’d have to ship the power all over creation on those lovely high tension wires that currently blight the landscape. When you were in the gorge looking at the wind turbines, did you notice the wires? They were strung across the Columbia back in the 50′s, but to date nobody has complained about them. I can never understand how a wind turbine can be taken as such an eyesore when a high tension electric line and all it’s supporting superstructures never cause anyone to bat an eye.
Solar has similar numbers. 675,000 acres sounds huge, but if you do the math, it works out to a little over 100 square miles, about half the size of Rhode Island. But here is the real beauty of renewable energy, most of our resources are spread pretty evenly over the middle half of our globe, which just happens to be where all the people are. Consider a family of four living in what might be a midwest starter home. It might be 1500 square feet, but since it’s a two story, it only has a, “Footprint,” of about 800 square feet. Since the roof slopes both ways, only about 450 square feet of surface would face south, which is where we would want solar panels to face. If you covered that space with solar electric panels, even at 11% efficiency (about average today) you would generate over 5000 watts, enough to run that home and the nieghbors too. Our home is another example, our solar array fits quite nicely on the roof of our one car carport with room to spare, yet it runs the entire property most of the year. If I install solar panels on an existing structures roof, how much footprint is it taking up? Basically none, since the building already did that. Now look at our existing commercial structures in the sun belt, those huge warehouses in places like Ontario, CA. If we just covered those buildings with solar panels, we could easily cut our grid power requirements in half. This is the reason builders, utility companies and governments are so busy putting in solar and wind, it makes sense environmentally, economically and aesthetically if it’s done properly, and there are jobs to be had in those projects, higher tech ones that are safer than mining for coal. Did you know that there are already over 100,000 homes and businesses in the US alone that use some level of solar power right now? That number is increasing daily, and in most cases, you won’t even see that “ugly” array after it’s installed, it will be neatly hidden on the roof of that lovely factory you’re driving by. In most wind farm applications, the space below the tower is still available for whatever it was used for prior to the turbine. In the Dakotas, they farm and graze under the turbines, so how much, “footprint,” is being used up now?
You’ve probably heard the argument that a solar panel or wind turbine will never produce as much power as was used to produce it in the first place by now, it’s one of my favorites. Even after several institutions did research on the, “embodied energy,” in a solar panel found that it wasn’t true, it was later discovered that the entire argument is pointless. The gas generator needs to be fed gas the rest of its life too, the panel does not.
I’ll grant you the fact that there are places we should not stick a wind turbine. Along the rim of the grand canyon is one example, regardless of how attractive the wind resources might be there. I’m also a firm believer that there is no one answer to our energy needs, be it renewable, nuclear or fossil fuel. The way out of this maze is through diversity. I would love to see solar get 10% of our electric budget one day, and maybe 20 for wind, but there is still room for some coal, natural gas, and nuclear. All these technologies should be used wisely. I don’t think we should be storing nuclear waste in temporary repositories on site like we do today, and I don’t think we should install wind turbines just offshore along the beaches of the Great Lakes either. We just need to use our heads. Now if you really want to get into the discussion, I wouldn’t take answers from hacks like me online at face value, there are some great resources where you can dig up the information you want, I’ll list some below in you’re interested. Good luck Reality, and take care, Rudydoo
Actually, off grey or green would be a good idea, now that’s using our heads. The power companies do have arrangements for individuals solar arrays, it is called, “net metering,” we are in a contract right now. Most states have not adopted them yet, but they are gaining momentum. Thanks for the edits..Rudydoo
Dear evidence based reality,
your observations of this countries atempts at reducing our so called “Carbon footprint ” are not only correct but are also probably misplaced….I say “misplaced” only because your opinion will never matter!….as will mine “never matter”……..if you look at Greenland and Finland and notice that thier electricity is made via volca/thermo-tseam production and that none of the public actually pays for electricity (even though the population is not comparable to America) you’d not even suggest that wind is an alternative. T.Boone Pickens who’s formerly put 200 million of his own dollars into wind energy is now saying he made a huge error,…he is now saying not to invest in wind energy. Now if you think California has alot of wind turbines within it’s borders, you’d be much remiss by not visiting Texas and comparing the two places…..just in west Texas alone,….and one example: on my relatives properties RICHARDS from Abilene,Tx. there are over 1100 on just 27,000 acres of a mesa following an area along hwy 20 from about abilene to about Noodle Dome,Tx. just past Merkle,Tx.and that’s just a small parcel of land….if you keep driving to Lubbock,Tx, you keep seing thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands and they all hanve 3 blades on each turbine, that has got to be a huge waste of surface area. what I noticed most is that about half were working and half weren’t working….something is wrong with this picture. Either the technology doesn’t work or the mechanics of the technology havn’t been correctly worked out. it seems to me that the blades are way too thin (from one edge to the other) and thus don’t grab enough wind or the type of blades are just not the thing that will work…….they don’t spin very fast at all and I got out and put my hand in the air to check out the wind speed (knowing the wind changes at 13 feet off the ground and then again at 30 feet off the ground…..these things are up to 250 feet high and start at 150 feet high…..some are absolutely immense………..And yet I don’t think there is one single Volca/thermo power plant in all of the United states and yet we have about 25 areas that we could utilize for that very thing…….and not one single person has put his head to that IDEA……but, we can design an electric car that can go up to 75 miles on one charge and have it cost $ 35,000.00………who’s the freaking genious that came up with that Idea and said it was a good thing??????????? I wsnna know who that was??????? stand that Fu%$ er up against a wall and shoot him on TV. Cuz he’s just designed the freakin Golf Cart with a paint job!!!!!!! well hell I coulda done that for about $ 1100.00. and called it “the golfcart with a paint job”….that would be at least Honest.!!!!…… Instead of the president telling car makers they should be making cars that get 50 miles to the gallon by 2030, he should be telling home makers that they should be making “affordable electricity producing shingles” by 2015 !!!!!!…why the heck isn’t anyone doing that???????…so this windmill thing? I say go hire a Norwiegian….cuz they aint broken a windmill in over 300 years….when soemthign works, let it keep working…….you watch, this coming year whe n the oregon Ducks play Aubrun, ( I hope Oregon wins but they won’t) Oregon will lose to Aubrun because they’re changing up to new uniforms when they don’t have to, the old ones got them to where they are, they’re 12&0….and they got there in thier old uniforms……..that sounds paranoid I know but just wait and see…if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it…….we don’t have an oil shortage either, we have an oil stupidage….all we have to do is design an engine that actually uses the oil we put in it………that’s all we need to do…..
Now,….when you’re talking about turbines, you’re not even talking about water turbines and if you were, you aren’t mentioning flat water turbines or, “Long water turbines” which this country hasn’t even delved into and nobody even talks about it and yet New Mexico has miles and miles of concrete spillways as does New York and New Jersey……Why aren’t you asking about that?…I mean you seem intelligent to me……..so why not?
Nathan
Depending on the technology, none.
For example, if solar power stations were put into geosynchronous orbit then far more power then we currently used could be beamed to Earth and land area occupied by the power receiver arrays could still be used as agricultural fields. Of course many people complained about storing solar energy but the energy could be used to synthesize gasoline and diesel from H2O and CO2 thereby storing the energy chemically, batteries are just chemically stored energy anyways. Sandia Labs has demonstrated using solar energy to synthesize hydrocarbon fuels from H2O and CO2.
Unfortunately, people are limited by their imagination and preconceptions about energy.
How about atmospheric vortex energy ? Did you know that a major research offensive
regarding this free renewable energy is on the go ? Did you know that this energy
was licensed to be developed by only the authority of … ? They reckon and I agree
that this form of energy has the definite potential to actually replace fossil fuel usage ?
Usage of this energy can actually prevent tornadoes from touching down ever again.
They named it something like “atmospheric vortex energy”. There is apparently
already an experimental plant in Utah. Its done as follows :
google it and type : ” tornado chimney, go to bottom, go to page 4. These guys
actually contain and maintain their own tornadoes to generate more power than
wind can dream of. You can also glimpse my website : http://www.weciboo.com,
page 21 : Tornado prevention chimney energy.
The atmosphere already house all of the energy, Man may need, in advance.
To power the entire united states wind energy would need to be fully harnessed in 3 of the 50 states
Solar Farms – A lot of land.
At mid-day when the sun is not begin a cloud, each square foot on the earth’s surface receives about 100 watts of solar radiation. So, at that time, each square mile of the earth’s surface would receive almost 2.8 gigawatts of energy. Most of our current solar panels/collectors are only about 20% efficient, so reduce that to 0.6 gigawatts per square mile. And that is only near midday, during the solar peak. At night, of course, they would not produce any power at all. But, suppose that 0.6 gigawatts of power could be sustained 24 hours a day (which it can’t), it would still take 1 square mile of solar panels to equal the energy produced by each 1 of our 600 average-sized coal-fired steam generating units which each produces on average about 500 megawatts, or 0.5 gigawatts of power. You don’t need to do the math to figure out that it would take probably hundreds or thousands of square miles to replace our current coal-fired energy system, and I’m not going to do that here. Even so, I haven’t even gotten into the solar requirement needed to replace our oil-generated power. That’s another calculation.
Wind turbines – A lot of land too.
Last time I checked, the very largest wind turbines produce about 5 megawatts each. And they only produce energy when the wind blows. Even so, if the wind could blow 24 hours a day, you would need over 100 of these largest wind turbines to replace each 1 of our 600 coal-fired generator units. And they cannot be spaced very close together. You don’t need to do the math here either to realize we’re talking about lots of land area would be needed.