Con with the Wind...

by opus diablos - the regressive hypocrite party Fri Aug 06, 2010 16:03

For anyone who knows a bit about the subject.As someone who likes to climb the hills, I have often wondered why, instead of cluttering our landscape with these machines they are not installed (on a smaller scale) in urban areas, particularly atop industrial plants where the loss in power transmission would be minimal.Why do factories not have batteries of smaller scale wind generators packed as densly as feasable on their roofs?
I recognise there are economies of scale, but think that trade off is worth it. Height provides more efficient results, but this accountants logic is at the root of much that is wrong with 'western' developmental models.Time we lowered the profile of the Price and elevated the profile of alternative and supplementary Value?A cluster of four or five smaller turbines round every farmhouse should be as viable as one mega-unit on the highest point dominating the landscape.Lower transmission costs, less disruption on failure as numbers give less dependence on major outage risk.
You cant eat scenery, but the falling tourist figures indicate our lopsided ideas of development have damaged a few clean sustainable industries for an external FDI short-term gombeenism.
Where's that engineer when he's needed?

by Engineer. Mon Aug 09, 2010 16:17

You can equally say that the village of Glenties ruins the skyline.

Lighthouses and beacons enhance the Irish shoreline.

As do jetties and harbours and piers and the roads leading to them.

Windmills look pretty in the Dutch landscape.

Windmills will look handsome on an Irish shoreline.

by opus diablos - the regressive hypocrite party Mon Aug 09, 2010 16:50

like health, depend on balance and proportionality. The concept of 'appropriate technology' is a necessary corrective to the techno-fix that would have us experiment with the oceans and athmosphere instead of reading the feedback and adapting ourselves as well as our ecology. We cannot consume and produce our way out of problems created by producing and consuming as though we were free of responsibilities to each other and the future.The windmills on Aran are fine, but I dont want to see the islands turned into a wind generator for the mainland. Nor do I want every hill to be crowned with machinery when a little imagination might see the problem solved with urban installations.New technologies are necessary, but so is a more considered approach to permissable individual consumption limits. Just as there is under-development, so there is overdevelopment.
The most ugly example is probably the 'epidemic' of obesity in the 'developed' world while a billion go hungry. Something rotten in the state...

by Engineer. Mon Aug 09, 2010 17:38

If "Ruining the view of the bay " were the norm for development then Dublin would not exist.
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by opus diablos - the regressive hypocrite party Mon Aug 09, 2010 18:45

What exactly is ' the norm for development'? I dont believe people visit Dublin for the view of the bay (though it is worth doing if visiting).
You compare a metropolitan area with rural Donegal. Visual amenity and economic generator through tourism with power generation and transmission. You wouldn't be a ship's engineer by any chance?Or is it strictly wind?