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40 comments on Well none of this is particularly good news!

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Heading Out on December 6, 2005 - 12:02pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
For a photo of the relative scale of these wind turbines and a town, see our earlier post on this .
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Magnus Redin on December 6, 2005 - 12:18pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Yes, its like living in a landscape full of animated Gif:s.

But it beats being cold in the dark. Or living next to a coal combinate. I would prefer to have a nuclear powerplant as neighbour.

To get the most money and energy out of the investment they need to be built where the wind is steady. It do hurt the neighbours, I do not know what a reasonable compensation would be.

A fair but not great ammount of windmills are being built in Sweden. There is zoning forbidding building next to densely populated areas. Most inland windmills are built on farmers properties and they usually own a percentage of the plant but they are now to expensive to be financed by a single farmer.
The larger scale projects are now planned out at sea or along scenic ridgelines in very sparesly populated areas. They are depending on subsidies for now a "greeen" certificate system that forces people to buy "green" power. Withouth them there would hardly be any since we still have more cost effective ways for generating additional power.

But if the electricity price would double they would be built everywhere, or rather tripple since the building cost will be higher.

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Leanan on December 6, 2005 - 12:30pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
To get the most money and energy out of the investment they need to be built where the wind is steady.

Nope.  They have to build them where they're allowed to.  

According to this recent study, the best sites for wind power in North America are on the coasts.  

But do you think they are actually going to build there?  No way.  Real estate's too valuable there.  Too many people with too much money.  They'll put them in small inland towns, far from where most of the power is used, because that's where it's politically feasible.

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Magnus Redin on December 6, 2005 - 12:49pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
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george in vermont on December 6, 2005 - 1:01pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Here's a Dutch photo showing the scale against the landscape pretty well.

http://gallery.zoommagazine.nl/images/62400

I would be willing to have one or more of these nearby IF I knew I was getting a steep discount on electricity. I think that's going to have to be how this is done.

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Magnus Redin on December 6, 2005 - 1:02pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
They you are stupid and reality will hurt you.

The pre planning process in my home town Linköping in Sweden were mostly an overlay of two maps. One with the wind distribution and one showing population density and special buildings like old churces. The areas with good wind and low population density have been designated as recommended areas for wind power. This has been made to prepare for an eventual building boom for wind power. But the recommended areas turned out to be fairly small and other parts of the country have better wind. The same kind of planning has been made almost everywhere especially in areas with better wind resources.

The planning process is slow although the legal costs are much lower then in USA. If nobody complains it takes a year to get a permit for a wind powerplant, if people complain it can take about 5 years, if a retierd lawyer complains it can take an extra year or so to get a final no or yes to such an infrastructure investment. The lenght of the process has at least cost us a paper mill or three as a nation. :-(

Municipal pre planning saves year or two for such a process.

How do it work in different parts of USA?

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