A Medley of Potpourri is just what it says; various thoughts, opinions, ruminations, and contemplations on a variety of subjects.
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Thursday, January 30, 2014
Vestas says record powerful wind turbine in operation
A photo taken on June 29, 2012 shows a Vestas wind turbine near Baekmarksbro in Jutland
Danish wind technology giant Vestas said on Thursday that the world's most powerful wind turbine has begun operating, sweeping an area equivalent to three football fields. [DJS -- that's almost three or four per sq. kilometer of space the turbines take, not to mention the pollution in a poor part of southern China where all the "dirty and toxic" industrial and mining work is done to build them -- but what do we care about China?]
A prototype for the group's first V164 8 megawatt offshore wind turbine has successfully produced its first electricity, the Aarhus-based group said.
"We expect that it will reduce the cost of energy for our customers," spokesman Michael Zarin said.[Only if you don't count the massive tax breaks and direct subsidies they get -- nobody pays for that, right?]
"You can have fewer turbines to have the same amount of electricity. ... You can save a lot of the expense on things like the foundations, the cabling or the substation," he added.[To produce the same amount of electricity as what? A 1,000,000 megawatt standard nuclear or fossil plant? I -- well, there's just this thing called lying, which you can away with here because so many of us are so scientifically illiterate, and too lazy to check facts before rousing up opinions.]
The 8 megawatt turbine, which will be the flagship product for a joint venture between Vestas and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, has the capacity to produce electricity for 7,500 European households.[Let's see. 7500 households is a very small town. A single, decent sized city -- we're not even close to the entire country -- will have some 100 times that many households, plus industry and business of all sides, and public transportation. So we will need 100-200 of these behemoths, using up to a total 25-60 sq kilometers worth of land, or a square 5-8 kilometers on side. Actually more, because you will need space between them. With all that spare land Europe has, especially kilometers and kilometers of flat, windy, unpopulated country, this should be no problem. Even when you scale it to national and continental levels. Oh, and those poor Chinese workers don't mind dying and suffering at the 1-200 times rate -- much more, in the end -- they did for one turbine. And once again, with all that infinite taxpayer money, no problem with finances.
It's been installed on land at the Danish National Test Centre for Large Wind Turbines in Oesterild in northwestern Denmark. Vestas said serial production could begin in 2015 if there is enough demand.
The most powerful onshore wind turbine on the market is currently the 7.5 megawatt E-126 by Germany's Enercon, while the largest offshore turbines are the 6 megawatt models produced by Germany's Siemens and France's Alstom.[Interesting, Germany is. Although lauded for the greatest use of wind power and other "recyclables", they are still, year after year, among the top CO2 emitters of the West, especially per capita, because of all the coal and oil they have to burn to sustain their lifestyle and security. Even with their nuclear plants helping -- I know, they're all so dangerous, we have to get rid of them! -- as the people who know nothing about the history, science, and technology of nuclear will holler; even those don't help much. Perhaps trying to support thousand of utterly stupendous, economically unsustainable turbines will collapse the German -- and then European -- economy, and they can make work tearing down the plants that actually served her electricity needs. Brilliant!]
Competition in the sector is fierce: South Korea's Samsung Heavy Industries installed a 7 megawatt offshore wind prototype turbine in Scotland last year.
France's Areva and Spain's Gamesa said last week they were holding talks on combining their offshore wind turbine activities, and that they planned to accelerate development of an 8 megawatt turbine.
