Comments for wind-energy-news

Comment on What are some risks/benefits of wind energy? by John W

John W — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 00:03:06 +0000

The wind doesn’t start blowing just because you turned on a switch so you’re gambling that wind energy would be available when you need it. There’s a capital investment in both land and in the generator itself, there’s maintenance, there’s transmission costs, basically it amounts to a high startup cost, a constant operational cost but results in a variable uncontrollable generation of energy. The risk is that you won’t have the power when you can sell the power and you may have too much power when you can’t sell the power.

Comment on What are some risks/benefits of wind energy? by MIKE L

MIKE L — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 00:03:06 +0000

Here is a risk Tornado’s what if one decides to plow through some windmills .
How long before power is normal.?

Comment on What are some risks/benefits of wind energy? by SmackPie

SmackPie — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 00:03:06 +0000

There’s quite some benefit to it. Saves me a lot for my billing expenses. I go hybrid-ing my power usage with wind power and cuts an average of $250 a month. Sure it takes a lot of time to gain back your capital installing the system, but they sure are promising if you own a property.

Risk-wise, ONLY if you try to use it someplace not so windy. Normally beach houses or hillside residents won’t have problems though.

Try http://www.enhancegreenenergy.com. These are the guys that helped me reduce my monthly expenses.

Comment on What are some risks/benefits of wind energy? by T500

T500 — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 00:03:06 +0000

risks…
it costs over $1 million USD to put up ONE… windmill… so.. when you see 500 or 600 or 800 of them in a big field, you can calculate the cost…

One of them produces enough electricity to power, what…. 5 houses? of all of the windmills we have ALLLL OVER the us…. thousands….. it only accounts for 1% of our energy.

also, they are cool, but… it sucks having millions of 400 foot tall windmills dotting the what would otherwise be a beautiful landscape.

also, there are only certain places in the world, certain types of landscapes that are truly conducive of having windmills. and of those places, most of them have them already. and even there, they don’t ALL – ALWAYS spin.. when they aren’t spinning, they aren’t producing.

benefits…….

that’s 1% less coal that we have to burn.

but realistically, there doesn’t HAVE to be ANY coal burned at this point. it could all be nuclear. meltdowns are very very very very very very very very very very very unlikely. the only reason they’ve ever had one was because the staff there didn’t keep up with the equipment because they didn’t feel they had to.. and of course there was a meltdown.

The problem is the waste it produces.

germany subsidizes solar power… they allow the sale of solar energy by the public. because of that, there are TONS AND TONS AND TONS of solar panels all over the place, and about 46% of their energy COMES from solar……… whereas 2% of the US’s power comes from solar.

problem is, if it’s dark, it’s not producing…

there are ways to convertt water into electricity, but governments won’t allow it.

sea water could be filtered, have electrolites added, hydrolicized to an "unstable" liquid, and burned by machines that generate electricity… there’s an over abundance of sea water, and hell… the level is getting higher each year is it not? the only biproduct of such a thing would be atomized water…

not co2.

Comment on how much would it cost to power pocono moutain west high school with wind energy? by spk

spk — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 21:42:47 +0000

Wind will be very costly, and you’ll need a lot of land. I like solar better personally, but both will be in the $100,000-$500,000 range

Good luck fund-raising!

Comment on If wind energy was used what would it replace? by yaman a

yaman a — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 22:36:27 +0000

Wind is not efficient enough to replace another source of energy. As it depends on location if there is no wind there is no energy. It is the same idea with solar, hydro, geothermal, etc. People would prefer wind over these kind of sources if it was more efficient or cheaper to maintain.

Comment on If wind energy was used what would it replace? by Matt

Matt — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 22:36:27 +0000

Wind energy mostly replaces energy from coal-fired power plants. In reality wind will never fully supplant nonrenewable energy sources because it is not reliable (non-windy days). There must always be back-up sources that can be used on demand. The cleanest solution would be nuclear and natural gas nonrenewables along with geothermal, wind, and solar renewables.

Comment on What part of the world needs wind energy the most? by Mark V

Mark V — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 19:15:06 +0000

You could certainly argue that nearly all parts of the world would highly benefit from wind energy.

But I suppose that the "best" areas would be along the coastlines, as those are the areas with a favorable combination of wind strength/speed and endurance/sustained wind. It’s also very beneficial since an enormous fraction of the total world population lives near the coast in the first place.

Mid-continents also receive favorable wind patterns, but there aren’t usually very many people around to benefit in those areas. Naturally, though, a proper electrical infrastructure could carry electricity generated in these areas to more distant locales.

Comment on What part of the world needs wind energy the most? by ZORCH

ZORCH — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 19:15:06 +0000

Don’t neglect to mention that wind energy is not without its downside. Its seriously ugly and is noisy. In un-inhabited areas, it works well. Ugly is OK and the noise bothers nobody. However, in some of the good windy areas, you find local residents not liking the 24 hour a day sounds, described as a "big whop-whop-whop-whop". And its hard to sell ugly to the neighborhood.

Comment on What part of the world needs wind energy the most? by Roger R

Roger R — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 19:15:06 +0000

I’d say the USA. It has the highest per capita use of energy and most of this comes from fossil fuel. Wind energy is something that the US needs to transition too and some people helping to do this is Pacific Crest Transformers, who are into manufacturing energy efficient transformers