Blade Runner San Francisco

[Dashmellow]

Neither of those image is from Vermont!
And they are 1.5MW turbines, outdated even for onshore wind turbines.

New Danish test centre for +20 MW wind turbines

Read more about New Danish test centre for +20 MW wind turbines.

stateofgreen.com

What BS! You are just making sh*t up at this point.

These images are of the Georgia Mountain Wind turbine project in Milton Vermont. They are part of a local community project. Wind and solar projects are scaled accordingly to support mostly smaller cities, towns and communities here, although our larger cities benefit as well. We are a small state where such massive wind turbines would be inappropriate and unsuitable.

https://plus.usgbc.org/green-mountain-city/

Some wind projects here go back more than 20 years like the Searsburg Wind Farm which was a modest first toe in the water for wind power here back in 1997. It includes eleven 550 kW wind turbines that produce 6 MW wind that provides electricity for 1,704 Vermont households. It was built as an educational and research facility by Green Mountain Power to determine the long term viability of wind power in Vermont. It is still online and just because any renewable project here is older tech nobody is going to throw it in the garbage. Newer, larger and more powerful turbines have come later. Renewables here in Vermont in recent years have focused mostly on a massive build out of large solar installations along with wind and Canadian hydro from Quebec with whom we share a border.

Your petty trolling over such things as size of wind turbines is absolutely adolescent. I almost feel embarrassed for you to witness such childish behavior time and again.

Searsburg

 

[Dashmellow]

I sandblasted and metallized 1.5 MW wind turbine axles in 1998 or so, that was OMG big stuff back then.

But it is probably still a good size for wind turbines on dry land, and we Danes dont want any more wind turbines on land, and the poo hit the fan when someone want to replace 3-4-5 old turbines on some field with 2 larger ones.
And i do get that too, my nieces new house have 3 close by with the nearest one at 380 Meters, and on a windy day you hear them easy.
I can only imagine how much 2 turbines 2 X larger would sound.
View attachment 53370

But for my dream house i just want a little KW wind turbine, 100 KW should be plenty for my needs i would think
Still, even these little hobby sized ones, you got to have a permission to put up.
A small house turbine as we call them, cost from 5000 USD and all the way up to 127.000 USD, larger than that and they leave the "hobby" segment

Danish rules for this. ( well the basic rules anyway )

The turbine must be placed in relation with the house.
It can only be 25 M from the house ( could be any other building on the property maybe )
The total blade area can not be above 200 M sq.
It must be at least 300 M from any larger forest or church.
It have to be at least 200 M from the neighbor.
It have to be at least 150 M from a lake or river.
It have to be at least 100 M from protected sites or beach.
39 db max noise near residential areas.
44db max over open uninhabited land..

Those wind towers are LOUD! I got to visit Searsburg up close and personal one time and couldn't believe how loud the spinning turbines were. You could barely have a conversation standing even 100 feet away. Suddenly I understood why nearby communities in some locales are not pleased. For this reason, wind power is Vermont has been on a more modest scale and more and more solar is coming online.

What at one time was a huge aging garbage dump in my community has been capped and turned into a massive solar array. Pipes drilled into the old landfill extract methane which is used to generate electricity. There's no noise for anyone to complain about. In the last few years old landfills all over the state and many unused fields have had huge solar farms installed. Smaller ones are going up all over the place along with large rooftop solar. It is a good trend.

 

[Nigel]

What BS! You are just making sh*t up at this point.

These images are of the Georgia Mountain Wind turbine project in Milton Vermont.

Strangely similar to Laurel Mountain Wind Project West Virginia :

Laurel Mountain Wind Project

Laurel Mountain Wind Project (Northwest of Elkins, WV) Photos by John Terry, March 29, 2011 Earth disturbance and habitat fragmentation by AES Corporation (ongoing) By courtesy of Virginia Wind — click each image for full

www.wind-watch.org

 

[Nigel]

I sandblasted and metallized 1.5 MW wind turbine axles in 1998 or so, that was OMG big stuff back then.

But it is probably still a good size for wind turbines on dry land, and we Danes dont want any more wind turbines on land,

We have some 6MW land based ones going up, but most got stuck at 3MW because any bigger wont go along the roads.
We also have some rules allowing farmers to install small ones, don't like them, ruin the landscape when they pop up randomly all over the place, and you need a huge number to replace just one offshore turbine so they should not make sense economically!

 

[Nigel]

Those wind towers are LOUD! I got to visit Searsburg up close and personal one time and couldn't believe how loud the spinning turbines were. You could barely have a conversation standing even 100 feet away. Suddenly I understood why nearby communities is come locales are not pleased. For this reason, wind power is Vermont has been on a more modest scale and more and more solar is coming online.

That is why the Danish ones have noise limits, which in a good wind will be almost inaudible:

39 db max noise near residential areas.
44db max over open uninhabited land..

Perceived noise levels tend to drop with size, but there is no need for any size to be loud. If you don't have the rules though...

 

[kamkar]

Yeah off shore is the way to go, also something we trail blazed, though we have now been overtaken in having the largest off shore wind farms.

But that might actually change soon, as i understand it they will build artificial energy islands, one in the north sea ( 2 GW upgrade able to 10 GW ) and one in the Baltic on Bornholm ( also 2 GW ) , for larger installations where massive wind farms can connect to ( just a retrofitted oil rig for main hub will not do )
Just the basis 4 GW that is more than 2X of what we have at the moment from all wind here, so the basis alone are a substantial upgrade.

The waste management, where we today burn a lot of stuff just to get a little power and heating, will also undergo massive overhauls as it is a major Co2 source here, and the Concrete company Allborg portland, well their factory are told to cut emissions with 30 % or 660.000 tonnes of Co2 every year, and that before 2030.
the target are still 70% CO2 less by 2030 compared to current levels.
I think thats about as ambitious as it get in going green.

 

[Nigel]

But that might actually change soon, as i understand it they will build artificial energy islands, one in the north sea ( 2 GW upgrade able to 10 GW ) and one in the Baltic on Bornholm ( also 2 GW ) , for larger installations where massive wind farms can connect to ( just a retrofitted oil rig for main hub will not do )

Our Dogger Bank Wind Farm is currently installing 3.6GW, but it wont stay that small for long, "as much as 110 gigawatts of wind energy generating capacity could ultimately be developed at the Dogger Bank location."

the target are still 70% CO2 less by 2030 compared to current levels.
I think thats about as ambitious as it get in going green.

Maybe a bit too ambitious?

 

[Dashmellow]

That is why the Danish ones have noise limits, which in a good wind will be almost inaudible:

Perceived noise levels tend to drop with size, but there is no need for any size to be loud. If you don't have the rules though...

Sound problems from wind turbines are highly dependent on the terrain. Mountains and valleys are like amphitheaters which amplify and project the sounds. Vermont is almost entirely mountains and valleys.

Denmark is flat with very little elevation. Very different and easier to manage.

 

[kamkar]

If you are a very optimistic person and can find something here to call a mountain ridge, it will probably be impossible to get a permission to build wind turbines there

Yeah i dont see how they can make that 70% cut, one thing is for sure the big Audi / BMW / Mercedes minister cars will not get replaced by a measly Tesla or public transport.
To reach that goal you also need to get about 1.5 million cars ( at least ) electrified, and granted those do sell here, but no way near as they sell in say Norway.
And they have tried subsidizing electric cars, thats how most of the older Tesla's here are funded, and there is also a rebate on the small electric cars now.
But i dont get that the KWH price here are ( it too ) one of the highest prices in the world, so apple 2 apple anywhere else will be cheaper to a lot cheaper to charge your electric car.

When it all come down to it, i still feel this is yet another FU finger to the Danish population, and without a thing like a lotto win to fund it, there is no way in hell i will be onboard with any of their ideas / plans.

 

[Dashmellow]

If you are a very optimistic person and can find something here to call a mountain ridge, it will probably be impossible to get a permission to build wind turbines there

I have friends who live in Florida and they say exactly the same thing. The entire state is virtually flat. For someone like me who has mostly lived on or around mountains, large flat terrain is like being on a different planet. At one time I worked on a cattle ranch in Wyoming. It was 65,000 acres of flat land and the ranch next door was 100,000 acres. You could get on a horse and ride in a straight line all day and it never really felt like you got to someplace different! There were mountains in the distance that never got any closer.

 

[kamkar]

That feeling a Dane can only get if he look out across the water.

 

[SawMaster]

If you haven't seen the Great Plain then you just cannot really grasp the vastness. In many places out there, you can actually see the curvature of the earth A combination wind and solar system out there would work well, but the transmission losses in getting the power to populated areas makes it unfeasible And that's one of the big problems with renewable energy; it can't always be used where you need it in enough quantity to be worthwhile.

But we're close to having parity with grid power costs using at-home solar systems in the middle lattitudes, including maintenance and battery replacements costs. It actually feasible and many people are doing it The only problem with this approach is the up-front costs and perhaps the hard limits on power usage. In the next 40-80 years it will be taking over from grid power where there's enough sunshine- perhaps 1/3 of the world.

Phil

 

[Nigel]

If you haven't seen the Great Plain then you just cannot really grasp the vastness. In many places out there, you can actually see the curvature of the earth A combination wind and solar system out there would work well, but the transmission losses in getting the power to populated areas makes it unfeasible And that's one of the big problems with renewable energy; it can't always be used where you need it in enough quantity to be worthwhile.

But we're close to having parity with grid power costs using at-home solar systems in the middle lattitudes, including maintenance and battery replacements costs. It actually feasible and many people are doing it The only problem with this approach is the up-front costs and perhaps the hard limits on power usage. In the next 40-80 years it will be taking over from grid power where there's enough sunshine- perhaps 1/3 of the world.

Phil

The situation here has been the opposite of that, the larger the scale, the cheaper the power, and putting the power generators in the right places can produce power at far cheaper cost. For storage systems it is definitely the case that the bigger the battery, the cheaper the power. Batteries are much better done on a town/city/nation basis than individual houses, people here who have solar panels on their houses store the unused power in the grid. Wind is always stronger and more consistent at sea, so that is where the wind turbines should be. Local solar power doesn't work at night but it does work at night if you spread it across time zones. Wind is dependent on the weather, but as weather systems move around the Earth it averages out. You need everything on the big grid to even out availability.

As for the power transmission, just increase the voltage and the losses disappear! Power cable voltages for the big cables keep increasing, the 400 mile power cable from Scotland to England runs at 600KV DC. UK also has cables to France, Ireland, Belgium, Netherlands, with new ones being installed to Denmark, Germany, Norway, and a 1200 km link to Iceland being studied. China has a 1.1MV DC, 10GW, 2600Km cable in planning. Green power can be transported.

The only advantage of getting people to install stuff on their own homes is that they then finance it, while the huge national and international stuff generally requires government support, or at least guarantees of income for the investors, but doing things on the small scale doesn't make your nation wealthy, it is a big waste of wealth.

HVDC: A Building Block for a Resilient, Flexible and Interconnected Grid

The biggest battery the UK is connecting to is going to use existing, and thus free storage, by exporting wind power to Norway when we have plenty, Norway does not need to use its hydro power, it can keep it in the reservoirs, then when we have less wind, they can use the saved water to send the power back. No storage needs to be built, this is not a pumped storage scheme, just some cables and some extra generating capacity. We can't do that on a local or national basis, but we can on the big scale.