Author Topic: Green Shit  (Read 2893 times)

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Offline Christopher McCandless

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Re: Green Shit
« Reply #45 on: July 06, 2008, 04:39:14 PM »
I would prefer wind turbines anyday.

The wind turbines are set up in a clear area. Not like there are loads of people are around. I can't find anywhere where it is written that wind turbines have killed people.
O really?
http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSN2720796920070828
Also someone died while parachuting because they got lost and had to do a low turn to avoid it
http://www.dropzone.com/fatalities/Detailed/28.shtml
Thats two I could find off the top of my head...

Yes, because parachuting is a completely safe activity that usually has no accident or fatalities.
Its safer than driving your car if you are not a prat. Most of the fatalities are suicides or people not following instructions.

Yes, but that can be said of pretty much any technology or activity. Which is my point.
Would you drive your car if it exploded when the brakes failed? When these turbines get a few years old, or heaven forbid we get microgeneration everywhere, they are going to become a real hazard.

Oh you mean like Hollywood cars? Yeah why not. Perhaps then more people would take road safety seriously.

The problem I have with your arguement is that you are comparing a well maintained nuclear reactor with a poorly, if not at all, maintain wind turbine.
Lol, the only problem is that cars blowing up on their own accord has nothing to do with driver incompetence.

In practise wind turbines are going to be less well maintained than a nuclear reactor (simply because nukes have people on site 24-7, where as a turbine might get a monthly inspection if you are lucky. If they become on people houses, in practise you would get inspections every 18 months at best. The other things is that modern nukes are fail safe, they shut down automatically if anything goes wrong, and the designs do not require active input to shut them down. Wind turbines don't have that failsafe.

Offline Christopher McCandless

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Re: Green Shit
« Reply #46 on: July 06, 2008, 04:40:02 PM »
Even if you chose not to go in a car you still have to worry about them hitting you
I would be a lot more worried about getting stabbed myself. Actually we worked out everytime I go skydiving its more dangerous for me to get there than to actually do the jump.

Offline Dexter Morgan

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Re: Green Shit
« Reply #47 on: July 06, 2008, 09:10:35 PM »
I'd be all for wind turbine plants if they could generate anything close to a gigawatt of power.

Offline Christopher McCandless

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Re: Green Shit
« Reply #48 on: July 07, 2008, 05:35:21 AM »
I'd be all for wind turbine plants if they could generate anything close to a gigawatt of power.
A big enough wind farm could generate that. The main flaw is you cannot guarantee the amount of power they will produce. The micro-generation ones people are putting on their houses are the most pointless though, they don't even manage 20W on average.

Offline Peter

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Re: Green Shit
« Reply #49 on: July 07, 2008, 06:53:21 AM »
I'd be all for wind turbine plants if they could generate anything close to a gigawatt of power.

Currently the UK has 2033 wind turbines producing a total of 2.546 gigawatts, which is sufficient to power 1,424,027 homes.  Germany generates 22.247 gigawatts through wind power using around 18,000 turbines and Spain produces 15.145 gigawatts.  The latest and largest wind turbine designs can produce 5MW per turbine, and Germany is currently replacing older model turbines with these larger versions.
« Last Edit: July 07, 2008, 06:56:53 AM by Peter »
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14:10 - Moarskrillex42: She said something about knowing why I wanted to move to Glasgow when she came in. She plopped down on my bed and told me to go ahead and open it for her.

14:11 - Peter5930: So, she thought I was your lover and that I was sending you a box full of sex toys, and that you wanted to move to Glasgow to be with me?

Offline Peter

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Re: Green Shit
« Reply #50 on: July 07, 2008, 07:12:32 AM »
The difference is you have the choice to get into a plane, car or whatever. You don't have a choice if someone puts a wind turbine next to your house. Plus with both cars and parachutes you have several fail-safes, with a wind turbine if the brakes go, it explodes, simple as. I certainly would be uneasy if I had to walk past a few wind turbines whenever I go for a walk.

Mind, I think driving and parachuting could both be a lot safer mind. Though the general rule with both is that you are safe if you dont be a prat.

They only disintegrate (not explode) if the brakes fail during exceptionally high wind conditions; the sort of wind conditions in which falling trees and roof tiles would make it hazardous to be outside anyway.  They won't randomly spray you with shrapnel on a normal breezy day like time bombs waiting to go off, and if the brakes fail during a gale or hurricane, you'll have plenty of warning from the sound the blades make as they spin up beyond their design speeds and the obvious visual effect of fast moving blades; failure isn't instantaneous as the blades have substantial mass which takes time and energy to accelerate and the structural materials are flexible and can absorb energy before failing.
Quote
14:10 - Moarskrillex42: She said something about knowing why I wanted to move to Glasgow when she came in. She plopped down on my bed and told me to go ahead and open it for her.

14:11 - Peter5930: So, she thought I was your lover and that I was sending you a box full of sex toys, and that you wanted to move to Glasgow to be with me?

Offline Peter

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Re: Green Shit
« Reply #51 on: July 07, 2008, 07:31:48 AM »
A big enough wind farm could generate that. The main flaw is you cannot guarantee the amount of power they will produce.

Energy can be stored and moved around, and different energy generation technologies can be combined to even out the variation in the production of each one.  A common way of storing energy is to pump water into an elevated reservoir when excess power is available and then to drain the water into a lower reservoir through a turbine to generate power when it's needed.  Another common method is in large flywheels which operate in vacuum cases on magnetic bearings and store energy in their angular momentum.  The flywheels are spun up when excess energy is available and the process is reversed to extract the energy when it's needed.  With moving energy around, an area with an energy surplus can power an area with an energy deficit, so even if there's no wind in one region for a while, another region that does have wind can export their surplus through those wonderful cables that are strung between those pylon thingies we see all over the place.
Quote
14:10 - Moarskrillex42: She said something about knowing why I wanted to move to Glasgow when she came in. She plopped down on my bed and told me to go ahead and open it for her.

14:11 - Peter5930: So, she thought I was your lover and that I was sending you a box full of sex toys, and that you wanted to move to Glasgow to be with me?

Offline Christopher McCandless

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Re: Green Shit
« Reply #52 on: July 07, 2008, 09:06:06 AM »
The difference is you have the choice to get into a plane, car or whatever. You don't have a choice if someone puts a wind turbine next to your house. Plus with both cars and parachutes you have several fail-safes, with a wind turbine if the brakes go, it explodes, simple as. I certainly would be uneasy if I had to walk past a few wind turbines whenever I go for a walk.

Mind, I think driving and parachuting could both be a lot safer mind. Though the general rule with both is that you are safe if you dont be a prat.

They only disintegrate (not explode) if the brakes fail during exceptionally high wind conditions; the sort of wind conditions in which falling trees and roof tiles would make it hazardous to be outside anyway.  They won't randomly spray you with shrapnel on a normal breezy day like time bombs waiting to go off, and if the brakes fail during a gale or hurricane, you'll have plenty of warning from the sound the blades make as they spin up beyond their design speeds and the obvious visual effect of fast moving blades; failure isn't instantaneous as the blades have substantial mass which takes time and energy to accelerate and the structural materials are flexible and can absorb energy before failing.
Ok, lets say you are on a walk, nice sunny day, a little bit breezy and then the weather suddenly changes. Obviously you have to get home or take shelter. Then you are at risk from the big turbines blowing apart, remember the blades are 100m long. If you are out in the middle of a big farm of them then they can be difficult to avoid. Not to mention that poor weather conditions make them a lot harder to spot, e.g. rain fog and the like...

Though personally I think the smaller ones that people are installing on their roofs are the ones that are going to be the ones we have to worry about. They are going to be be poorly maintained, and there are a lot of them. I could just imagine them being poorly installed and falling on a toddlers head as they go out and play.

Offline Christopher McCandless

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Re: Green Shit
« Reply #53 on: July 07, 2008, 09:07:58 AM »
A big enough wind farm could generate that. The main flaw is you cannot guarantee the amount of power they will produce.

Energy can be stored and moved around, and different energy generation technologies can be combined to even out the variation in the production of each one.  A common way of storing energy is to pump water into an elevated reservoir when excess power is available and then to drain the water into a lower reservoir through a turbine to generate power when it's needed.  Another common method is in large flywheels which operate in vacuum cases on magnetic bearings and store energy in their angular momentum.  The flywheels are spun up when excess energy is available and the process is reversed to extract the energy when it's needed.  With moving energy around, an area with an energy surplus can power an area with an energy deficit, so even if there's no wind in one region for a while, another region that does have wind can export their surplus through those wonderful cables that are strung between those pylon thingies we see all over the place.
That is a possibility I guess, though the most logical way of solving it would be a hydrogen economy, so when you need the extra power, you have a power plant that you can turn on with a switch. Though of course such a system is going to take longer to set up than building a few nuclear power plants, and will be an awful lot more costly. Bear in mind the deadline in practise to sort out this mess is around 20:20, we should have been building stuff years earlier.

The other thing with all these storage systems is that they tend to waste energy by the bucketload, so you would need a lot more wind turbines to do it. That costs.
« Last Edit: July 07, 2008, 09:10:49 AM by Fook Mi »

Offline Phlexor

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Re: Green Shit
« Reply #54 on: July 07, 2008, 01:05:06 PM »
If everyone did everything in the safest possible way, life would be way boring.

Sometimes you need to take a risk.

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Re: Green Shit
« Reply #55 on: July 15, 2008, 03:52:29 AM »
A big enough wind farm could generate that. The main flaw is you cannot guarantee the amount of power they will produce.

Energy can be stored and moved around, and different energy generation technologies can be combined to even out the variation in the production of each one.  A common way of storing energy is to pump water into an elevated reservoir when excess power is available and then to drain the water into a lower reservoir through a turbine to generate power when it's needed.  Another common method is in large flywheels which operate in vacuum cases on magnetic bearings and store energy in their angular momentum.  The flywheels are spun up when excess energy is available and the process is reversed to extract the energy when it's needed.  With moving energy around, an area with an energy surplus can power an area with an energy deficit, so even if there's no wind in one region for a while, another region that does have wind can export their surplus through those wonderful cables that are strung between those pylon thingies we see all over the place.
That is a possibility I guess, though the most logical way of solving it would be a hydrogen economy, so when you need the extra power, you have a power plant that you can turn on with a switch. Though of course such a system is going to take longer to set up than building a few nuclear power plants, and will be an awful lot more costly. Bear in mind the deadline in practise to sort out this mess is around 20:20, we should have been building stuff years earlier.

The other thing with all these storage systems is that they tend to waste energy by the bucketload, so you would need a lot more wind turbines to do it. That costs.

In what way would hydrogen be an improvement?  You need energy to produce the hydrogen in the first place, whether it's hydrocarbons that you crack or electrolysis of water using electricity from coal, nuclear, wind, solar or other sources.  Hydrogen in the sense of the 'hydrogen economy' isn't a source of energy; it's just a way of storing energy that you've already produced, and it's not a particularly efficient way of storing energy.  Hydrogen is difficult and expensive to store, whereas it's extremely cheap by comparison to have a big-ass water reservoir in some unpopulated upland region, and those reservoirs are needed even with traditional coal and nuclear plants, since the boilers in power stations take hours or days to heat up and can't respond to rapid changes in demand, whereas the flow rate through a water turbine can be quickly adjusted to match demand.
Quote
14:10 - Moarskrillex42: She said something about knowing why I wanted to move to Glasgow when she came in. She plopped down on my bed and told me to go ahead and open it for her.

14:11 - Peter5930: So, she thought I was your lover and that I was sending you a box full of sex toys, and that you wanted to move to Glasgow to be with me?

Offline Christopher McCandless

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Re: Green Shit
« Reply #56 on: July 15, 2008, 05:10:37 AM »
A big enough wind farm could generate that. The main flaw is you cannot guarantee the amount of power they will produce.

Energy can be stored and moved around, and different energy generation technologies can be combined to even out the variation in the production of each one.  A common way of storing energy is to pump water into an elevated reservoir when excess power is available and then to drain the water into a lower reservoir through a turbine to generate power when it's needed.  Another common method is in large flywheels which operate in vacuum cases on magnetic bearings and store energy in their angular momentum.  The flywheels are spun up when excess energy is available and the process is reversed to extract the energy when it's needed.  With moving energy around, an area with an energy surplus can power an area with an energy deficit, so even if there's no wind in one region for a while, another region that does have wind can export their surplus through those wonderful cables that are strung between those pylon thingies we see all over the place.
That is a possibility I guess, though the most logical way of solving it would be a hydrogen economy, so when you need the extra power, you have a power plant that you can turn on with a switch. Though of course such a system is going to take longer to set up than building a few nuclear power plants, and will be an awful lot more costly. Bear in mind the deadline in practise to sort out this mess is around 20:20, we should have been building stuff years earlier.

The other thing with all these storage systems is that they tend to waste energy by the bucketload, so you would need a lot more wind turbines to do it. That costs.

In what way would hydrogen be an improvement?  You need energy to produce the hydrogen in the first place, whether it's hydrocarbons that you crack or electrolysis of water using electricity from coal, nuclear, wind, solar or other sources.  Hydrogen in the sense of the 'hydrogen economy' isn't a source of energy; it's just a way of storing energy that you've already produced, and it's not a particularly efficient way of storing energy.  Hydrogen is difficult and expensive to store, whereas it's extremely cheap by comparison to have a big-ass water reservoir in some unpopulated upland region, and those reservoirs are needed even with traditional coal and nuclear plants, since the boilers in power stations take hours or days to heat up and can't respond to rapid changes in demand, whereas the flow rate through a water turbine can be quickly adjusted to match demand.
Hydrogen you need the energy to produce and store, but once stored you are not losing anymore energy until you need it. There are two easy ways we can store it, either shove it back underground where gas initially was and mined years back, or this: http://www.physorg.com/news98556080.html Also there are simple cycle plants you can turn on in seconds, in a similar manner to a car. Whilst a little inefficient, they are brilliant for emergency supply with peaking demand.

In contrast, all your other suggestions have energy leakage, and are in many cases difficult to build. For example, hydroelectric power there is a limit as to where you can build dams, and they lose quite a lot of potential energy due to evaporation. Flywheels always lose some energy due to damping forces constantly, you have to keep putting energy in to maintain the angular momentum.

Offline renaeden

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Re: Green Shit
« Reply #57 on: December 28, 2016, 03:55:55 AM »
Though personally I think the smaller ones that people are installing on their roofs are the ones that are going to be the ones we have to worry about. They are going to be be poorly maintained, and there are a lot of them. I could just imagine them being poorly installed and falling on a toddlers head as they go out and play.
I know Hadron is not here to answer, but do people really have wind farms on their roofs? I mustn't have read this properly before, but I haven't ever heard of this done even now, since 2008.
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Offline 'andersom'

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Re: Green Shit
« Reply #58 on: December 28, 2016, 08:04:13 AM »
Though personally I think the smaller ones that people are installing on their roofs are the ones that are going to be the ones we have to worry about. They are going to be be poorly maintained, and there are a lot of them. I could just imagine them being poorly installed and falling on a toddlers head as they go out and play.
I know Hadron is not here to answer, but do people really have wind farms on their roofs? I mustn't have read this properly before, but I haven't ever heard of this done even now, since 2008.

Some companies do have smaller windturbines on their roofs. But solar panels are way more common. And they are properly maintained, because it is easy to notice when a panel is not working the way it should.
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Offline "couldbecousin"

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Re: Green Shit
« Reply #59 on: May 14, 2017, 09:25:03 AM »
  Eating licorice jellybeans will give your shit a teal tint from the blue dye.  :M
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