5 ms·

Annoying article, it talks more about the (in my opinion very naïve and utopian) ramifications about the technology if implemented on a massive scale, than abou

by unwind 15y ago

Annoying article, it talks more about the (in my opinion very naïve and utopian) ramifications about the technology if implemented on a massive scale, than about the technology itself. http://news.discovery.com/tech/lens-wind-turbines-magnify-power.html http://news.discovery.com/tech/lens-wind-turbines-magnify-po... is marginally better (and more brief), I'm sure there are further sources.

sbt 15y ago
I'm confused. The discovery article says "Each Lens, which measures 112 meters in diameter, can provide enough energy for an average household." Does that mean we need millions (or even billions) of these structures?
- ctdonath 15y ago
  Article says we'd need "about 2,640,000".
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- MediaBehavior 15y ago
  So the diameter more than the width of a football (NFL) field. And... one of those per each household? Besides the visual obstruction, just finding such space for each abode is daunting anywhere (not to mention somewhere with the population density of Japan). EDIT: Or, consider the transmission costs from areas where such land is available.
trebor 15y ago
I've heard that wind turbines currently are dangerous/lethal to many birds. If we widely deploy a great many "wind lenses" or normal turbines we'd see a substantial loss in bird population.
- _delirium 15y ago
  I wouldn't say "substantial loss", unless there were a truly gigantic number put out there. Currently, wind turbines kill approximately 0.01% as many birds annually as household pets do (around 60k-80k birds annually in the United States for windmills, versus 500m-700m for pets). So, regulating outdoor pets would be a better place to start if we were truly worried about bird populations. Second place to start would be buildings with plate glass, which kill around 100m. Numbers in the tens of thousands are pretty small as an additional factor.
  - jerf 15y ago
    The point of observing that wind kills birds is more to shake people out of thinking it's a matter of "green = holy = perfect" vs. "conventional = evil = bad", and returning to thinking about costs, which are never zero, and benefits, than specifically about birds themselves. Once we're back in a frame of thought in which costs and to a lesser extent the benefits aren't being manipulated behind the scenes to produce a pre-desired result, and once we're back in a frame of thought where we once again remember we're talking about powering a civilization with these power generation methods and not just abstract numerical "houses" or whatever, we can have much better and connected-to-reality discussions on the topic of power generation. Unfortunately, wind doesn't hold up very well under such examination for a variety of purposes, and I seriously doubt this changes any significant aspect of the analysis. But that's not the "evil's" fault, it's just engineering.
    - onemoreact 15y ago
      I have trouble saying that wind is worse than coal when looking at the externalities. Among it's many problems Coal directly results in thousands of deaths and 100's of thousands of cases of respiratory distress in the US every single year. It's only when you consider the direct costs and ignore everything else that coal is in any way competitive with wind when building a new power plant.
      - jerf 15y ago

by unwind 15y ago

sbt 15y ago

I'm confused. The discovery article says "Each Lens, which measures 112 meters in diameter, can provide enough energy for an average household." Does that mean we need millions (or even billions) of these structures?

ctdonath 15y ago
Article says we'd need "about 2,640,000".
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
MediaBehavior 15y ago
So the diameter more than the width of a football (NFL) field. And... one of those per each household? Besides the visual obstruction, just finding such space for each abode is daunting anywhere (not to mention somewhere with the population density of Japan). EDIT: Or, consider the transmission costs from areas where such land is available.

trebor 15y ago

I've heard that wind turbines currently are dangerous/lethal to many birds. If we widely deploy a great many "wind lenses" or normal turbines we'd see a substantial loss in bird population.

_delirium 15y ago
I wouldn't say "substantial loss", unless there were a truly gigantic number put out there. Currently, wind turbines kill approximately 0.01% as many birds annually as household pets do (around 60k-80k birds annually in the United States for windmills, versus 500m-700m for pets). So, regulating outdoor pets would be a better place to start if we were truly worried about bird populations. Second place to start would be buildings with plate glass, which kill around 100m. Numbers in the tens of thousands are pretty small as an additional factor.
- jerf 15y ago
  The point of observing that wind kills birds is more to shake people out of thinking it's a matter of "green = holy = perfect" vs. "conventional = evil = bad", and returning to thinking about costs, which are never zero, and benefits, than specifically about birds themselves. Once we're back in a frame of thought in which costs and to a lesser extent the benefits aren't being manipulated behind the scenes to produce a pre-desired result, and once we're back in a frame of thought where we once again remember we're talking about powering a civilization with these power generation methods and not just abstract numerical "houses" or whatever, we can have much better and connected-to-reality discussions on the topic of power generation. Unfortunately, wind doesn't hold up very well under such examination for a variety of purposes, and I seriously doubt this changes any significant aspect of the analysis. But that's not the "evil's" fault, it's just engineering.
  - onemoreact 15y ago
    I have trouble saying that wind is worse than coal when looking at the externalities. Among it's many problems Coal directly results in thousands of deaths and 100's of thousands of cases of respiratory distress in the US every single year. It's only when you consider the direct costs and ignore everything else that coal is in any way competitive with wind when building a new power plant.
    - jerf 15y ago