DailyDirt: Windmills Of All Sizes
from the urls-we-dig-up dept
Alternatives to fossil fuels are pretty well known, but it’s hard to beat the short term returns from burning hydrocarbons that are pumped out of the ground — which is why fossil fuels still make up about 80% of our energy supply. One of the most environmentally-friendly energy sources comes from wind turning some turbines to generate electricity, and wind power has been growing rapidly in the last few years. In 2010, wind power generated about 2.5% of worldwide electricity usage (about 430 TWh), up from just 0.1% in 1997 and projected to hit 8% by 2018. If you’re interested in the creation of energy out of thin air, here are just a few links to check out.
- Extremely small windmills less than 2 mm in diameter could be used to power mobile devices. These tiny windmills could also be fabricated by the thousands on large sheets to be placed on the sides of tall buildings, too, but the researchers who made the first prototypes don’t mention if it would actually be cost effective to do so. [url]
- On the other side of the spectrum, windmill blades ~1,000 feet in diameter could be generating electricity at a 20 megawatt scale in the next few decades. Commercial turbine blades have grown from diameters of just 50 feet in the 1980s to diameters of nearly 500 feet now. [url]
- The energy-generating capacity of large wind farms might have a lower limit than once thought. If the entire Earth could be covered in wind farms, some estimates say over 100 terawatts of energy could be produced, however, it wouldn’t be easy to build wind farms at even a small fraction of that scale without running into significant problems. Still, wind energy is one of the most scalable renewable sources of energy known, but it could have an upper limit of just a few percent of our total energy consumption requirements. [url]
If you’d like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.
Filed Under: energy, fossil fuels, global climate change, renewable energy, turbines, wind energy, wind farms, wind power, windmills
Comments on “DailyDirt: Windmills Of All Sizes”
You know, I've always wondered why the links go through bit.ly...
When the full url is given too. Why just on this one daly “feature”? Must be more “monetizing” through link farms.
So why doesn’t Mike ever even outline the money-gathering techniques he uses? Isn’t he promoting teh internets and its new possibilities? Or just not helping competition? Because this re-writing of what others produce isn’t so difficult that many people can’t do it, and even better.
But I think the real secret is how does one get Google to list this site at top of searches? Even over the original source. (At least my searches: yours may vary because Google knows your habits too…)
Mike will soon announce T-shirts that he personally silk-screens! Just $1000 each! — He’s selling REAL scarcity as only one in 20 come out legible!
13:37:08[o-370-8]
Re: Re:
You know, I’ve always wondered why the links go through bit.ly… When the full url is given too. Why just on this one daly “feature”?
Mike and Michael explained this decision in this thread from awhile ago (which you might have read if you spent more time reading this site other than criticizing every little thing that you don’t like):
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101130/18423312064/dailydirt-live-performances-get-attention-sometimes-being-kinda-bad.shtml#c65
But I think the real secret is how does one get Google to list this site at top of searches? Even over the original source.
By spending many years becoming a reliable, trustworthy source that users click on after doing a Google search. It’s not some nefarious plot Blue, it’s called building a web reputation and it’s reflected in Google’s search algorithms.
Re: You know, I've always wondered why the links go through bit.ly...
I’m really curious, Blue… since you have such severe problems with Google, why are you still using their services?
out_of_the_blue just hates it when due process is enforced.
The trouble with all the forms of so called green power sources is peek demand and the lack of ability to come online for it.
Until the offline storage of energy becomes cheap and ubiquitous green energy is a failure.
One of the promising systems is the combination of solar and natural gas.
Re: Re:
Yes, by all means – let’s put all our eggs in one basket, because that is such a good idea – amirite?
Only a fool would suggest that “green tech” is presently a direct replacement for that which precedes it. Evaluating the merits of a system based solely upon whether it can immediately replace its competition is a worthless exercise usually intended to discredit said competition and bolster support for the legacy system.
I have serious doubts concerning wind farms. There are people studying the impacts of such facilities in local atmosphere circulation regimes and it seems there are important issues there (I’m saying that from a personal chat I had with an academic that studies climate here in Brazil so I can’t really provide solid facts). There are also the proven hazards to the bird population.
I’m not saying we should stop using it but much like any form of energy generation it has downsides that need to be considered.
Re: Re:
There are designs which use a vertical tower rather than an open blade system. This design protects the avian population much better.
Global wind patterns and the affect of local wind farms is an interesting field. Much more data is necessary. It is a shame that some would shut down funding of global weather satellite development and use.
Re: Re:
It’s just basic physics that you don’t get energy for free. Wind farms extract energy from the wind, which reduces the amount of energy in the wind itself.
There is no way that wind farms can be a reasonable source of energy without cause changes in the environment. How bad those changes are, I don’t know.
They are not windmills actually
They are wind turbines.
I know this may seem pedantic, but wind mills are/were used to actually grind (or mill) wheat.
Turbines are used to generate electricity.
Stop wasting energy, goddamit!
I say stop wasting energy in the first place. Revert to General Electric 1940′ technology and make refirigator that last 100 years, instead of 10 years of present day GE models.
Same for everything else. Then you would not need so much to produce to keep up with demand.
Re: Stop wasting energy, goddamit!
Never going to happen. First, efficiency of old appliances was terrible, so going back will make things less efficient. Second, energy use is correlated to population and standard of living. So unless you want to lower the population or reduce/hold the standard of living for people, energy requirements will always increase. Efficiency doesn’t help because of Jevons paradox.
Re: Re: Stop wasting energy, goddamit!
Never going to happen. First, efficiency of old appliances was terrible,
even if for some appliances it was, overall you cannot replace fridge every 10 years. There is not enough natural resources on this planet to go with this insane cycle forever.
Calcuate energy used to manufacture and use one 1942 model of GE fridge to this day (yes, they keep going and going), to energy needed for manufacture and usage of 7 fridges of present day quality over the same period.