The world’s largest wind turbine has been switched on

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7nSB1SdVHqQ

But, AFAIK, windmills wre immobilized when the wind gets too strong, in order to protect them. If the tech allows it, they can also be made to catch less window. Some Dutch wind mills could be rotated, and the cloth covering the arms could cover less surface. Modern windmills adapt their position automatically. Look at [0] and search for "Ten Have / Beckers".

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windmill_sail

The choice, if between coal-fired plants and windmills should be pretty obvious to birds. Sure we may not see them getting splashed to bits with coal-fired plants but they are silently getting ill/dying over time.

https://www.fws.gov/library/collections/threats-birds

234,012 - Collisions: Land-based wind turbines

6,600,000 - Collisions: Communication towers

72,000,000 - Pesticides & other poisons

214,500,000 - Collision: Vehicles

599,000,000 - Collision: Glass skyscrapers

2,400,000,000 - Predation by cats

[Unknown] - Habitat loss and climate change

These are just some estimates of some admittedly very difficult to capture data, but the orders of magnitude differences are revealing nonetheless.

[1] https://www.doll.eu/de/produkte/schwertransport/nachlaeufer-...

[2] https://www.wiwo.de/technologie/wirtschaft-von-oben/wirtscha...

The base is segments (shaped like calamari rings), which are big but usually can be transported by road, but the big ones probably can't pass under bridges.

Here are some images to give you an idea of the size of large wind turbines https://growsverige.se/2023/02/11/storleken-svindlar-pa-nya-...

I think you meant per minute.

Per second would mean that the rotor tips are travelling faster than SR-71.

In other words, wind pushing the middle of the blade could accelerate the tip, even if the tip only produces drag.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCsgoLc_fzI

> The partners as well as the BMFT also had political motives connected with the project. Günther Klätte, management board member of RWE, stated during a general business meeting: "We require Growian [in the general sense of large wind turbines] as a proof of failure of concept", and he noted that "the Growian is a kind of pedagogical tool to convert the anti-nuclear energy crowd to the true faith".[6] A similar statement regarding the incurred financial burdens was reported of Minister of Finance and former Minister of Research Hans Matthöfer: "We know it won't do anything for us. But we do it to demonstrate to the wind energy advocates that it doesn't work."[6] After the Green Party had derided the installation as the electricity provider's "fig leaf" on the occasion of groundbreaking in May 1981, the RWE took internal measures to make sure that publicly a position of open-mindedness towards alternative energy production was emphasized while public interest in wind energy was allayed.

(Picture two flat-topped letter 'A's, one behind the other, with a crossbar going from the top of the front one to the top of the back one. The blades spin around this crossbar, an axle. The generator can be at one end of this axle, or in the blade hub. The whole structure is floating, moored at one corner, and can rotate to keep the blades facing into the wind as required.)

When they were first installed there was local opposition, but now no one cares about them at all. They don't ruin the horizon, they aren't an eyesore, and compared to office blocks they don't seem to be killing a large number of birds or causing any other issues with wildlife.

They want to build more, but the blockage seems to be the large increases in costs of materials and labour since the project was costed pre-COVID (likely just a play for some govt subsidies?) and also concerns about pylons to carry the power generated. I'm personally not so worried about the pylons esp given the cost of buried cabling.

I assume that this turbine should be able to supply those 36,000 households for an arbitrary amount of time, not just one year.

How does eating meat factor into this?

Because it's better to worry about it and try to mitigate at the beginning, than wait until there is too much inertia, sunken costs, vested interests and institutional pushback. Some things become too hard to fix if you start wrong.

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.

Take out the transformer station at, or transmissions line from, the wind farm.

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.