Bowden, Alberta windfarm.
(Thanks, Darcey.)
Update, from the comments – “Not a big fan of wind farm due to consumer or government subsidies, but to be fair this one is still under construction and not hooked to the grid.”
LOL… Fair enough!
Bowden, Alberta windfarm.
(Thanks, Darcey.)
Update, from the comments – “Not a big fan of wind farm due to consumer or government subsidies, but to be fair this one is still under construction and not hooked to the grid.”
LOL… Fair enough!
thank goodness . . . thousands of innocent little birdies, creatures that have done nothing to hurt mankind, will now be saved from horrible, cruel deaths in those aviary cuisinarts.
A small miracle I tell ya . . .
Hope Darcy got home safe,and wasn’t powering his car with ALL the electricity being generated!
Maybe they all ran out of gas. That’s what makes them go isn’t it?
Not a big fan of wind farm due to consumer or government subsidies, but to be fair this one is still under construction and not hooked to the grid.
LOL… ok, fair enough.
Drove through the Crowsnest Pass last week (in my Silverado 2500 HD Diesel), and there was what I though was a pretty strong north wind (I sure know it was making #3 a mess for driving). In one spot between Pincher and Fort Macleod, there was a number of windmills going at a pretty good clip, yet an even greater number were not moving at all.
What magnitude of wind speed does it take to get these things going?
What magnitude of wind speed does it take to get these things going?
Just the hot wind from a few greenies. What an expensive concession in an attempt to appease an unappeasable minority.
Got a bunch of them here in Lambton Co. Ontario
that ARE operable. They aren’t working either.
I saw more than 30 vehicles off the road in the slick conditions and the wind between Red Deer and Calgary. the wind was polishing the road like glass. Bowden was especially bad
Ironically, they are working as they are supposed to. The blades likely have been feathered to avoid spinning in high winds. The turbine guts can be damaged if the blades spin too fast.
Give it a couple of years than go into the wind farm scrap metal Industry. It will be booming.
JMO
Good thing they are all painted white…although they should have the word elephant painted on them somewhere.
To be fair though, there is probably a valid case for them to be used in areas not serviced by the electric power grid.
I work at a power plant and we get(state required ) power from a wind farm. They often go down – wind too slow or wind too fast. Never, when you trend the power, is it a constant.
We drove east from Van Isle last summer. Went through Crows Nest and stayed south. Saw lots of wind mills and most of them were turning. Also saw lots of oil wells not pumping.
I like the concept of wind power but not the reality.
Can someone explain what I saw?
Good to see they’re finally doing something about that too-many-birds problem.
Hey m-alta: Are you saying that since the mills are “under construction and not hooked to the grid” they are locked stationary? This is possible, since the bearings/rotators in windmills are apparently wildly expensive.
If this is not the case — and whether they are connected to the grid or not — they’re simply not turning. Perhaps Darcey should contact his MLA and demand an answer. I would. And he can post it here for us all to see.
There just might be a valid explanation, although this would not preclude an explanation for building windmills in the first place.
It get better, even when the wind is blowing at the right speed and the blades are spinning, changes in the wind direction imply that the turbines need to be slowed down to a halt, reoriented and started up again. The process takes a good 3-4 minutes. Take that for reliable energy supply!
I was under the impression that anything over 80kph and they shut them down due to overheating. A big problem down in the Pincher area, not sure how the wind speed is calculated as it would take a pretty big braking system to stop these units if the winds got going above the tolerable levels.
Anybody on the inside know how this all works? Inquiring minds want to know!!!
It’s all good, see now, ten to the third power of these here machines work, and there’s only ten to the fifth power altogether, so that’s like yer 60 per cent working, it’s all good.
Would be yer smart way to power yer planet, once yer elites stop payin their taxes cuz they’s retired on yer EI benefit payments. So they did benefit somebodies. Yer all good.
Yee-haw.
I suggest then we hook m-alta up to them.All the hot air spewing out of it ought to get them going!
I wonder what the difference in power production is between the turbines hooked to the grid and these ones. I’m guessing not that much.
There’s a heap-big wind farm in Minnesota down by the border with South Dakota that goes on for miles and miles. Apparently its the second windiest place in the USA.
A goodly portion of the windmills were stationary whenever I drove past. Seems they require a great deal of maintenance, as one would expect of a mechanical system that big. They have to wash the crud off the blades for one thing, as bugs, birds and dust will unbalance the blades if allowed to build up. A couple pounds difference times 80 feet long and spinning at a good clip translates to major breakage.
As well, the blades are carbon fiber so they have to be inspected for damage to the leading edges. One little crack and WHAMMO, the blade will shear in half. Then the whole thing will beat itself to death in seconds. And probably go on fire.
Then there’s the fancy giant bearings, hydraulic pumps with computer controls to turn the machine, gear motors to do the turning, frickin’ enormous generator with lots of science fiction control apparatus, forty thousand little micro switches and sensors so the thing knows what its doing… and the whole thing is 100 feet in the air.
I wouldn’t want to work on one.
I did some forest engineering/ EA work for a few wind farm proponents on Northern Vancouver Island a few year back and I recall that the turbines come on somewhere around 4 to 5m/s and feather-off at somewhere around 20m/s (don’t quote me) due to the enormous torque on the structure of the huge blades (up to 120m in length, honeycombed fibreglass to reduce weight). They apparently can tear themselves apart if allowed to function during high winds.
I find that most interesting.
This summer, riding in interior Washington state approaching the Oregon border, I saw — no exaggeration — 100s of them (1000s?) and not a one moving.
And what a disgusting, heart-breaking defilement of that lovely rolling green-carpeted landscape.
Not one.
This insanity would end if puppys could fly and we can find more dead DUCKS than hawks and eagles under these great subsidy suckers. Green energy, so warm, so fuzzy, makes one feel so good as you sit in a hospital waiting room for 6 hours with an emergency. Anyone sending a nickel to Sierra club, Pembina Parkland Greenpeace Suzuki etal should have their taxes doubled, not the people that know this is a SCAM.
An article from the UK mentioned that during extreme cold temps and no wind, the windmills must draw power from the grid so that they can keep turning slowly and not freeze solid which would seize them up and require guys to do maintenance. It’s not like Britons had any other use for energy during bitterly cold temps…..
“We drove east from Van Isle last summer. Went through Crows Nest and stayed south. Saw lots of wind mills and most of them were turning. Also saw lots of oil wells not pumping.
I like the concept of wind power but not the reality.
Can someone explain what I saw?”
If the price of a barrel of oil is below a certain value the owner of that well may decide not to extract that oil until the market value is greater, after all why sell at 60 when you know it will go to 80. The oil in the ground isn’t going anywhere and the oil company is opting for a bigger profit at a later date.
Other resons may include maintenance, perhaps at the refinery if not the well head or pumping station, or inactivity to bring about an equalization of the pressure in the oil field.
Not a complete explanation I am sure and if anyone cares to elaborate or correct me, by all means please do so!
John Chittick, I did the math one time and it turns out that the blade tips can easily go supersonic if they let the RPM get high enough.
Circumference of a circle with radius 80ft is ~377ft, speed of sound is ~1,126ft/sec, you get much over 160rpm and bad things start to happen. Supersonic shock waves form at the blade tips, makes ’em delaminate and then they pretty much explode.
Its not what I’d want in my back pasture, know what I mean?
That kind of looks like the new wind farm just north of me, which would place it 30-odd miles east of Bowden. That project is under construction, too, but I saw a few of the turbines, maybe a half-dozen, turning lazily in the strong winds today.
I was away on a mini-vacation over the Christmas-New year break, and arriving home on Saturday night, I topped a hill, and was surprised to a whole constellation of red flashing lights, all blinking in unison. My first though was it was somebody’s Christmas light display, then I thought it might be alien spacecraft lined up at the Three Hills Tim Horton’s, and I finally realized it was the aircraft warning beacons on the new windfarm.
A thought came to mind today regarding these wind projects. I think it would be a great idea that each such wind arm be required by law to maintain a Web site with real-time data displays containing at least the following: average wind speed through the turbines, current net power output for the entire installation (expressed in mW), current net power output for the entire installation (expressed as a percentage of nameplate capacity), and year-to-date total energy production, similarly expressed. Seeing as taxpayers/power consumers have (willingly or otherwise) a financial stake in these operations, they have a right to know. I expect the wind-farm developers would strenuously resist such a measure.
To “U”. Mostly correct, I think. Other possible reasons: 1. the well is pumping into an on-site storage tank, and the tank has become full;
2. they have stopped pumping to allow the well to recover, or to avoid drawing water up into the pay zone.
The power produced by a wind turbine is based on the cube of the wind velocity (V³). In low wind conditions, they produce very little of rated output, but when they reach design speed, they become very sensitive to wind gust overloads. Remember, “Math is hard!”
Overall, they will only deliver 30% of rated capacity; ie, a 1MW turbine will actually produce 300kw over time.
In addition, wind demonstrates a slightly negative relationship to electrical demand. Periods of highest electrical demand (hot summer days, cold winter nights)are often windless. Turns out the best wind period is fall. If you want wind energy, you can have lots of it in September and October. Conversely, July and August, you might not get any.
So irrespective of the promises of the wind industry and the green beanies, you need to provide backup power for the times when the wind don’t blow. And you cannot do that successfully unless you build direct fired gas turbines that are quick enough to turn on and off to balance wind load variation.
Ontario currently uses (2) coal fired generators to balance wind energy. But these coal plants have to run 24/7 to be ready to pick up the demand. As a result, Ontario has to ‘dump’ power to Michigan and New York to keep the grid running. So much for keeping the carbon footprint down.
Most Ontario home users in Ontario currently pay between $60-90/MW for electricity, depending on their local utility and pricing plan.
But Ontario pays $135/MW for wind power($800/MW for solar), pays OPG $30/MW to run coal plants, and pays the Americans an additional $10/MW to take that coal energy off the grid. And now McGuinty is going to give everyone a $8/MW rebate to “cushion” the cost increases he created.
I’m sure the AP Barbie can figure out how sustainable this plan will be.
One of the places I used to work had digital displays around the workplace indicating the MW of electricity being generated at that moment. I wonder how often the readout on windfarms would be not just zero but negative? Perhaps a Times Square, NYC sized Big Screen display in every provincial capital is needed to make the public understand the idiocy of wind power.
Technically these fans are closer to Trochu and three hills than Bowden. Right beneath some of them are shale gas wells producing at about 2$ per gj and run through a gas turbine would produce power for about 10 to 15 percent of the cost of wind (on demand to boot). I could be wrong, but I’m lex to believe that these mills are owned by enmax that also has recently constructed a few gas turbines (there’s one right off of hwy 2 near Crossfield. One set of turbines for show, one set for go, I suppose.
Damn, gordinkneehill had the same idea and is quicker on the draw. 🙂
Gord Tulk @9:51
Then we are talking the same wind farm. They are GE 1.6 mW turbines, although curiously, they don’t bear the GE meatball logo on the nacelles. Is GE not proud of their product?
The nearest of these is about 2 miles north of my house. Fortunately, my house is so situated that I cannot see any of the turbines from the windows I normally look through.
And there are shale gas wells in the immediate area. Also Viking gas and Pekisko oil. There’s a rig drilling a directional well about half way between my place and the nearest turbine.
Note to self: coal-bed methane, not shale gas! And rigs have been drilling quite a few of those this year, some on the same quarter that I live on. Too bad I only own the acreage, not the quarter. Ka-ching!
G in khill:
Coal beds are a kind of shale aren’t they? I get your point though – the kind in your area are very shallow and very low flow and pressure and known as coalbed methane whereas the shale gas fields are usually very deep and high pressure/flow. Btw there are much deeper shale gas plays all the way from Drumheller to Drayton valley.
Hmmmm, Bowden. Home of the prison where the famous riot over the loss of their colour TVs and french fry makers was held.
I suggest we power the prison, on a trial basis, with wind this winter.
I’m not sure how Bowden got the credit?! I can see from the roadsigns this is the project in the Trochu area. Construction is a bit behind schedule although last I heard all 51 towers were up. No blade has ever turned, and won’t be allowed to until proper commisioning is done and units are brought on line. Coal beds are not a kind of shale, they are methane gas produced from coal seams. Natural gas turbines are a bit more complicated than Gord would have us believe, but still quicker to start and stop than coal fired boilers. More and more oilwells are controlled by POC’s (pump off controllers) that monitor the conditions at the pump, down the well, and stop the pumpjack when the well is “pumped off”, then allowing a predetermined time for the well to recover before it is restarted and the conditions are checked again. No use beatin’ a dead horse!
vianza, some of the turbines were definitely turning today. Not all, but a handful. I didn’t think to count them. At a guess, maybe about 10 RPM?
Since a line of them is upwind of my home, I wonder if I will benefit from somewhat lower northerly wind speeds once they go into operation? That could impact favourably on my heating bill if there is a real reduction in average wind velocity.
There are about 25 wind farms in Alberta [not including Bowden] of 111 in Canada.
// Welcome to the CanWEA wind farm database: a comprehensive list on wind energy projects in Canada.
Map of Installations
The map highlights Canada’s installed wind energy. The country’s current installed capacity is 3,549 MW – enough to power over 1 million Canadian homes. //
Try that again —
CanWEA wind farm database
Maybe im missing something but why not slap a hydraulic pump up top instead of a big assed generator? Keep the generator at the bottom and use the hydraulics to regulate in case of overspeed.
Is the general public being tricked by “the installed capacity” of the turbines as opposed to “the actual output”
For example the Pincher Creek wind farm states it has an “installed capacity” of 68.4 mega watts …. enough to power 24,000 homes. Sounds impressive considering there are only 38 windmills.
But that is probably based on if they ran 100% of the time for a whole year.
Is there a way to find out the ACTUAL mega watts produced in one year compared to the THEORETICAL potential.
Thanks
I didn’t read all the comments, so this might have been covered:
In Southern Alta (I grew up there) a huge, expensive natural gas power plant had to be built to provide backup power for the “green” windmills.
Also, my dad is a retired power lineman and says phase, load and voltage matching those things into a grid is a nightmare.
dwright
Well, what happened to the birds in Virginia this past week has finally become apparent.
pCp: “the turbines need to be slowed down to a halt, reoriented and started up again. ”
That’s right! Now how come no one has asked this question.
If the wind doesn’t come from the right direction, how do they turn the windmills to face it? I don’t see a weather vane on the back end of them.
Is it done using electricity? Isn’t that counter productive?
First time I heard this called the Bowden wind farm, more like Huxley/Trochu Windfarm. “Ghost Pine wind farm to be exact”. It’s owned by Florida light and power. There was some opposition to the project but none the less it was pushed through. To us locals they promised 1 full time job for every 4 turbines. I know at least 20 that applied and none were hired. We get to look at them, but don’t get the jobs that come from them.
Joe in Kneehill.
When did Three Hills get a Tim Hortons?? I think I would of heard that.
Pumpjacks (oil pumps) are usually on timers & will pump for any prescribed intervals throughout the day & contnuously in some cases. You can’t simply pump or flow a well at maximum….production rates are heavily governed by reservoir dynamics….for the most part the tendency is to flow or pump much less than maximum which will usually translate into drastically longer well life & greater production. Too much flow means drawing water up into well bore etc & possibly corrupting reservoir to the point of needing earlier remedial action than initially projected.
@johnbrooks at January 4, 2011 12:11 PM
Your question about how the windmills face the wind without a vane on the back …..
actually the wind direction is from “behind” the rotor . The rotor and hub is offset from the tower and it will naturally stay oriented.
It might seem backwards at first glance , but a symmetrical rotor works just fine with the wind coming from “behind”
Thanks.