In article ,
wrote:
On Feb 5, 2:44*am, (Fake ID) wrote:
In article ,

LSMFT wrote:
Why would the town care how close a wind mill is to a stream? Do they
leak grease or something?

There are a number of obstructions you may encounter: leaking grease,
killing bats, descecrating a riparian zone, disturbing nesting birds. *But
your biggest problem is going to be dealing with the North American Nimby.
If you want really have fun, claim it's a wifi antenna with decorative
fan. *Or a SmartMeter, again, with decorative fan.

m

There are certainly some potentially legitimate issues locating a
windmill
or any other structure for that matter, close to a stream. In many
cases
areas immediately adjacent to streams are protected and you can't
build on them.

Back in the 1970's the operator of the orchards surrounding our place
would bulldoze out the channel and dam the creek that ran behind our
place. I cannot imagine how ballistic the econuts would go if someone
tried that today.

However, when it comes to windmills, they are a good example of the
empty promises of the tree huggers. One of their cherished answers
to meeting our energy needs is wind power. Yet, in EVERY case I've
heard of, as soon as someone actually proposes to build some of
them, the same environmental extremists show up with a long, long
list of how harmful it will be to the environment..... The birds,
the noise,
the fish, where the power lines will go......

Within the past week the local newspaper had a story about a local
farmer who put up a couple windmills. The quotes from a neighbor
objecting to ruining the view could be predicted with 110% accuracy.
Something similar a few years ago in rich and liberal Marin County, CA
where the hypocritical residents forced the windmill to be built out of
sight.

In many cases, they further hide their true intentions by demanding
endless study and review, only to have that process repeat itself
so that nothing ever gets built. Which is exactly what they want.

I find the econuts to be pretty transparent about their goal of
obstructing any and all projects. It's commercial interests that
disguise their motives behind eco complaints.

One of the most recent examples of this kind of stupidity is here in
NJ. Gas companies want to build an offshore liquified natural gas
dock so that tankers can unload 13 miles out at sea off
central NJ A pipeline would run back to land. The usual
suspects are all on board
opposing that too. One of the principle complaints, even bought
into by some ignorant politicians, is that it could foul the beaches.
WTF? It's LNG, not oil. And which would you rather have? That
tanker off loading 13 miles at sea, or coming into NY harbor?

Somehow, and I'm not sure how, the kooks have taken over the country.

m

clipped

About 20? years ago, I read a very chilling thriller novel about that
very concept- terrorists bring an LNG tanker into a harbor (forget which
one) that fronted a wide river that happened to have enough cliffs and
such to make a natural bowl to contain a gas cloud, and somehow vent it
off without the safeties kicking in. They also timed it for the exact
worst possible weather conditions (hot muggy still day, etc) so wind
would not disperse it. I can't remember how it came out- the hero
probably pulled off a save at the last second or something- but they
claimed even a small LNG tanker could produce a gas cloud big enough,
that if it could be kept intact long enough to light off, would do
similar damage to a small nuke.

Author coulda been speaking out of his ass for all I know, but the data
presented seemed consistent with my limited knowledge of pyro and
explosives and flammable gases.


There have been documentaries about harbor security (since 9/11, of
course) and the NG tankers used as targets. Seems they discussed the
explosive force in terms of a large proportion of whatever city it was.
Domino effect, as well, I believe.

Fake ID wrote:

Within the past week the local newspaper had a story about a local
farmer who put up a couple windmills. The quotes from a neighbor
objecting to ruining the view could be predicted with 110% accuracy.
Something similar a few years ago in rich and liberal Marin County, CA
where the hypocritical residents forced the windmill to be built out
of
sight.


Oh, yeah. A number of years ago our local power company proposed a new
generating station. Part of the plan called for a cooling pond and a
discharge canal into a neighboring bay - about a mile away.

The environmentalists went nuts. This heated water (about 4-5 degrees above
ambient) would surely kill every aquatic thing from Houston to Mexico!

After much litigation, the facility was finally built.

Turns out shrimp LIKE the warmer water and congregate at the outlet of the
canal as well as IN the canal all the way back to the several-acre cooling
pond. Further, fish that eat shrimp (and don't mind the warmer water) also
gather in the same locations. Sometimes it looks like piranhas eating a cow!

Bottom line, fishermen are lined up shoulder-to-shoulder on the canal and
its environs!

Presumably the fish that DON'T like the warmer water go elsewhere. If there
are any. For sure, the environmentalists went elsewhere.

On Feb 5, 4:06*pm, Han wrote:
wrote :

On Feb 5, 8:45 am, Han wrote:
wrote
innews:9a1c895f-0330-4c98-ad15-d463fe40c385@f
30g2000yqa.googlegroups.com:

snip

snip

Here's a project that brings energy and jobs, and as usual, it will
go nowhere. Even Christy is against it.

Let's not start talking about Christie (spelling?). He's a populist
rabblerouser who will not get done what needs to be done (such as
more public transportation).

Spoken like a rabblerouser who doesn't live here. *He's already got
the
budget under control by cutting spending, which is EXACTLY what
needs to be done. *Just wait until all the union contracts come up for
renegotiation.....

I have lived in Bergen county for the past 12+ years. *OK, my daughter
and son-in-law are high school teachers in South Orange and Paterson. *
Our town is now having trouble making ends meet, as are many towns. *I
agree that there are many things where cuts eed to be made, not the least
of them pensions calculated on the amount of overtime in the last years
of employment. *And if you would want your kids being taught by 35K/year
teachers and have the legislators and administration give money to their
friends, yes, then I'm a rabble rouser.

--
Best regards
Han
email address is invalid


If only it were so.... In fact, NJ teachers are the third highest
paid in the
country, averaging $56,600.

http://www.employmentspot.com/employ...ries-by-state/

"The state with the highest average teacher salary was Connecticut, at
$57,760.
California was a very close second, where the average teacher salary
is $57,604.
New Jersey teachers make approximately $56,635 per year. "

To find teachers making $35K, you'd
have to go to Miami. And do you think there is a big difference in
the
quality of education in NJ versus Miami?

That's the big mistake some people make, which the politicians feed
on and how govt grows and spending goes out of control.
They think that money is the solution
to every problem. In NJ, the districts where we've poured huge
amounts
of money, eg Camden, Newark, Asbury Park, still have the worst
track records and little or no improvement. Those districts are
gettting
2X per student what the average district in NJ spends to educate
their children. And I don't know about you, but $57K a year for a job
where you have 2 1/2 months off every summer, plus more holidays
than any other job isn't a bad deal.

I agree the bloated pensions are a problem, but it's a difficult one
that isn't going to be easy. You can change it moving forward, but
the real problem is you can't just change pensions that were granted
over the last couple decades. GM managed to do it through
bankruptcy, which apparently states cannot.

IMO, Christie is the first governor to have the guts to start to take
on
these issues. He'd be doing a lot more, but with the Dems still in
control of the legislature and senate, there is only so much he can
do. So far he's reduced spending, balanced the budget, and
killed the rail tunnel to nowhere that would have cost us billions.

On Feb 6, 6:55*am, "HeyBub" wrote:
Fake ID wrote:

Within the past week the local newspaper had a story about a local
farmer who put up a couple windmills. *The quotes from a neighbor
objecting to ruining the view could be predicted with 110% accuracy.
Something similar a few years ago in rich and liberal Marin County, CA
where the hypocritical residents forced the windmill to be built out
of
sight.

Oh, yeah. A number of years ago our local power company proposed a new
generating station. Part of the plan called for a cooling pond and a
discharge canal into a neighboring bay - about a mile away.

The environmentalists went nuts. This heated water (about 4-5 degrees above
ambient) would surely kill every aquatic thing from Houston to Mexico!

After much litigation, the facility was finally built.

Turns out shrimp LIKE the warmer water and congregate at the outlet of the
canal as well as IN the canal all the way back to the several-acre cooling
pond. Further, fish that eat shrimp (and don't mind the warmer water) also
gather in the same locations. Sometimes it looks like piranhas eating a cow!

Bottom line, fishermen are lined up shoulder-to-shoulder on the canal and
its environs!

Presumably the fish that DON'T like the warmer water go elsewhere. If there
are any. For sure, the environmentalists went elsewhere.

We've had a similar thing here in NJ for the last 40 years. The
Oyster Creek
nuclear power plant discharges it's cooling water into the creek,
which in
turn makes it's way to Barnegat Bay. All was OK until recent years,
when
the environmentalists went hell bent on getting it closed. One of
the big
bitches were that on the rare occasions when the plant shuts down
unexpectedly, the water temp in the creek drops quickly, killing some
fish. So,
you wind up with some floating dead fish, menhaden and the like, which
are
common, the bay has millions, and 500 dead ones matter not a wit.

But the econuts as you put it demanded they build cooling towers on a
plant that is now 40 years old. The state went along with the
nonsense.
It would have cost $200Mil to $300Mil.
Finally GPU had enough and announced they will be closing it in 2020.
One more victory for the econuts, who believe electricity just comes
out
of the wall outlet.

Han wrote:
dpb wrote in
:
....
But, even in those areas (this is the High Plains here, one of the
highest wind areas in the US) and the Gray County wind farm has
produced at only 40% of installed capacity over the 8 years since
installation based on EIA production data. The highest monthly
production in those 8 years has barely exceeded 50% and the average
during Feb and Aug is in the mid-20% range as the wind doesn't blow as
much even here during those changing-seasons periods.
....
I'm considering the possibility that that low % is because of either
contracts specifying how much has to be bought from other sources, or
competitive prices of other sources.

Gray County is operated by NextEra Energy (renamed Florida P&L
subsidiary formerly FPL Energy LLC) which is a generation-only outfit.
So, they're not buying power elsewhere; their objective would be to sell
everything they can make.

http://www.nexteraenergyresources.com/content/where/portfolio/pdf/graycounty.pdf

I'm pretty heavily involved w/ our local electric co-op; Dad was
founding member and on board 50 years; we've kept on since returned to
farm after previous career in engineering mostly w/ the electric
utilities (starting in nukes w/ B&W then going into consulting ending up
mostly in support of fossil).

Anyway, Sunflower, the generation co-op for western distribution co-ops
in the state has agreement to buy 50 MW from Gray County but it's in
fulfillment of requirement to have "green" power percentages as decreed
by legislation (and to a lesser extent for the publicity) but otherwise
wouldn't on a purely economic evaluation of best value to members. It
costs us a minimum of 25% more/kW to buy it than does equivalent power
from the shares from conventional generation and nearly double what our
share from Wolf Creek Nuclear does.

It isn't a logical choice other than for reasons other than economic
(unless, of course, one is one of those _very_ few landowners getting
royalties or the generating companies getting the tax incentives that
subsidize the construction and the subsequent revenue that's mandated
they have a market for).

Who knows, _eventually_ somebody may figure out how to both make the
wind blow 24/7 and also increase the energy density but until then for
"clean" power and to have a notable effect on reduction of C emissions,
nuclear baseload generation has all current alternatives beat hands
down. (I've a comparative graph of the Wolf Creek availability over the
same time frame also on the above-mentioned spreadsheet).

--

wrote in
:

On Feb 5, 4:06*pm, Han wrote:
wrote
innews:2adc5d19-13c6-473a-99d1-599fc465dee1@r
16g2000yql.googlegroups.com:

On Feb 5, 8:45 am, Han wrote:
wrote
innews:9a1c895f-0330-4c98-ad15-d463fe40c385@f
30g2000yqa.googlegroups.com:

snip

snip

Here's a project that brings energy and jobs, and as usual, it
will go nowhere. Even Christy is against it.

Let's not start talking about Christie (spelling?). He's a
populist rabblerouser who will not get done what needs to be done
(such as more public transportation).

Spoken like a rabblerouser who doesn't live here. *He's already got
the
budget under control by cutting spending, which is EXACTLY what
needs to be done. *Just wait until all the union contracts come up
fo
r
renegotiation.....

I have lived in Bergen county for the past 12+ years. *OK, my
daughter and son-in-law are high school teachers in South Orange and
Paterson. * Our town is now having trouble making ends meet, as are
many towns. *I agree that there are many things where cuts eed to be
made, not the least of them pensions calculated on the amount of
overtime in the last years of employment. *And if you would want your
kids being taught by 35K/yea
r
teachers and have the legislators and administration give money to
their friends, yes, then I'm a rabble rouser.

--
Best regards
Han
email address is invalid


If only it were so.... In fact, NJ teachers are the third highest
paid in the
country, averaging $56,600.

http://www.employmentspot.com/employ...-salaries-by-s
tate/

"The state with the highest average teacher salary was Connecticut, at
$57,760.
California was a very close second, where the average teacher salary
is $57,604.
New Jersey teachers make approximately $56,635 per year. "

To find teachers making $35K, you'd
have to go to Miami. And do you think there is a big difference in
the
quality of education in NJ versus Miami?

That's the big mistake some people make, which the politicians feed
on and how govt grows and spending goes out of control.
They think that money is the solution
to every problem. In NJ, the districts where we've poured huge
amounts
of money, eg Camden, Newark, Asbury Park, still have the worst
track records and little or no improvement. Those districts are
gettting
2X per student what the average district in NJ spends to educate
their children. And I don't know about you, but $57K a year for a job
where you have 2 1/2 months off every summer, plus more holidays
than any other job isn't a bad deal.

I agree the bloated pensions are a problem, but it's a difficult one
that isn't going to be easy. You can change it moving forward, but
the real problem is you can't just change pensions that were granted
over the last couple decades. GM managed to do it through
bankruptcy, which apparently states cannot.

IMO, Christie is the first governor to have the guts to start to take
on
these issues. He'd be doing a lot more, but with the Dems still in
control of the legislature and senate, there is only so much he can
do. So far he's reduced spending, balanced the budget, and
killed the rail tunnel to nowhere that would have cost us billions.

Well, NJ may be 3rd highest in teacher salary, but both my daghter and my
son-in-law, despite master's degrees don't make that much. Which means
they are lucky (they know it) that grandma can babysit. And part of the
high cost is that teachers get easily promoted away, since the seniority
system does not take teacher success into account.

--
Best regards
Han
email address is invalid

On Fri, 04 Feb 2011 15:24:44 -0800, Joe wrote:

On Feb 4, 11:58Â*am, Sjouke Burry
wrote:
LSMFT wrote:
Why would the town care how close a wind mill is to a stream? Do they
leak grease or something?

They leak sound , lots of it, like
screach/wap,screatch/wap repeated all day and night long.

Don't agree with that at all. Our county has hundreds of wind tower
generators

those are wind turbines, not windmills...

dpb wrote:
Han wrote:
dpb wrote in
...

So, that means that on average there has to be 2.5X times the
installed capacity to meet a given load demand and that there also has
to be spinning reserve to make up for the shortfall when the wind
....
I'm considering the possibility that that low % is because of either
contracts specifying how much has to be bought from other sources, or
competitive prices of other sources.

8-yr averages are all very similar showing the patterns consistent w/
weather. Feb and Aug are both high demand months in cold and hot
weather, respectively. Given the consistency over that long an
operational period, I'm convinced it is at significantly
production-limited by lack of wind.

....
... And, unfortunately, there's no publicly available data site
for windspeed information in a convenient-enough format I've gone to the
trouble to try to correlate with. The closest NWS official recording
station is Dodge City which is 30+ miles ...

I looked again at the possibilities of finding some correlate-able wind
data...wunderground.com has modified their history pages some since last
time and now it's at feasible to get something that has at least some
usefulness w/o _too_ much effort...

So far I've downloaded two years of data from the NWS DDC (Dodge City,
KS) archives and computed monthly averages of the daily average
windspeeds and added those to the plots of monthly production for the
two years. As I suspected, there's a fair similarity in the overall
shape of the data during the year reflecting the cyclic nature of the
wind speed during the year and the overall output is definitely
positively correlated with the average wind speed.

To do this really well one would need the actual wind speed at the site
and be able to do weighted averages over the shorter intervals
reflecting the dynamics of the rotor response to variations in speed,
but even at this bulk level it's pretty obvious that months with lower
average wind speeds tend to have lower net generation. (One interesting
thing to note is how low average wind speeds are even here owing to the
diurnal cycle that when sun goes down, often so does the wind...)

It'll take a couple more days to actually do the full 8 years of data
I've already tabulated for generation and I've not done 2010 yet,
either. Not sure if that data is yet available at the EIA site; takes
them a while to correlate and publish.

--