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Shradha Merchant writes:
The Pros and Pros of Wind Turbines
When I hear people discussing the demerits of wind turbines vis-a-vis climate change, I wonder if they have lost their collective marbles! It makes my blood curdle …are they absolute & *^&^ (pardon my French) to even discuss the disadvantages of wind turbines and its negative impact on climate change?
Just to be sure and to get my facts right, I Googled the phrase – pros and cons of wind turbines – and I got 52K+ results. I began to think that perhaps the world was not crazy; maybe I was just ill informed. So I began to read up the possible disadvantages of wind turbines since I already knew its benefits.
‘Disadvantages’ of Wind Turbines
And that’s when my doubt was confirmed. People are nutz! Do you know what they have listed under the ‘disadvantages’ of wind turbines? And not just one site, quite a handful of them, right at the top of the search engine results.
I could be rolling on the floor, pealing with laughter, tears flowing from my eyes, hands clutching my belly – if it just wasn’t so sad. People believe this garbage. There are people out there who actually start doubting the eco-friendliness of wind turbines and its zero impact on climate change.
Forget Climate Change; Just See How They Spoil the View
Yes, wind turbines are not pretty, yes, they are an eye sore, but hello! They actually help reverse the process of unnatural climate change. See, they effectively produce energy without dangerous side effects like pollution.
They don’t produce waste materials, or generate radioactive substances, or hog non-renewable sources like coal and oil to produce energy. They merely need wind – which is free and cheap!
Wind turbines are one of the few ways in which mankind can produce clean energy without harming Mother Earth – and if you gotta tolerate a view which is less than perfect, well, so be it!
And so Noisy?
Yeah, yeah they are noisy and they create a terrible hum but you know what? I’d prefer to go deaf – I won’t, but for the sake of argument, let’s assume one can go deaf if they live close to a wind turbine.
So, I prefer to tolerate the noise pollution instead of gagging to death and choking on pollutants that are created when oil (or coal or gas) is burnt to produce electricity.
I prefer the hum of harmless wind turbines instead of asthma, bronchitis, and other terrible diseases I’d probably cultivate if I were living next to a thermal power station or an oil refinery.
Wind Turbines can be Fragile and Expensive
Yes, they can be easily damaged by acts of god like a thunderstorm perhaps or fire – but let me know of one power station that is immune to that?
They might have an initially higher start up (small price to pay for climate change) which is a one-time cost.
Also, costs of electricity is slightly higher but am sure no one minds digging a little deeper in their pockets if they want a greener, cleaner climate change.
Valid Drawbacks of Wind Turbines
They aren’t really all that efficient (they can only work in ‘wind corridors’) and one wind turbine can power only 500 households. But studies have shown that if wind turbines were properly explored, they could produce 5 times more electricity than is currently needed – so hah!
Another drawback is that they might damage birds that tend to fly right into them and if you live nearby, your TV reception might be less than perfect.
So, for the sake of all couch potatoes and bird lovers, let’s dismantle wind turbines and allow climate change to proceed unchecked.
Do you agree with Shradha? Leave a comment below.
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For now energy generated from wind turbines is not that highly recognized. But few years from now, i guess the worth of it will be much appreciated. After we experience for ourselves that our planet is dying.
Comment by Manu — September 3, 2009 @ 2:52 am
This is exciting – just heard of wind turbines being installed at sea. They will be far away from the shore so that should take care of issues such as ugliness, noise, interference with TV reception, and so on.
If enough wind trubines are installed at sea, then does that mean climate change wont be such a burning issue after all?
Comment by Alan — September 9, 2009 @ 5:43 am
I don’t think that installing wind turbines at sea will affect climate change so much.
See, environmentalists will be up in arms about the pollution caused at sea, at how wind turbines are negatively affecting sea animals, flora, and fauna, at how installations and construction cause pollutions blah blah.
Also, I think the costs are also higher, but the good news is that wind turbines at sea are more effective than land based wind turbines because sea winds are stronger and are more regular than winds on land.
Overall, everything has a negative and a positive. The key issue is that climate change can and should be altered in any which way.
Comment by Sharon — September 9, 2009 @ 5:47 am
Nothing is ever simple. Problems with wind turbines:
Fossil fuel generators still have to run at a certain level for back-up.
Cost of a single turbine vs. life time production of energy? What are the figures?
Quite a number of bats, eagles, large birds of prey ARE killed in areas that have large turbines. I personally don’t want to be up to my ass in bugs and rats. PLACEMENT SHOULD BE REGULATED BY FEDERAL GOVERNMENT AND EPA.
Very few studies have been done regarding effects on sea life.
Vibrations also kill everything in the ground for a certain radius around the turbine.
Sleeplessness is only the beginning of health problems for people living close to the turbines. I’m glad Shradha doesn’t mind missing sleep or going deaf but shouldn’t speak for people who often have no choice regarding the turbines built near their homes.
Comment by Karen — September 10, 2009 @ 5:13 pm
Except noisy problem of wind turbine, killing birds is another problem for wind turbines. For the noisy, vertical axis wind turbine has good performance in noisy. Usually less 20db@A at 6m/s.
Comment by wind turbines — September 16, 2009 @ 9:53 am
I have also done some research and the following article appears to summarize much of the debate for me.
Wind power the worst kind of mirage By Henk Tennekes
Engineers cave in to green pressure, thanks to politically driven funding.
Wind energy is an engineer’s nightmare. To begin with, the energy density of flowing air is miserably low. Therefore, you need a massive contraption to catch one megawatt at best, and a thousand of these to equal a single gas- or coal-fired power plant.
If you design them for a wind speed of 34 miles per hour, they are useless at wind speeds below 22 mph and extremely dangerous at 44 mph, unless feathered in time. Remember, power is proportional to the cube of the wind speed. Old-fashioned Dutch windmills needed a two-man crew on 12-hour watch, seven days a week, because a runaway windmill first burnt its bearings, then its hardwood gears, then the entire superstructure.
This was the nightmare of millers everywhere in the “good” old days. And what did these beautiful antiques deliver? Fifteen horsepower at best, in favourable winds, about what a power lawn mower does these days. No wonder the Dutch switched to steam-powered pumping stations as soon as they could, in the late 19th century.
Since the power generated by modern wind turbines is so unpredictable, conventional power plants have to serve as back-ups. These run at less than half power most of the time. That is terribly uneconomical – only at full power do they have good thermal efficiency and minimal CO2 emissions per kWh delivered.
Think also a moment of the cable networks needed: not only a fine-maze distribution network at the consumer end, but also one at the generator end. And what about servicing? How do you get a repair crew to a lonely hillside? Especially when you decided to put the wind park at sea? Use helicopters – now that is green!
For that matter, would you care to imagine what happens to rotor blades in freezing rain? Or how the efficiency of laminar-flow rotor blades decreases as bugs and dust accumulate on their leading edges?
Or what did happen in Germany more than once? German legislation gives wind power absolute priority, so all other forms of generating electricity have to back off when the wind starts blowing. This creates dangerous, almost uncontrollable instabilities in the high-voltage network. At those moments, power plant operators all over Europe sweat blood, almost literally. The synchronization of the system is also a scary job: alternating currents at 100,000 volts or more cannot be out of phase more than one degree or so, else circuit breakers pop everywhere and a brownout all over Europe starts.
One application might be attractive, though. Suppose you fill a water basin in the hills nearby using wind power when it blows, and turn the water turbines on when emergency power is needed for one reason or another (a power plant failure, a cold winter night).
Wind power is a green mirage of the worst kind. It looks green to simple souls but it is a technical nightmare. Nowhere I have been, be it Holland, Denmark, Germany, France or California, have I seen wind parks where all turbines were operating properly. Typically, 20% stand idle, out of commission, broken down. Use Google Videos to find examples of wind turbine crashes, start meditating and reach your own conclusions.
Why don’t politicians listen to engineers? Why do engineers cave in to politically inspired financing? Merely to join the green daydreaming? I am an engineer; I want to be proud of my profession.
Henk Tennekes is an aeronautical engineer and the former research director of KNMI, the Dutch National Weather Service. This article was published today by The Pielke Research Group here.
Comment by Gene Mitran — April 6, 2010 @ 1:59 pm