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They have installed these in the Taiwan Strait where, in the event of war between China and Taiwan, one well-aimed missile knocks out power to 36000 homes or bu

They have installed these in the Taiwan Strait where, in the event of war between China and Taiwan, one well-aimed missile knocks out power to 36000 homes or businesses. Obviously the first target and the juiciest targets are those that disrupt and disable the adversary's ability to produce the means and materials of conducting warfare. Therefore power generation, factories that produce munitions or that can be quickly flipped to dual purpose factories are obvious targets to neutralize. Accomplishing the destruction of your adversary's domestic ability to produce the weapons of war, food stocks for the nation, munitions, etc compromises the adversary's ability to conduct a war without needing to depend on outside assistance. In Texas we have numerous wind farms. One of my relatives came home to find a crew at work on the neighboring property building a pad for a turbine. They had received no notice that a wind farm was to be constructed in the area and none about opportunities to object to turbine placement and as a result, while they were trying to determine who to contact about this, brand new turbines were installed on the neighboring property with the nearest one being less than 1500 feet from their home. It appears that they are now stuck with the constant whoosh-whoosh-whoosh of the blades as they rotate and an electric hum, 24 hours a day and their peaceful home now has an inescapable background noise pattern. I love wind power, I have some solar power installed on my own property and will be upgrading that. I think though that the ability to enjoy peace and quiet in your own home should not be compromised by a private utility even if they are providing clean power for public consumption. It would be better if we could replace some older turbines with newer units like this high-capacity turbine in the article. Perhaps with larger, more pwoerful turbines we would need fewer to be installed to be able to meet our state's power consumption needs. New wind power installations should be mandated to use best-available technology so that we end up with durable, reliable, quiet power generation with a minimal footprint.

matthewdgreen 3y ago
TFA is about offshore wind turbines, which would seem to address your concerns about having one built near your house.
- doodlebugging 3y ago
  Believe it or don't, I read TFA and added a little color to the situation since most of us understand that great technology like high-capacity turbines has the potential to be useful in more locations than just offshore installations. As time passes and we are able to make the switch from fossil fuel sources to renewable sources we will find ourselves with a requirement that we produce as much power as possible in the smallest footprint. There will always be people who don't want a turbine near their house. That's a simple fact. One of the original arguments against wind installations in California was the argument that it spoiled the view since no one wanted to see a bunch of turbines along a scenic ridge, they preferred the unmolested vistas of their childhood. Later, they focused on noise issues, which are valid concerns, and many states worked with operators and other stakeholders to design a set of guidelines or restrictions on minimal offsets from habitations. Texas is not one of those states and so wind turbines of any size can be installed within the wind farms without taking into consideration existing habitations. Most operators solicit public input though in the case I mentioned, there is no record of any notice to affected people that the wind farm might have an impact on their use of their property or quality of life. It is a lot like the problems we had here during the Barnett Shale boom about 15 years ago where operators bought mineral rights all over North Texas and began drilling for natural gas and then fracking those wells so they would be economical to produce. There were no restrictions in most cities and communities on offsets to housing, schools, businesses, etc and so, as the industry has done so many times in the past, they took advantage of that situation and began drilling knowing that they could deal with those problems later. Over a course of years some communities passed regulations limiting drilling locations and other parts of the operation in a bid to prevent drilling wells just over a fence and the building of compressor stations in neighborhoods. I think if you had a compressor station, even one with all the noise attenuating walls around it, near your own house you would also keep a wary eye on any attempts to bring other noise sources into your area that will interfere with your quiet enjoyment of your private property. The low frequency rumble from the compressor engines is not attenuated by the puffy walls and travels for large distances like ground roll on a seismic record. I am a geophysicist and for me, when the compressor starts up it is like feeling the initial part of an upsweep from a vibrator except that the upsweep never makes it to the higher frequencies. It's just a low frequency rumble that doesn't stop until the compressor engines stop. My mind doesn't get stuck on actualities, I look at possibilities, probabilities, and consequences and for that reason I can see that something like a huge turbine installed today in an offshore generation configuration could easily be employed later as a component of an onshore generation farm. I know that puff piece article didn't cover any of that ground since it was not designed to tell any part of that story.
jl6 3y ago
The low density of wind power actually makes it much harder for an adversary to take out a country's energy production capacity. Currently, that well-aimed missile could hit a nuclear plant and cause devastation as well as the loss of multiple gigawatts of capacity. The equivalent wind power would be spread across hundreds or thousands of turbines, spaced kilometers apart. Destroying one wouldn't have the same impact.
- throw0101a 3y ago
  > The equivalent wind power would be spread across hundreds or thousands of turbines, spaced kilometers apart. Take out the transformer station at, or transmissions line from, the wind farm.
  - thefurdrake 3y ago
    I have this problem a lot in rimworld. I solved it by running more than a single line. I feel like that's a viable solution for attacking transmission lines in the real world, too. Transformers less so, I suppose. I'd imagine those could be hardened. Is there a reason we couldn't place them underground?
  - tuatoru 3y ago
    That is not specific to wind technology. The risk is much worse with legacy coal, gas and nuclear power stations.
- doodlebugging 3y ago
  Missiles with integrated guidance systems are in every modern inventory. I mentioned the possibility of the loss of a single turbine to one missile and left it up to the reader to extrapolate the consequences if the one firing the missile had a large number of missiles at their disposal. Satellite data available allows one to pick high value targets with high precision. I hope that conflict between Taiwan and China never happens. I enjoy reading about new technologies coming into production and if these nations go to war, a lot of this productive capacity will shift to production of tools for war instead of tools useful for solving problems that we have brought on ourselves over generations.

matthewdgreen 3y ago

TFA is about offshore wind turbines, which would seem to address your concerns about having one built near your house.

doodlebugging 3y ago
Believe it or don't, I read TFA and added a little color to the situation since most of us understand that great technology like high-capacity turbines has the potential to be useful in more locations than just offshore installations. As time passes and we are able to make the switch from fossil fuel sources to renewable sources we will find ourselves with a requirement that we produce as much power as possible in the smallest footprint. There will always be people who don't want a turbine near their house. That's a simple fact. One of the original arguments against wind installations in California was the argument that it spoiled the view since no one wanted to see a bunch of turbines along a scenic ridge, they preferred the unmolested vistas of their childhood. Later, they focused on noise issues, which are valid concerns, and many states worked with operators and other stakeholders to design a set of guidelines or restrictions on minimal offsets from habitations. Texas is not one of those states and so wind turbines of any size can be installed within the wind farms without taking into consideration existing habitations. Most operators solicit public input though in the case I mentioned, there is no record of any notice to affected people that the wind farm might have an impact on their use of their property or quality of life. It is a lot like the problems we had here during the Barnett Shale boom about 15 years ago where operators bought mineral rights all over North Texas and began drilling for natural gas and then fracking those wells so they would be economical to produce. There were no restrictions in most cities and communities on offsets to housing, schools, businesses, etc and so, as the industry has done so many times in the past, they took advantage of that situation and began drilling knowing that they could deal with those problems later. Over a course of years some communities passed regulations limiting drilling locations and other parts of the operation in a bid to prevent drilling wells just over a fence and the building of compressor stations in neighborhoods. I think if you had a compressor station, even one with all the noise attenuating walls around it, near your own house you would also keep a wary eye on any attempts to bring other noise sources into your area that will interfere with your quiet enjoyment of your private property. The low frequency rumble from the compressor engines is not attenuated by the puffy walls and travels for large distances like ground roll on a seismic record. I am a geophysicist and for me, when the compressor starts up it is like feeling the initial part of an upsweep from a vibrator except that the upsweep never makes it to the higher frequencies. It's just a low frequency rumble that doesn't stop until the compressor engines stop. My mind doesn't get stuck on actualities, I look at possibilities, probabilities, and consequences and for that reason I can see that something like a huge turbine installed today in an offshore generation configuration could easily be employed later as a component of an onshore generation farm. I know that puff piece article didn't cover any of that ground since it was not designed to tell any part of that story.

jl6 3y ago

The low density of wind power actually makes it much harder for an adversary to take out a country's energy production capacity. Currently, that well-aimed missile could hit a nuclear plant and cause devastation as well as the loss of multiple gigawatts of capacity. The equivalent wind power would be spread across hundreds or thousands of turbines, spaced kilometers apart. Destroying one wouldn't have the same impact.

throw0101a 3y ago
> The equivalent wind power would be spread across hundreds or thousands of turbines, spaced kilometers apart. Take out the transformer station at, or transmissions line from, the wind farm.
- thefurdrake 3y ago
  I have this problem a lot in rimworld. I solved it by running more than a single line. I feel like that's a viable solution for attacking transmission lines in the real world, too. Transformers less so, I suppose. I'd imagine those could be hardened. Is there a reason we couldn't place them underground?
- tuatoru 3y ago
  That is not specific to wind technology. The risk is much worse with legacy coal, gas and nuclear power stations.
doodlebugging 3y ago
Missiles with integrated guidance systems are in every modern inventory. I mentioned the possibility of the loss of a single turbine to one missile and left it up to the reader to extrapolate the consequences if the one firing the missile had a large number of missiles at their disposal. Satellite data available allows one to pick high value targets with high precision. I hope that conflict between Taiwan and China never happens. I enjoy reading about new technologies coming into production and if these nations go to war, a lot of this productive capacity will shift to production of tools for war instead of tools useful for solving problems that we have brought on ourselves over generations.