At over $300,000 each and with no evidence that it's better than what we have now, are wind turbines worth it?

Question

Or should we wait until be find reliable energy that's truly efficient, successful, inexpensive, safe, and doesn't require lots of other resources (such as land in this case)?

Can they stand up to harsh weather (or even regular weather)?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4N4HQv-UyUo&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3FZtmlHwcA&feature=related

Are they safe, reliable, and "carbon neutral?"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4N4HQv-UyUo&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKkTUY2slYQ&feature=related

Answer 1

Lots of good answers already.  A bit more info:

Wind power is cheaper per amount of energy produced than nuclear power, particularly when you factor in the cost of decommissioning the nuclear plant.

http://www.iea.org/Textbase/nptable/2007...

The energy return on investment of a wind turbine on average is 18 (and increasing), meaning they create 18 times more energy than is required to build them over the turbine's lifetime.

http://www.theoildrum.com/story/2006/10/...

Once they're built, operation and maintenance costs are minimal.  As long as there's wind, you don't have to worry about losing your fuel supply, or the changing price of fuel.  And of course the energy is 100% clean and emissions free.

In short, wind turbines are one of the best sources of energy we have right now.  They're more than worth it.

Answer 2

Wind power is not the entire solution and never will be, but it can be a valuable PART of the solution.  Wind turbines have the sort of failure rate you'd expect of that kind of mechanical device but the impact of an individual failure is very small and easily fixed.

I have heard it said that wind turbines are only about 20% efficient (don't know how true that is).  My response is to point out that 20% efficiency from a fuel that was FREE at the point of usage is very impressive.  Try that with gas, oil, coal or nuclear and see how much you get for free.

The hundreds of wind turbines already in use in and around the UK are safe, occupy little land that is capable of supporting alternative productive uses (and I think wind power IS a productive use of land) and make a contribution to reducing dependence on imported oil.  The turbines will keep producing power for years to come without requiring additional capital expenditure and without burning fuel  while oil and natural gas prices will continue to rise.  At issue is the economics of power generation over the useful life of the generating plant.  That, together with increased domestic energy security, makes wind power pretty attractive.

On top of that, they look nice while producing no fumes.  What else is currently deployable that does that?

Answer 3

"Can they stand up to harsh weather (or even regular weather)?"

Yes easily, the place I work installed 2 of them at one of our Antarctic stations in 2003, they have been running ever since in what is probably one of the harshest environments on Earth, average wind speed is 40knots and regularly goes to 100knots

http://www.aad.gov.au/apps/operations/el...

Answer 4

Like solar panels and geothermal heating/cooling, wind turbines are a good idea.  But because of the cost they won't happen on a large scale.  If they're going to be truly useful, a way has to be found to make them much less expensive.  Good as they are, if they're unaffordable people won't buy them.

Answer 5

.Yes. Anything that keeps us from nuclear.

Answer 6

There is something that is way better than wind turbines.....

Answer 7

"As folks in Texas would say. "T. Boone thinks the best place to put his money is in wind power? That's strong.""

Bob, who said this?

Answer 8

Yes.  So they sometimes fail?  That doesn't prove anything.  This is more important.

T. Boone Pickens is investing billions of dollars in the largest wind farm in history, because, he says...

"The simple truth is that cheap and easy oil is gone.  What's the good news?  The United States is the Saudi Arabia of wind power."

In case you don't know, he's a very smart guy who made those billions in the oil business.  As folks in Texas would say.  "T. Boone thinks the best place to put his money is in wind power?  That's strong."

EDIT - Yes, the 'swift boat guy", who did everything he could to defeat Kerry and elect Bush.  Yet another of those leftist/socialist/communists (NOT).

Answer 9

Over $300k each?   I've seen ones that cost around $900.   I've seen ones that cost over $5,000,000.    I've made one myself out of a box fan, some copper wireing from another fan and a few other items for close to nothing.   It was better than what I had ( a couple broken fans) and was definately worth the rainy afternoon spent making it.   The large ones (multi megawatt turbines) are efficient, successful, less expensive than building and fueling most any fossil fuel power plant, are safe and don't require lots of land- about 290 square feet each for the tower base.

Answer 10

For the same money spent on wind mills we could get a hundred time the amount of power from space based solar and with lower maintenance or repair costs.

Answer 11

Some of you have this totally wrong-- Texas is the largest wind energy state --- and the megawatts will double again in the next 2 years-- that said-- and GW is not the issue at all-- T Boone wants to replace 22% of the electrical generation with wind power and then use our natural gas resources to power vehicles -- thereby reducing our imports of foreign oil by about 300 billion dollars per year. As a skeptic here on the GW topic I support his wind energy efforts 100%-- for economic reasons. However GW advocates and skeptics SHOULD have the same concerns with the amount of money we send to foreign governments every year-- to buy oil.(according to Boone $700 billion every year!-- we cannot sustain this for very long!)

http://www.pickensplan.com

EDIT-- by the way there is an article today in the Dallas Morning News about getting the right of way for the transmission towers to bring the electric from the wind farms to the major cities here in Texas-- just google "dallas morning news PUC wind"

http://www.reporternews.com/news/2008/ma...    Texas Leads

CARBON NEUTRAL! You must be joking!

Answer 12

Wind turbines don't have to take up a lot of land at all. My undergrad university built one on the farm it already owned right in the middle of the fields. ~300 or 400 square feet sounds right. It provides 60% of the campus's electricity. Also, it is located in the northern prairie region, where winters get very cold and it is extremely windy and as far as I have seen it stands up to the weather pretty well.

Answer 13

WIND TURBINES ARE WORTH IT

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!...

Answer 14

I strongly support wind energy.    Once you build the wind farm, the wind itself is FREE and creates NO waste.

It can't replace other sources because of the reliability factor, but the way the grids are designed, you can use wind only when it's windy and use other sources when it's not.

The grids are set up so that the utility has to use the cheapest available source of power, and that's wind when it's available.

What oil has to do with the question, I do not know - we generate less than 2% of our power using oil.   Refined petroleum is a transportation, shipping and heating issue, not a power issue.

Answer 15

I'd highly discourage trying to use youtube as the basis for any serious reliability analysis of wind turbines.  All new technologies have their mistakes and failures, but clearly the reliability of wind turbines has reached the level where they are considered extremely viable by many very savvy individuals (e.g. T. Boone Pickens) and the US Dept. of Energy.

Edit:

T. Boone Pickens is the perfect individual to counter the "skeptics" around here.  They always try to dismiss anyone (scientist, politician, yahoo answerer) that acknowledges AGW by calling us liberal greenies.  Pickens is no liberal greenie, but a staunch conservative that helped keep Kerry out of office and kept Bush (AKA hide the science of AGW) in office. So you can't discount Pickens by calling him a liberal greenie.

Answer 16

Of course they are worth it. It gives countess people high self esteem because they think they are helping save cute baby polar bear cubs.

What is wrong with you? Do you want the cute baby bear cubs to drown?

Also, I think they may be hypnotic. If you look at the windmill long enough, you will believe that the world will come to an end without them.

You should be happy to pay higher taxes to subsidize the pretty windmills.

Read my blog an see if you can find fault in my reasoning.

http://garyganu.blogspot.com/2008/07/glo...

Answer 17

everything fails. coal plants fail, oil rigs cathc fire. no system is flawless. wind power is the same as everything else.

is it worth it, well that up to the indiviudal. i know of 6 people who live in NH near the ocean and have a wind turbine. it gives them enough enery to never have to pay an electicty bill.

Answer 18

Plenty of evidence they work, and they're far cheaper than a nuclear plant in the long run.  Probably cheaper than coal in the very long run.

Answer 19

Some day, we can have solar and wind and hydrogen power but it is not ready for us today (unless you like paying higher prices for electricity than the conventional methods for generating it).

"Its the economy stupid" - This phrase got Bill Clinton elected and the rest is history.  However, it is the bottom line - like it or not, our economy is based on cheap oil.  And every day that we buy over 10 million barrels of oil from other countries, that is $1.4 Trillion leaving our economy and going to (some) people who don't exactly like us.  

But oil is not only used for gas (actually less than 1/2 of a barrel is used for gas) Do you have carpeting? - oil based, plastic bottles? oil based  Wake up and had some coffee?  unless you were in S America, it had to get here somehow. GM will be shutting down factories that make some of their trucks and SUV's and guess what - lots of people will be out of work then too.  The airlines will not be able to last much longer either with jet fuel this high.  Everything you do, eat, or buy, has an oil component to it.  

If we don't do something very soon, we will see major hit to our economy - it will affect us all and it will be very hard to recover by then.

Answer 20

Who gives a rat's patoot? Not the majority of the US, and certainly not the majority of the world. What matters is that the turbines are able in most cases to pay for themselves before their expected service life expires. That's the bottom line.

When you crazy kids realize the environmentalism is 100% economic-based in the real world, you'll stop burning brain cells needlessly. Carbon-neutral? Please. That is 100% a non-issue to everyone who matters.