Cape Wind Project Expects Approval Today

[Beantown]

http://www.boston.com/lifestyle/gree...pected_to.html

Took nine years of debating, planning, more debating, more proposals and all of that...but it appears that Ken Salazar has approved the plan to create the nation's first off-shore wind farm.

As as a Massachusetts resident, I'm pretty excited to see how well this comes to fruition.

[SPTO]

Sounds really interesting. I'm assuming on days when it's not windy that power would be generated electrically so it's a hybrid that way?

Either way this is pretty much a slam dunk in terms of renewable energy and if it works well I could certainly see more wind farms up and down the Atlantic seaboard.

[Cebby]

Quote: Originally Posted by SPTO

Either way this is pretty much a slam dunk in terms of renewable energy and if it works well I could certainly see more wind farms up and down the Atlantic seaboard.

I'm not too sure there will be that many.

New Jersey and New York are broke, and Maine, Maryland, the Carolinas, and Florida depend too much on coastal tourism not to mention the political issue of wind vs nuclear.

If it's a major success I could see some additional ones, but I'm not sure how successful it will be. I'd like to see wind be the thing that eliminates coal, but if it was that easy I think it would be much more common in some states.

[AnArtofWar]

Great...I know in the UK they have planned or at least thought about wind farms off the coast...could power all the UK...

And also there are wind balloons, would be more efficient than this if they had them off coast instead.

[superjames1992]

Wind turbines are terribly inefficient, though. In reality, according to the Betz Law, the most energy which can be gotten from the wind is 59% and, in reality, it is lower than that. This is because if all the energy was sucked out of the wind, there would be no kinetic energy or vorticity on the other side of the windmill, which means that the air couldn't get out of its own way and there would be no energy generated.

The power generated actually increases by a power of three, but the problem is that wind turbines don't function well under high speeds, and if the speed of the wind is halved, the energy generated is only one-eighth of the previous amount.

Plus, if we actually wanted to generate enough power to power a significant amount of the nation's power from wind, we would have to cut down many forests across the country and destroy many wild habitats to put in these turbines. That's not going to happen.

I think nuclear power is undoubtedly the way to go, not wind.

[pfunk880]

Quote: Originally Posted by superjames1992

Wind turbines are terribly inefficient, though. In reality, according to the Betz Law, the most energy which can be gotten from the wind is 59% and, in reality, it is lower than that. This is because if all the energy was sucked out of the wind, there would be no kinetic energy or vorticity on the other side of the windmill, which means that the air couldn't get out of its own way and there would be no energy generated. The power generated actually increases by a power of three, but the problem is that wind turbines don't function well under high speeds, and if the speed of the wind is halved, the energy generated is only one-eighth of the previous amount. Plus, if we actually wanted to generate enough power to power a significant amount of the nation's power from wind, we would have to cut down many forests across the country and destroy many wild habitats to put in these turbines. That's not going to happen. I think nuclear power is undoubtedly the way to go, not wind.

I 100% agree with this post.