Portsmouth, RI Second Wind Turbine going up - Pics of Blades

[webbie]

(broken link removed)

We have a summer cottage on this island - and they have a wind energy committee and effort...which appears to be working.

There is one turbine already installed on the grounds of the Carnegie Abbey School and it is working very well.

With all that is going on in the economy, it would seem that wind power is one ace in the hole for states like RI and Ma - if only they would get off their butts and start installing DOZENS of turbines.

 

[wingsfan]

120 foot blades. That is one big wind generator.I wonder how tall the pole is it is going on.

 

[deck2]

I assume that the pole would be at least 120 ft high- how much do those blades weigh??

 

[JustWood]

There is a big wind farm near my sisters house in Dansville NY. Last Sept when I was up there they had probably 40+ put up. 2 cranes were working on more while I was there. There is also about 10 near Buffalo on lake Erie with more planned. I think this technology is going into high gear with O as pres.

 

[flyingcow]

Got a 34 group to the north of me(65miles) and a 38 group to the south(35miles). These are 400ft tall, i think. Look very similar to the pics you posted. These guys moving them are cool to watch, I drive truck for a living, and I've watched these guys up close and personal.


Plus i got a small residential unit 100ft behind the house. Its only on 45ft pole.

 

[rowerwet]

wind seems like a great idea, unfortunately the maintenance is expensive on windmills and the lifespan doesn't make the initial investment back in most cases. However reusing the same pole and connecting power lines etc. will lessen the cost over the long run . Unlike a hydro dam that has water hitting the turbines at the same force all the time, wind is very different from day to day and one good wind storm will wipe out the investment, just look at Utube for examples of wind mills self destructing.

 

[flyingcow]

I'm with you on the dam idea. It's too bad we seem to want to rip out the old ones and not rebuild new ones.

 

[youngstr]

There is a big wind farm near my sisters house in Dansville NY. Last Sept when I was up there they had probably 40+ put up. 2 cranes were working on more while I was there. There is also about 10 near Buffalo on lake Erie with more planned. I think this technology is going into high gear with O as pres.

My parents live over that way and we took a drive at Christmas to see them. They're in Cohocton, NY and the word is they're going to put another 25 up in the adjacent town of Howard, NY. Most of the locals in WNY think the area will be inundated with wind farms over the next few years as there are a lot of projects on the books.

From a distance they don't look like much but I recommend anyone to get right up under one of the turbines. Whether you like them or not their size will take your breath away.

Y

 

[webbie]

wind seems like a great idea, unfortunately the maintenance is expensive on windmills and the lifespan doesn't make the initial investment back in most cases.

I think you are wrong on that - WHEN the windmills are large and sited in the correct places. I think residential wind machines are usually not the right idea because of siting - remember that the power of the wind is calculated using the square of the wind speed. So if we have a coastal area where they have 20MPH average, this produces 4x as much power as a 10MPH wind.

The one on Aquidneck Island was carefully worked out as to payback over the entire life span and the results are AHEAD of the calculations.
Here is a link if you want to do some reading:
http://www.windpower.org/en/tour/env/enpaybk.htm

The current cost of wind generated electricity for offshore or high wind areas in the area of 5 cents per KWH. That is very competitive with other sources, and when you figure the lack of pollution, etc. it is a clear winner when it comes to currently available technologies.

This price INCLUDES the financing, interest, maintenance, etc.......if it didn't, you would never be able to get the financing to build the things.

 

[2.beans]

they look better than smoke stacks.

 

[JustWood]

wind seems like a great idea, unfortunately the maintenance is expensive on windmills and the lifespan doesn't make the initial investment back in most cases.

I think you are wrong on that - WHEN the windmills are large and sited in the correct places. I think residential wind machines are usually not the right idea because of siting - remember that the power of the wind is calculated using the square of the wind speed. So if we have a coastal area where they have 20MPH average, this produces 4x as much power as a 10MPH wind.

The one on Aquidneck Island was carefully worked out as to payback over the entire life span and the results are AHEAD of the calculations.
Here is a link if you want to do some reading:
http://www.windpower.org/en/tour/env/enpaybk.htm

The current cost of wind generated electricity for offshore or high wind areas in the area of 5 cents per KWH. That is very competitive with other sources, and when you figure the lack of pollution, etc. it is a clear winner when it comes to currently available technologies.

This price INCLUDES the financing, interest, maintenance, etc.......if it didn't, you would never be able to get the financing to build the things.

The companies building these wind farms do a 1-2 year study to make sure their plan is going to "fly". About half a dozen towns in my my county have done this and they have been all shot down by the do gooders concerned about geese.I'll bet the latest Hudson River incident might change a few minds.

 

[2.beans]

the geese will learn.

 

[ihookem]

Or they will die! If they die that's ok with me. I live in Allenton Wisconsin and we have 88 a little north of me and 103 south west of me. I call them middle fingers pointing at opec.

 

[Woodrat]

-----There's one in the industrial park in Newburyport, Ma----- 290 ft tall---put up in January, but not operatiional as yet. Definitly looks impressive!! Vocal minority of "NIMBY" types in opposition to it-- should be interesting
-----Always interesting (but disheartening) that as a society, we profess to want energy independence and "green" solutions to all our problems--- but are unwilling to do what's necessary to accomplish it.

------Woodrat

 

[rowerwet]

Good thing there is already a diesil generator located in the industrial park to take over when the wind dies on those hot sumer days when all the a/c is cranked. That is the only problem with wind the dirty back up source to take over when the wind dies.
Of course as someone who grew up a 1/4 mile from there and rode my bike on scotland rd everyday I can say that has to be one of the best locations as the wind never dies until after dark, and it always is coming from the direction you are going!

 

[webbie]

The "real" sites, most of which are actually out in the Ocean and Bay, almost never lose wind. Also, that is the main reason that part of the new infrastructure projects include more build-out of the electrical grid. Ge is getting involved big time in these efforts - a "smart" grid which is more efficient in moving around the juice. Take the wind farm off cape cod - in the winter it will probably produce as much or more than the summer - but the Cape does not need it then...but BOSTON does.

There are parts of the grid that can function as storage batteries - an example is the pumped storage project near me...when there is extra juice, they pump tens of millions of gallons of water to a mountaintop lake - when the juice is needed they let it go back to the river and generate electric from it. This is also an idea that some of the electric and hybrid car makers have - that when your car has extra juice it actually feeds back into the grid, so all these millions of cars can act as storage.

ALL of these technologies are already here. We just have to have good reasons (and capital, etc.) to implement them.

Lees, if you look carefully at the wind charts for interior New England, you may (as I have) conclude that it really only for show that wind generators would be built inland here. The amount of available wind power offshore is VASTLY greater, not only for each single generator but in physical size of the sites. Some things just work best when scaled.

 

[mayhem]

A local ski area installed a 1.5Mw turbine last year, which covers about 1/3 of their annual electricity usage. The bank i work at underwrote the project so we got to see it going up and when they were bringing in the bits and pieces...you can see it from my office window and the thing is a good 12-13 miles away as the crow flies.

Each blade is 123 ft long and the tower is 253 feet tall. Cost for the whole project was about $4,000,000.

 

[rhetoric]

It's all just solar power. Wind is just converted solar power. I'm going to guess that solar panels will, in time, render the turbines obsolete. They need to, anyway.

Rode w/ my motorcycle gang (ha -- guys from church) throughout the "southern tier" of NY to explore the windfarms sprouting up and started with the first windfarm east of the mississippi (near Warsaw). The first time I saw them it was awesome in the original sense of the word -- wonderful and scary at the same time. But this time we went down and they are putting up the mega-monsters which made the original turbines look wimpy.

We rode up to a few construction sites and stood next to the blades which were laying on the ground. Oh my goodness. At cohocton we were swarmed by power company employees who thought we were eco-terrorists and once they calmed down told us that the installation process was being held up by a broken crane. Only 5 cranes in the whole world can pick up those turbines.

 

[sullystull]

I can see a windfarm consisting of 44 wind turbines from my back door. They are 1.5 megawatts each--producing 66 megawatts total. They stand 225 ft to the hub and each blade is 115 in length. I love them. Of course, if you compare them to the coal fired power plant down the street...it produces 1,600 megawatts but burns 15,000 tons of coal a day. One good thing about coal mining is when they come back to reclaim the high wall on the strip mine, it makes for nice backcountry skiing.

 

[mbcijim]

The current cost of wind generated electricity for offshore or high wind areas in the area of 5 cents per KWH. That is very competitive with other sources, and when you figure the lack of pollution, etc. it is a clear winner when it comes to currently available technologies.

That's great if true. Can you back it up? And is that $.05/KWH before or after subsidies like tax credits and Renewable Energy Credits (REC's)?

I know the developer of a $75 Million dollar wind farm in Pennsylvania, and he always indicated to me that it was dependent on the wind power tax credit (not sure which one that is) that has always been renewed for just one year at a time.