Wind Farm Locations? *mod warning: post #2

Xenophile

If wind energy is going to be a part of the solution to energy needs in the future where would you locate turbines.

I cannot see too many suggestions being posted here as it will be the usual not at my front door reply and that's fair enough.

I suggest that before the harvesting rights of our forests are sold off that we look at locations within the forests that would be suitable for the construction of wind farms.

sydthebeat

Please not that this thread is not to be used as a soap box for any fundamentalist view point.
We will only allow conversation in regard to the general suitability of locations for wind farms and will not allow discussion of specific projects or locations within ireland.

Sydthebeat

sinnerboy

It is best from a primary energy efficiency point of view to generate power as close as possible to where you want to consume it. So right in my back back garden is the best place to minimize distribution wastage. Presently out national grid wastes energy at around 250% or to put it another way 2.5kw/hrs of energy is spent before you consume 1 kw/hr or electricity in your home.

So any desire to keep wind farms , in the immortal words of Delboy " out in the sticks where no sod lives" has a price.

Capt'n Midnight

sinnerboy wrote: »

It is best from a primary energy efficiency point of view to generate power as close as possible to where you want to consume it. So right in my back back garden is the best place to minimize distribution wastage. Presently out national grid wastes energy at around 250% or to put it another way 2.5kw/hrs of energy is spent before you consume 1 kw/hr or electricity in your home.

So any desire to keep wind farms , in the immortal words of Delboy " out in the sticks where no sod lives" has a price.

250% ?
can you provide some backup for that claim

I think you are getting mixed up with the thermal efficiency of a fossil fuel plant based on the original energy in the fuel (and even then CCGT is way higher than 40% even with transmission losses )


the best place for wind turbines is where the wind is
http://www.seai.ie/Renewables/Wind_Energy/Wind_Maps/
Though this has to be tempered with the fact that turbines in windy places cost more because they have to be stronger


there is a lot less wind at ground level so elevating the turbines helps

the government rules limit domestic ones to sizes where a falling turbine couldn't possibly get anywhere near your boundary walls so they have to be small low and generally they are very inefficient in terms of power out for a given investment since the area the blade sweeps increase as the square of the blade length. Add in the control systems and the cost effectiveness drops.

5MW ones are ~180m tall and at a guess a rotor diameter of ~125m, so the disc covers a large area.

Also wind is variable, so the transmission losses are largest when you have the most free wind energy. Losses are I squared R. So if you are only getting 50% of the wind energy then you only have a quarter of the transmission losses. You could probably even argue that it might be cheaper to invest in more wind turbines than in improving the transmission system. This means when it's very windy you ignore the extra power, but you get more power because there are more turbines when it's not that windy. Mathematical models and all that help decide which approach is best.


It also depends on whether you have a local use for the wind energy. For example putting wind farms near Turlough hill would mean you could store more of the wind energy.

until http://www.tynaghenergy.ie get their plant built then windfarms near Galway would reduce existing transmission losses there.





In an ideal world we'd have more offshore ones, because they act as nurserys for diminishing fish stocks. Yes it would be nice if the ones ear marked for the Irish sea were to go ahead / finished off as most of the population is on the coast. But at present they cost more than land based ones.


I don't know the economics but it might be worth investigating putting them on end of life oil/gas rigs.