How green is "GREEN"

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Fred in Skirts
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How green is "GREEN"

Post by Fred in Skirts »

Right now the average wind farm is about 150 turbines. Each wind turbine needs 80 gallons of oil as lubricant and we're not talking about vegetable oil, this is a PAO synthetic oil based on crude... 12,000 gallons of it. That oil needs to be replaced once a year. :(

It is estimated that a little over 3,800 turbines would be needed to power a city the size of New York... That's 304,000 gallons of refined oil for just one city. :evil:

Now you have to calculate every city across the nation, large and small, to find the grand total of yearly oil consumption from "clean" energy.
Where do you think all that oil is going to come from, the fricken oil fairies?
Not to mention the fact that the large equipment needed to build these wind farms run on petroleum. As well as the equipment required for installation, service, maintenance, and eventual removal.

And just exactly how eco-friendly is wind energy anyway?
Each turbine requires a footprint of 1.5 acres, so a wind farm of 150 turbines needs 225 acres; In order to power a city the size of NYC you'd need 57,000 acres; and who knows the astronomical amount of land you would need to power the entire US. All of which would have to be clear-cut land because trees create a barrier & turbulence that interferes with the 20mph sustained wind velocity necessary for the turbine to work properly (also keep in mind that not all states are suitable for such sustained winds). Boy, cutting down all those trees is gonna piss off a lot of green-loving tree-huggers

Let's talk about disposal now.
The lifespan of a modern, top quality, highly efficient wind turbine is 20 years.
After that, then what? What happens to those gigantic fiber composite blades?
They cannot economically be reused, refurbished, reduced, repurposed, or recycled so guess what..? It's off to special landfills they go.
And guess what else..? They're already running out of these special landfill spaces for the blades that have already exceeded their usefulness. Seriously! Those blades are anywhere from 120 ft. to over 200 ft. long and there are 3 per turbine. And that's with only 7% of the nation currently being supplied with wind energy. Just imagine if we had the other 93% of the nation on the wind grid... 20 years from now you'd have all those unusable blades with no place to put them.. Then 20 years after that, and 20 years after that, and so on.
Golly gee, how green is that?

Oops, I almost forgot about the 500,000 birds that are killed each year from wind turbine blade collisions; most of which are endangered hawks, falcons, owls, geese, ducks, and eagles.
Apparently smaller birds are more agile and able to dart and dodge out of the way of the spinning blades, whereas the larger soaring birds aren't so lucky.
I'm sure the wildlife conservationist folks are just ecstatic about that.
I'm so glad the wind energy people are looking out for the world.
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Uncle Al
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Re: How green is "GREEN"

Post by Uncle Al »

:clap: :clap:
Very well stated and explained. This should "open the eyes" of the
'fancy-pancy' politicians (IF they would ever take the time to read it).
(Hey, A.O.C., are you listening :?: )
:clap: :clap:

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I respond-The why is F.T.H.O.I. (For The H--- Of It)
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Sinned
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Re: How green is "GREEN"

Post by Sinned »

And BoJo, aka Carrie. She has him on strings, like a puppet. She has him by the b*lls so him mind, tiny as it is, follows.

As to the turbines, what about their manufacture, chances are that won't be green either. But thanks, Fred, for the info.
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Jim
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Re: How green is "GREEN"

Post by Jim »

This post about wind turbines has been circulating a while? What's its source? Do you know if it's accurate? For example, I've read elsewhere the oil change is not that frequent.
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Re: How green is "GREEN"

Post by Ray »

What utter nonsense. No supportable evidence.

What’s the alternative? Coal? Climate change?

When it’s a better hour, I’ll go off and destroy your argument with facts.
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Re: How green is "GREEN"

Post by crfriend »

Lubricating oil, so long as it's not exposed to high temperatures, tends to have quite a long lifetime so long as it's filtered well and kept free of contaminants.

An astonishing thing I learnt a few weeks ago when watching a piece on diesel-electric railway locomotives was that the several hundred gallons of lubricating oil was put into the engines tended to stay there for the lifetime of the locomotive with careful attention to the filtration and treatment systems. I suspect that wind-turbines may well fall into that classification.

As far as the real-estate required for the turbines to exist on, what else are you going to do with it? Sell it to build McMansions on thereby losing it effectively forever?

The ultimate answer is not going to be one technology, it's going to be a blend, and all options need to be under active consideration.
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Re: How green is "GREEN"

Post by Faldaguy »

by Fred in Skirts » Sat Oct 23, 2021 9:09 am
Right now the average wind farm is about 150 turbines. Each wind turbine needs 80 gallons of oil as lubricant and we're not talking about vegetable oil, this is a PAO synthetic oil based on crude... 12,000 gallons of it. That oil needs to be replaced once a year. :(

It is estimated that a little over 3,800 turbines would be needed to power a city the size of New York... That's 304,000 gallons of refined oil for just one city.
Fred, I'd sure like to see some validation for these claims, but even with that I feel the arguments fall far from accurate and are misleading at best.

Just for fun, consider even if you use just the personal average gasoline consumption per person in this country, multiply that by the residents of NYC and divide it by the 300K gallons of oil you cited -- their present consumption is 20,000 times more than the oil you fear may be used by turbines! I'll gladly give you the 300K gallons of oil -- you give me the 6 Billion gallons of Gas -- OK? :mrgreen:
And just exactly how eco-friendly is wind energy anyway?
Each turbine requires a footprint of 1.5 acres, so a wind farm of 150 turbines needs 225 acres; In order to power a city the size of NYC you'd need 57,000 acres; and who knows the astronomical amount of land you would need to power the entire US. All of which would have to be clear-cut land because trees create a barrier & turbulence that interferes with the 20mph sustained wind velocity necessary for the turbine to work properly (also keep in mind that not all states are suitable for such sustained winds). Boy, cutting down all those trees is gonna piss off a lot of green-loving tree-huggers
NYC uses roughly 10,000 megawatts of electricity per day & represents about 3% of the US population so extending your estimate of 57,000 acres to power NYC, we would need 33 times that for enough turbines for the whole of the US -- a little under 2 million acres. So, how about the great state of Texas's leases just 15% of their already existing desert to the Turbine outfits -- that will provide over 2 million acres of land and TX will be sole supplier and beneficiary of powering the US without cutting down any trees! :D

[And yes, I realize my citations above do not hold a consistent logic, but the same can be done with other data that does -- but it is more difficult to follow, while this shows the silliness of the contentions in the piece you've cited. Denial of climate change and blind support of the oil industries propaganda is killing us faster the Covid; and I find neither trivial. We need take our blinders off and cooperate lest we be one of the last generations to generate anything.]
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Re: How green is "GREEN"

Post by rode_kater »

Faldaguy wrote: Sun Oct 24, 2021 9:04 am [And yes, I realize my citations above do not hold a consistent logic, but the same can be done with other data that does -- but it is more difficult to follow, while this shows the silliness of the contentions in the piece you've cited. Denial of climate change and blind support of the oil industries propaganda is killing us faster the Covid; and I find neither trivial. We need take our blinders off and cooperate lest we be one of the last generations to generate anything.]
Thank you Faldaguy for making the effort to refute some of this nonsense. In another forum I also try to do my best but it is so tiring. The same stupid arguments that have to be refuted over and over again. If only people googled before repeating rubbish.

As to the original post, there is somehow the assumption that wind power is somehow touted to be the perfect solution and that if only the (hypothetical) greenies knew how many birds were killed they'd change their minds. But it's a strawman. It's not a perfect power source, yes it takes land (or sea), it kills birds, it uses (synthetic) oil. And despite all those things it's still better than most alternatives.

The fleet of cars use more lubricants, no-one cares. Skyscrapers kill more birds, no-one cares, a huge chunk of the world is covered by farms which take up huge amount of space, no-one cares. All the concrete used making power stations and buildings also cannot be recycled, no-one cares.

Additionally, they're working on green lubricants not based on oil, lighting/colour patterns to deter birds, putting them in the sea so they don't take up space, inventing processes to recycle turbine blades. These are solutions made by real people solving real problems instead of just moaning on the internet.

There are plenty of real, solid arguments to be had about the energy transition, but you always just get the same stupid ones. It drives me nuts.
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Re: How green is "GREEN"

Post by pelmut »

Faldaguy wrote: Sun Oct 24, 2021 9:04 am NYC uses roughly 10,000 megawatts of electricity per day
Megawatts are the rate of energy flow, not the quantity of energy.  I don't know where you got that figure, but it is completely meaningless because the units are wrong.
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Re: How green is "GREEN"

Post by 6ft3Aussie »

pelmut wrote: Sun Oct 24, 2021 11:30 am
Faldaguy wrote: Sun Oct 24, 2021 9:04 am NYC uses roughly 10,000 megawatts of electricity per day
Megawatts are the rate of energy flow, not the quantity of energy.  I don't know where you got that figure, but it is completely meaningless because the units are wrong.
I'm thinking the units should MegaWatthours (MWh), or in this case GWh...
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Jim
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Re: How green is "GREEN"

Post by Jim »

Fred in Skirts wrote: Sat Oct 23, 2021 3:09 pm
Each turbine requires a footprint of 1.5 acres, so a wind farm of 150 turbines needs 225 acres;
Around here the wind turbines are on farmland. The ground can be farmed quite close to the base of the turbine; not nearly 1.5 acres are taken out of agricultural production long term.
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Re: How green is "GREEN"

Post by familyman34 »

I feel that Fred's figures for the demand for lubrication oils in wind turbines are unreasonably simplified.

First, one must consider how the rotary motion of the yurbine blades is converter to electricity - these days, the choice is principally between geared systems (usually requiring large quantities of lubrication) and direct-drive systems. https://dro.dur.ac.uk/6704/1/6704.pdf?D ... jmd+d67a9y

Then there are the various ancillary moving parts.
https://evolution.skf.com/wp-content/up ... 8-en-5.jpg

A commercially-sourced account of the requirements is given at
https://www.machinerylubrication.com/Re ... ubrication

While a theoretical (and mathematically more demanding) treatment is at
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals ... CC3F165053

I reckon personally that the required amount of lubricating oil would fall far short of Fred's quoted 80 gallons per turbine, particularly with the more modern direct-drive systems, and would, following Carl's comments about filtering and removing contaminants, need to be replaced much less frequently than annually.
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Re: How green is "GREEN"

Post by moonshadow »

Sounds like to me we've got too many people and not enough planet.

Looks like we're doomed either way.

I would have had hope that maybe in the next century we'd start to colonize other worlds, but given the current condition of the education system and the prevailing "woo-woo" religion that's got a hold of our "leaders".... now I'm not so sure.

Oh well... try to change something and watch half the people's head explode.

I say, let the whole damned thing burn. And to the neo-cons popping babies left and right because we'll NEVER run out of resources (because the bible told them so)

Heh... good luck with that.

I can think of no greater act of cruelty than to intentionally conceive a child given the absolute dismal future that awaits...
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Sinned
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Re: How green is "GREEN"

Post by Sinned »

Moon, the trouble is that the babies are born in the wrong places, like East, North, South and West! :(
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Re: How green is "GREEN"

Post by moonshadow »

Sinned wrote: Sun Oct 24, 2021 2:35 pm Moon, the trouble is that the babies are born in the wrong places, like East, North, South and West! :(
One of these days Dennis, while we both still have a few marbles rolling around upstairs, we've got to meet up. I bet we could chat for hours!

Hang in there a few years while I work up the courage and the funding to get on a plane...
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