How then, do we move backwards? How does a society, with most of the people having no clue of future events, move from being dependent on a vast and intertwined network of goods and services produced by the indigenous people of whereever, to a local resource and renewable energy based society, and do so in the timeframe available (20-30 years using the most liberal extimates, 10-20 with resonable estimates, 5-10 with worst case scenarios), all the while prices on everything increasing, world politics getting more militaristic, governments continuously reducing civil liberties, shortages of goods on the market and weather patterns resembling bad Hollywood movies?
Posted: Thu Jun 26, 2008 1:41 am Post subject: Worlds Largest Wind Turbine
The world’s largest wind turbine is now the Enercon E-126. This turbine has a rotor blade length of 126 meters (413 feet). The E-126 is a more sophisticated version of the E-112, formerly the world’s largest wind turbine and rated at 6 megawatts. This new turbine is officially rated at 6 megawatts too, but will most likely produce 7+ megawatts (or 20 million kilowatt hours per year). That’s enough to power about 5,000 households of four in Europe. A quick US calculation would be 938 kwh per home per month, 12 months, that’s 11,256 kwh per year per house. That’s 1776 American homes on one wind turbine.
Joined: May 06, 2006 Posts: 811 Location: Tustin, CA
Posted: Thu Jun 26, 2008 1:54 am Post subject: Re: Worlds Largerst Wind Turbine
Hope it doesn't catch on fire!! I number of posts ago I ignorantly stated that I had never seen one on fire out in the San Gregorio Pass in California near Palm Springs.
Found out from a girlfriend whose son in law works on them at that location it happens all the time there! _________________ Skeptical scrutiny in both Science and Religion is the means by which deep thoughts are winnowed from deep nonsense-Carl Sagan
Posted: Thu Jun 26, 2008 6:43 am Post subject: Re: Worlds Largerst Wind Turbine
SILENTTODD wrote:
Hope it doesn't catch on fire!! I number of posts ago I ignorantly stated that I had never seen one on fire out in the San Gregorio Pass in California near Palm Springs.
Found out from a girlfriend whose son in law works on them at that location it happens all the time there!
In Germany wind turbines are everywhere.I´ve never seen one on fire.I have seen one that had fell over due to a hurricane.
Germany I think gets approx 5% of its energy needs from the wind.
Posted: Thu Jun 26, 2008 1:36 pm Post subject: Re: Worlds Largerst Wind Turbine
I wonder how big the largest wind turbine could be on a cost-effective basis?
Seems like the higher you go and longer your turbine blades, the more efficient your generation will be... but then, there's the cost of raising one of these devils.
Maybe you could raise a huge one up the way that some Japanese companies have built tall buildings: by jacking them up and installing sections at the bottom.
You could rig one so that the plane of the blades was rotated to the horizontal to keep everything balanced while you raised it, And then turn the blade plane to the vertical once the giant thing is secured. _________________ Documentary: "Oil, Smoke & Mirrors" Engineers Question 911
Posted: Thu Jun 26, 2008 1:55 pm Post subject: Re: Worlds Largerst Wind Turbine
I am kind of wondering, as I used to work in a truck plant, how many of these per day a large truck plant, like GM operates in Janesville, WI or Oshawa, ON could make, if retooled?
Both of these are equipped for large scale assembly and painting and have huge floor area, over 150,000 square metres each. And, it looks like they'll soon become vacant.
Posted: Fri Jun 27, 2008 12:05 am Post subject: Re: Worlds Largerst Wind Turbine
Hmmmm...
...it's not that I'm against wind generators: but...
I spent 3 years at Cottam power station, my friend works at WestBurton: either of these two 1950's vintage coal burners can match that things yearly output, on demand, in 10 hours.
Does that give you an idea of the sheer scale of the problem?
Posted: Fri Jun 27, 2008 2:20 am Post subject: Re: Worlds Largerst Wind Turbine
hugh-wright wrote:
Hmmmm...
...it's not that I'm against wind generators: but...
I spent 3 years at Cottam power station, my friend works at WestBurton: either of these two 1950's vintage coal burners can match that things yearly output, on demand, in 10 hours.
Does that give you an idea of the sheer scale of the problem?
I don't think anyone is trying to compare these two sources.
If you had say 1000 of those Enercon E-126 there you would have 6000 megawatts output.The only costs thereafter would be maintenance.
With the cost of Oil and Gas continuing to rise .Windpower is a safe bet.
Matilda, was a wind turbine located on Gotland, Sweden. It produced a total of 61,4 GWh in the 15 years it was active. It was demolished on June 6th, 2008.
"The price of offshore turbines rose 48 percent to 2.23 million euros ($3.45 million) per megawatt in the past three years, according to BTM Consult APS, a Danish wind power consultant. By comparison, land-based rotors cost 1.38 million euros per megawatt after rising 74 percent in the same period."
Enercon was prohibited from exporting their wind turbines to the US until 2010 due to infringement of U.S. Patent 5,083,039. [...] Enercon claims their intellectual property was stolen by Kenetech (US Windpower, Inc.) and patented in the US before they could do so. Kenetech made similar claims against Enercon.
According to the European Parliament: "Kenetech seeking evidence for legal action against Enercon for breach of patent rights on the grounds that Enercon had obtained commercial secrets illegally. According to an NSA employee, detailed information concerning Enercon was passed on to Kenetech via ECHELON."
It is a longer story going back to the early 1990s. It is alleged, though not proven, that the CIA 'aquired' the technical information which was patented in the U.S. by Kenetech. Later the NSA was involved to 'prove' that Enercon was in breach of that Kenetech patent.
The NSA listened in to Enercon communication and 'aquired' codes needed to enter and shut down Enercon wind generators. Some folks on Kenetech's payroll used these codes and then climbed up into the machine house of one Enercon generator in Germany. There they took plenty of pictures. These pictures were used against Enercon in the U.S. patent case by Kenetech.
About 5 % of its electricity, not 5 % of its energy.
Denmark is world record holder at about 20 % wind electricity, which should make it something 8 % of the energy (in developed countries electricity is about 40 % of total energy IIRC). And that is pretty close to where your power grid starts being really stretched. In spite of having something like 50.000 MW's of Scandinavian hydropower to balance your grid with! _________________ Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.
Posted: Sat Jun 28, 2008 6:49 am Post subject: Re: Worlds Largerst Wind Turbine
Starvid wrote:
....
Denmark is world record holder at about 20 % wind electricity, which should make it something 8 % of the energy (in developed countries electricity is about 40 % of total energy IIRC). And that is pretty close to where your power grid starts being really stretched. In spite of having something like 50.000 MW's of Scandinavian hydropower to balance your grid with!
Imagine if Norwegian hydro-power was NOT available and Denmark had to "balance" the power using gigantic lead acid batteries.
//
Actually there's something called a "Flow battery" but I'm not sure what the cost would be.
Posted: Sat Jun 28, 2008 11:30 am Post subject: Re: Worlds Largerst Wind Turbine
Well, here in Spain wind power represents more than 10% of our electricity consumption (near 5% of our primary energy) and we are going to expand our wind power capacity to more than 20000 MW by 2010.
The special issue about Spain, is that we are an "energy island" because we have little electric connection with France so we have to deal with the non-constant nature of wind power. This is done with the use of tele-metering and forecasting tools, we are kind of world reference on it:
Posted: Sat Jun 28, 2008 1:39 pm Post subject: Re: Worlds Largerst Wind Turbine
some parts in germany now have ~35% electricity from wind-energy and that does work quite well, too. (but I assume that they can exchange certain amounts of that electricity through the grid with other parts)
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