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World's largest wind turbine to be 853ft tall


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On 4/27/2018 at 6:26 AM, Sundew said:

I have heard, perhaps incorrectly, that the energy involved in making a wind turbine of this type is greater than the energy produced over the lifetime of the device, and that most are heavily government subsidized. Plus manufacturing these is not without environmental concerns as well. 

Could be wrong, I have not researched it further. 

Who cares if the energy required to make a device exceeds that which it produces ???!!!!

That's perfectly normal in MANY cases.

Not only that, but if I were OVERLY CONCERNED about that, my remote farm in Iowa would have no electricity or drawn water to produce my crops for other's.

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It'll be expensive, it'll produce little electricity and it'll blow down when it gets windy.

We need more nuclear and coal power stations, not windmills. Windmills won't keep our lights on.

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On 5/1/2018 at 4:21 PM, pallidin said:

Who cares if the energy required to make a device exceeds that which it produces ???!!!!

That's perfectly normal in MANY cases.

Not only that, but if I were OVERLY CONCERNED about that, my remote farm in Iowa would have no electricity or drawn water to produce my crops for other's.

Meh, I'd look for actual sources to back up that claim. 

Sounds like it's just propaganda from people who would rather we didn't invest in wind power. 

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On 5/5/2018 at 7:50 AM, Black Monk said:

It'll be expensive, it'll produce little electricity and it'll blow down when it gets windy.

We need more nuclear and coal power stations, not windmills. Windmills won't keep our lights on.

If it falls down, then I guess people fix it and put it back up.

On the other hand, if there's an accident at a nuclear facility, that's a bit more complicated. 

And coal just spews more crap into the air that we don't need to breathe.

No matter where you are on global warming, most of us can agree that less crap in the air is better. 

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13 minutes ago, ChaosRose said:

Meh, I'd look for actual sources to back up that claim. 

Sounds like it's just propaganda from people who would rather we didn't invest in wind power. 

No. We should invest in power stations.

When the lights go out in the 2020s thanks to the reliance on wind turbines we'll know who to blame.

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3 hours ago, Black Monk said:

No. We should invest in power stations.

When the lights go out in the 2020s thanks to the reliance on wind turbines we'll know who to blame.

Well, aren't you just a cheerful proponent of assistive alternative energy.

Let's ban all alternative energy!

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43 minutes ago, pallidin said:

Well, aren't you just a cheerful proponent of assistive alternative energy.

Let's ban all alternative energy!

He does have a point, a lot of these alternative energy ideas are more feel good projects then actually beneficial projects.

Wind turbines are at best only 69% efficient, there is just no way to get past the Beltz limit.  Then there is the issue that wind blows at different speeds, if it blows to slow the turbine produces no energy, too fast and the blades cut out to prevent damage also producing no energy.  Realistically it is very rare for a wind turbine to operate at 100% of its capacity, if I remember correctly if everything is done right the wind turbine will average out at about 60%.  Then there are the environmental concerns and wind turbines actually do effect local weather patterns.  Basically the wind turbines turn laminar wind flow into turbulent wind flow which alters the local temperature and precipitation.

Solar power is just inefficient and to top it off the production of solar panels produce some of the worst industrial waste known along with requiring extensive mining operations to get the needed rare earth minerals.

Biofuels at best have a net energy of zero, at worst using them is a net energy lost and they produce more CO2 for the same amount of energy produced.

None of them are effective, but they make people feel good and that they are doing something.  Ultimately fossil fuels and nuclear are our only real energy options for the short to intermediate term.  Also fossil fuels are no where near as dirty anymore as people make them out to be.

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Silly you ^^^, alternative energy is progressive, not degressive.

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1 hour ago, DarkHunter said:

He does have a point, a lot of these alternative energy ideas are more feel good projects then actually beneficial projects.

Wind turbines are at best only 69% efficient, there is just no way to get past the Beltz limit.  Then there is the issue that wind blows at different speeds, if it blows to slow the turbine produces no energy, too fast and the blades cut out to prevent damage also producing no energy.  Realistically it is very rare for a wind turbine to operate at 100% of its capacity, if I remember correctly if everything is done right the wind turbine will average out at about 60%.  Then there are the environmental concerns and wind turbines actually do effect local weather patterns.  Basically the wind turbines turn laminar wind flow into turbulent wind flow which alters the local temperature and precipitation.

Solar power is just inefficient and to top it off the production of solar panels produce some of the worst industrial waste known along with requiring extensive mining operations to get the needed rare earth minerals.

Biofuels at best have a net energy of zero, at worst using them is a net energy lost and they produce more CO2 for the same amount of energy produced.

None of them are effective, but they make people feel good and that they are doing something.  Ultimately fossil fuels and nuclear are our only real energy options for the short to intermediate term.  Also fossil fuels are no where near as dirty anymore as people make them out to be.

No energy conversion process is very efficient. Be it solar cells, internal combustion (IC) engine, wind turbine, hydro-electric scheme, whatever, the conversion rate is low. Some are better than others. The efficiency of a wind-turbine is higher than that of the IC engine. The overall efficiency of the IC engine in extracting energy from fossil (hydro-carbon) fuels is 25% or less, much lower than a wind turbine or a solar panel.

Making people feel good has nothing to do with. There are sound engineering and thermodynamic reasons for pursuing renewable and alternative green energy technologies. 

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2 hours ago, DarkHunter said:

He does have a point, a lot of these alternative energy ideas are more feel good projects then actually beneficial projects.

Wind turbines are at best only 69% efficient, there is just no way to get past the Beltz limit.  Then there is the issue that wind blows at different speeds, if it blows to slow the turbine produces no energy, too fast and the blades cut out to prevent damage also producing no energy.  Realistically it is very rare for a wind turbine to operate at 100% of its capacity, if I remember correctly if everything is done right the wind turbine will average out at about 60%.  Then there are the environmental concerns and wind turbines actually do effect local weather patterns.  Basically the wind turbines turn laminar wind flow into turbulent wind flow which alters the local temperature and precipitation.

Solar power is just inefficient and to top it off the production of solar panels produce some of the worst industrial waste known along with requiring extensive mining operations to get the needed rare earth minerals.

Biofuels at best have a net energy of zero, at worst using them is a net energy lost and they produce more CO2 for the same amount of energy produced.

None of them are effective, but they make people feel good and that they are doing something.  Ultimately fossil fuels and nuclear are our only real energy options for the short to intermediate term.  Also fossil fuels are no where near as dirty anymore as people make them out to be.

Blah.

Facts here

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17 minutes ago, Ozymandias said:

No energy conversion process is very efficient. Be it solar cells, internal combustion (IC) engine, wind turbine, hydro-electric scheme, whatever, the conversion rate is low. Some are better than others. The efficiency of a wind-turbine is higher than that of the IC engine. The overall efficiency of the IC engine in extracting energy from fossil (hydro-carbon) fuels is 25% or less, much lower than a wind turbine or a solar panel.

Making people feel good has nothing to do with. There are sound engineering and thermodynamic reasons for pursuing renewable and alternative green energy technologies. 

There are no truly sound engineering or thermodynamic reasons for pursuing renewable and alternative green energy in it's current form other then to feel good.

Of course some energy conversions are better then others but the renewable/green ones are specially bad.  

You mention the internal combustion engine, which do have very bad efficiency, luckily internal combustion engines arent used to generate energy.  The boilers used by coal and natural gas power plants are on average 85% efficient.  Wind on the other hand for example has the beltz limit which by default limit it to 69% efficiency but there are further limits to efficiency with the main one being blade design. 

Basically it is impossible to design a wind turbine blade that extracts the 69% maximum at all wind speeds, if the wind is just a few m/s higher or lower then the wind speed it was designed for it can have drastic effects on the efficiency. 

For example the EWEA says that an average 2.5 to 3 MW wind turbine can create over 6 million kWh per year which sounds good till you look at the numbers.  To make it easier cause I'm lazy I'll just assume a 3 MW wind turbine generating 6 million kWh in a year.  On average that all means that 3 MW wind turbine is only operating at an average capacity of approximately 685 KW, or 0.685 MW, or about 22% of its total capacity on average over the course of the year.  If you took that same turbine and after slight modifications to use it in a coal power plant it would produce the same amount of electricity in about 92.6 days assuming it was ran at 90% capacity like most turbines are at coal/natural gas power plants.  

Of course the wind turbine isnt operating at just 22% of its capacity year round but for every day it works at over 50% efficiency there are just as many days, if not more, its operating at below 50% efficiency.

Would love to hear these sound engineering and thermodynamic reasons though, no matter how one tries to spin it all of the current and popular green/renewable energy sources are far less efficient and cost far more then fossil fuels and nuclear power.

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21 minutes ago, toast said:

Blah.

Facts here

Good to show that 57.8% of Germany's electricity production, which is different then energy consumption, is still coming from coal, natural gas, and nuclear so far this year.  

We gone over this before but if we need to I can go over this all again later tonight where I show you once again that all of Germany's green/renewable engery production have hit hard walls and are not going to be expanding significantly any time soon.

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I have posted this before, but it pretty much sums it up:

What-If-Its-A-Hoax-56a74f4c5f9b58b7d0e8f300.jpg

Of course there are issues with things like wind and solar energy, but they are being solved by people who don't just sit back and say " We need more coal". Cars and planes were pretty useless in the beginning, but we didn't just say "lets stick to horses as we have allways done". 

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7 hours ago, DarkHunter said:

Good to show that 57.8% of Germany's electricity production, which is different then energy consumption, is still coming from coal, natural gas, and nuclear so far this year. 

The trend is doing the trick here. Currently 42,2% are coming from renewable energy sources, compared to 38,2% in 2017, 33,7% in 2016 and 33,5% in 2015 and ca. 25% in 2013. And, in 2022 the last one of initial 19 German nuclear power plants will be switched off forever.

Quote

We gone over this before but if we need to I can go over this all again later tonight where I show you once again that all of Germany's green/renewable engery production have hit hard walls and are not going to be expanding significantly any time soon.

The German project is named Energy transition (and currently we are ahead the schedule) with the targets to generate energy from renewable sources at 50%/2030, 65%/2040 and 80%/2050; to reduce carbon emission by 40%/2020, 55%/2040 and 80-95% until 2050 based on the values of 1990. 

 

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6 hours ago, toast said:

The trend is doing the trick here. Currently 42,2% are coming from renewable energy sources, compared to 38,2% in 2017, 33,7% in 2016 and 33,5% in 2015 and ca. 25% in 2013. And, in 2022 the last one of initial 19 German nuclear power plants will be switched off forever.

The German project is named Energy transition (and currently we are ahead the schedule) with the targets to generate energy from renewable sources at 50%/2030, 65%/2040 and 80%/2050; to reduce carbon emission by 40%/2020, 55%/2040 and 80-95% until 2050 based on the values of 1990. 

 

A good place to start I guess would be with understanding terms, cause you keep using them incorrectly.  The site you linked to, and love to use, shows electricity production.  Electricity production does not equal energy production, electricity production is a part of energy production being approximately a third but far from being the entirety of energy production.

Sadly that data only goes back to 2015 and being only partially through 2018 it does give a rather limited amount of data, but it does mean less typing.

As for electricity production, in 2015 183.73 TWh came from renewable engery with the break down being 38.73 TWh coming from solar, 79.21 TWh coming from wind, 46.99 TWh coming from biofuels, and 18.81 TWh coming from hydro. 

In 2017, the last full year of data, 209.97 TWh came from renewable energy with the break down being 38.39 TWh coming from solar, 103.65 TWh coming from wind, 47.45 TWh coming from biofuels, and 20.48 TWh coming from hydro.

Out of all of those renewable energy sources only wind had any real growth, those minor increases aren't from any significant capacity expansion but from the unreliable generation of those sources except for hydro which is either from maintenance or small increase in the capacity the turbines already installed are running at.  

The point is only wind can be expanded, I remember showing and explaining why solar is done in Germany and wont be significantly expanded further but I can go into it again if I have to later tonight, hydro can't be expanded either as every river that can have hydro has it already, and biofuels just don't work when you do a full energy audit on them.  Even then wind can only be expanded so far and it won't be enough. 

But on further research I found some other interesting things.

That site that was used shows that a total of 549.39 TWh were generated in 2015, 539.72 TWh being generated in 2016, and 549.9 TWh in 2017.  The problem is the AGEB has 648.1 TWh being generated in 2015, 650.6 TWh being generated in 2016, and 654.8 TWh being generated in 2017.  A discrepancy of about 100 TWh is pretty significant, largely it comes down to the site you use not counting all energy production, it doesn't count electricity generation from conventional sources with a capacity less then 100 MW while AGEB does.

Ultimately the real electricity produced from renewable resources was 28.9% in 2015 and 29% in 2016, and 33.3% in 2017 which are significantly different then the 33.3% in 2015, the 33.7% in 2016, and 38.2% in 2017.  

I have no idea why you keep on trying to use 2018 data when it isnt even half way through the year yet and renewable energy generation, especially in Germany, is very dependent on the season with wide fluctuations over the course of a year.

In 2022 when the nuclear power plants are still operating or when the use of coal and natural gas increase to make up for the loss of electricity, cause all of the renewable energy generations in Germany have stalled except for wind which would need to be nearly doubled in 4 years to just replace nuclear energy, I'll make sure I remind you.

As for total energy generation, it is even worse for Germany.  In 2016 Germany consumed about 13,451 PJ of energy which includes electricity production, heating, and transportation.  Of that 13,451 PJ only 1,644 came from renewable sources or to put it in percentage approximately 12.4%.

Germany isnt going to reach its 80% electricity generation by 2050, doubt it will reach its goal of 50% by 2030 and for its goal of 18% total energy from renewable sources by 2020 Germany almost certainly wont reach it let alone its goal of 60% by 2050, Germany still hasnt even reached its 2014 goal for total energy generation.

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