http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/06/busine...odayspaper

Facts like these are a necessary part of the discussion.

Nuclear power plants don't make any noise.

Previously living in DeKalb (the town referred to in the article, where NIU is located), I can first tell you the hype about the noise is overblown. They've made a lot of improvements, you'd think this article was written in 2002 the way they describe it.

In any case, DeKalb actually has a nuclear power plant in their skyline, and we still built a ton of these things. Until the government finally puts their money where their mouth is and starts promoting nuclear power again and we start building more plants, you could do a lot worse than these windmills.

(10-07-2010 09:37 AM)HuskieFan84 Wrote:  Previously living in DeKalb (the town referred to in the article, where NIU is located), I can first tell you the hype about the noise is overblown. They've made a lot of improvements, you'd think this article was written in 2002 the way they describe it.

Liberal dittoheads. Always repeating the party line. *Yawn*

Did you stop to recognize that this article was about windmills in another location?

Or perhaps you didn't live that close to the windmills, or that other factors (other noise) were in play?

Ugh. So much for the skill of critical thinking.

Quote:In any case, DeKalb actually has a nuclear power plant in their skyline,

Braidwood? I toured it before it went into operation.

Quote:We still built a ton of these things.

So?

Quote:Until the government finally puts their money where their mouth is and starts promoting nuclear power again and we start building more plants, you could do a lot worse than these windmills.

Why? $15M for how many kW? I'll wager you could do a lot better. Wind power in this design has been proven repeatedly to be a poor investment in economic terms. (oops, that isn't the left's party line) Now it's jut more proof that it isn't even beneficial from a pollution, quality-of-life perspective.

Put 'em all out at sea. Or vacate one of the Dakota's and have them stretch blade to blade.

No amount of tech is probably ever going to silence the sound of blades slicing through the air.

I have driven out to the windfarm just south of DeKalb a few times. Once just to see them up close, the second to see how loud they actually were, and the third because we had some tornado warnings and I wanted to see them get hit by lightning (which is a pretty cool sight!). The noise issue is nonexistant. If you are within 100 yards, you can hear them, a bit, on a calmer day. But any day the wind is really blowing, the wind is louder than the turbines. I then drove to the driveways of a few of the houses nearby (no turbines were built within 1/4 mile of a house) and there was no audible noise from the turbines. The wind was louder and also my boots crunching in the snow was louder. The people who are complaining are NIMBY ******** whose property didn't get selected for these money makers (FPL or whoever owns them pays $1000 per month in rent for each turbine on someone's property). Whether these are a legitimate source of energy is one argument, but the noise pollution argument is bunk IMO. Just take a trip to a windfarm and hear for yourself.

Torch.. read what bleeds said. They are out in the open, anyone can go near them if you want to see how loud they are. I didn't live down the street, but read the Daily Chronicle or Northern Star if you want, the DeKalb newspapers, there are no complaints anymore now that they are actually built.

And yes, I get that the ones built in New York may have been put together poorly, but that doesn't mean the technology isn't sound. If you do something poorly, of course there will be complaints. If you build a ****** road with potholes people are going to ***** about the road, it doesn't mean roads are bad. It means you had a ****** contractor.

Torch, the nuclear power plant I refer to is in Byron, IL.

The problem with windmills is not that they are noisy but that they are unreliable.

Not that the wind turbines themselves are unreliable, but the wind that has has to drive them is. That means that every kw of wind capacity has to be backed up by a kw of conventional capacity. That makes wind pretty expensive.

Just goes to show you that no matter what we do it's gonna piss off someone. I believe there was a thread saying that the tree huggers were against windmills because they were killing migrating birds.

(10-07-2010 05:16 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  The problem with windmills is not that they are noisy but that they are unreliable.

Not that the wind turbines themselves are unreliable, but the wind that has has to drive them is. That means that every kw of wind capacity has to be backed up by a kw of conventional capacity. That makes wind pretty expensive.

^ This

The only places they're feasible is where the wind is constant. 25% of Maui's energy needs are serviced by windmills that line the West Maui mountains, and it's ALWAYS windy. Dekalb? Never been there, but I can't see it as a constant.

DeKalb is basically a farming / college town in the middle of nowhere. There is nothing really stopping the wind, so there's almost always a constant breeze at the minimum. While Chicago wasn't called the windy city for wind originally, the name stuck for a reason. (DeKalb is 60 miles to the West). As I said though, there's a nuclear power plant down the road, so it's not like we don't have alternatives if we don't have wind some day.

I'm not going to claim to be an expert, but this information is from those who are:

Quote:NextEra said the farm would generate 226.5 megawatts for the electricity grid, enough to power 55,000 homes

[This is basically DeKalb's population size].

So clearly, they must also believe there is enough wind here to make them feasible.

I think what annoys me about the people who complained, were those who said it ruined the countryside. There is a *** **** nuclear power plant to the west, and farms all over the place that have a stench, that I wish not even my worst enemy would have to smell. If the stacks of steam they see every day and stench of the pig farms didn't ruin it, I find it hard to believe these windmills did. People just want a reason to complain, and in a smaller, rural town like DeKalb, where there are rarely "real" problems, you're going to see a lot of bitching about the smallest things. (Which I admit is a good thing, at least the people care).

I'll agree with you though, that wind farms aren't effective in a lot of areas, but in places like this, they make sense. Th fact that they were put together poorly in New York or they used outdated technology, should not have any bearing on how effective people think they are in general. It's ridiculous to let the shoddy work of those contractors lead people to believe the technology isn't any good. If you ever make it out to Chicago, it's an easy drive down to DeKalb, you can see or try to hear them, yourself.

Well 55,000 homes is about four to five times Dekalb's size. There are about 10,000-15,000 households here. So that small part of the county that it takes up probably gives enough electricity for the entire county, maybe even more. One thing I do think we should use wind turbines for is private property. Encourage farmers to use them on their farm or if you can get people to stop complaining, smaller ones in residential areas. With all the tax credits out there now, you should be able to make your money back in electricity savings pretty quick.

Ha, misread that in my quick quoting, I read that as population 55K. Not nearly that many homes in DeKalb.

While I'm open to the wind power, I have seen those ones turned sideways on more than one occasion to take them out of the wind because the wind speed was too much for them to handle. That certainly reduces their effectiveness.

(10-08-2010 09:11 AM)HuskieFan84 Wrote:  DeKalb is basically a farming / college town in the middle of nowhere. There is nothing really stopping the wind, so there's almost always a constant breeze at the minimum. While Chicago wasn't called the windy city for wind originally, the name stuck for a reason. (DeKalb is 60 miles to the West). As I said though, there's a nuclear power plant down the road, so it's not like we don't have alternatives if we don't have wind some day.
I'm not going to claim to be an expert, but this information is from those who are:

Quote:NextEra said the farm would generate 226.5 megawatts for the electricity grid, enough to power 55,000 homes

[This is basically DeKalb's population size].
So clearly, they must also believe there is enough wind here to make them feasible.
I think what annoys me about the people who complained, were those who said it ruined the countryside. There is a *** **** nuclear power plant to the west, and farms all over the place that have a stench, that I wish not even my worst enemy would have to smell. If the stacks of steam they see every day and stench of the pig farms didn't ruin it, I find it hard to believe these windmills did. People just want a reason to complain, and in a smaller, rural town like DeKalb, where there are rarely "real" problems, you're going to see a lot of bitching about the smallest things. (Which I admit is a good thing, at least the people care).
I'll agree with you though, that wind farms aren't effective in a lot of areas, but in places like this, they make sense. Th fact that they were put together poorly in New York or they used outdated technology, should not have any bearing on how effective people think they are in general. It's ridiculous to let the shoddy work of those contractors lead people to believe the technology isn't any good. If you ever make it out to Chicago, it's an easy drive down to DeKalb, you can see or try to hear them, yourself.

Your argument is correct, but it misses the real point.

Wind is feasible, and we need every bit of it that we can get. Regardless of whether the Kennedy family wants to look at the windmills or not. But you have to understand, it's a limited source. We use 21 million barrels of oil a day, and we import 14 million of that, and we aren't going to replace any substantial part of that with wind. We might be able to replace 10% of our total energy supply with wind, and of that amount, only a tiny portion would be replacing energy that comes from oil today. So, realisitcally speaking, wind might replace 100,000 barrels of oil a day out of 21 (or 14, take your choice) million barrels. That's not a reason not to do it. But that is a reason to recognize that wind has limitations, and we're kidding ourselves to pretend otherwise.

Drill, baby, drill, won't do a thing to reduce the 21 million number, but it can take a 1 to 2 million bite out of the 14 million number, within 3-5 years (by the way, that's what the study that supposedly said "no benefit for 10 years" actually said, if you take the time to read it instead of taking the word of the spin doctors).

What I'm saying is that we need alternatives and we need conservation, but we also need increased development of domestic conventional sources--including oil, natural gas, and nuclear. You can't solve the problem without all of them. That's why we haven't solved the problem. We're too busy arguing drill v. conservation v. alternatives, while time goes marching by. If the question is asked, "Do we need conservation or alternatives or drill, baby, drill?" the answer is "Yes." We need all three.

As for powering 10-15,000 homes, I have no doubt that a sufficiently large wind farm in a sufficiently windy area can produce enough kwh to do the job. But that energy is not going to be produced at the same time those customers need it--sometimes the wind farm will produce too much and sometimes too little. What's needed is a backup for those times that the wind isn't blowing (and no matter where you are there are those times, and often they come at the least opportune moment). An ideal situation is like Denmark, where offshore wind farms provide more than it needs during part of the day, that excess is shipped to Germany, and Germany returns the favor when the Danes need more than there is enough wind to provide. You need to build just as many coal/gas/nuke generating plants with a wind farm as you do without one, it's just that you won't be running them as much.

Oh, and Chicago actually got the name because of its windy politicians. It's actually not the windiest city in the US. But its politicians have lived up to their end of the bargain.

I know that.. that's why I said it didn't get it's name from being a windy city.

(10-07-2010 09:37 AM)HuskieFan84 Wrote:  In any case, DeKalb actually has a nuclear power plant in their skyline, and we still built a ton of these things. Until the government finally puts their money where their mouth is and starts promoting nuclear power again and we start building more plants, you could do a lot worse than these windmills.

Nukes aren't going to be built under Obama because:

1. His nutjob environmentalist base will throw a fit.

2. The Red Tape involved in obtaining the Nuke Plant Permits.

3. The Yucca Mountain issue has yet to be resolved. We have to have a long term storage solution.

(10-08-2010 08:19 PM)WMD Owl Wrote:  

(10-07-2010 09:37 AM)HuskieFan84 Wrote:  In any case, DeKalb actually has a nuclear power plant in their skyline, and we still built a ton of these things. Until the government finally puts their money where their mouth is and starts promoting nuclear power again and we start building more plants, you could do a lot worse than these windmills.

Nukes aren't going to be built under Obama because:

1. His nutjob environmentalist base will throw a fit.

2. The Red Tape involved in obtaining the Nuke Plant Permits.

3. The Yucca Mountain issue has yet to be resolved. We have to have a long term storage solution.

Obama is in violation of the law by halting the development of Yucca Mountain.

The Yucca Mountain Development Act was passed by the Congress and signed by President Bush in 2002 making development of Yucca Mountain the Law. Until Congress amends or changes the law, the Secretary of Energy is charged with pursuing development of Yucca Mountain as the Nation's geologic repository.

(10-08-2010 08:19 PM)WMD Owl Wrote:  The Yucca Mountain issue has yet to be resolved. We have to have a long term storage solution.

Maybe we do, maybe we don't.

First, you can reduce both the volume and the radioactivity of the waste by reprocessing. The French do this. Jimmy Carter prohibited it here, and that prohibition has never been lifted.

Second, dispersion may be better than concentration. The French store on-site, which is viable for a long time, particularly with reprocessing. There are some promising technologies under development to do things like putting it back in the ground where we got it from.

Yucca Mountain is a solution to a problem that may not exist if we exercise some degree of intelligence.

Stop pissing away money all over the world(and at home) that has very little return on investment and put into nuclear plants like the French have. Im not a fan of windmills. They simply are a band aide to a decades long failed energy policy. With some decent leadership in Washington, we would not be having this discussion.