Wind turbines on your door step?

[oldjerry]

I am sorry to say that whilst I have found some great people since joining this forum there is an undercurrent of "holier than thou" amongst a few posters that I feel will put people off the forum rather than encouraging them to embrace this way of life in however small a way.[/quote]


Aint that the truth..C'mon get real ,the ..''in what ways are you not ish?''.....should have been 100 pages long (and that's just for me) AND I love The Ice Road Truckers.....so there.....

Any how aren't we missing the point,big turbines mean big centralized power generation(in both senses of the word) and this is not even slightly forward thinking wether it's wind, coal, nuclear,solar or whatever.Typically,it seems simple enough to get PP for a wind farm,but a small turbine for a private dwelling? only for those with the money or time to fight the local authority.

[niknik]

Read David Mackay's book on the scale of the problem http://www.withouthotair.com/

Thanks for that. and the download option.

Have now got it, and startd reading it.well skimming though the first couple of chapters....
Fascinating.

Thanks again

[demi]

i love the windmills! i think they look grate, much better than the electricity pilons. i feel prowed when i see them because i know they are doing good. we have some a few miles from our house, in all directions, 10 here, 10 there and theres is loads of them off the coast in the sea thats about 6 miles from us. iv never heard them. only seen them, and i think they blend in beautifully with the landscape.
theres also a lot of houses up my way that have their own in their gardens. id love to have one!
clean energy is the future, we should embrace it. its saving the plannet and there should be more of it arround! fossil fules will soon run out so we need to develop new ways of making energy, unless you want to regress back to the dark ages! i really think people are getting their knickers in a twist over nothing. windfarms are a good thing. they are pointing the way to a better, cleaner future for us all! we need to welcome clean energy and say good bye to dirty coal and oil thats distroying our beautiful plannet.

[pelmetman]

We went away to France and Spain at Christmas for a month in our camper, using the tunnel we arrived in France late and in thick fog so decided to park up for the night round by the Cite de europe

Anyway settled down for the night and we both kept hearing this noise which we thought was a railway line, but it sounded different .............Come the morning we relised we were 50 mtrs from a turbine

Have to say for a night I wasn't that bothered but if I had to put up with it 24/7 then I doubt I'd be very happy................Wind farms fine..........but if they plonk them within a certain distance of your home then the company should be obliged to buy out the affected peoples house at market value

Or better still let us build small scale windturbines without the hassle then we can really be self sufficient

[MKG]

Not all sites are suitable for wind generation of power. Our garden, for instance, would be useless. It has far too many trees creating turbulence (not a good thing near a wind generator) so we'd have to cut them all down. But that wouldn't be good enough because our neighbours also have trees and we'd have to ask them nicely to cut theirs down too. And, while we were at it, we'd probably have to ask them to get rid of a few of the houses as well.

Wind turbines - the big ones, that is - are erected on sites where they stand a chance of actually doing what they were designed to do - generate electricity. It simply isn't a matter of sticking them as far as possible from company shareholders and as near as possible to poor people. That way lies paranoia.

Audible noise is not the issue either - it's sub-audible frequencies which can cause anxiety and give rise to possible health problems. However, all power stations and, as I mentioned ages ago, lots of other things, produce sub-audible frequencies and there haven't been too many complaints in that direction. So it's probably a red herring.

And eyesores? Show me the power production and distribution system from any part of our history which does not create eyesores. Show me the system which does not ultimately depend upon a grid - complete with pylons and/or trenching activities for buried cables (that last one being by far the most expensive option).

But wind power is a valuable addition to our power-problem solving. As is solar power, although for it to make a significant contribution on anything but a personal level would mean huge solar farms which would be regarded as an eyesore. It's probably time we accepted that, on the whole, using electricity as we do is always going to have visible effects upon the landscape.

Mike.

EDIT: @JessieMac - I read through the whole thread twice, but I can't see those snide comments you thought you'd read.

[dave45]

say good bye to dirty coal and oil thats distroying our beautiful plannet.

unfortunately coal or gas is going to continue to be necessary to make the grid work when the wind doesn't blow. This country does NOT have vast hydro-power (like Norway for instance) to balance the grid, so we are stuck with fossil fuels for the foreseeable.

This also implies a limit to the amount of wind on the grid... something no-one wishes to talk about.

And then there's the cost in ROC subsidies to consider..... very few people know how much this is costing them already...

[battybird]

@hellsbells...are you still waiting for an outcome??

We have wind turbines in the sea about 5miles from shore. They are huge even from that distance and I am not sure I would want any structure that size very near my home. I love them though, and they have brought added bonuses;
boat trips are going out to them,
the fishermen say that there are more fish near the turbines..someone did explain why..sounded feasible at the time!
The horizon is always interesting and they never look the same..depending on the weather they look white, grey, closer, disappear and in a sunset look great! We regularly check to see whether they are actually rotating...quite often they are out of action (several technical problems)
Downside is the sub-station expansion in the countryside, but as many other ishers have pointed out, power production is not pretty!

[Helsbells]

Plans for the wind turbines have been thrown out after protests and over 450 letters of complaint from residents.

Not sure what to feel really, it is a shame people are not embracing alternative power sources and I wonder what will be put into place instead of the turbines, more pylons? However I am relieved I don;t need to worry about the price of my house going down of any health issues associated.

[demi]

say good bye to dirty coal and oil thats distroying our beautiful plannet.

unfortunately coal or gas is going to continue to be necessary to make the grid work when the wind doesn't blow. This country does NOT have vast hydro-power (like Norway for instance) to balance the grid, so we are stuck with fossil fuels for the foreseeable.

This also implies a limit to the amount of wind on the grid... something no-one wishes to talk about.

And then there's the cost in ROC subsidies to consider..... very few people know how much this is costing them already...

yes at the moment coal and oil, and nuclear for that matter, supply most of the power for the gird. but fossil fules are a finite resorse, one day they will run out so we need to look for alternitive energy sources. in time, as science and technology advances, we will develop bigger, better and more efficient renewable power plants that will one day take over from fossil fules. and i think seeing whats happened in japan with the nuclear power plants and now that germany has declaired that it will be ending its nuclear energy in 2021, or whenever they said, no doubt the rest of the world will follow. so in the future we will have to relay soley on clean renewable energy be it wind, solar, hydro, bio or whatever else they come up with in the future.

[MKG]

... in time, as science and technology advances, we will develop bigger, better and more efficient renewable power plants that will one day take over from fossil fules.

The problem is, demi, that we don't KNOW that to be true. We're guessing and hoping at the moment. Certainly it is possible to supply all our power requirements using renewables - but imagine what that's going to look like. Mile after mile of solar farms. Acres of wind generators. Huge geothermal projects. No access to the sea because of tidal barriers and more wind farms. It's not a pretty thought.

More realistic, I would hope, would be a program of education to reduce power expectations and, thus, requirements. But I don't hold out too much hope for that either.

Mike

[greenorelse]

Next time there's a strike or outage at a power station, will they cut off those who object to wind turbines first?

[stevetc]

I really think there're only four even vaguely valid reasons for objecting to turbines sited locally. . .
They're local enough that they're as noisy as a busy road, or a bad rock band (happened to me. Band, not turbines).
Someone who produces all their own energy.
Someone who doesn't use any energy.
Someone who is happy to have a coal-burning station instead.

It's like eating meat (i do, btw) - if someone's gonna consume a product, they should accept some responsibility for it's production. . .

[MKG]

I liked this ...

http://xkcd.com/556/



Mike

[gregorach]

More realistic, I would hope, would be a program of education to reduce power expectations and, thus, requirements. But I don't hold out too much hope for that either.

Cost will do the job sooner or later...

[The Riff-Raff Element]

More realistic, I would hope, would be a program of education to reduce power expectations and, thus, requirements. But I don't hold out too much hope for that either.

Cost will do the job sooner or later...

I think it may already be playing a part. People don't like having to choose between heating their home or buying a new iPhone, but a quick look through forums such as Mumsnet shows that they are having to.

Interestingly, the iPhone seems to win over heating about 30% of the time