The Oil Drum

This image towards the bottom
http://www.speakerfactory.net/wbuoy2.jpg

Birds avoid 'em and they're prettier, I think, than those propeller-blade things.

Go to google and put in this phrase in the search bar:

Wind turbines and birds

You will have reports to read for days and days!  The problem is, the results are somewhat inconclusive.  From my reading (and I have made my eyes hurt reading the subject, since I am involved in an experimental wind turbine firm)
the main consensus looks like this:

a.  Wind turbines do sometimes kill birds.
b.  Location means everything.  If the turbines are located in a flyway of large predatory birds, the damage can be severe.  If the birds are already endangered species or a population small in number, it becomes a serious issue to confront.
c.  In areas not frequented by larger predatory birds such as hawks, owls, eagles, the damage is less severe, and probably no worse than any other tall structure such as cell phone towers, guy cables to cell and broadcasting towers, taller glass buildings, and fossil fuel towers, etc.  Birds do also strike those.  Let us not forget the killing of birds by aircraft.
d.  It is the spinning motion of the blade that makes wind turbines more dangerous to birds.   They never know what hit them.  However, some studies do indicate behavior change by the birds over time.  The sight/smell of dead birds on the ground make the living ones leery to go there (this is not a joke, birds do "learn".  Experiments have also been done with colered ribbon, noise makers, etc., to dissuade birds from going near wind turbines.  The results are still inconclusive in most cases.
e.  The issue of perception is crucial.  Since wind is percieved by it's supporters as "environmentally friendly" power, any bird kill by wind turbines will be viewed much more seriously than the same kill would be viewed if it were caused by a fossil fuel plant.  Thus, the Audoban Society, Seirra Club, National Wildlife Fund, etc.,  have shown great interest and made intensive studies of the bird kill issue, and the wind industry is always working to address it.  
f.  Regarding the above, almost no such scrutiny concerning bird kill has ever been placed on the fossil fuel industry.  Open waste storage tanks are deadly to birds, and the "catch basin", "retention ponds" and lagoons for oil and coal "tailings" of many oil/coal drilling/processiong operations can contain hundreds, sometimes thousands of dead birds.
g.  Other industries and agriculture can be deadly to birds.  One of the great killers of predatory eagles and hawks is the fence, be it barbed wire or woven wire.  When a predatory bird spots prey, their eyes focus to that prey, and the fence between them and the prey become invisible to them.  I know that in Kentucky and Indiana, several eagles have been rescued from fences with broken wings.

In closing, wind power is expected to act to a higher standard than the fossil fuel industry, and rightfully so.  Any developing technology reducing danger to birds, should and I think will be implemented.

Roger Conner  known to you as ThatsItImout

In addition to ThatsItImOut's points, it's worth mentioning that the newer, bigger turbines with larger, slower-spinning blades are much easier for birds to avoid and pose less of a danger than the models of 20-30 years ago.

I'd imagine that what these generators use is "sea swell" rather than waves generated by wind.  You only get good sea swells in regions of open ocean where there is lots of space for the sun/wind to interact and churn the sea.  

Any kind of coastline will quickly knock down sea swell.

The entire Eastern Seaboard of the US/Canada... but especially the North East sections, would be excellent regions as they have strong tides, strong weather (generated by hurricanes in the summer, and winter storms in the winter), and a fairly "open" coastline, where the sea swell washes right up on shore.

The West Coast would be just as good, though the weather isn't as extreme, the Pacific is so vast that waves can be generated on the other side of the Date line and still cause good surf on Long Beach.

I fished in the Queen Charlotte Islands for 4 summers... they are just south of the Alaska panhandle in Canada.  The West Coast of the Queen Charlottes would be absolutely ideal... hardly a day without sea swell there.. and when it comes, it's big.  On the other side, between the Islands and the BC Mainland, is Hecate Strait... it has some of the strongest tides and strongest winds in the world... which makes for a hellish place if your stuck there in a storm (I've seen 50 foot waves towering over our 51 foot boat... a humbling, and frightening experience... good thing I have a strong stomach).

Long story short... even if these generators are expensive... there is no doubt that there are a ton of regions in the world where this would make sense and could contribute.

I'm sure that's what BC Hydro, the public Electric Utility here in BC... helped to fund some of this research (i think).  Hopefully we see some of this stuff of our coast.

The problem is more remoteness.. alot of these "wavey places" are a little "out there" especially in North America... so transmitting that energy into the grid will likely be the biggest stumbling block.

What if EPR is lower than 1?
What if Pelamis' EPR is lower than that of Offshore Wind?
Would you put your money on it?
Would it make sense to spend capital in Pelamis if Offshore Wind is a better option?

I am still having trouble with the deeper philosphical aspects of that line of thinking.

I was looking at pictures of sailing ships the other day.  I don't mean recreational craft, but I mean the old "workboats" of the 17th, 18th, and 19th century.

Having frequented TOD a few times too many, I began to think about the EROEI of the big workboats of more than a century ago.

Now the earliest generation of the big sailing ships were not really "big" in the true sense.  Of the three ships used by Christopher Columbus, in a rather famous voyage in the year 1492 (at least to us Yanks!), the Santa Maria was the longest, with a keel of about 115 feet, while the two smaller ships, the Nina and Pinta, were around 50 feet.

Pause for a moment:  The large sailing ship was still the only intercontinental transport system some 350 years later!  It is still one of the most durable, stunningly successful instruments of transport, commerce and cultural exchange (including war) in world history.  The next time someone tells you "wind won't work"  kind of clue them in, would ya'?

By the time of the "Roaring '40's (1840's that is) the sailing transportation industry of large wooden sailing ships was at it's zenith, and also, relative to it's long history and unbeknownst to the travelers of the time, in it's last dying days.

"It was not considered ominous when, in 1838, the Admiralty had requested proposals for a steam service to America."

And the swan song concluding 3 centuries of trans Atlantic sailing to the new world, which would end in barely over 3 decades:

"The packet ships had held on too long. It had been a stirring episode for the passengers to cheer in mid-ocean when the lofty pyramids of canvas swept grandly by some wallowing steamer and left her far astern, but in the fifties this gallant picture became less frequent, and a sooty banner of smoke on the horizon proclaimed the new era and the obliteration of all the rushing life and beauty of the tall ship under sail. Slow to realize and acknowledge defeat, persisting after the steamers were capturing the cabin passenger and express freight traffic, the American ship-owners could not visualize this profound transformation.

But the finale was grand:
"They were small ships of three hundred to five hundred tons when the famous Black Ball Line was started in 1816. From the first they were the ablest vessels that could be built, full-bodied and stoutly rigged. They were the only regular means of communication between the United States and Europe and were entrusted with the mails, specie, government dispatches, and the lives of eminent personages. Blow high, blow low, one of the Black Ball packets sailed from New York for Liverpool on the first and sixteenth of every month. Other lines were soon competing--the Red Star and the Swallow Tail out of New York, and fine ships from Boston and Philadelphia. With the completion of the Erie Canal in 1825 the commercial greatness of New York was assured, and her Atlantic packets increased in size and numbers, averaging a thousand tons each in the zenith of their glory."

"Meanwhile the era of the matchless clipper had arrived and it was one of these ships which achieved the fastest Atlantic passage ever made by a vessel under sail. The James Baines was built for English owners to be used in the Australian trade. She was a full clipper of 2515 tons, twice the size of the ablest packets, and was praised as "the most perfect sailing ship that ever entered the river Mersey." Bound out from Boston to Liverpool, she anchored after twelve days and six hours at sea.

More, the clippers speed could be stunning, given their size.:
"This clipper, sent across the Atlantic on her maiden trip, left in her foaming wake a twenty-four hour run which no steamer had even approached and which was not equaled by the fastest express steamers until twenty-five years later when the greyhound Arizona ran eighteen knots in one hour on her trial trip. This is a rather startling statement when one reflects that the Arizona of the Guion line seems to a generation still living a modern steamer and record-holder. It is even more impressive when coupled with the fact that, of the innumerable passenger steamers traversing the seas today, only a few are capable of a speed of more than eighteen knots.

http://www.authorama.com/old-merchant-marine-8.html

Toward the end, the greatest of all sailing ships would be built, as measured by tonnage.  The last would even have steel hulls:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falls_of_Clyde

She was built in 1878 by Russell and Company in Port Glasgow, Inverclyde, Scotland, launched as the first of eight iron-hulled four-masted ships built for Wright and Breakenridge's Falls Line.

Here's the irony...."the only surviving sail-driven oil tanker, in the world."

Now let us consider this in ralation to our EROEI discussion of renewable energy.  
The sailing ship created a world trade and world empires.  Tea from India, China dishes and tea sets from of course China, tobacco, cotton, rum, slaves, all were made an international trade by the power of the wind.  The growth in trade, commerce, and cultural exchange meant that the EROEI of a giant sailing ship must have been FANTASTIC.  But, how was that true?  What were the "real" numbers, in man hours, in lumber, in nails and fittings?

In the post I am replying to in writing this, and the post it replies to, we were discussing "wave power" or devices that would harness the power of ocean waves for energy.  The assertion was made that the whole exercise would be "digging a deeper hole" unless the "wave power" device could power the steel mill that built the wave power device.  
Questions multiply:  For how long would it have to power a steel mill?  Would the mill be "dedicated" to only making the wave power device?  What if the Wave power device only "freeded up" enough kilowatts to equal the power used to make the steel, and not run the steel mill per se, would that be good enough?  If the steel was recycled, would that change the equation?  What about recycling the steel when the wave power device was worn out?  Would that change the equation?  What about extreme tempetures needed in handling metal, would the wave power device be expected to match those second by second?

Allow me to return to the giant, beautiful and durable sailing ships.  The commerce they opened up of course caused new industries to develop, new opportunities, so that the last of the last ones could actually act as oil tankers, helping the EROEI of the early oil industry (!)

But in the long history of sailing ships, no one ever suggested that for the sailing ship to be useful, it had to provide the power to build another sailing ship!  

The sailing ship of yesterday, like the windmills, the solar panels, the wave power devices, the hybrid cars of today, were a "component" of a much larger and more involved system.  If the rest of the system had not developed along with the large sailing ship, then the Nina and the Pinta would probably now be regarded as "giant ships" and we would be living in a different world.

The only reason that renewable energy devices would be built to the exacting standard (which applies to no other industry) that oil and fossil fuel could not EVER be used in their construction is if the world were to be truly OUT of fossil fuel.

We don't mean PEAKED, we would mean OUT.  There is no scenario that I am aware of that indicates that would be true for the next 150 years, or for that matter, ever.  PEAKED, yes, but OUT?  That is not even on the table of discussion.

There simply must be some way to regain some touch with reality.  As we write our posts tonight, factories are building airliners and speedboats, shops are building racing cars, all of which require a degree of engineering and a variety of materials that make the "wave power" device look simple and primitive by comparison.  What is the EROEI on an airliner, a speedboat, a racing car?  Yet they are being built.  The oil and gas is there to build them.

When the first steam engine was built, what was the EROEI on it?  It was designed to convert energy from a non renewable resource (unlike the giant sailing ship), not to recapture energy or to use "renewable" energy (excepting the earliest pre coal wood burners!).  The first ones were built by hand labor and wood charcoal fires in blacksmith shops!  How could an industry such as that hope to sustain itself!  Where would the steel come from!  How many million men would have to work in the steam engine factories?  How would they be fed?  How big would the shops have to be to build them?  I have always wondered, in a straight on comparison, what the EROEI comparison between a steel hulled steam ship, or a wood hulled sailing ship, what the comparision would look like.  It woud be fascinating to see, counting the coal burned by the steamer mind you, against the knots per hour covered by the sailing ship!  Would wind power still lose the EROEI race?  How?

I do not have an answer as to exactly what direction the future of alternative energy will take.  I think that there is simply no way people can visualize the "confluence" of ideas and technology, the ways in which one renewable can be used in combination with another renewable, and in combination with the remaining non-renewables  (trillions of barrels of oil and trillions of feet of natural gas EVEN AFTER PEAK)  

Let us not dismiss the way that the factor of time can become a flexible part of the mix:

 I had a friend who in the 1970's home brewed alcohol to drink, (this is Kentucky!)  and fixed up one car to run it....he used a set of three solar panels for distilling, built from leftover lumber and a set of salvaged patio sliding glass doors (double paned, they will hold some heat) corrugated black tin roofing inside the insulated box...it looked like crap, but it would get HOT)...I asked him what he did when the sun didn't shine, and he laughed at my lack of imagination...." I can heat enough on hot sunshine in July and August alone and tank it to run through the year...."  It was the first time I realized that energy does not have to stick to the perfect "9 to 5" shift thinking to be a huge asset...energy in "batches" can be priceless if it can be stored!)

The key is that we must build the components.  We must test the ideas.  We must engineer a variety of devices.  Ask the question another way:

If I build a solar collector that only returns say a 3 to 1 "energy profit" what good is that, you may say, oil returns 10 to 1!  But if nothing else, three to one slows the curve and buys time compared to the fact that I could have used the equal amount of material/time/engineering/BTU'S to build a speedboat or a racecar....what direction should we be moving?

Roger Conner  known to you as ThatsItImout