Submitted by Patagonica t3_z2vbi8 in askscience
I already believe wind turbines are good, but I know my father believes a bunch of Facebook nonsense and I will have to see him on Thanksgiving. Specifically, he says they require a lot of maintenance, they "catch on fire," they're loud, and I'm sure he'll have fun, new, objections to them.
I am a “designer” of wind turbines and agree with all of this points. From an engineering and climactic point of view, they’re pretty fantastic for the environment.
I'm wondering a bit about the impact of off-shore windmill parks though.
If you look at wind maps such as windyTV, you see that wind speed drops a lot at the shoreline. I guess the buildings, trees,... make the boundary layer larger.So the surface, has a major impact on wind patterns. And continental climate is different from sea climate.
But if they put windmill park in the middle of the sea, some energy gets extracted from those big laminar bodies of air, making them more turbulent, like buildings and trees on land.It maybe shifts the "shore" in the middle of the sea. Maybe the winds lose some of their momenton and can't carry the usual amount of moist inland increasing the size of the continental climate regions.
I'm pro windmill though, I live pretty close to a bunch of them and I think they're gorgeous.
>If you look at wind maps such as windyTV, you see that wind speed drops a lot at the shoreline. I guess the buildings, trees,... make the boundary layer larger
Yup but that is more pronounced at a low height while WTs tap into wind at 100+ m height where the effect is less dramatic.
>maybe shifts the "shore" in the middle of the sea. Maybe the winds lose some of their momenton and can't carry the usual amount of moist inland increasing the size of the continental climate regions.
Ironically the turbulent nature actually helps mitigate the effect (which is not that large in the first place) because it improves "mixing" with the untapped wind
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I’ve seen videos of vertical tube type turbines. How efficient are those on a large scale compared to the existing ones? And do they eliminate some of the drawbacks?
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I'm really interested in the new method(s) for end of life treatment of the blades. Could you expand on that, or post a link to somewhere that discusses it? Does it scale to high volume as we install more wind capacity?
Feels like a tough problem given the thermoset resin used.
I'm sorry but how can something be "4000% less"? Surely something can only 100% less than something, i.e. nothing?
Do you mean 1/4000 the amount? That would be 99.975% less.
I should have stated it the other way around- that cats kill 4000% more birds each year than wind turbines. Your math is correct.
The problem with them and birds is they tend to kill the birds cats can't, large rarer, slower breeding birds of prey etc. I still think getting rid of fossil fuels is key, but the large birds killing problem certainly needs addressing.
Another counterpoint I may have is that in order to prevent fires, inert atmospheres (mainly SF₆ afaik) are used, which itself has a very high gwp. However that only becomes an issue during leaks.
Generally they are still way better than any fossil fuel.
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I like this!
Perhaps you can help me explain to my captives that the guillotine is a good method for executing them. It is quieter than my shotgun (about 8Db vs 88Db) and the guillotine requires only 1/5th the amount of wood as the gallows requires (and only 25% of the rope). Guillotines can unintentionally amputate a digit or an appendage, but so can butcher knives, cars, hydraulic presses, lathes, CNC machines, augers, and this owes to operator error. At the end of their life cycle, guillotines are far more recyclable than gas chambers, and more sustainable with less carbon output and far less dependency on supply chains. And both MVCs and overdoses of prescription drugs kill far more people (4000% and 5200%, respectively) than guillotines kill each year.
Now you take it from here, please.
"good for the environment" is not a specific statement so the judgement will depend on preferences.
Things can be good for one issue, e.g. not generating CO2, and bad for other issues, e.g. generating noise. So, the question is, how much do you weigh one criteria against the other.
theyre good, but theres a few downsides
comparatively low energy, you need a lot of land and wind turbines. keep in mind, these things are huge since its more efficient to make the biggest, structurally sound fans you can (which is about the size of a football field). at the end of life turbines are basically impossible to deal with, they go in the trash and likely the infrastructure to recycle these things is decades off, but we wont see the impacts of this for at least 10-30 years, and obviously, you need to build them in a windy area.
some downsides that arent really issues but get brought up a lot, they dont create that much noise, they dont kill that many birds, they are a eyesore but thats an aesthetic thing, they could influence local climate as they do slow down winds, but we're not entirely sure there is an impact at all, they also sometimes catch on fire but its mostly a danger to maintenance workers.
from an environmental standpoint, i still think more nuclear plants need to be built, but wind is a good choice when there is a viable location. its just not this magic energy device that spins forever. these things need maintenance and eventually break down and just get buried. solar suffers similar issues as well.
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>Are wind turbines good for the environment?
Depends on what you want to compare it against.
There are quite limited ways of recycling for the decommissioned wind turbine blades, as their primary material (fiberglass) isn't naturally degradable. Main problem with mechanical recycling is that it's also power-consuming, which often makes it net negative in either financial costs or energy costs. Which in turn makes burying and landfilling more "economically reasonable".
Wind electricity production fluctuates time-wise due to windstreams being irregular over time (from daily to seasonal), which requires accumulator/battery buffering systems to smooth discrepancies between production and consumption spikes ^({or just a coal power plant nearby}). Most effective types of batteries are based on lithium chemistry, and lithium mining and production is very environmental-unfriendly. There are specific buffering technologies based on salt melting or natural gas liquefying, but they are not cheap enough and low-efficient in general ^({however, with current liquefied gas prices in the world it still can be at least profitable}).
Also, wind generators have quite low electric power output. It is fine for feeding general population needs, but almost inapplicable for power-hungry production industry. That limits application of wind energy severely.
Therefore, if one takes into account the overall fabrication and commission cycle as a whole (not just "pure electricity production" part), it turns out that wind turbines are worse for environment then e.g. natural gas turbines or nuclear plants. Still better than coal plants though.
^({On the sake of somehow-invisible comments: I speak about "environmental damage" in general (including all ways of ecosystem harm combined, not just greenhouse emissions. On the latter, things that burn are obviously more influential than things that don't.})
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It depends,
I have been an ecologist militant for years now, so it pain me a little to admit that so-called green tech aren't so green.
For instance in sweden wind turbine freeze during winter and they have to use anti-freezes that are not eco-friendly.
In France they want to install sea wind turbine but to do that you have concrete the sea floor. They want to do that in areas to would damage the marine ecosystem.
They do kill birds, it's not that much of an ecological disaster when it's pigeons or non-endangered species but when it's in areas with endangered birds it's an other matter.
In Switzerland in winter trough condensation they collected water droplets that turned into ice shards during the night and started to throw these ice shards in the road nearby. People got wounded.
But the main problem is that it's not so cost effective. I don't have the graph in mind but in energy you put in watts for production, exploitation and decommission of wind turbines compared to the watts you get in return is not high. Among the lowest in fact.
If you put them in a windy desert they are great, otherwise it not the safe and clean tech you may want to believe.
As always: perfect is the enemy of good.
Wind is cheap compared with fossile and fusion. It's the smaller evil (if any) in any case.
Indeed, All this nonsense spreading around is upsetting. YES, ofcourse there are disadvantages. So... Start using less power in order to minimise the negative effect. As somebody who has been living on solar power for over 20 years now, I can tell you that it is amazing how little power you actually need. E.g. neighbours have 2 fridges and a freezer. We survive with a small (camping-style) fridge/freezer. Do you need this huge plasma TV? Do you need to wash at 90 degrees C? We survive very comfortably with a 5kWh battery set which has been in service now for 6 years and not degrading because we take care.... Do you need this big SUV while a smaller car can do 5 liters/100km?? Or use excess solar/wind power for an electrical car? And then, when you have minimized your consumption, then select the source with minimum environmental impact and for the time being, that is solar/wind. Or sometimes hydro power.. But please stop this Facebook stuff and have a look at realistic cost/benefits. ALL costs and ALL benefits, not just slogans.
>But the main problem is that it's not so cost effective. I don't have the graph in mind but in energy you put in watts for production, exploitation and decommission of wind turbines compared to the watts you get in return is not high.
Not true, you tend to earn it back in under a year (design lifetime: 20-25y) and developers will naturally seek out the windiest areas to improve their ROI.
The problem here is not the overall power amount, but the power density. What a wind turbine produces in years, a regular steel or aluminium mill (or a production line for fiberglass which the same turbine blades are built of) consumes in days or less.
Basically, one cannot fabricate new wind turbines and even replace decommissioned ones using wind electricity only, another high-density energy sources are needed for it.
Why would you have that as a requirement anyway?
Partly because of "sustainability" component, partly because of general considerations.
A bit offtopic on the latter: the current "green energy" movement seems to be much more political than rational, onten pushing for the so-called "eco energy sources" without any regard on how these will integrate into the overall electric consumption balance. For example, one of the crucial elements of last-year Texas energy crisis was over-reliance on the renewable energy sources (solar and wind) while decommissioning the ecology-unfriendly coal and gas plants which served as balancing reserves, so at the moment of partial power outage due to freezes the rest of electric grid couldn't refill in time, which caused a cascade effect. It wasn't the only cause (cue the state economy on expensive gas supplies and historical electric network desync on a federal scale), but it can be considered as a "last straw" in that particular event.
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Isn’t it also impossible to recycle them and they just bury the giant blades in the ground once they’re worn out or damaged
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I hear about vibration issues. They vibrate pretty heavily and this disrupts life of all fauna on and in the ground around them.
Ever seen a coal excavator or oil platform? Seems common for all energy forms besides solar.
Is manufacturing giant objects and transporting them faraway to stand them up so that they can generate electricity (and sometimes kill birds) good for the environment?
Is artificial lighting at night good for the human Circadian rhythm or for birds migration or hunting patterns, or for insects night-flight cycles?
Is powering gadgets and global communications and transports good for screen addiction and FOMO and social media nonsense and drug/human trafficking and spreading a local virus in short time to become a worldwide pandemic?
In an alternate universe, the Nazi war machine was zero-emissions, producing bombs with wind energy and fueling attack aircraft with ethanol and tanks with biodiesel! Was this good for the environment?
"The industrial revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race."
Realistically you have to compare it to what would have been used instead (mostly fossil fuels depending on the location) rather than nothing though.
That's certainly a prevailing sentiment, but not my own, as I don't regard electrical generation as inevitable (or beneficial).
Presumably all my downvoters don't like all the destructive consequences I already mentioned, they simply don't want to prevent those things if it means forsaking electricity and modern gadgets.
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I read a National Library of Medicine article there was a negative link between the low frequency noise created by wind turbines and human sleep issues. I didn't say but I would expect a similar effect on animals.
I know the absolute intensity of the sound is relatively low but because the frequency is so much lower there is a much different effect than a fan or similar.
There's no evidence low sound (infrasound) is linked to issues (beside no-cebo effects) any more than other sounds. Every car emits infrasound btw.
SpeedyHAM79 t1_ixk48na wrote
They are good for the environment. They are relatively quiet- usually around 43 Db (an A/C unit is around 50 Db. They require some maintenance, but it's in line with other power plants for the amount of power they produce. They can catch on fire, so can your car, your house, and just about anything else. The reason you see video's of them on fire is that they are large and very visible, so when a fire happens it gets recorded. They kill birds, but far less than housecats (4000% less each year). They are usually designed to last around 20 years and make more energy than it takes to produce them in 5-6 months depending on where they are sited (wind conditions). There are also new ways being used to recycle the turbine blades so they don't have to be landfilled at the end of life. I don't currently work in the industry, but have in the past. Tell him to stop watching YouTube and research facts from reputable sources.