Wind farms and Climate Change

[JohnW2]

They are not policeman, they are teenage rioters wearing stolen uniforms

Ah - that's inconsistent with the rumour I heard, that the rioters were plain-clothed policemen

Kind Regards, John.

 

[sparkticus]

Yep, that's possible - but, overall, there clearly has to be less energy (hence, presumably, wind speed) 'left' in the totality of all weather systems, if some has been stolen and turned into electricity.

Well given my understanding that energy can neither be created or destroyed but merely moved from one place to another or converted from one form to another, then I think you are right unless a globally reduced wind speed is somehow compensated by something else. Of course finally, given the energy theory, the checks&balances will be balanced somewhere along the line, possibly in one tiny squalid corner of the universe where all the broken laws of physics are dumped and possibly a place where D Cockburn went to school!

 

[ericmark]

The problem I see with wind farms is control. Major power stations have to run at less than 100% capacity in order to be able to produce more when there is a sudden demand. They also need to stay on line with a temporary lost of voltage so if there is a fault once the automatic disconnection unit removes the fault the power is immediately restored.
The early wind generators needed to get the excitation from the grid so would not stay on line during a brown out and their ability to vary the amount of power according to demand rather than according to wind available is very lacking.
As a result the major power stations have to run even further below their maximum capacity in order to step in when the wind farm fails to meet their portion of extra demand. So the major power stations are running less efficient due to the wind farms.
At the moment the amount produced by wind farms is very little. The BBC says a wind farm produces 150MW but the power station I worked on, one of a pair at Connah's Quay produced 2400MW with 4 x 600MW combined power turbines. Sizewell has two 750MW turbines even the standby power from Diesel is 8 x 1.5MW or 12MW that's just to keep pumps running like those which failed in Japan.
The figures quoted are often "Enough to power 2000 homes" maybe if they said something like "enough to power half a furnace at Quin Glass" we would realise what a drop in the total the wind farms produce.