Wind Farms, including offsore

[kiwi_outdoors]

just for fun, lets start a new topic.

Wind farms are now popular to generate electricity. Interestingly, they seem to pass environmental review, especially if located offshore. Since these things must impede the near-surface breezes in order to work, would they not lead to elevated temperatures downwind, which then leads to (1) more energy used for AC, and (2) higher moisture loss from evaporation of moisture held in the soils.

And out here in the SW - any loss of water is now a big deal

I just wonder if the in-depth environmental modelling as been done, of if it was a "once-over-lightly" kind of review, with no modelling of local atmospheric effects.

[devo_stevo]

Never really thought about the disruption of the wind before. Makes sense though. I know they kill a lot of birds every year, so there's that.

[Iceaxe]

The biggest problem with wind turbines is they are weather dependent and are not able to produce a steady or dependable supply of electricity 24/7.

Something the general population really doesn't understand is you can't really store electricity on a large scale so you have to produce nearly exactly what is being consumed all the time. This is one place hydro is awesome as you can raise or lower your electrical output is 15 minutes just by the water you release to spin your generators. Coal and oil are nearly as good and takes about one hour to ramp up and down. Wind and solar you are pretty much clueless on what your going to get and when. You can ramp wind and solar down on demand but not up. Whatever your power source you need a method of rapidly (within on hour) of increasing or decreasing what you feed to the power grid. The power Americans use fluctuates greatly during the day. The biggest jump is in the mornings when folks wake up and start turning on lights, TV's and other appliances. The morning jump is huge and nearly instant and is the most difficult to mange.

Until large scale storage batteries are designed and built this living off wind, solar and tidal power is just a tree huggers wet dream.

Anyhoo... hope that helps...

FWIW - I'm a structural engineer by trade and over the years I've designed wind turbines, coal fire power plants, solar plants, oil fire power plants, nuclear power plants and hydro electric power plants. 80% of what I do is energy and mining....