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sailors and wind farms

11K views 81 replies 26 participants last post by  sailaway21 
#1 ·
I'm really curious to know what sailors think of wind farms, onshore or offshore. I'm working on a report right now for the Ontario Nature Federation (ON Nature), and I'll eventually get something up on the Georgian Bay cruising website. There are quite a few projects under way around the Great Lakes in Ontario, and some (heck, most) have run into controversy, mainly from property owners who really don't like the idea of looking at them or perhaps having to listen to them. My unscientific survey to date says sailors generally like the idea of them (they employ the wind, after all), but I would welcome feedback, especially from sailors out there who have actually encountered them in their area.
thanks
 
#2 · (Edited)
They're looking to put on in on Nantucket Sound, down my neck of the woods. I think wind farms, properly designed and implemented, are a good thing... but they'll need to clearly mark the individual wind gens on the charts, as they're a serious navigation hazard, much like the off-shore oil platforms down in the Gulf of Mexico.

Also, depending on how large an area the wind farm covers, it might make sense to have them marked and lighted in such a manner that the different wind gens are clearly identifiable. If you've got 30-50 of these sticking up out of the water, it would be nice to be able to tell if you were at the first, the fifth or the fifteenth of them... and roughly how many you had left to get by, without having to try and guess from your DR position.
 
#7 ·
N I M B Y ........



Everybody want there to be an energy alternative; nobody wants to change anything about the way they live.

I know, a gross generalization; but true enough to be a PIA.

I think wind power is here to stay. It's the most viable alternative in the largest geographical part of the world. Solar may take precedence in some latitudes; but for most the sun is too shallow to be efficient enough. Also, it's the most proven, and technologically simple, alternative.

I don't want to start the "peak oil" debate; but for the purposes of this discussion let's agree that petroleum is a finite resource. IMHO it is too important for so many other uses that to burn it for energy more than absolutely needed is a tremendous waste.

Are there environmental impacts of wind generation?
Of course; everything has an impact on something.

Is wind the one true solution?
Of course not, it will be an important part (one of many) of our energy supply from here on in.
 
#4 ·
We are absolutely infavor of the wind farms. We saw lots of them around west texas in ranchland. Now there is one slated for offshore Galveston, Tx where we now live. I have wondered how they will be marked and like the idea that SailingDog put forth about numbering North to South as a standard or something similar. We need all the renewable energy sources we can exploit, so we need to learn to compensate for the changes in our lifestyle.

SKFNEK sailing "Miss Guided" out of Galveston, Tx
 
#5 ·
The real reason I think the individual wind gens should be easily identifiable is that Nantucket Sound often gets some serious fog... and if you can't see the others, it would be nice to be able to use the wind gen as a navigation mark, and make it much easier for you to avoid hitting the others... since you'll have a much better chance of knowing where you are in relation to them, even in the fog.
 
#6 ·
The Georgian Bay Association, which is a creature of waterfront property owners, is really lobbying hard not to have them along the bay's shore. Their own committee report actually downplays the whole sound issue, but they clearly just don't like the idea of looking at the things. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, I guess. There's a big battle right now on Wolfe Island, near Kingston, Ont., between shoreline property owners and rural landowners who want to lease land for wind farms.
Toronto has one big generator on the waterfront, not in the water. I think people generally like it, as it says something about clean energy. I don't know if they'd feel any differently if there was a whole farm, or if Humber bay was dotted with them. Cpn Malcom makes excellent points about visibility and safe navigation. Denmark has massive wind farms offshore, and I'm not sure how they've handled this issue.
My thanks to everyone for the prompt and thoughtful replies. This is going to be a big issue along our shores, where it isn't already.
 
#9 ·
ROFLMAO... I was wondering who the hell Cpn Malcom is... Just FYI, Captain Malcolm Reynolds isn't me... he's the captain of space-going tramp freighter named Serenity, in the short-lived TV series Firefly and the movie Serenity. I just loved the quote he says about starships...and thought it was equally applicable, with a bit of modification, to sailboats.

Cpn Malcom makes excellent points about visibility and safe navigation. Denmark has massive wind farms offshore, and I'm not sure how they've handled this issue.
My thanks to everyone for the prompt and thoughtful replies. This is going to be a big issue along our shores, where it isn't already.
 
#8 ·
I don't mind them, and they will reduce our dependence in fossil fuel.

We have many many farms in my country and in our coasts.

The tree hugers tried to block, but none of their conclusions were proven...we built and are happy.

Besides, the wind is for everyone...GO WINDMILLS!!!!
 
#10 · (Edited)
TPI, a fiberglass fabricator with a plant at our marina that also produces hulls for Pearson, JBoat and Alerion - among others, had a contract to produce vanes for a land based wind farm project a few years ago. I was amazed over the scale of these vanes, as hundreds of them were regularly trucked out on flat beds. The molds still sit in the boneyard behind the marina.

Some time after that the Dutch and Swedes constructed a massive offshore windfarm. The photos and videos from that project were used to educate the public by the group of private investors planning the Nantucket Sound project - the first of it's kind in the US.

For those who haven't yet seen the scale and magnitude of these things, check out some of these photos from the Dutch installation. The TPI project pales by comparison.

A promotional digitized image:


A series of actual construction photos:















I agree that we need to consider all directions for reducing our dependance of foreign oil - but, I am ambivalent about it being in my back yard. There are similar discussions as Nantucket Sound, for an offshore installation off Newport RI - between Sakonnet and Sachuest Points, which would create some navigational hazard issues for all boaters - especially during typical fog conditions.

In spite of all the negativity though - it is a good thing.
 
#13 · (Edited)
TPI, a fiberglass fabricator with a plant at our marina that also produces hulls for Pearson, JBoat and Alerion - among others, had a contract to produce vanes for a land based wind farm project a few years ago. I was amazed over the scale of these vanes, as hundreds of them were regularly trucked out on flat beds. The molds still sit in the boneyard behind the marina.
...
In spite of all the negativity though - it is a good thing.
GREAT photos, thanks. There was a program on CBC television on which someone visited one of the Danish windfarms, rode the elevator up one of the towers, and then popped his head out the top of the turbine housing to have a look around. Just a stunning view.

Update: I just looked up the program. It was a documentary called Earth Energy and it aired on the program Nature of Things in September. There's a web page about it here.
http://www.cbc.ca/natureofthings/earthenergy/index.html
No video unfortunately, but there is a pic of filmmaker Bill Lishman standing atop one of the Danish offshore turbines.
 
#11 ·
There are a lot of wind turbines going up in UK waters. Lots of studies done, the ATC can see them on radar and so on. All the one's I've sailed past are on sandbanks where I don't care to go, so they tend to say "shallow water". Its a bit odd at night as their lights add to the puzzles in places.
 
#15 ·
They have one of these, albeit a bit smaller, in Hull, which is a significant navigation landmark for anyone sailing Boston's Outer Harbor, and another, even smaller one in Dorchester.
 
#19 · (Edited)
Without trivializing the hazards they might present in fog or inclement weather, at least these things are standing still and can be precisely marked on a chart, unlike freighters, fishing vessels and everyone else wandering around out there in bad visibility.
Some people will still hit them. A number of years ago I was in a regatta in which a 30-footer under spinnaker t-boned a lake freighter dead midships. They were all so busy trimming the chute and the main that they failed to notice this very large and very long multistorey wall of metal right in front of them. As I recall, their excuse was, "well, it was kind of grey and kind of hard to see."
(I'll try not to encourage thread drift here.)
 
#18 ·
A single turbine was installed by the Portsmouth Abby School a couple years ago. At first I thought it was visually obtrusive, but don't mind it at all now. The sound is not discernable at all from our slip, about 2 miles away - but the turbine is certainly visible.

It forms a very distinct visual reference from all areas of the upper Narragansett Bay. I even use it for taking bearings while sailing.

 
#24 ·
I think wind power is generally a great idea.

There are some concerns with the fact that the best wind patterns tend to also be the most favoured bird migration pathways, a big concern on Lake Ontario, where two of the four North American "skyways" for birds converge.

But I can live with a few bird strikes if it keeps a few fossil fuel plants from being built, because these plants are obviously the source (if not the only one) of particulates, sulphur and C02 emissions. The "brown band" around the Toronto skyline in summer is largely due to American coal plants southwest of here, although there is a large coal plant on Lake Erie that contributes a portion.

One of the criticisms of wind turbine power is its intermittant nature. If used to feed directly into the electrical grid (after transformation to AC, one assumes), this criticism is correct. What needs to be built is a storage facility that includes co-generation in concert with the wind power.

This could take the form of electrolysis of water and the storage of hydrogen in fuel cells (static fuel cells are far more practical at the moment than the ones being developed for cars), or for use to boil water for steam turbines. Another use would be to power the pumps involved in geo-thermal extraction of heat energy, which would also power traditional turbine generators. A less desirable method would be to use the wind power to reform natural gas.

In other words, when the wind blows, you convert the power gathered into some medium that is able to be stored and used when the wind isn't blowing.

Of course, this is precisely how it works on a boat with a large battery bank.
 
#27 ·
I think wind power is generally a great idea.

One of the criticisms of wind turbine power is its intermittant nature. If used to feed directly into the electrical grid (after transformation to AC, one assumes), this criticism is correct. What needs to be built is a storage facility that includes co-generation in concert with the wind power.
One of the solutions wind power proponents have is that you put enough installations across a wide enough geographic area so that there never is a serious or persistent wind shortage. "It's always windy somewhere." The key is to feed a shared grid, not to rely on one installation to provide power only to its immediate vicinity. And if solar is part of the mix, then you hopefully have sunshine somewhere when the wind's not blowing, and conversely wind when the weather is cloudy.
 
#25 ·
The twist does incidentally reduce noise caused by stalling at the tips -- on many smaller turbines, the blade tips actually have a negative angle of attack, because their apparent wind is essentially in the plane of the blades, the tips are moving so fast. Some of those machines have tip-speed ratios of eleven or higher (tips moving eleven times actual wind speed).



About 35 miles north of my house in Wyoming is Foote Creek Rim, home to one of the largest wind farms in America. At last count, 183 big Mitsubishis on a mesa near Arlington. We also have large farms in Medicine Bow and on the Terry Bison Ranch south of Cheyenne. I fancy them. They look quite splendid along the skyline, like kinetic sculpture. But I'm biased -- wind power drives my entire house and business.

Designers could do a better job of blending the turbines into the landscape without making them significantly more a navigation hazard; visual impact is the number one complaint against them. Noise is the second, but that's not too honest: I've stood beneath the Arlington beasts in full flutter, and they are not loud. Had trouble hearing them over truck noise from the highway, which no one seems to notice. Third gripe is some vague notion of bird mortality. This perception, that wind machines puree birds by the thousands is provably false, and nearly all the websites devoted to hand-wringing over the issue are, provably, financed by the fossil fuels industry. The raptor mortality rates at Arlington are 0.03 birds per tower per year; more birds probably die on our front picture windows.

Some sailors use sea-based turbines as lighthouses and racing buoys. I love the idea of giving each tower a distinct code -- maybe the nav lights flashing colors? Blue-white-white means the twelfth to shoreward, style of thing?

Here's a funny Casper Star-Trib article on the Arlington installation: note the date (late October 2007), and the 105-mph wind speeds. Yeah, I recall that couple of days. It was pretty windy.:eek: (Now y'all see why I wanted a boat with some ballast?)

As for the "not in my back yard crowd": clean up your back yard first, then you'll have some standing in the matter. Anyone burning thirty-five kWh per day of electricity is in no position to pick and choose its provenance.
 
#28 · (Edited)
The twist does incidentally reduce noise caused by stalling at the tips -- on many smaller turbines, the blade tips actually have a negative angle of attack, because their apparent wind is essentially in the plane of the blades, the tips are moving so fast. Some of those machines have tip-speed ratios of eleven or higher (tips moving eleven times actual wind speed).

I was at a sailing club meeting last night and we somehow afterwards got on the subject of onboard wind generators. A friend told me about being up in the North Channel and visiting aboard with a guy who had a wind generator mounted at the stern. The guy was proudly telling him about how many amps the thing could put back into his battery bank, and my friend could barely make himself heard over the noise of what sounded like a small Cessna bolted to the boat.
I too have heard that the sound from the big generators is fairly benign, more like gentle ocean surf. Setting standards for acceptable noise levels and residential setbacks is a really sticky issue. The wind farm industry in Ontario argues that there's no one-size solution, that each installation has to be judged individually for setbacks. But they also argue that background levels of 40-50 dB should be expected at the setback perimeter. I guess the objections up on Georgian Bay from the cottagers (above and beyond their NIMBY predilections) is that when you live somewhere that you can normally hear a pin drop, suddenly introducing a steady 40-50 dB of whooshing noise is going to be noticeable. (That would also apply to cruising anchorages.) But I bet the wind in the pines cranks out something at that level. It always sounds windier along the bay's coast than it usually is because of the way the pines generate sound.
I'm with you on the aesthetics. I generally like the look of them.
 
#29 ·
Diva-

I think that the larger wind gens tend to be less noise since the blades don't have to move as quickly to produce electricity. That is why many computers have gone from an 80mm to a 120mm cooling fan... since they move the same volume of air but spin slower and are less noisy as a result.
 
#32 ·
You are all very funny.....
do me a favour, will ya??
go to search in advanced bar type:wyoming, casper, and douglas....
see the dates....and a hint...I work in the Power business...
Now piss off....
Bob....you joined Sailnet in June....see what's from March 2007....:D :D :D :D
Mwahhaaahaaa. That's pretty funny. SOME people call it the Ends of the Earth. I call it home. Piss off yerself, G.:p I don't laugh at Portugese mountaineers, even tho your tallest hill is 300 meters lower than my toilet seat....

Next time y'all are bobbing around wishing for wind, know a few crazy bastards in Wyoming have the rail buried in whatever tiny frigid alkalai lake we can find. Yeah, it was minus eleven F here last night. You just wait until June, when the ice melts again.... We will go sailing!:D

(FWIW, even Wyomingites consider Douglas dull. That's saying sumthin.)
 
#34 ·
I like them. I like the way they look. They are new looking, but certainly not ugly. My retirement property is on Lake Huron, and there are a few turbines about a half hour south of me. I find that far preferable to the nuclear plant that is about an hour south of me.

I had not realised that there was a lot of opposition to them on the part of landowners. There is a section in our municipal Zoning Bylaw encouraging them.

But then, the Georgian Bay crowd has always been a little "arriviste" I guess..... ;)
 
#35 · (Edited)
A major wind farm planned at Collingwood, Blue Highlands, was vigorously opposed by residents (read: ski chalet owners) and was abandoned in the planning stages. Cottage owners along the Tiny shore of Nottawasaga have been fighting the Robitaille wind farm project, and got pretty exercised when they heard Beausoleil First Nation was thinking about turning Christian Island into a wind park. Cottagers near Parry Sound have been fighting a wind park project on Parry Island being pursued by the Wausasking First Nation. One cottager told the local paper that his property values would plunge $300,000 as soon as the towers were built. I find this "property value" argument rather galling. If you know anything about land treaties in Ontario, you'd know how shockingly ripped off the bands were by the Williams and Robinson treaties in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The land the govt pretty much stole from them was then sold off for cottage development. The bands lost more land when it was expropriated for railway development. (There's an unresolved land claim by the Henvey First Nation for a chunk along the south shore of the Key River, expropriated for a railway port that was never built. The govt then just sold it to cottagers.) Now the Wausasking want to put up some wind generators and the cottage gentry are whining about their property values. I should write, "Don't get me started," but it's too late...
Much thanks to all for their thoughtful input.
 
#36 ·
Tons of Wind Power in Palm Springs

We were on vacation a couple of years ago when I first saw the massive windmill farms near Palm Springs. It was kind of creepy looking at first -- so completely foreign to anything I'd seen.

After seeing them for a few days, they started growing on me and I realized what a great way to use the wind whipping between the mountains.
 
#37 ·
There is a issue regarding how many birds are killed by windmills.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2005-01-04-windmills-usat_x.htm
It may reduce the number of "dump ducks" which some may find a good thing.
Vertical turbines are purported to not have that problem.

A row of 50 windmills spaced appropriately would make a challenging race course to slalom around.

With all that power going through the water I wonder if some minor misconnection could cause massive galvanic corrosion to boats in the vicinity.
 
#41 ·
Back to the aesthetics issue: It's both funny and sad how many people here in MO write letters to the editor about how ugly the new wind farms are and how they hate the sight of them, while the fact that the whole state is the main training ground for 'Redneck Yard of the Week' doesn't rate a mention.....

Ah well, it's only ugly if it's new....
 
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