France Faces Issues with Wind Turbines
A friend sent me this piece for comment, presenting the objection that some people in southern France have to wind turbines. Most of it focuses on the issue of the disposal of wind turbine blades that are decommissioned in favor of newer, longer ones. Excerpts with my comments include:
One thing is for sure. A storm is brewing over the future of wind power in Europe. The latest controversy concerns the difficulty to recycle turbine blades.
From this: Almost 90% of the blade material, primarily fiberglass, from onshore turbines that GE changes out during repowering efforts will be shredded and used to replace raw materials for cement manufacturing, creating a “circular economy for composite materials,” Anne McEntee, CEO of GE Renewable Energy’s Digital Services, said in a statement. In Europe, such recycling processes have grown to commercial scale, and GE plans to deploy the program at scale quickly.
“We’re not against wind power. We’re opposed to putting turbines in areas which are rich in terms of biodiversity. In Occitania, this is the case for roughly 70% of the region,” says Marion Valé, the group’s spokesperson.
There is little to no relationship between wind power and biodiversity. The photo above shows a typical wind farm.
Residents in and around the town of Lunas, in Southern France, want seven turbines in the Bernagues wind farm dismantled. They see them as an eyesore and a threat to the natural environment.
Anyone could have seen this coming, especially given the aesthetic sensibilities of the French. The vast majority of the world’s wind turbines are installed where this isn’t an issue, if only because the power generated by wind turbines is proportional to the cube of the wind velocity, meaning that doubling the velocity means octupling the power. No one wants to live in a place that have the wind resources found in California’s Mojave Desert or the vast plains of western Texas (see photo). I don’t really like to drive through such places (let alone live in them). The speed limit’s 80, I’m doing 92, and my rental car is blowing all over the freeway.
We will go from 2 to 4.2 Megawatts per turbine. This means we will triple the electricity produced.
No, going from 2 to 4 is a doubling, not a tripling.
We will surpass 9,000 Kilowatts per hour.
Maybe it’s just a pet peeve of mine, but authors of articles like this really should understand the units of power and energy, or perhaps let some high school science kid review it before publication. There is no such thing as “kilowatts per hour”; it’s like saying that the distance from here to Los Angeles is 100 miles per hour.
Hope this helps.
