Spinning Blimp Wind Turbines Take Test Flight!

Only up to 10kw units at present according to ecogeek.org but could be eventually installed with up to 2000kw. Handy in residential areas - just hang it the 200 meters above your chimney so it's out of the way.

What'll it do to the bird population?

Interesting idea. They're kinda big though. For a finish we won't be able to see the sky, we'll be confined to looking in the gutter (if I might butcher Wilde).

Here's another idea from the same site. Harness the power of your kids: Link

'Environmentalists' Who Oppose Cape Wind Farm Apparently Linked to Fossil Fuel Industry

Right next door to youngdan where a wind farm is getting proposed in Nantucket Sound, some OilMen are posing as Environmentalists and Opposing the project, the son of a bitches.

Quote :

Eco-Scandal or Clerical Mistake?
Well, well. The cat's out of the bag: "The Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound [...] filed a federal document last month reporting that its work is partially funded and shaped by an international energy conglomerate. [...] The disclosure represents the first documented financial connection between the group opposing the wind farm and Oxbow Corp., which mines and markets energy and commodities, including coal, natural gas, and petroleum."

There must be something about this in the Boston ClareChampion youngdan... lynching these twisted turncoats would be too quick a slow death.

This encourages me that wind energy must actually be a viable option, or these lads wouldn't be trying to stop it.

cactus flower wrote:

This encourages me that wind energy must actually be a viable option, or these lads wouldn't be trying to stop it.

Look at this:
upto 7 Megawatts!
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/02/enercon_e126_largest_wind_turbine.php



Up to 7 Megawatts, this German turbine can produce they're saying at Treehugger - that's twice the size of the ones on the Arklow bank which are 3.6 MW. Now, well over 100 of the 3.6 MW turbines can fit on that bank so why don't we try to put 150 X 7MW babies there that's over 1 Gigawatt... Ireland uses 5-6 Gigawatts per day.

With these turbines, you are spoiling us.

I have been on about this carryon for a long time Auditor. The Oil companies love to fund conservation groups. They want to hold a monopoly on energy and they want it expensive. The Nantucket Sound is one of the best places the US has for wind power. Kennedy asked Senator Stevens of Alaska to sneak an amendment onto an important bill in congress. The amendment gave the area to the control of the Coast Guard which put a spanner in the works of the plans for the wind farm. Kennedy did not want himself to take the action on a local project that would be of great benefit to the people. They won't drill in Alaska because it will disturb the caribou but a million Iraqi and 5000 troops can be killed no problem. It is all baloney and it is all linked together. Ireland needs no oil and it needs no carbon taxes either. Cowen will eventually say that windmills will kill crows. So crows could be the next endangered species.

You're not wrong. Constantly there's a rake of f*ckers who turn up out of nowhere whereever you are in the country to protest against the wind turbines - local councillors often support these people too. It really is curious how a group can suddenly appear though - down here I believe farmers get 12,000 a year for having a turbine on their land. All I need is a couple of acres with good wind and I can move back to spain and live off the Irish wind.

Speaking of Spain, all these oilmen-paid nimbys and corrupt fellas back here will be shown up something chronic when some state or country takes it upon themselves to grab the bull by the balls as Spain has done with the wind. 40% electricity from wind there... There'll be a few lynchings to be had yet...

Audi, that 7 Meg. is a beauty.

Those cranes are impressive too. The engineering in the cranes is possibly more complex than the turbine tower.

What a good photo to illustrate the ingenuity of humankind.

Do you have some knowledge of engineering EVM, that design of lattices is incredibly strong. If my memory serves me right it can carry a greater load than if it were solid steel.

youngdan wrote:

Do you have some knowledge of engineering EVM, that design of lattices is incredibly strong. If my memory serves me right it can carry a greater load than if it were solid steel.

Well I'm an engineer so I'd have some knowledge I suppose.

Cranes always amaze me, not because of the strength, but because of the balance. All that lifting ability concentrated on such a small base. Great stuff.

I am a civil out of UCG but left the profession.

youngdan wrote:

I am a civil out of UCG but left the profession.

How come YD ? Once an engineer, always one !

Except for software engineers, whom I sometimes like to call 'programmers' just to take the piss.

I walked into a top engineering firm in Manhattan one day and just when I almost had a job gave an incorrect answer to a question about my visa. Anyway I worked for a surveying company in Boston for a few years with a lot of work on some of the towers that were put up at the time. This site work would be the same as my class mates would be doing in England at the time but the problem was advancing was not in the cards. I had worked in a office in NY and knew how unbearable that was. I found myself in the bar business and had my own place for 12 years. Perfect job for me, infinate patience and can talk rubbish all day long. I would go as far as to say that I am turning some to drink here on machine nation

Here is another project in Massachusetts. A co-operative of towns have been formed to build a 10 turbine plant producing enough for about 350 homes. This might be the size a big parish or small town would go for. The wind would not be nearly as good as in Ireland. Also of note is the fact that the state is not promoting or helping this and also some of those towns are about 100 miles apart so they must be using the power lines of other utility companies. http://www.telegram.com/article/20080427/NEWS/804270357/1008/NEWS02

youngdan wrote:

Here is another project in Massachusetts. A co-operative of towns have been formed to build a 10 turbine plant producing enough for about 350 homes. This might be the size a big parish or small town would go for. The wind would not be nearly as good as in Ireland. Also of note is the fact that the state is not promoting or helping this and also some of those towns are about 100 miles apart so they must be using the power lines of other utility companies. http://www.telegram.com/article/20080427/NEWS/804270357/1008/NEWS02

Well that's cool news now - there's some more about it here on what looks like an international anti-wind-watch site. Some sites are just simply at the top of the mountain on certain things and I'm always looking for them it's just a pity that I stumbled on what looks like the most organised anti-wind site around. Pity the positive isn't as organised ...
http://www.wind-watch.org/news/2008/02/12/sale-to-jolt-wind-project-corrected/

Here's another site on about the lawsuit end whatever the story was (public utility trust buys private?) but it seems it's going ahead next month anyway.

What would a 'municipal utililty' be youngdan in terms of ireland? Are they councils or county councils or local public bodies just to deal with water energy etc.? If they are truly public bodies run by local people elected by and involving locals in some way then that looks like a good bit towards an anarchists dream brought to you by intermediate technology in the form of turbines. Communities owning their own locally-produced electricity - not imported on coal ships or fought for in crazy asian wars instead just using local resources. It'd be interesting to know who owns the transmission systems between them - practically everything like that in the States is in private hands but a private/public mix is necessary in my view given the nature of the systems involved... God bless this type of thing in America.

A municipal utility would be exactly as it sounds. Towns of decent size would have say their own water and sewer department funded by real estate taxes which is the sourse of most of a towns revenue. Other taxes would be vehicle excise taxes and misc licenses and fees. It is a bit complicated around here because billions was spent to clean up Boston Harbour so a group covering a lot of towns was created. This town and an adjacent town shares one water and sewer department and you get a bill every quarter.
Electricity is supplied usually by private companies with areas covering huge areas overlapping states and they are all interlinked so they can borrow power from one another. In a big outage workers from one company can travel to another area to help out. Some towns like Hull produce electricity of their own like we have seen. They just hook into the local transmission lines.
So Clare county council could set up their wind farm. What would be even better if these Cloughjordan people would get in on the act. Co-ops are a tremendous idea but are not encouraged because they promote independence from state control. Socialists don't like that.
Roll on the air car and a co-op in every village

I found an excellent French (?) site on my traipse around Europe for wind data. It's fairly up to date with it's database and data except for the map below which is from 1989. It pretends to have Europe and World-wide wind data and though it does have tons of resources it lacks good stuff like our lovely Irish and Spanish wind graphs unfortunately ... http://www.thewindpower.net/index_en.php


European wind energy production potential - We're rich, youngdan, rich!

The worldwide maps are even more impressive. Ireland is just about the best place on Earth for wind power. You are correct, Ireland is rich in the only 2 things that really count, energy and food. All that is needed is to get out of the EU, adopt the US constitution in it's origonal form and let the good times roll.

Interesting map alright. Ireland is awash with invisible gold.

700Watts/M2 is no joke.

Auditor #9 wrote:

Spinning Blimp Wind Turbines Take Test Flight!

Only
up to 10kw units at present according to ecogeek.org but could be
eventually installed with up to 2000kw. Handy in residential areas -
just hang it the 200 meters above your chimney so it's out of the way.

Looks like a variation on the kite design. I think the tech is pretty old on this. The wind acting on the fins of the kite winch out the line turning the generator. You pull the fins in, reel in the line, and repeat. Easy.

Although I'd say it'll be a few years before it's put into action*.

*
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airborne_wind_turbine

Quote :

Generating equipment would remain on the ground, only the airfoils are supported by the wind. An aeolic power plant conceived in this fashion is capable of producing the energy equivalent to a nuclear power plant, while exploiting an area of few square kilometres, without occupying it exclusively. (The majority of this area can still be used for agriculture, or navigation in the case of an offshore installation.)

EvotingMachine0197 wrote:

Interesting map alright. Ireland is awash with invisible gold.

700Watts/M2 is no joke.

Could climate change, change the way the wind blows tho'?

somebody over at p.ie was commenting on croke was trying to go carbon neutral, i was wondering where it get the eco-friendly electricity from, i preusme they just buy grid electricity, meaning its just as likely to come from peat of gas or oil but then airtricity gives it electricity to the esb,

but how much electricity is now being generated by airtricity now,(not the windmills in planning), i looked at the figures and where the turbines are but still can't grasp how much electricity they are generating.

did you see there was a thing in the times toady and eco-friendly private jet travel, get this, they by saying hey share your jet with somebody else rather then buying your own. but that's what a lot of business people do already and just cos you share it the plane doesn't justify you using a private jet rather then go with the cattle.

lostexpectation wrote:

somebody over at p.ie was commenting on croke was trying to go carbon neutral, i was wondering where it get the eco-friendly electricity from, i preusme they just buy grid electricity, meaning its just as likely to come from peat of gas or oil but then airtricity gives it electricity to the esb,

Do you mean Croke Park? Sounds interesting - maybe they are putting solar panelling on the roofs of the stadium? Have you got a link

Quote :

but how much electricity is now being generated by airtricity now,(not the windmills in planning), i looked at the figures and where the turbines are but still can't grasp how much electricity they are generating.

Currently we have windmills which would produce 800MW of electricity if the wind blew perfectly 100% of the time. I think Ireland's total demand for electricty is about 5000MW so with a little bit more windfarms it would look like we had enough windmills to produce 1000MW which would be a fifth. Not so though...

On the "Wind Window" outside I made some screen prints for you to look at. This one is Tuesday's wind production over the entire day (the function is real time it's cool - there's a spanish one too but that's all the countries I've found so far)

You can see it varies wildly throughout the day so you'd have to take an average of that line going from 200-320 ... for that day ..


To really see how much is getting produced you'd have to look at the graph or figures over a year or more for a good sample of wind. Here's the last three days...


There's probably a 45-55% efficiency when you see it over a year, not bad considering it's 'free' energy once the yokes are established. Free, local, clean and cheap to install initially.