Datatek said:

I forgot the soft start.

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Not surprised. It is a very complicated field, and the turbines range from very good to almost entirely useless, across all sizes of machine.

As well as having my own installation, I also do a bit of work for the contractor that services mine. I spot turbines around the country, work out where they are on the ground, and if possible who owns them, and email him the info, so that he can contact them and see if they require servicing or maintenance. If I see machines that are clearly unserviceable, or haven't turned for a long time, he contacts them to ask if they can dismantle them, and buy the parts for re-use on other turbines.

Although he only deals with 3 types of machine, it has been quite a learning curve, but interesting, and increased my knowledge of my own machine.

Turboman said:

Not surprised. It is a very complicated field, and the turbines range from very good to almost entirely useless, across all sizes of machine.

As well as having my own installation, I also do a bit of work for the contractor that services mine. I spot turbines around the country, work out where they are on the ground, and if possible who owns them, and email him the info, so that he can contact them and see if they require servicing or maintenance. If I see machines that are clearly unserviceable, or haven't turned for a long time, he contacts them to ask if they can dismantle them, and buy the parts for re-use on other turbines.

Although he only deals with 3 types of machine, it has been quite a learning curve, but interesting, and increased my knowledge of my own machine.

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The only wind turbines I have ever had any dealings with were on sailing boats. I still have a regulator in stock.
I'm not against them but I do not like the noise.
H.G. Wells foretold wind generation in his book "The Sleeper Awakes"

Datatek said:

The only wind turbines I have ever had any dealings with were on sailing boats. I still have a regulator in stock.
I'm not against them but I do not like the noise.
H.G. Wells foretold wind generation in his book "The Sleeper Awakes"

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Never been tempted to install a turbine on my own boat, for more or less the reason you describe. Also, the turbines you see on boats are too small to be much use, I feel a mimimum useful size is about 5Kw.
I do have panels, 600W. I didn't install them, they were on the boat when I bought it.
They aren't too bad as supplementary battery charging. According to the controller, they have generated 43,285 Ah since installation.

Our part of France was given the choice "Have nuclear or have wind turbines", so they chose wind turbines. Don't know if they were right. Don't really know enough about it.

Stanleysteamer said:

Our part of France was given the choice "Have nuclear or have wind turbines", so they chose wind turbines. Don't know if they were right. Don't really know enough about it.

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Nuclear won't happen without governments propping it up and by the time you've made the reactor, mined, refined and then cleaned up the uranium you're well out of carbon neutral territory and still no-one can agree what to do with the waste.

Wind is getting cheaper by the day and unlike solar really is carbon neutral. Just a bit of a bugger when the wind stops. Still, the amount of wind we've had the last month or so must have powered all of Europe - except I was told the turbines have to switch off above a certain wind-speed?

Grrrrrr said:

Nuclear won't happen without governments propping it up and by the time you've made the reactor, mined, refined and then cleaned up the uranium you're well out of carbon neutral territory and still no-one can agree what to do with the waste.

Wind is getting cheaper by the day and unlike solar really is carbon neutral. Just a bit of a bugger when the wind stops. Still, the amount of wind we've had the last month or so must have powered all of Europe - except I was told the turbines have to switch off above a certain wind-speed?

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to answer your last point first, yes, they either gewt switched off or switch themselves off.
As for the rest, at the time the decision was taken, nuclear was still seen as an option.

Stanleysteamer said:

to answer your last point first, yes, they either gewt switched off or switch themselves off.
As for the rest, at the time the decision was taken, nuclear was still seen as an option.

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The only time any country goes nuclear is because they need the processing to make bombs or power subs.

Grrrrrr said:

The only time any country goes nuclear is because they need the processing to make bombs or power subs.

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You appear to know more about this than I do. All I know is that from 1979 until 1988 my ex-father-in-law was a French trouble shooter for Nuclear power plants and he flew around France and the world fixing them. Never once did he mention anything about nuclear power plants being there to furnish the country's military with nuclear stuff. Maybe he had signed some sort of Official Secrets Act, but it never even came up, in the sort of way in which an awkward silence would have meant something. So I am not sure you are right. Or at least not to do with countries like France, UK etc.
France went nuclear for generating electricity back in the 70s as it had no oil of its own and didn't want to have to rely on oil producing countries in order to be able to generate electricity. It came up with a kind of pattern for a straight nuclear power station that would work OK then duplicated it all over France.
I would also point out that we had the bomb, or had contributed to the bomb (1945) long before we made nuclear power plants (1951)

I used to work in the wind industry, so a couple of comments.

What some people fail to realise, or choose not to acknowledge, is that wind is a very constant and reliable resource. No one builds a wind farm without a significant amount of wind data for a site. 10 years is a good target, but sometimes it is done with two to three years data. You will find the usual variations are -20% in a bad year to +20% in a good year (much less than the variation fossil fuel prices). Understanding the wind resource and terrain modelling allows you to design the farm and place the turbines for maximum efficiency. "Turbines only generate energy when the wind blows" is something you see all the time. Once again, the resource is well understood before anyone commits to financing a wind farm. What you are looking for are sites with a high capacity factor. The capacity factor is a percentage of the installed capacity that you can reasonably rely on for "continuous" generation. So a 1,000 MW wind farm with a capacity factor of 35% should generate the same energy in a year as a 350 MW gas or coal or whatever power station. The developers and owners know that the wind pattern changes over the year and so may commit different tranches of power to the market at different times. For example, if you know the wind is stronger in say Spring, and less in Summer, you would look to forward sell energy on that basis (as opposed to the energy you trade on the spot market).

An ideal "battery" set up is to combine wind with pump storage hydro, so that the hydro give you the ability to sell power in the morning and afternoon peak with regularity, and the wind is used to provide energy to pump the water back to the upper storage. Of course the new massive Tesla batteries are changing that focus. The one installed in South Australia is essentially charged by renewables (wind) and is used to balance the grid and power essential services should the grid crash. It has a capacity of 193 MWh. It is estimated that the cost saving of using the battery to balance the SA grid saves around $40M/year. Batteries have issues no doubt, so do coal mines, oil spills and so on.

A friend of mine works for a power company and he tells me they buy 80-90% of the gas on the wholesale market 1 to 2 years ahead and only spot purchase about 10% to adjust for demand. That way fluctuations in oil price have little effect except for the customer who pays the going rate, near enough.

Stanleysteamer said:

You appear to know more about this than I do. All I know is that from 1979 until 1988 my ex-father-in-law was a French trouble shooter for Nuclear power plants and he flew around France and the world fixing them. Never once did he mention anything about nuclear power plants being there to furnish the country's military with nuclear stuff. Maybe he had signed some sort of Official Secrets Act, but it never even came up, in the sort of way in which an awkward silence would have meant something. So I am not sure you are right. Or at least not to do with countries like France, UK etc.
France went nuclear for generating electricity back in the 70s as it had no oil of its own and didn't want to have to rely on oil producing countries in order to be able to generate electricity. It came up with a kind of pattern for a straight nuclear power station that would work OK then duplicated it all over France.
I would also point out that we had the bomb, or had contributed to the bomb (1945) long before we made nuclear power plants (1951)

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Yes. Military research is done at different levels and people are not told anything unless they absolutely have to know.

The bomb was a research project. The question is then how do you make it business as usual but also make it acceptable and affordable. Are there any spin-off benefits? Think GPS or even the internet, both were developed for the military but are now commercialised. In the case of uranium it requires a shed load of work in special facilities, where do you hide that? As much as possible on the open with a production line. The stuff in the power stations is lower grade but it is the first step towards the stuff used in the bombs. Most people in the nuclear industry are nothing to do with the military, same as GPS or anything else.

Stanleysteamer said:

You appear to know more about this than I do. All I know is that from 1979 until 1988 my ex-father-in-law was a French trouble shooter for Nuclear power plants and he flew around France and the world fixing them. Never once did he mention anything about nuclear power plants being there to furnish the country's military with nuclear stuff. Maybe he had signed some sort of Official Secrets Act, but it never even came up, in the sort of way in which an awkward silence would have meant something. So I am not sure you are right. Or at least not to do with countries like France, UK etc.
France went nuclear for generating electricity back in the 70s as it had no oil of its own and didn't want to have to rely on oil producing countries in order to be able to generate electricity. It came up with a kind of pattern for a straight nuclear power station that would work OK then duplicated it all over France.
I would also point out that we had the bomb, or had contributed to the bomb (1945) long before we made nuclear power plants (1951)

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Nuclear weapons require enriched Uranium, Nuclear power depletes Uranium, apart from the knowledge required for both, I don't see any connection between weapons and power generation.

Datatek said:

Nuclear weapons require enriched Uranium, Nuclear power depletes Uranium, apart from the knowledge required for both, I don't see any connection between weapons and power generation.

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The knowledge is important, and some reactors produce Plutonium.

Grrrrrr said:

Nuclear won't happen without governments propping it up and by the time you've made the reactor, mined, refined and then cleaned up the uranium you're well out of carbon neutral territory and still no-one can agree what to do with the waste.

Wind is getting cheaper by the day and unlike solar really is carbon neutral. Just a bit of a bugger when the wind stops. Still, the amount of wind we've had the last month or so must have powered all of Europe - except I was told the turbines have to switch off above a certain wind-speed?

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I'd like to know how wind is carbon neutral taking into account production of steel, copper, composites, concrete and other materials used in making a wind turbine. Add in the limited life of the blades as is the case in the USA and the fact that used blades are being dumped in the desert because, for the moment at least, they cannot be recycled and they don't look very carbon neutral to me. They also affect the weather.

Datatek said:

I'd like to know how wind is carbon neutral taking into account production of steel, copper, composites, concrete and other materials used in making a wind turbine. Add in the limited life of the blades as is the case in the USA and the fact that used blades are being dumped in the desert because, for the moment at least, they cannot be recycled and they don't look very carbon neutral to me. They also affect the weather.

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It isn't carbon neutral, but it is at least as carbon neutral as other means of generating electricity.
I am not sure why the blades are failing, but suspect it is a small minority of turbine types. I have only seen a couple of blade failures in the UK, and I have looked at thousands of turbines.

I have never seen any evidence that turbines affect the weather, and I have been working outdoors for 50 years.
Neither have I seen any dead birds around the base of turbines. Birds have very good eyesight, and aren't stupid.
I suspect these things are largely propaganda, produced by the many with an anti renewables agenda.

Turboman said:

It isn't carbon neutral, but it is at least as carbon neutral as other means of generating electricity.
I am not sure why the blades are failing, but suspect it is a small minority of turbine types. I have only seen a couple of blade failures in the UK, and I have looked at thousands of turbines.

I have never seen any evidence that turbines affect the weather, and I have been working outdoors for 50 years.
Neither have I seen any dead birds around the base of turbines. Birds have very good eyesight, and aren't stupid.
I suspect these things are largely propaganda, produced by the many with an anti renewables agenda.

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I have seen dead birds, birds even fly into high tension overhead lines, I have also seen to fog hanging around offshore wind farms in certain weather conditions.
I recently read an article on the life expectancy of wind turbines in the USA, blade life was stated as about 10 years.
certainly over here in France there have been 2 blade failures on the local turbines in a space of about 10 years, both times in very high winds.
I did not know about the Plutonium from power generation.

Datatek said:

I have seen dead birds, birds even fly into high tension overhead lines, I have also seen to fog hanging around offshore wind farms in certain weather conditions.
I recently read an article on the life expectancy of wind turbines in the USA, blade life was stated as about 10 years.
certainly over here in France there have been 2 blade failures on the local turbines in a space of about 10 years, both times in very high winds.
I did not know about the Plutonium from power generation.

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Not surprised that the Americans can't build a decent turbine, they are known for throwing money at things to achieve overcomplicated, unreliable results.
I am sure you are right, the odd bird probably gets killed, they do occasionally fly into things.
But I am also sure that the total losses to date are probably nothing like the amount of seabirds that are killed in oil tanker spills, think Torrey Canyon or Exxon Valdez.
I have seen a couple of blades snap, but again, very few compared to the total number of blades in use.
Blades aren't expensive or difficult to make, some are aluminium, like tiny aeroplane wings, others are a steel armature inside a fibre glass laminate. Both cheap and well established technologies.

Datatek said:

I'd like to know how wind is carbon neutral taking into account production of steel, copper, composites, concrete and other materials used in making a wind turbine. Add in the limited life of the blades as is the case in the USA and the fact that used blades are being dumped in the desert because, for the moment at least, they cannot be recycled and they don't look very carbon neutral to me. They also affect the weather.

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Not looked at the calculations myself but that was the latest position I read. Wind generates more than it takes to make the turbines. Solar requires more carbon to produce the panels than their lifespan generation is expected to produce. Add on top of that the batteries currently used with their lithium and cobalt and they look really nasty. Nuclear is similar to solar once you realise all the old waste is stacked up still waiting to be disposed of, notwithstanding the reprocessing work.

Turboman said:

Not surprised that the Americans can't build a decent turbine, they are known for throwing money at things to achieve overcomplicated, unreliable results.
I am sure you are right, the odd bird probably gets killed, they do occasionally fly into things.
But I am also sure that the total losses to date are probably nothing like the amount of seabirds that are killed in oil tanker spills, think Torrey Canyon or Exxon Valdez.
I have seen a couple of blades snap, but again, very few compared to the total number of blades in use.
Blades aren't expensive or difficult to make, some are aluminium, like tiny aeroplane wings, others are a steel armature inside a fibre glass laminate. Both cheap and well established technologies.

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Can I be cheeky and ask if you have a boat and if you do is it sail or motor? I used to have a 28 foot sail boat, got down as far as Dartmouth in it . Mainly I went to the Channel Islands or French ports.

Grrrrrr said:

Not looked at the calculations myself but that was the latest position I read. Wind generates more than it takes to make the turbines. Solar requires more carbon to produce the panels than their lifespan generation is expected to produce. Add on top of that the batteries currently used with their lithium and cobalt and they look really nasty. Nuclear is similar to solar once you realise all the old waste is stacked up still waiting to be disposed of, notwithstanding the reprocessing work.

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There is a lot of electronics within a Li-Ion battery which adds to the pollution.