Showing posts with label turbines. Show all posts
Showing posts with label turbines. Show all posts
Saturday, March 13, 2021
Friday, January 2, 2015
One-Third of Scotland Could Soon Be Powered by the World's Biggest Underwater "Windmill" Tidal Plant
http://inhabitat.com/one-third-of-scotland-could-soon-be-powered-by-the-worlds-biggest-underwater-windmill-tidal-plant/
One-Third of Scotland Could Soon Be Powered by the World's Biggest Underwater "Windmill" Tidal Plant
In between the Scottish mainland and the Orkney Islands lies the Pentland Firth, a turbulent sound with tides that can reach up to a startling 18 miles per hour. That’s a lot of untapped power. MeyGen is taking advantage of all that renewable energy with the installation of the world’s largest tidal power plant, and if everything goes as expected, the underwater windmills could eventually power a full third of Scotland.
Daily tides in the Pentland Firth are about 11 miles per hour, which is ideal for a tidal power plant, but that same tidal activity makes installing massive turbines difficult. Nonetheless, the new power station is expected to produce 398 megawatts of electricity every year. That would make it the biggest tidal power plant, passing South Korea’s Sihwa Lake, which generates 254 megawatts each year.
Related: Scotland Approves Europe’s Largest Tidal Energy Project
The plan for building the plant involves dropping 61 turbines onto the floor of the sea, where each one will be weighed in place by concrete legs. Each turbine has rotary blades like a windmill, so to sea life and any wayward divers, the plant will look like a giant undersea wind farm. Though it isn’t the first time someone has used this technology to generate power – there is, among others, one installation in New York City – it is the first time anyone has attempted it at this scale. If it all works, it could set the standard for arrays like this one.
One-Third of Scotland Could Soon Be Powered by the World's Biggest Underwater "Windmill" Tidal Plant
In between the Scottish mainland and the Orkney Islands lies the Pentland Firth, a turbulent sound with tides that can reach up to a startling 18 miles per hour. That’s a lot of untapped power. MeyGen is taking advantage of all that renewable energy with the installation of the world’s largest tidal power plant, and if everything goes as expected, the underwater windmills could eventually power a full third of Scotland.
Daily tides in the Pentland Firth are about 11 miles per hour, which is ideal for a tidal power plant, but that same tidal activity makes installing massive turbines difficult. Nonetheless, the new power station is expected to produce 398 megawatts of electricity every year. That would make it the biggest tidal power plant, passing South Korea’s Sihwa Lake, which generates 254 megawatts each year.
Related: Scotland Approves Europe’s Largest Tidal Energy Project
The plan for building the plant involves dropping 61 turbines onto the floor of the sea, where each one will be weighed in place by concrete legs. Each turbine has rotary blades like a windmill, so to sea life and any wayward divers, the plant will look like a giant undersea wind farm. Though it isn’t the first time someone has used this technology to generate power – there is, among others, one installation in New York City – it is the first time anyone has attempted it at this scale. If it all works, it could set the standard for arrays like this one.
Friday, June 8, 2012
Saturday, November 14, 2009
UFO crash hits wind turbine!
Be on the lookout for a UFO with a giant wind turbine blade sticking out of it. LOL
A UFO is believed to have struck a giant wind turbine in South Lincolnshire.
These blade are just massive, and you have to admit it really look like it hit something hard but there is no damage on the mast. Also one of the blades are just missing, how do you loose a telephone pole size windmill blade and can't find where it went?
http://www.ecotricity.co.uk/ Is the owner of the turbine.
In a later report they found out the real cause metal fatigue.
It wasn't ET 'wat done it' 10 February 2009 Interim report rules out UFO’s
A UFO is believed to have struck a giant wind turbine in South Lincolnshire.
These blade are just massive, and you have to admit it really look like it hit something hard but there is no damage on the mast. Also one of the blades are just missing, how do you loose a telephone pole size windmill blade and can't find where it went?
http://www.ecotricity.co.uk/ Is the owner of the turbine.
In a later report they found out the real cause metal fatigue.
It wasn't ET 'wat done it' 10 February 2009 Interim report rules out UFO’s
Friday, November 13, 2009
Wind turbines make bat lungs explode
Researchers at the University of Calgary have found out why bats have been dying near wind turbines.
From: New Scientist
From: New Scientist
"Beware: exploding lungs" is not a sign one would expect to see at a wind farm. But a new study suggests this is the main reason bats die in large numbers around wind turbines.
The risk that wind turbines pose to birds is well known and has dogged debates over wind energy. In fact, several studies have suggested the risk to bats is greater. In May 2007, the US National Research Council published the results of a survey of US wind farms showing that two bat species accounted for 60% of winged animals killed. Migrating birds, meanwhile, appear to steer clear of the turbines.
Why bats - who echolocate moving objects - are killed by turbines has remained a mystery until now. The research council thought the high-frequency noise from the turbines' gears and blades could be disrupting the bats' echolocation systems.
In fact, a new study shows that the moving blades cause a drop in pressure that makes the delicate lungs of bats suddenly expand, bursting the tissue's blood vessels. This is known as a barotrauma, and is well-known to scuba divers.
"While searching for bat carcasses under wind turbines, we noticed that many of the carcasses had no external injuries or no visible cause of death," says Erin Baerwald of the University of Calgary in Canada.
Internal injuries
Baerwald and colleagues collected 188 dead bats from wind farms across southern Alberta, and determined their cause of death. They found that 90% of the bats had signs of internal haemorrhaging, but only half showed any signs of direct contact with the windmill blades. Only 8% had signs of external injuries but no internal injuries.
The movement of wind-turbine blades creates a vortex of lower air pressure around the blade tips similar to the vortex at the tip of aeroplane wings. Others have suggested that this could be lethal to bats, but until now no-one had carried out necropsies to verify the theory.
Baerwald and her colleagues believe that birds do not suffer the same fate as bats - the majority of birds are killed by direct contact with the blades - because their lungs are more rigid than those of bats and therefore more resistant to sudden changes in pressure.
Bats eat nocturnal insects including agricultural pests, so if wind turbines affected their population levels, this could affect the rest of the local ecosystems. And the effects could even be international. "The species being killed are migrants," says Baerwald. "If bats are killed in Canada that could have consequences for ecosystems as far away as Mexico."
Windy day
One solution could be to increase the minimum wind speed needed to set the blades in motion. Most bats are more active in low wind.
The study was funded by a number of bat conservation groups together with energy companies with a financial interest in wind energy, such as Shell Canada and Alberta Wind Energy.
Journal reference: Current Biology (vol 18 p R696)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
