Offshore Windfarms: Good or Bad?

[njsurfer42]

i'm all for them. you gotta start somewhere w/ this, so complaining that alternative sources of energy aren't immediately as cost-effective as traditional fossil fuel sources is, IMO, stupid. we have to look at the long-term w/ these, not just the short term.
as previously mentioned, the "eye sore" critique isn't valid for a couple reasons. one being that the wind farm wouldn't be visible except on the most clear of days...we're talking MAYBE 3-5 days per year here. even then, the turbines will appear to be about thumbnail sized.
i'd personally like to see each region of the country tap into the sustainable energy sources that it has at hand. we've got wind here in the mid-atlantic. great, let's fire up the wind turbines! arizona, new mexico, set up some solar arrays. hydro-electric along the mississippi...that sort of thing. i think that's going to be the only way to fully wean our society off the coal/natural gas/nuclear grid.

oh, & unlike what one poster said, any impact these installations have on wave power is going to be so minuscule as to be irrelevant.

[mOtion732]

I'm all for alternative sources of energy, including wind turbines, but offshore? It will f*ck up the swell, guaranteed! Just wait till they're up, then it'll be too late! Put them onshore - there's still wind on the barrier islands and the mainland! Leave the offshore sites alone!

how/why will it f*ck up the swell?

[Kuono]

Hey McLovin, heard about that conference and wanted to go....Off shore wind farms, good idea, its the farms inland that pose the most to interrupt our daily routine if they are constructed around airports and/or any radar facility i.e. NOAA.
I'm an RF guy and I know they can reak havoc on HF/VHF comms.
In short - I read a report out of the UK in where wind farm site data was collected over 2 years and the executive summary stated that the average energy output was around 24% of what was needed so it basically said it failed to keep up w/demand. This was for the entire grid, so I don't know how many wind turbines we're talking here. My point is as with new technology it needs to be studied for some time before definitive results.
But if you'd like your own turbine check out this link..
http://m.cnet.com/Article.rbml?nid=2...&bcid=&bid=-54

peace!

[Swellinfo]

how/why will it f*ck up the swell?

I'd like to take a look at the actual turbine structures that will be in the water to see if they could actually refract/defract ocean swells. If the structures are more or less floating on top of the water, then it wouldn't have any impact. If the structures go deep under the surface, then perhaps there could be some impact. How close are the turbines going to be a part from one another? How many total?

I guess they will be moored to the bottom, like a buoy, and I would assume they would have the same influence on ocean swells as a buoy. The difference is, of course, that buoys are sparse, and one bouy isn't going to have much influence. If you have 200 of these structures all next to each other, then I could see swell refraction/refraction to be plausible.

[leethestud]

there is an impressive wind farm set up a few miles off the coast of the netherlands, i could see them on the flight in to amsterdam. Hundreds of them!!! (saw what looked like a billion sharks too... crazy what you can see from above)

[live aloha]

I'd like to take a look at the actual turbine structures that will be in the water to see if they could actually refract/defract ocean swells. If the structures are more or less floating on top of the water, then it wouldn't have any impact. If the structures go deep under the surface, then perhaps there could be some impact. How close are the turbines going to be a part from one another? How many total?

I guess they will be moored to the bottom, like a buoy, and I would assume they would have the same influence on ocean swells as a buoy. The difference is, of course, that buoys are sparse, and one bouy isn't going to have much influence. If you have 200 of these structures all next to each other, then I could see swell refraction/refraction to be plausible.

From my understanding, we are leaning toward the "floating platform design" as discussed in this article: http://www.windpowerengineering.com/...ends-offshore/

On a side note, to those here who insist on "knowing the facts(!)", please give google a shot. Most of this information is readily available, and it's really not that difficult to find.

Distance from land: Most articles I have read cite local groups protesting the "eyesore" argument. For right or wrong, there's a simple solution that involves moving the turbines further to sea. Luckily we have the continental shelf, so this is entirely do-able. Anyone who has worked at sea knows about the "line of sight" equation, which says that sqrt(height of eye, or top of turbine) * 1.34 = distance to horizon. This means a 100 ft turbine would be visible up to 13.4 miles away on the clearest of days. By visible, we mean you could see the very tippy top of the structure from there. Obviously, if you're on the roof of a big hotel, the distance is longer. This article says offshore turbines are huge, with the 5 MW structures up to 350 ft tall. This means they'd theoretically be visible at a distance of slightly less than 19 miles. That's pretty far, but I think most plans call for building at least 20 miles offshore because the wind patterns are more reliable. Definitely check out this link. It shows a lot of detail on proposed designs for offshore turbines and would likely answer many of your questions...
http://ocsenergy.anl.gov/guide/wind/index.cfm

[Ray F.]

i'm all for them. you gotta start somewhere w/ this, so complaining that alternative sources of energy aren't immediately as cost-effective as traditional fossil fuel sources is, IMO, stupid. we have to look at the long-term w/ these, not just the short term.

If this in response to my post, I never mentioned cost. There's a lot more to having a dependable alternative power source than cost. From what I've read, I can't find one windfarm that powers a significantly-sized community without the support of fossil fuel or nuclear powered plants and these plants can't be shut down and started up as the demand (i.e. inability for windfarm to support power requirements). If that's the case, it's not really an "alternative."

The only idea that is stupid (your words) is the one that wants to sprinkle an unproven concept across a nation without figuring out the potential. Personally, picking one area...maybe a small city...and establishing a windfarm that can support it makes a lot more sense than arbitrarily erecting these things with no defined goal.

If your your reply wasn't in response to my post, I digress.

[live aloha]

If this in response to my post, I never mentioned cost. There's a lot more to having a dependable alternative power source than cost. From what I've read, I can't find one windfarm that powers a significantly-sized community without the support of fossil fuel or nuclear powered plants and these plants can't be shut down and started up as the demand (i.e. inability for windfarm to support power requirements). If that's the case, it's not really an "alternative."

The only idea that is stupid (your words) is the one that wants to sprinkle an unproven concept across a nation without figuring out the potential. Personally, picking one area...maybe a small city...and establishing a windfarm that can support it makes a lot more sense than arbitrarily erecting these things with no defined goal.

If your your reply wasn't in response to my post, I digress.

I'm not sure what the other guy meant, but just food for thought: wind farm building is mainly about location. Real estate values are obviously important (ie, nobody's building one in DC or NYC, even if the wind patterns were perfect), but most sites under consideration are those where wind patterns are favorable. Sure, you can't have 100% reliability with the wind. I don't think I'd have to try very hard to convince people here about that! At the same time, if we have an area where wind patterns are good 80% of the time, that's pretty freaking good. So wind itself isn't necessarily a "sole replacement" for burning coal, but we can head in that direction by supplanting it 80% of the time, and then fill in the remaining 20% as additional technologies (solar, and...???) advance. 80% carbon reduction is absolutely a good thing. In air quality alone we would reap tangible benefits. As for the cost increases, sure we must deal with that; as my very first post suggested, help is on the way for that as well. I devote most of my free time to energy technology, and I can show you very convincingly there is an ARMY of folks trying to solve the problems. Meanwhile, companies like Exxon are bribing governments and courts to maintain the status quo. They're winning now, but just about everyone working in this field is fighting like mad to change that. We'll see what happens...

[Ray F.]

I'm not sure what the other guy meant, but just food for thought....

.....We'll see what happens.

I got ya, Aloha. I'm just trying to see if anybody's got any real data. The path to hell is paved with good intentions. I think most of us could make a pretty lengthy list of questionable programs that where created with improving the quality of life...combustion engines included. Personally, I'd rather not invest time & energy in a program with no established goal or test bed. Like I said, I'm all for green, but I have yet to see one shred of evidence that windfarms actually lessen a negative impact on the environment. If someone can provide anything but a theory or biased report, I'd like to see it.

I don't think one exists, so....just my 2 cents, but I before we start investing time, energy & hope in planting these things in different locations, I think it would be smart to see an actual experiment to see what kind of environmental improvement can actually be measured when a society converts or suppliments it's existing energy with windfarms. Not doing so sounds like an overly desperate move that could be real waste of time.

[bushwood]

Like...
In Nags Head, at the Jennetts Pier, they have some wind turbines on the pier. Apparently the wind turbines fuel the entire pier's electricity, which includes a restaurant on the pier. Not sure if this is true or not, but it is definitely cool... The wind turbines on the pier weren't an eye sore at all, in fact they looked cool and were a perfect way to monitor the change wind direction and speed.

Jeanettes has two three at the most small wind turbines on the end of the pier. THis powers all the lighting, resturant, gift shop, and reception area above the resturant on the pier. These turbines actually produce so much energy the pier cant use all of it and they have to put some of the power back into the grid in Nags Head. To see these relatively smalls turbines from the line up and realize they provide more power than the pier needs, you wonder why this type of power isnt used more frequently.