Great Lakes Wind Could Supply One-third of U.S. Electricity

[bananas]

http://www.celsias.com/article/great-lakes-wind-could-supply-one-third-us-electri/

Great Lakes Wind Could Supply One-third of U.S. Electricity

No sooner was the Great Lakes Basin Compact approved in October of 2008 than wind turbine consortiums and manufacturers started talking about the potential of Great Lakes wind to deliver massive amounts of clean energy to the Upper Midwest.

Their hopes and statistics are based on several wind distribution maps. The first, a government-sponsored wind mapping system, shows eastern Wisconsin having the greatest potential. A Wikipedia resource confirms this, and adds the Upper Peninsula area in Michigan as having wind speeds from 12 to 15 miles per hour offshore, with winds exceeding 20 miles per hour on Lake Michigan itself. The U.S. Energy Information Administration, a division of the Department of Energy, rates offshore wind speeds at both Lake Superior and Lake Michigan as ‘good', and wind speeds over the lakes themselves as ‘excellent'.

<snip>

These proposed freshwater, offshore wind farms, ringing the lakes from Superior to Huron, with Michigan as the flagship enterprise, could produce enough electricity to turn on the lights for all the roughly 40 million inhabitants of the region, with enough left over to light up Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania and New York, with Vermont added on as an afterthought.

<snip>

[valerief]

1. ...and the wayward wind...is a restless wind...a restless wind...

that yearns to waaaaaaander...

I forget the rest of the lyrics.

[OnceUponTimeOnTheNet]

2. Are they noisy? How far off shore are these things?

I'd be for it, as long as these things aren't making distracting noises as I'm picking agates on the beaches. Lake Superior that is.

There are many remote areas on the Lakes to put them, but there's bound to be someone upset with it.
K&R.

[Donnachaidh]

3. and that's only from the cheese heads at football games.

:evilgrin:

[HysteryDiagnosis]

4. I hate to say this but I bought an LED lamp light bulb at Wally World

for a little over 5 dollars. Per year cost to run is rated at around 16 cents. I'm down with that.

[The Doctor.]

5. Now here's the GREAT news;

After load reduction incentives for residential and business dwellings, and the proliferation of more solar-generated electricity into the grid, the great lakes could be making up the difference for the ENTIRE nation.

This stuff is very real.

[NNadir]

6. "Renewables will save us" types can't construct a sentence without the word "could."

Most of them, of course, also can't understand that 616 is not greater than 860 either.

To wit: http://www.energyalmanac.ca.gov/electricity/electricity_generation.html

Many of them also seem to believe that climate change is going to start in 2050, and so are content to dump the responsibility for their own actions on future generations about whom they couldn't give a rat's ass.

Climate change is not some function of some future happy horse shit fantasy.

Climate change is now.

I note, with all due contempt, that the very same people who have continuous wet dreams about their "could" renewables fantasies, spend at least 80% of their time trying to viciously vandalize the world's largest, by far, form of climate change gas free primary energy.

Why? Mostly because they're assholes with withered educations.

If wind could do any of the things that shit for brains anti-nukes have been continuously hyping here (after 30 years of similar hyping by moronic "Rocky Mountain Institute" car cultists) it would have already been done.

Wind and solar combined can't even power the servers that run the websites that hype them.

In fact, if they did, their huge external costs would be obviated.

If someone tried to generate 1/3 of electricity with wind, it first of all wouldn't work, but before it failed, every square centimeter of the great lakes would be covered with a thin slick of gear box oil.

[OnceUponTimeOnTheNet]

10. I read this twice, and still do not understand what it is you are saying.

Mind I'm of the mind that Global Cooling is on the way. Lack of sunspots, Maunder Minimum...

[jpak]

13. Koo koo. Koo koo, Koo koo

:rofl:

[NNadir]

18. Gobble, gobble, gobble.

Um, watch your uncle, locally grown turkey, I think he has an axe in the other hand.



http://www.livevideo.com/video/8CB184B132BE43CAB906F64C3AA3C225/exploding-windmill.aspx

[jpak]

14. LOLOLOLOLOL!!!!11111

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x176801

[navarth]

7. As much as I like this, I still think we need to talk about the danger to birds.

Sorry to be a wet blanket, but...this is a concern for me. I've heard horror stories about dead bats and birds littering the ground around windmills. Seems kinda strange, because it looks to me like those windmills are turning very slowly.

Again, sorry to be a wet blanket. Anything that's good for Michigan, I want to be for it. But the dead birds and bats seem like a huge problem. Am I wrong?

[bananas]

8. Cats are a bigger danger to birds.

Do you want to ban cats?

[navarth]

11. I'd like to keep it a serious dicussion please

No flaming necessary.

[bananas]

15. I am being serious

Do you want to ban cats?
Do you want to ban windows?

"Even if America got a full half of its electricity from wind power, the annual cumulative bird fatalities would be 0.5% of what US cats kill per year." (Mike Tidwell)
http://www.futureenergy.org/infowindbirds.html

Glass Windows
Bird Deaths a year: 100 to 900+ million
Dr. Daniel Klem of Muhlenberg College has done studies over a period of 20 years, looking at bird collisions with windows. His conclusion: glass kills more birds than any other human related factor.

House Cats
Bird Deaths a year: 100 Million
The National Audubuon Society says 100 million birds a year fall prey to cats. Dr. Stan Temple of the University of Wisconsin estimates that in Wisconsin alone, about 7 million birds a year are killed by cats

Automobiles / Trucks
Bird Deaths a year: 50 to 100 Million
Scientists estimate the number of birds killed by cars and trucks on the nation's highways to be 50 to 100 million a year. Those statistics were cited in reports published by the National Institute for Urban Wildlife and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Electric Transmission Line Collisions
Bird Deaths a year: up to 174 million
Estimates made by the U.S. Fish and Wildife Service demonstrate millions of birds die each year as a result of colliding with transmission lines.

Agriculture
Bird Deaths a year: 67 million
Pesticides likely poison an estimated 67 million birds per year according to the Smithsonian Institution. Cutting hay may kill up to a million more birds a year.

<more>

http://www.currykerlinger.com/birds.htm

[navarth]

20. serious huh

you ask me if I want to ban cats and windows and you're serious.

PLEASE refer once more to my original question. You want to post this info? That's great! Very good info.

The smart ass comments do me no good. Keep it on the intelligent level so I can learn something here PLEASE.

It's useless to jump to the conclusion that I want to ban windmills. I just want the question of the danger to birds addressed. OKAY?

[Dead_Parrot]

12. Not many cats can kill a 5kg eagle

Wind turbines can. Now, This doesn't mean we should junk all wind farms, but it is a valid concern over where they are sited: I don't know enough about the Great Lakes ecosystems to comment on this particular case, however.

[Berry Cool]

16. Wind turbines really don't turn all that quickly.

I think people imagine them like they're gigantic rotary fans or something. They don't turn that quickly.

[Dead_Parrot]

17. So, the Smola eagles all commited suicide?

I guess that's possible. There's a paper here you might want to flick through, though.

[diane in sf]

19. Hi Parrot, the old wind mills with fast-moving rotors in Altamont Pass are bird blenders

The new, big ones are not--the blades move slowly and are very avoidable and the structure isn't so likely to encourage nesting. The Altamont Pass windmills were placed in the early 80s in a bird flyway also--unfortunate design and siting--we know more now.

[navarth]

21. That is comforting to know.

I really don't want to solve one ecological problem at the expense of creating another.

[Dead_Parrot]

24. True, but I wasn't talking about Altamont

With a diameter of just 33m the Altamont turbines spin like a magimix: On a migration path, It's a case study in how to it wrong.

The Ones on Smola, which I linked to, are 83m: much bigger and slower but still decimating the local eagles. Now, as is mentioned downthread habitat loss (caused by pollution, climate change, farming and urbanisation) is a much bigger threat, and turbines are one way to reduce two of these so there's clearly advantages as well.

What we need to do is avoid overly simplistic thinking (Wind turbines kill birds and are teh evil! Wind turbines are renewables and are teh green!) and look at the details.

Which, as I mentioned, I have no idea about for the great lakes. :dunce:

[diane in sf]

26. did kitty survive this encounter?

[Dead_Parrot]

27. Well, there's no reference to it's demise...

...although you do have to wonder.

There's another photo of the pair at http://alaskan.smugmug.com/gallery/264699_5qeMT/1/2769185_hGqmk/Medium

[diane in sf]

28. looks like kitty's eyes were bigger than its stomach or brain, but it seems to have

survived judging by the caption.

[SnowGoose]

22. Point taken - although climate change kills birds too

I can see that here, as in other situations, a "solution" conceived without a thorough understanding of the interconnected real-world systems, can lead to undesirable new problems.

So I think you're right that we need to consider the total impact of a proposed system.

Part of that total impact, of course is what's happening to the habitats and ecosystems right now, from generating our energy with fossil fuels.

[GliderGuider]

23. Once you start to take a system-level approach

You rapidly run into the question of where you draw your boundaries. For instance, in this case if we were to plan a massive build-out of wind power, we need to factor in infrastructure costs (for production, installation, maintenance, power distribution and end use), the cost of capital over the next decade or so, the need to "front-end-load" the effort with fossil fuels, etc. etc. Each of these issues brings competing tradeoffs into play.

It's of course much easier to keep the argument to such basics as "is there enough wind" and "birds vs. electricity" but the issue is a lot more complex than that.

[madrchsod]

9. i think northern illinois is approaching 250 windmills

they are growing like the corn in july...

[jwirr]

25. I do not know how to access the information but I know that Minnesota

Light & Power erected an experimental wind tower up around Brimson several years ago. It would be interesting to find out what they have observed about the problems - including those with birds.