The Life of Riley

TILTING TO WINDMILLS

Thursday, January 24th, 2008 at 1:35 pm
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29 Responses to “TILTING TO WINDMILLS”

1. BarbaraD Says:
   January 25th, 2008 at 2:43 am

   Good morning, Ollie & Mike, from southern California. Not too far from where I leave are “wind fields” which look very much like the ones you describe here. It’s a fascinating concept and seems as though it should be an efficient energy solution.

   Thank you again for taking the time to post this blog/blob. I love checking in and seeing how things are going in your world!

   How do people feel about them, Barbara? Mike the helper

2. Sylvie Jamet Says:
   January 25th, 2008 at 6:40 am

   Good morning Olive !
   How do you do ?
   all OK in Australia for you I hope.

   And good happy new year to you and yours friends and your family from France.

   Sylvie, the accordionist.
   Accordion and Music Blog
   http://sylviejamet.over-blog.com
   
   Sylvie is a great expert on the accordion as i found visiting her blog. The music is marvellous. ollie uses to play the accordion. Mike the helper

3. peppylady Says:
   January 25th, 2008 at 12:40 pm

   I don’t know if I should say good morning or afternoon but it doesn’t real matter. It sometime some where.

   I thought windmill would be great were I live I live by a hay field and there is a breeze always moving.
   But now it comes out of the North and it been cold here for the last four days or so.
   It going to warm up and snow. Have you every seen snow?

   Sure hope you enjoy massage

   Dora from Naples Idaho USA.
   
   Hi Pepperlady, I’ve seen masses of snow. I lived in eastern Canada for many years. I’ll have to ask Ollie if she’s ever seen it. Snow has never come up in the conversations. Mike the helper

4. Robert in NJ, USA Says:
   January 26th, 2008 at 1:27 am

   Wind and solar are our only hopes. We have to save the remaining oil for things like pharmaceuticals. Anything that requires electricity, can be provided by wind or solar, albeit in a somewhat less… “profuse” amount. Mass transit needs to be converted to electric, and we need way more mass transit. The U.S., under Bush,Inc., is doing jack-squat to move ahead on this. Seeing this news, gives me two feelings. One of hope, for the world and Oz, and one of dread, for the U.S.

   Hope that massage felt good Ollie; glad to find a new post here!

   Boy, that’s an impassioned reply, Robert. I think we are getting the message here, but will we get it in time? I think it’s inspiring that Ollie’s interested. Mike the helper

5. Zbynek Says:
   January 26th, 2008 at 5:43 am

   Dear Olive,
   glad to hear about your website. We’re in our winter season, but we haven’t got any snow now.
   ould your days e full of sun. Greetings from the Czech Republic, MidEurope, European Union.

   Thanks Znynek, Every day is nice here at the moment. Mike the helper

6. BarbaraD Says:
   January 26th, 2008 at 6:24 am

   Hi Mike. I’m not sure people think too much about the windmills, one way or the other. To tell you the truth, I don’t quite understand the entire process the way I’d like to or should. They are in a very breezy “pass” … on the way to Palm Springs, California, and many times when I drive by them, they are just standing still, like extra large sticks stuck into the sand. No movement at all. Perhaps they spin away at other times when I am not aware. Seems like a clever idea to me, though.

   They must be turning when you’re not looking, Barb. Surely the builders would not put them in a place where there was no wind.

   They are here to stay. Just as windmills became a charming symbol of Holland in centuries past, so too these slender pylons are going to be a symbol of our century. I saw one close up in NZ and was intrigued by the humming noise and vibration I felt at the base, like a thing alive. I hear there is a problem with birds flying into them. I wonder if birds will learn to avoid that noise. Mike the helper.

7. Cowtown Pattie Says:
   January 26th, 2008 at 11:31 am

   Much hoopla in south Texas over the wind farms. South Texas, around the King Ranch, is home to many deer and quail, and some very wealthy hunters who feel the wind farms are a detraction and potential environment hazards for flocks of ducks and the deer population, not to mention obstructing a view that goes for miles and miles.

   I see their point, I hate seeing something mechanical when I am enjoying nature, but the human race must consider alternatives.

   Hope you having a good week, Miss Olive!

8. Christine McKenna Says:
   January 26th, 2008 at 5:31 pm

   Mike, that ad in the film clip is SOOO clever, isn’t it? There is a wind farm on the trip to Bathurst NSW and everytime we drive past we have to slow down to look! So does everybody else, still such a rare sight, but not for much longer. In the same responsible environmental vein, the other day there was a documentary on the ABC about growing trees for carbon credits, where businesses lease the land and farmers are being paid to plant thousands of trees in rows in empty fields !! A brave new world where you can farm trees and wind, eh? Hope Ollie, you and Katya are all well and not suffering too much from the hot and humid weather.
   Hooroo,
   Christine in humid Sydney
   http://missmuffettwo.blogspot.com/

   I think it’s an exciting new world, Christine. I think its potentially very participatory. We’ve had decades of being rather passive consumers, making buying choice for whimsical and fashionable reasons. Now, we move into a time were our choices are more considered, and i think that’s great. Mike the helper

9. Robyn - Brisbane Says:
   January 26th, 2008 at 6:01 pm

   Hi Ollie and Mike, finally I’ve got around to posting and commenting.

   It was interesting to read about the wind farm but I do think they’re so ugly and sinister somehow.

   Never mind, let’s all sing instead…

   Robyn, Did you see the commercial at the end which cleverly deals with your feelings? Mike the helper

10. Marc Says:
    January 26th, 2008 at 8:04 pm

    Hi Olive, Mike,

    Us Dutch can’t get enough of windmills, you might know that

    It is a subject of ongoing debate over here. Some people believe windfarms to be “horizon pollutors”. Personally, I think harvesting as much energy from natural sources like water, sunlight and wind will help this world getting out of severe troubles…

    Cheers from the Netherlands

11. Ronni Bennett Says:
    January 26th, 2008 at 8:51 pm

    I too think wind farms are a blight on the landscape AND an environmentally benign energy source. Hard choices we have to make these days, but wind farms are among the better ones.

    Ronnie, glad to hear from you again. In this case the windmills will be far from most people. Though there have been some local objections, I believe, because the area has been used as a wilderness location for shooting futuristic films. Presumably, now that wont work, unless they change the story of course to incorporate the strange towers. Mike the helper

12. Simon Says:
    January 26th, 2008 at 9:06 pm

    First of all I must thank Mike for his reminder about this blog. I forgot about it while being busy trying to understand the mysteries of law.

    As I was asked to tell you something about windmills, I will try to put, what I know, and what I have seen in Northern-Germany, where there are a lot of those windmills, into a text that should be easy to understand.
    Before that I have to say though that this commercial clip really is brilliant.

    However superb the idea of generating electricity from wind might be, there are, despite a lot of advances in technology, a few problems that have to be considered.

    One of the problems is that the high-voltage-power lines only have specific capacities. This problem is especially relevant and observable with over-land power lines. Since a high ‘flow-through’ of electricity causes the lines to expand due to heat, which might make them touch the ground or tree tops. Such a surplus of electricity is easily created by wind farms, if there is a stronger than calculated wind blowing. In such a case several units of such a wind farm have to be shut down in order to avoid a short-circuit.
    Units that do not run mean no converted energy however, which equals inefficiency of the entire unit, since you still have maintenance and the amortisation to consider.
    For that reason engineers and researchers have tried to find a way to keep the mills running even during such periods of stronger wind. This could be done by saving the created energy instead of feeding it into the power lines. With the current construction of these windmills the problem would be that the energy would have to be saved in battery packs. Batteries are rather inefficient energy storages however, and a lot of the created energy would be lost through heat and the likes.
    A solution for that was found by an American company (I do not remember the name) just a few months ago. They approached this problem by simply storing wind instead of electricity. For that they took the generator unit out of the head of the windmill and put an air compression turbine into it instead. This compressed air they save in an underground tank then, from where it can go through a turbine to create electricity. In this process there is far less energy lost than in the storage of electricity, and other than with batteries, the entirety of the stored energy is available instantaneously… then when you need it.
    An additional advantage of the new American method is that you get rid of the fire-hazardous generator in a height of 100m +. Which is another drawback of modern windmills, because once they burn you cannot extinguish them, since they are so incredibly high.
    Oh and they are also rather loud, but I doubt that that would be a problem in the outback.

    All in all one can say however that this is a promising technology, and that it should be considered as one of the top choices of generating electricity in the future, besides water, (also wave energy in the oceans), heat exchangers that work with the earth’s warmth, as well as photovoltaics and parabolic concentrators.

    Anyways, this is all that comes to my mind about this topic at the moment, and I should get back to my studying for my exams.

    So take care and I hope for a lot more posts in the future.

    Simon, what a fascinating answer. I guess the company which is building these windmills knows about the developments you are talking about. I don’t ‘t understand the air compression exactly. Are you saying that the flow of air could be so fast over the head of the wind unit that it would self compress into some sort of funnel that would replace the blade and would then travel down the mast to be stored compressed underground with all the compression energy supplied by the wind itself? That does sound incredible. Mike the helper

13. Monica (Spain) Says:
    January 26th, 2008 at 9:20 pm

    Hi! Well… I really don’t have a formed opinion about them. To be honest they are something I have never given a thought to. There are some where I live but I don’t get to see them on a regular basis because they are located quite far away from the city I live in. But I do suport all kinds of alternative energy sources: I think it’s something to be concerned about because THE PROBLEM with global warmth is doing nothing but getting bigger everyday.

    In my country we are having a big problem at the moment with drought. Over the last four years it has barely rained. To be honest, I don’t even remember what a rainy day is like. When I was a child it would rain a lot but now it’s just horrible. Not to mention the horrible and abnormal hight temperatures we are having in the middle of January.

    PS: Happy Birthday, Ollie.

    Monica, we have been so obsessed with our own drought here in Australia, which has just broken (now we have floods) that we have heard nothing of your drought. Mike the helper

14. Merle Says:
    January 27th, 2008 at 12:08 am

    Hi Olive and Mike ~~ Glad to hear all is well with you. I don’t know much about wind farms but guess we will all learn as they become more popular.
    I read all the posts, just don’t have a lot of time to comment. Keep up the good work.
    Take care, Love and Best Wishes, Merle.

15. Simon Says:
    January 27th, 2008 at 2:47 am

    To answer your question regarding my reply:
    The wind is not compressing itself in a funnel. If things were like that you would not need the big propeller.
    With the new concept the propeller will be connected to a turbine (not in the sense of a jet engine, but in the sense of a propeller, or multiple propellers being stuffed into a tube) instead of a generator. I guess they will not connect them directly, because a turbine needs a lot higher rpm, than a direct connection would be able to supply, in order to compress air. [There is probably some kind of transmission in there.] This turbine serves then, so to speak, as an air pump.
    Through piping this compressed air will then be pumped into an underground tank where it then will be available for another turbine which is connected to a generator, as energy.
    Oh and if I still did not manage to explain this part properly, please ask again, but be aware that my next reply will possibly take more than a week for aforementioned reasons.

16. Anne Says:
    January 27th, 2008 at 5:28 am

    Oh, darn. My coment went to the wrong post! Hello anyway, Olive and Mike!

17. fatima Says:
    January 27th, 2008 at 9:36 am

    Dear olive and Mike
    Just a quick hello and…
    miss u so much :*

18. Constance Says:
    January 27th, 2008 at 1:16 pm

    Wind Farms, what will they think of next? Sounds very “Green” and good for the environment.

19. kerri Says:
    January 28th, 2008 at 8:40 am

    Hi Olive and Mike,
    I saw that you had a birthday party Olive and thought I left a comment. If not, a very happy belated birthday to you!!
    We have wind farms in our area too, but on a much smaller scale than this one you’ve posted about Mike. There are big ones out in California, Arizona, New Mexico.
    I think the windmills look rather graceful against the horizon, with their blades turning gently with the wind. But there’s controversy over that, as with every alternative that’s tried. They’re a great idea in my opinion.

    Kerri, thanks so much for you rush of comments. We’re especially glad to get the last one since wind is the topic of the moment. What did you think of the commercial at the end. I think it’s brilliant. Mike the helper

20. sweetsalty kate Says:
    January 28th, 2008 at 2:23 pm

    Hi Olive! We have a few windmills here in Nova Scotia on the east coast of Canada, but really, not many. I think there are people here just starting to look into it for the Tantramar Marshes, a similarly flat and open windswept area perched on the coast of the Bay of Fundy. I hope they do it - but knowing our little corner of the world, our advances into this new and exciting world of energy will be like dipping our toe into a pool. Very slow and cautious!

    Glad to see the pictures of you, and thanks Mike for the hello! Cheers from Canada,
    Kate

    Very interesting, Kate. What happened to the idea of harnessing the huge tide rises in the Bay of Fundy for energy generation. I remember that from years ago, from long before talk of an energy crisis. Mike the helper

21. kerri Says:
    January 29th, 2008 at 12:04 am

    Ross and I thought the commercial was very clever. I meant to say that in my first comment, but it slipped my mind.
    We have 3 groups of about 5 to 7 windmills, the closest about 15 miles from here, and the other 2 a little further. The land is leased for a very large sum, so it’s a good way for the farmers to make income from their land. Many of the small dairy farms around here have gone out of the dairy business and are seeking other ways to use the land.
    The companies supplying the windmills get a big tax break because it’s an alternative source of energy, so it’s a win-win situation for both parties.
    The people who are complaining also don’t like the big power lines, but they aren’t able to suggest any desirable alternatives. I’m sure when the very first power lines went up all those years ago people thought they were an eyesore too. In order to progress we must be willing to make some changes!
    I’m in favour of producing more of our own oil, and therefore being less dependant on other countries for our oil supply, but the politicians bow too often to the special interest groups who stand in the way of progress.
    This would also cause a huge boost to our economy by making gas prices cheaper.

    Kerri, a fascinating answer. Mike the helper

22. Junebugg Says:
    January 29th, 2008 at 1:02 am

    Hey There from Alabama. It’s so nice to see you again

23. jackie Says:
    January 29th, 2008 at 6:35 am

    congratulations on your 108th year..and good luck with the wind farms..it’s a wonderful idea and wish it all the success in the world…

24. Hugh Gurin Says:
    January 29th, 2008 at 7:32 am

    Hullo again, Olive. Mike emailed me about you and the wind farms. I hope you don’t have the same problems with bird deaths that we do here in California; you’d think someone would invent a whistle or something that would scare them off. In any case, it’s good to see Australia leading in these renewable technologies. The sensible-ness of using your available wind and solar energy resources strikes me as very Australian.

    Glad - but not at all surprised - to hear you’re doing well.

    Take care!

    That was a prompt and interesting response, Hugh. Thanks so much. mike the helper

25. timelady Says:
    January 29th, 2008 at 9:36 am

    Hi Mike and Ollie, here are some interesting links I found on windfarms:

    just noticed this article:
    http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/britain-will-need-12500-wind-farms-to-satisfy-eu-targets-773145.html

    also:
    http://www.cleanenergycouncil.org.au/

    and:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_farm
    the interesting bit here is australiaś position:)

26. Cris Says:
    January 29th, 2008 at 10:10 am

    Wow… amazing, I don’t think we have windfarms here, so this is great to get to know how it works, she’s so sweet…

27. m!na Says:
    January 29th, 2008 at 2:51 pm

    Hiiiiiiiiii
    It’s the first time that I visit your blog .
    just can say : ” It’s really great ! ”

    Have dreamy time

28. minnie Says:
    February 3rd, 2008 at 2:35 pm

    i just LOVED THAT!

    and, ollie? you don’t look a day older than my mom, and she just celebrated her 80th birthday!

29. denise crolle-terzaghi Says:
    February 12th, 2008 at 7:05 pm

    Hello Olive and thanks to Mike to keep your blog going on. It’s good to hear
    from you and to know you are still this very optimistic and great lady. Now
    about wind farms I would not say I hate them. I saw some in Lanzarote
    (canary islands) and they looked like very modern wind-mills. Driving along
    the small roads and following their shadow in the evening was a pleasure, I
    liked them like a piece of art. I kiss you Olive. Keep on telling us small
    stories. We love you. Denise

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