This is the state of politics in our country
and sadly, while describing a local situation in San Diego, it applies where you live. Go pay attention to your local boards. Recently we had a vote here on Wind Turbines and wind turbine projects. (But it is GREEN ENERGY...) Yes, and it still has some downsides, in fire country pretty significant down sides.
1.- Fires... you'd think that in fire country that be a pretty damn no-no
2.- They are very tall, making FIREFIGHTING more hazardous... see they use planes and choppers which have to fly in very hazardous conditions... you just added more risks for the pilots.
Anyhow, this was approved. We have our lovely board of supervisors. Did I mention it is supposed to be non political? Oh wait, never mind. All my board of supervisors members ARE REPUBLICAN... STill the only one that voted against the development... (wait what?) and is all for starting to put SOLAR all over and implementing a DISTRIBUTIVE model of energy production happens to represent the BACK COUNTRY... where well, we have those very real fire threats.
Gets even better, she did so not because of how green or how not green wind is, but because of the pretty significant fires we have had in the back country in recent years. She did it for public safety reasons. And she also knows that we need SOLAR.
Now here is another thing I want all of you to understand, we have had A LOT of Bureau of Land Management lands approved for these industrial developments... (but we need green energy), yes, yes we do, but these industrial developments are literally building up within a 20th century model of single point of distribution energy grids. We need to be really creative about this.
Care to ask why San Diego County went dark not too long ago? A SINGLE point of failure in the grid. That single point of failure turned off the lights all the way from Arizona to Ensenada, to Southern Orange County. That is a SINGLE point of failure. This is exactly what we continue to build and these companies, their life depends on this vulnerable, industrial, system of production. We have now the possibly of a mixture of both centralized and distributive energy grids. A distributive energy grid, why SEMPRA will attack it, is a direct challenge to the business model.
This is not NYMBY, this is quite frankly, being blind to different ways of possibly doing things that will increase the commons back to more people and away from very powerful energy conglomerates.
But going back to the beginning, what ails us in our politics is that pols are incapable of seeing a problem unless it affects them directly. THis is why my local supervisor voted against one of these projects... and mark my words, as more and more of these projects go on line, we will have a few fires tracked back to wind turbines.
But, but they are green and safe and wonderful, go hug a turbine! Here, some reading for you.
http://alfin2300.blogspot.com/2012/04/wind-turbines-fire-danger-to-wildlands.html
Oh here is more
Vestas Wind Systems A/S (VWS), the world’s largest wind-turbine maker, said a V112 3.0-megawatt turbine caught fire today at the Gross Eilstorf wind farm in Lower Saxony, Germany. No injuries were reported.
The cause of the 3 p.m. blaze, which is burning out under “controlled conditions,” hasn’t been determined, the Aarhus, Denmark-based company said in a statement. The turbine, a new model for Vestas, was disconnected from the grid and three nearby V112 turbines were shut for safety reasons, it said.
With many potential causes, “we can’t start any investigation until we have a chance to look at the turbine and in order to do that we have to get to the nacelle,” Andrew Hilton, a spokesman for the company, said of the casing on the tower that houses the turbine’s power-generating components.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-03-30/vestas-says-turbine-catches-fire-at-gross-eilstorf-wind-farm.html
By Clyde MacDonald, Special to the BDN
Posted June 29, 2011, at 6:19 p.m.
Despite all that has been written about wind power, a vitally important issue has barely been mentioned. When turbines fail, blades may fall to the ground or send fragments that land up to a mile away. Turbines often catch fire, and when they do they often send flaming shards into fields and forests. Much has been said about the short-term jobs created in preparing turbine sites, but almost nothing about job losses from turbine-caused fires in our paper mills, sawmills and other forest-dependent industries.
Official information on the number and severity of turbine-induced forest fires remains largely secret and unavailable. Nonetheless, there are scattered media reports and one thorough description of the safety record of the Caithness USA Wind corporation with installations in the northwest. That one corporation experienced 110 serious wind turbine fires over a 20 year period, but there is no mention of whether some of those fires may have spread to adjacent areas.
Similarly, media references to 43 turbine fires, mostly in the U.S. and Europe, merely state “no details.” Many references do contain brief statements, such as that 22 fires were caused by lightning strikes, but again, no references to those fires spreading far from the sites. Only 25 of the reports mention that turbine fires had spread to fields and forests.
http://bangordailynews.com/2011/06/29/opinion/forest-fires-and-wind-turbines-the-danger-no-one-is-talking-about/
There are more of course, as this is just starting to become a reality.
Oh and to my REPUBLICAN member of the County Board of Supervisors, a rare clap and bravo... you did good, and it takes a lot of fortitude to go against the prevailing common sense and wisdom... but you got it, before a lot of us city dwellers did. Some of us, as reporters, get it... mostly because we "enjoy" covering fires...
Really, they would happen, this fire was due to lightning. But I guarantee you, as more and more of these go on line, we will have more and more accidents and yes, fires.
But hey, I turn the switch on and I got power... well unless that is, if I have a failure at a single point of failure... then all bets are off.
http://www.10news.com/news/29124110/detail.html
= new reply since forum marked as read
getting close to the fire and well, fighting it... it had to do with access.
Have you been out there? I have.
I'm sorry that my personal experience matches SDG&E "talking points" but I have witnessed batteries catching on fire with my own eyes and I have cleaned up the damage to my personal property from fires caused by malfunctioning electronics combined with quite small batteries.
Going total solar implies some form of storage for those hours when the sun is not shining, it's unavoidable.
Another major problem with battery storage is that batteries all have a distinctly finite lifespan, both in terms of usage and just time in service, they start degrading as soon as they are manufactured and using them only accelerates the degradation process.
Flywheel motor/generators running in vacuum are one possible storage option that has a near infinite service life but research in that area seems to be lacking although Porsche has a successful hybrid race car out that uses electric flywheel energy storage.
http://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/alternative-fuel/hybrids/porsche-911-gt3r-hybrid-flywheel
At full speed the 16-inch diameter flywheel has a capacity of 0.2 kilowatt-hours, which pales in comparison to the 1.7 kwh available from the battery in the Cayenne hybrid. But the flywheel can release 163 horsepower for up to six seconds of boost—one of the performance characteristics that make it more like an ultracapacitor than a flywheel. An ultracapacitor with equivalent oomph would be substantially heavier: the flywheel and its support structure weigh in at 103 pounds. The whole mechanism is mounted in a carbon fiber box where the passenger seat would normally be in the 911.
Under the extreme power charge/discharge cycles of racing, even a lithium ion battery would face durability issues. Kristen estimates that a battery would have to be replaced three times during a race like the 24 Hours of Nurburgring, where the 911 nearly won in May 2010, after leading for over eight hours. The best current lithium ion batteries will last for a claimed 20,000-plus charge cycles, and hybrid batteries are typically only partially charged and discharged, which maximizes their life-span. Kristen claims the flywheel will last over one million cycles.
In its current form, the 911 hybrid is about 230 pounds heavier than the 911 GT3 RSRs run by the Flying Lizards team in the American Le Mans Series GT class. At its Nurburgring debut, the hybrid didn't have the outright speed of the conventional 911s, but it spent more of its time on the track thanks to its ability to achieve 25 percent better fuel efficiency. The use of so much regenerative braking, thanks to the flywheel's ability to absorb power quickly, also reduced brake wear. The brake pads on the hybrid only had to be changed once in the 24-hour race, compared to 2-3 changes for the regular version. The hybrid's on-demand all-wheel-drive should also give it a handling advantage in wet conditions.
They have sold a series of goods, and I think it will take a few years (the projects will be in place) for people to realize there is a problem.