Wind Power

1. 4 Responses to “Could using wind power have environmental consequences?”

2. By Belial on Oct 19, 2009 | Reply

   If you set up too large of a field of turbines I believe that it could disrupt the flow of air causing unpredictable weather patterns. The main problem that I have come across is the negative visual impact. By building ten or twenty large turbines, an otherwise visually stunning countryside now becomes an industrial power center crisscrossed by power cables and turbine blades.

3. By bestonnet_00 on Oct 20, 2009 | Reply

   It is quite possible though I doubt it’d be significant on a global scale though there could be negative environmental effects from the loss of wind around the turbines (and probably acceptable if wind power was actually able to significantly reduce fossil fuels usage, which for the most part it isn’t).

   The current environmental problems with wind power are to do with bird killing and the raw materials needed to make the eyesores (it takes a lot of concrete to make the foundations for those things and they also need a lot of steel, copper, etc). High land use due to wind having a low energy density is also a problem.

   Transmission lines also need to be built to get the power to where it is needed although that is true of all power sources, but wind tends to be worse than most others because the areas with lots of wind may not be near where you need the power (so requiring longer transmission lines).

   The infrasonic noise and strobe light effect of a wind turbine might also have negative effects on the life around it (it looks like the infrasonics from wind turbines are very bad for the health of humans who live near them).

   Of course the biggest problem with wind power is that it has not demonstrated the ability to actually take market share away from fossil fuels (which is what we need to be doing, so far only hydro and nuclear have managed it) given that Denmark didn’t close a single coal power plant despite all the wind turbines they’ve built and Germany has even opened new ones during their big renewable push.

   To make wind power useful better energy storage technologies than what we have now will be needed, those will have their own environmental effects. Currently the best energy storage technology we have for utility scales is pumped hydro which requires a dam, where there is sufficient pumped hydro storage wind turbines can at least help, although it’ll always be a fraction of what hydro takes and hydro is probably pretty close to its limit of market share.

   There is a reason fossil fuels companies which don’t want to lose market share are very big on promoting wind.

4. By antarcticice on Oct 21, 2009 | Reply

   It seems no matter how many time this is asked and answered it keeps coming back. Simple logic should tell you that if you look at the head on profile of the blades they describe a circle as they spin and at any given moment the blades occupy a tiny percentage of that circle. There is also the tower that holds the blades up but again they are usually only a few meters wide and the arch of the blades is usually at least 10m above the ground for safety. If you wish to talk about stopping the wind a forest has far more of an effect.
   The average wind generator is only ~50-70m high, most wind effect relates to precipitation and cloud movement/formation which occurs well above this height, even the largest wind generator in the world, has by comparison a small blade area and with a metal mesh tower that offer quite small wind resistance. The Troposphere is ~10km high which is a little more than 50 or even 200m.
   At least you didn’t ask if they slow the Earth’s rotation, which believe it or not, has also been asked before a number of times.

5. By Jack on Oct 22, 2009 | Reply

   Over all it is good.

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