Pardon the rampant alliteration, but...
Bye, Bye British Birdies!

Skeptical_Geezer

I'll weigh in as the resident wind energy expert. The UK could pull this off, but it wouldn't leave many turbines for the rest of the world. Turbine backorders are running about 3+ years right now.

As far as Kansas and other great plains states are concerned, the wind potential is definitely there, but the demand is not. We're exploring delivery options right now, but we're talking about literally thousands of miles of transmission lines that are necessary. The permitting process across that many counties and states is going to be a long time, unless we can get some coordination help from the federal government as part of a mandatory national renewable portfolio standard.

EBone

the cool thing about wind-power is that air doesn't really care if it is being blown or sucked. And neither do I.

islandmonk

If i bought a few hundred acres in Kansas and put these up I could be checking them daily in my Rolls. If one powers 5000 homes @ .2c a KWH I see nothung but $$$$.

One wonders at this point how much the America government wants to keep the coal flowing. I would love to see a document with how much money goes from my electril bill right into the Republican and Democrat slush / vacation fund.

jutman

@yogibimbi:

Couldn't agree more. I routinely drive between upstate New York and the Philadelphia area, and somewhere along the turnpike there's a small windmill farm along one of the mountain passes. Far from being an eyesore, I think they look lovely. Anyway, maybe when petro-based energy climbs even higher and stays there for a while, the NIMBY factions will come around. As for the danger to migrating birds mentioned by some, literally millions are killed by collisions with building windows and cars. The hazard from windmills is vastly overstated. (See [www.treehugger.com] )

SnowPants

@FredicvsMaximvs: Stairs? Well, hell...that's what trucks and SUVs are for!

dwarfgoat

Man, that's a lot of jiggawatts!

Re: "the UK coastline may lose its scenic beauty", it's just a different kind of beauty...

ideaman2020

They have these turbines in Alpha Dog, not surprisingly, they pull out a better performance than the entire live cast.

gokor

Sounds almost too good to be true... :-|

They talk about incentives, to entice companies to invest and build these wind farms. They did that too in France some time back and now, due to an Eco law, the wind farm companies are being paid 3 times the going rate for electricity. The EDF is now bound to buy the electricity until something like 2015, even though it doesn't need it. France already exports about 20% of it's production to countries like the UK.

The only companies building these things on a large scale are German and Scandinavian firms so all the money and investment just goes abroad. The UK will loose out in the long term.

Even though it does blow quite a bit around the UK most of the time, there are times when the wind doesn't blow. What do you do then when 50% of the power cuts out...?

Toto

@yogibimbi: I couldn't agree more. I'm amazed that people are less willing to balk at giant metal spaghetti mounds of oil refineries and dirt chugging power plants.

Kaiser-Machead

This would be one of the Wonders of the World!

ANoel

Also, mix things up.

Fedex blanketed their entire roof in cali with modern solar panels. They will get enough to provide their peak power usage and put power back on the grid when they arent cranking away.

If people put smaller scale solar kits on their roofs they might not be independent but they could really reduce what has to be produced centrally.

archercc

@tamoko: Being from Kansas, I agree. Its quite windy there and esimates if you covered 60% of the state with these things you could provide the power to the rest of the US.

At a cost, of course. Kansas would turn into the new Saudi Arabia (but with $200k pickups instead of Rolls)

archercc

Damn limeys. Always making us look bad.

While I doubt they will be, I hope they are very visible. The world needs to see as much alternative energy power systems as they can to understand that we all need to take steps like this.

Monty

@yogibimbi: If people could figure out a way to get their cars up the stairs they'd drive to the loo, too.

FredicvsMaximvs

I personally don't see what's so ugly about them. I'd take these over smog in a heartbeat.

FredicvsMaximvs

Yogibimbi: Yes you're 100% right.

moveteam

oh, and apart from the 'd' behind 'perceived' I forgot to mention the uglyness of exhaust fumes (well, despite their obvious health issues), of the noise of cars, power plants and their other respective emissions...

yogibimbi

I can't really understand all those people whining about real or perceive aesthetical problems with wind turbines. Those are the same people who are prepared to accept the uglyness of conventional power plants and their chimneys, or of oil refineries, just to keep their central heating chugging along below 20°C and the airco above that, and drive everywhere with their car but to the loo?
The climate is going to hell in a handbasket and all anybody can say it _looks_ bad to stop emissions?
Well, if you prefer breathing in a mix of Ozone, elevated CO2 and other niceties in a sauna at 90°C average ambient temperature, be my guest, but you should seriously consider relocating to Venus.

yogibimbi

I wish this would pick up here in America

ImTheKing

Cool place for 'em, even of the marine environment means more maintenance.

Very cool.

strider_mt2k

Na you won see it. They wont built it directly on the coastline but 20 - 50 kilomters away from the coast as they do it in denmark and germany now. They just have too built in on the continental shelf and withing the 200sm. Exclusive Economic Zone

Redwraithvienna

Bring on the wind turbine goodness.

All of Kansas and Wyoming should be blanketed with these things. Although there's still that problem of migrating birds....

tamoko

How visible will they be?

Can you not just put them even further out to sea?

Anyway they can't look as bad as those huge container ships that you always see..

Compact

For the bird lovers out there - less than 0.5% of all human - caused bird fatalities come from wind turbines. Over 90% are from domestic cat predation.

Www.awea.org

EBone

When wind turbines are this large, they turn very slowly. At this speed and scale, the turbines will end up killing birds at the same rate as a tower of the same height (e.g. no chopping up of birds, but birds still fly into the pole every once in a while).

tcolberg

1.21 JIGAWATTS!!!

sublimnl

Fuck all the haters! Wind turbines look awesome.

Fatty1

there are less obtuse looking options I am sure they are looking at. but either way, if the UK does it, it will help push the other western countries to as well.

EMoShunz