Wind turbines - can be DIY made?

[Mary Fisher]

There's an awful lot of paranoia about wind power in this thread :-)

[cupra]

A lot of it is NIMBYism, but that's opinion based - I wouldn't want a wind farm nearby but I'm happy with Nuclear!

[Mary Fisher]

I'd be happy with either. I'm not happy with coal fired power stations. Living on the Yorkshire coalfields I've experienced what coal mining does to people.

Mary

[Roger]

The message from "Mary Fisher" contains these words:

Why should I make any sacrifice at all when the average Brit has a larger energy footprint than I do? Let those who positively waste more energy make the sacrifices.

Bully for you but washing machines are just so much more effective.

Incidentally I would put up a decent sized wind turbine if I thought I would be able to make even a tiny profit out of it but I cannot afford to waste either my pension or my capital on grandiose schemes that don't pay for themselves.

Unlike you I have sufficient land, open aspect and altitude to give a turbine a chance of working. What I might not get is planning permission. According to the local rag a householder in an isolated position up the valley was refused planning permission for a wind turbine he wanted to install to replace his 30 year old diesel generator. There was something odd about the circumstances though which might have contributed to the refusal. The householder apparently claimed he was getting too old to go out and start his generator whenever they needed electricity and the turbine was the only way to get round that. Odd in that even 30 years ago auto start generators had been around for at least 20 years.

But I already have mains electricity so cannot use even his feeble excuse.

[cupra]

IMO, wind power is best suited to offshore locations, but again that's personal....

In an ideal world, all coal fired should go....

[David Hansen]

On Fri, 6 Oct 2006 10:44:08 +0100 someone who may be "Doki" wrote this:-

What I do is not in the least important to the discussion.

Were I to be asked about such things I would say that there are other things to do first, including the things you mention. However, having done that if someone wanted to install a wind turbine on their house I would point out the advantages and disadvantages of such a scheme.

I draw my own conclusions about those who loudly imply that someone should never install a wind turbine on their house.

[David Hansen]

On Fri, 06 Oct 2006 10:27:14 +0100 (BST) someone who may be "Dave Liquorice" wrote this:-

No I didn't write that.

[David Hansen]

On Fri, 6 Oct 2006 11:09:42 +0100 someone who may be "Mary Fisher" wrote this:-

Indeed. The rather desperate looking attempts to regurgitate "facts" that have been disproved are not convincing.

[Mary Fisher]

Indeed.

There are often alternative sites. When we considered it we were going to fix it to the concrete block garage to avoid vibration on the house wall. That would also have got it further away from wind disturbance from the house.

We were advised by the supplier that it still wouldn't have been suitable because of all the other buildings round us. I'm prepared to take the expert's view and not be ruled by opinion or unfounded scepticism.

I'd say never mind, we can wait for things to get better, of which I'm confident, but we'll probably be dead by then. We haven't as much time left as many round here.

Mary

[Mary Fisher]

No comment

You've done coparitive tests?

In this case the items was too big for effective machine washing.

I apologise, I didn't realise you were so hard up.

[David Hansen]

On Fri, 06 Oct 2006 10:05:30 +0100 (BST) someone who may be "Dave Liquorice" wrote this:-

The UK electricity system operates with a one hour gate closure. As the reports I have referred to illustrate, wind power can be forecast accurately over this timescale. Over a few days wind forecasts are less accurate, but accurate enough to wind up standby plant if there is likely to be a lull over part of the UK.

If you really want to push the infrasound then I will respond with

which contains the following:

=====================================================================

"I can state quite categorically that there is no significant infrasound from current designs of wind turbines."

=====================================================================

[David Hansen]

On Thu, 5 Oct 2006 21:38:48 +0100 someone who may be Roger wrote this:-

You have yet to provide a source for this quotation, preferably with a URL. When you do so we can consider it and the context in which it was made.

[tinnews]

Surely everything said here is an 'opinion' especially when relating to subjective things like unsightliness. If I say something like "that painting is horrible" it's inevitably my opinion, there's really no need to add IMHO to everything one says.

[tinnews]

I don't know, but you said "Surely anything which goes some way to reducing fossil .....". All I was saying was that, no, it's not true that *anything* that reduces fossil fuel use is good. One needs to study the relative costs (both monetary and environmental) of the alternatives before you can decide.

See above, I didn't say that there were *definitely* better ways to spend your money, I was complaining that you were saying that doing this (presumably installing a wind turbine) must be good regardless of any alternatives available.

[David Hansen]

On Fri, 6 Oct 2006 09:57:34 +0100 someone who may be Roger wrote this:-

What makes you think I don't? However, all this was considered by UKERC and you have yet to demonstrate a flaw in what they did.

I didn't claim that they are *the* answer to anything. That is just a distortion. However, they are part of a sustainable answer to the problems concerned.

Correct, roughly double. Now if I had claimed that wind farms on their own would provide all the electricity for London you would have a point, but that is not something I have claimed.

As I said, Sloy is an example of a hydro station that is used to lop peaks. Hydro stations are extremely flexible and thus can be used for several tasks. For example two of the units at Dinorwig could be in immediate response mode to cover failures while the other four are supplying the grid.

Those power stations do not represent a single point of failure, because there are a number of boilers, turbines and transformers.

Then you will have no trouble in telling us which report you are talking about and where in the report that part of a sentence is.

[Adrian]

Roger ( [e-mail]) gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying :

Surely it's better to have that power generated renewably whenever possible and non-renewably as a standby than to stick your hands in the air and go "Well, the renewables won't work 100% of the time, so let's not bother at all"...?

[David Hansen]

On Fri, 6 Oct 2006 09:48:44 +0100 someone who may be Roger wrote this:-

In 2002 it was 34%.

About 12%.

[Guy King]

The message from "Mary Fisher" contains these words:

I'll go with either, too.

The smokey old thing down the road from us, Buildwas Power Station, is going soon. It'll be nice to get our microclimate back to something approaching normal. There are days when the estate would be better named Land of the Long White Cloud.

[David Hansen]

On 06 Oct 2006 12:14:22 GMT someone who may be Adrian wrote this:-

Indeed. It makes sense to run wind turbines as much as possible, because we know for certain what the price of the fuel will be in the future.

Provided not more than 20% of output is from wind there is no great cost penalty for doing this. It may involve varying the output of some "conventional" stations more frequently than now. However, these stations are no longer the largely steady state stations that those who remember the 1970s may think they are. Since the dash for gas these stations have been operated as load following stations. Any extra emissions caused by extra variations will be small in comparison to the emission savings made by using wind turbines. This is all laid out in the UKERC report.

[David Hansen]

On Fri, 6 Oct 2006 12:23:23 +0100 someone who may be "Mary Fisher" wrote this:-

I find it interesting that some claim that wind farms are noisy. They have presumably not listened to the noises made by coal fired power stations.