70 windmills coming to N.J. shoreline

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://www.northjersey.com/page.php?qstr=eXJpcnk3ZjczN2Y3dnFlZUVFeXk2MDYmZmdiZWw3Zjd2cWVlRUV5eTcyMDM2NDgmeXJpcnk3ZjcxN2Y3dnFlZUVFeXky

70 windmills coming to N.J. shoreline

Friday, October 5, 2007

By COLLEEN DISKIN
STAFF WRITER

About 70 windmills will sprout in the ocean off the Jersey Shore, producing enough energy to power some 125,000 homes.

The Board of Public Utilities on Wednesday gave its OK to a pilot project to erect the windmills between three to 20 miles off the state's shores.

The BPU will solicit private companies to build the mini wind-power station. If the pilot project succeeds, more windmills could be built.

The ocean is New Jersey's windiest location, but the prospect of harvesting that energy has been controversial.

Some ocean and birding advocates are concerned about the potential harm to aquatic life and the prospect of ruining ocean views that bring in tourism dollars. But other environmental groups have complained about the overly cautious approach New Jersey has taken to developing greenhouse gas-free power source.

"We don't want to wait another five years for windmills to get constructed when the effects of global warming are getting worse every year," said Jeff Tittel, executive director of the New Jersey Sierra Club.

...

[partylessinOhio]

1. How many dead birds for power?

[dbackjon]

2. No kidding

Birding brings tens of millions of dollars into NJ every year - and millions of birds migrate through/just off the Jersey Shore.

[jpak]

4. Massive Offshore Wind Turbines Safe for Birds (FYI)

http://www.technologyreview.com/Energy/18167/

Uncertainty surrounding wind power's impact on wildlife--particularly the potential for deadly collisions between birds and turbines--has tarnished its image and even delayed some wind farms. Indeed, the first large offshore wind farm proposed for U.S. waters--the Cape Wind project in Massachusetts's Nantucket Sound--has been held up in part by concerns that its 130 turbines could kill thousands of seabirds annually. Now a simple infrared collision-detection system developed by Denmark's National Environmental Research Institute is helping clear the air.

The Thermal Animal Detection System (TADS) is essentially a heat-activated infrared video camera that watches a wind turbine around the clock, recording deadly collisions much as a security camera captures crimes. The first results, released this winter as part of a comprehensive $15 million study of Denmark's large offshore wind farms, show seabirds to be remarkably adept at avoiding offshore installations. "There had been suggestions that enormous numbers of birds would be killed," says Robert Furness, a seabird specialist at the University of Glasgow, who chaired the study's scientific advisory panel. "There's a greater feeling now among European politicians that marine wind farms are not going to be a major ecological problem, and therefore going ahead with construction is not going to raise lots of political difficulties."

The Danish findings are also resonating across the Atlantic, casting doubt on worst-case scenarios presented by Cape Wind's opponents. "The results make us guardedly optimistic," says Taber Allison, vice president for conservation science at the Lincoln, MA-based conservation group Mass Audubon and an outspoken critic of ecological studies by Boston-based Cape Wind Associates.

ADS was developed to solve a problem specific to monitoring bird collisions at offshore wind farms, in this case the 80-turbine Horns Rev wind farm off Denmark's North Sea coast and the 72-turbine Nysted wind farm in the Baltic. The Danish researchers at Horns Rev and Nysted used visual monitoring and radar tracking, which showed that most birds avoided the farms altogether or flew down the half-kilometer-wide gaps between the wind farms' orderly rows of turbines. But the researchers still could not rule out the possibility that some birds were flying close enough to strike the turbine blades, which spin as fast as 80 meters per second at the tip. Of particular concern were larger seabirds, especially the common eiders that migrate through the area. "We were concerned that these large, rather clumsy birds might not be able to maneuver around the turbines," says Danish environmental institute researcher Mark Desholm, who designed TADS.

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Audubon review supports wind farm

http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2006/03/29/audubon_review_supports_wind_farm/

The Massachusetts Audubon Society gave its preliminary blessing yesterday to a large-scale wind power project off Cape Cod, saying its studies show that turbine blades are not likely to cause significant harm to birds, as the group had once feared.

Support from the environmental group, one of the most respected in the state, is important because the threat to birds has emerged as a controversial aspect of the five-year-old proposal to turn stiff sea breezes into a source of electricity.

The group had previously raised questions about potential bird deaths, but Jack Clarke, advocacy director of Mass Audubon, said extensive studies it conducted in the last four years showed that endangered roseate terns and piping plovers, the group's main concerns, and other sensitive species generally avoid the 24-square-mile footprint of the proposed wind farm in Nantucket Sound.

''Our preliminary conclusion is that the project would not pose a threat to avian species," he said.

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[OKIsItJustMe]

8. FWIW: Absolutely unscientific, 2nd hand, anecdotal evidence

My brother tells me of having watched a flock of birds fly repeatedly through the blades of a large turbine, without a single one being harmed. He said they seemed to be having fun.

[jpak]

9. you had me for a second there

:spank:

[dbackjon]

12. Altamont Pass tells a different story

And probably more equivalent to this project, in terms of being in migratory paths.

[OKIsItJustMe]

14. And therein lies the difference

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altamont_Pass_Wind_Farm

The Altamont Pass Wind Farm is one of the earliest in the United States. The wind farm is composed of over 6000 relatively small wind turbines of various types, making it at one time the largest farm in the world in terms of capacity. Altamont Pass is still the largest concentration of wind turbines in the world, producing about 125 MW on average. They were installed after the 1970s energy crisis in response to favorable tax policies for investors.

Considered largely obsolete, these numerous small turbines are being gradually replaced with much larger and more cost-effective units. The small turbines are dangerous to various raptors that hunt California Ground Squirrels in the area. The larger units turn slower and, being elevated higher, are less hazardous to the local wildlife.

...

My brother was visiting one of the newest wind farms in New York State. The turbines are much larger, and revolve much more slowly than the models used at Altamont Pass.

[XemaSab]

16. Cape Cod is not the Jersey Shore

FYI.

[jpak]

17. I am an avid birder and have 800+ species on my life list

and I know the difference...

FYI

:P

[XemaSab]

19. I am an avid birder and I have a brazilion species on my life list

and most Americans are HUGH MORANS who don't know Cape May from a hole in the ground....

FYI

:P

[NYVet]

3. Consider the alternatives

Nuclear, coal, hydro, solar.

Wind is the cleanest of all the altenatives. And the blades do not turn as fast as the old windmills used to turn.

[ramapo]

5. Tell me....how many??

I'm sorry if some birds get killed by the blades. Even if it is thousands of birds.

How many birds are killed by cats or by crashing into windows? I find dead birds in my yard not infrequently.

It seems that wind power is about as environmentally cost-free as you can get.

What do you propose? Another coal-fired plant in NJ? A new nuke?

Thank god we're better than the Cape Cod'ers who couldn't tolerate the thought of seeing a bunch of windmills out in the ocean. RFK Jr should be ashamed.

At some point, some form of energy generation has to be ok.

[dbackjon]

13. Outdoor Cats should be eliminated as well

No place for them in nature. And we have to get better with high-rise windows, towers, lights.

A few thousand birds here and there, next thing you know there will only be starlings around...

[NNadir]

18. There is no evidence whatsoever that this system will be safe as a nuke.

Nuclear power plants have killed zero people in 50 years of operations and have done so on a ten exajoule scale, year after year after decade.

This is not true of wind plants.

Wind plants, on the other hand, have never produced an exajoule.

Nuclear plants are reliable. Wind plants are not.

These wind plants will not be as dangerous as the crap sold by the Walmart executive Amory Lovins (natural gas), and they will be safer than dangerous natural gas.

But they will not be close to being safe as nukes.

New Jersey needs to save Oyster Creek from ignorance, and we need to build the additional plant proposed at Salem. Saving Oyster Creek from ignorance will be the largest single climate change action in this state. Nothing, absolutely nothing on the drawing board could save as much dangerous fossil fuel waste (carbon dioxide) as running Oyster Creek another 20 years.

We should build two or three more nuclear plants to completely eliminate the use of dangerous fossil fuel generated electricity in our state.

In fact, with our extensive shoreline, we could export considerable electricity to PA and maybe even shut the coal plants that kill us from Ohio.

[jpak]

20. Oyster Creek has killed endangered sea turtles, many thousands of fish and countless more

marine organisms...

http://www.environmentnewjersey.org/legislature/testimony/clean-water/clean-water/oyster-creeek-nuclear-generating-station39s-pollution-of-nearby-waterways



Since Oyster Creek was built in 1969, the plant's operation has resulted in far-reaching and long-lasting environmental degradation in the nearby waterways of Forked River, Oyster Creek and Barnegat Bay.

Oyster Creek's once-through cooling system was designed in the 1960s. The system intakes water from Forked River to cool the reactor and the heated water, or thermal pollution, is then discharged into Oyster Creek. The plant intakes and discharges an enormous amount of water—over 1.4 billion gallons—on a daily basis. The water is taken in at a speed of 1-2,000 cubic feet per second, which is the force of a medium-sized river. The chlorine levels in the water are also 20 times the lethal level of many types of aquatic life.

Despite grates over the intakes, the water flushing creates a giant sucking action that brings with it an assortment of aquatic life. Some of this aquatic life is small, flows through the grate, and is killed in process of cooling the reactor. This lethal effect is called entrainment. Larger types of aquatic life, such as striped bass, white perch, and endangered sea turtles, get pinned on the grate and often die from, or are seriously injured by, the rush of oncoming water. This lethal effect is called impingement.

The plant has developed a record of killing threatened and endangered species, specifically sea turtles, over the last ten years. From 1992 to 2000, the plant recorded 17 captures of sea turtles and six sea turtle mortalities. Even though these figures are high, the problem could be much worse. A 2001 Nuclear Regulatory Commission report found discrepancies in the number of kills that Exelon reported to the NRC and the number in the archive, and concluded the "inconsistent and erratic availability of data on sea turtle captures at Oyster Creek underscores a wider unreliability of information supplied to the public."

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but who's counting????

Certainly not the (GOP) shills at the Nuclear Energy Institute...

http://neinuclearnotes.blogspot.com/search?q=oyster+creek

[jpak]

21. "Nuclear power plants have killed zero people in 50 years of operations"

nonsense

Chernobyl

Furthermore, by 2010 global wind capacity will exceed 100 GW and will produce (way) more than an ex-o-jewel of electrical energy per year...

[NNadir]

22. By 2010 huh? Weren't you saying by 2007 in 2004?

Of course, you have never managed to understand units of energy and you still insist that mocking the SI unit with a typically dumb anti-nuke mispelling will make you sound as if you are literate about energy.

Of course, saying "EVIL-LU-SHUN" doesn't make creationists any less stupid, but whatever...

In fact, it would seem that the wind plants aren't all that reliable. Here for instance is an article from Der Speigel:

Wind turbines continue to multiply the world over. But as they grow bigger and bigger, the number of dangerous accidents is climbing. How safe is wind energy?

It came without warning. A sudden gust of wind ripped the tip off of the rotor blade with a loud bang. The heavy, 10-meter (32 foot) fragment spun through the air, and crashed into a field some 200 meters away.

The wind turbine, which is 100 meters (328 feet) tall, broke apart in early November 2006 in the region of Oldenburg in northern Germany -- and the consequences of the event are only now becoming apparent. Startled by the accident, the local building authority ordered the examination of six other wind turbines of the same model...

...of course you couldn't care less about this accident, nor the Texas City refinery accident caused by the world's largest solar power company, BP, because well, you couldn't care less.

Let's have some more insight from those wonderful coal plant building Germans about their new wind industry and it's reliability:

After the industry's recent boom years, wind power providers and experts are now concerned. The facilities may not be as reliable and durable as producers claim. Indeed, with thousands of mishaps, breakdowns and accidents having been reported in recent years, the difficulties seem to be mounting. Gearboxes hiding inside the casings perched on top of the towering masts have short shelf lives, often crapping out before even five years is up. In some cases, fractures form along the rotors, or even in the foundation, after only limited operation. Short circuits or overheated propellers have been known to cause fires. All this despite manufacturers' promises that the turbines would last at least 20 years.

Now, we can only imagine the reaction of all the anti-nukes and their sockpuppets if a nuclear plant suffered a complete breakdown in 5 years.

We'd have fifty threads on the subject. Probably 8 new sockpuppets would come into being just to cry about it. In fact, there was a tiny leak in a Japanese nuclear plant after a major earthquake and the anti-nuke religion was crying as if everyone in Japan was about to die.

The number of anti-nukes who demanded an end to buidlings, even though 100% of the victims of the earthquake were actually injured by buildings collapsing and radiation, is zero.

As for this "by 2010" fantasy, I need only note that after nearly a half of decade of big, big, big, big, big talk from the anti-nuke religion here on this website, nuclear power produces 45 times as much energy in this country as wind. This means that about 2 nuclear plants produce as much energy as all the big, big, big, big, big world's largest brazillion megabeggawatt (and let's not ever ask an anti-nuke to distinguish power from energy - God forbid) wind farm.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/solar.renewables/page/trends/table1.html

Nobody would object, of course, if wind power produced - in spite of the efforts of fossil fuel apologists like the anti-nuke Robert F. Kennedy - an exajoule, but anyone looking for that exajoule will be waiting a long, long, long, long time.

The renewable energy industry is pretty pathetic, given that it's experience decades and decades and decades of unrestricted cheering and can't even in all its forms match nuclear power.

Of course, we will all take whatever offerings the renewable industry will offer, but anyone who pretends that this pathetic failed industry can take on fossil fuels is probably living on Mom and Dad's estates on the interest from the trust.

[OKIsItJustMe]

24. Exajoule

For those of you playing along at home, NNadir just loves to use the term "exajoule." Why? So he can prove he's smarter than you, since he knows words you don't.

To convert an exajoule into something we all can understand, it's about 280,000 gigawatt hours.

There are 8,760 hours in a year.

So, if you have a constant output of about 32GW, in one year that would total one exajoule. 100GW of constant power would produce about 3 exajoules in a year.

Of course wind power is not constant. It varies... with the wind. Nuclear power plants tend to put out a fairly constant amount of energy. (Except of course when the rivers get too warm.)

[jpak]

26. Umm..the "pathetic" renewable energy industry cracked the dreaded ex-o-jewel barrier last year

and conservatively so...

74 GWe of wind turbine capacity = 0.70 EJ/y
8.9 GWe of geothermal capacity = 0.21 EJ/y
8.2 GWe of photovoltaics capacity = 003 EJ/y
2.2 GWe of solar thermal electric = 0.01 EJ/y
100+ GWt solar thermal capacity = 0.23 EJ/y

= 1.2 EJ/y

...and every single one of those categories is growing exponentially by serious double digits per year...

...and additions of new pathetic renewable energy capacity are beating the pants off of new nucular capacity...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=115&topic_id=88105#88450

[OKIsItJustMe]

23. What a funny man!

"Nuclear power plants have killed zero people in 50 years of operations..."


Clearly people died in Chernobyl.

Remember that there is more to the nuclear power industry than plants. There's also fuel processing, and experiments. Power plants on submarines and nuclear waste. (There are several other examples.)

Oh, yes, and what about the people who have died from diseases caused by uranium mine tailings?

Nuclear power is absolutely safe. No deaths here. Move along.

[Systematic Chaos]

25. Yup, NNadir did just make a big goof there.

But in his defense I think what he's referring to is "zero deaths" among reactor designs which stood a chance. Chernobyl was poorly designed and none of the reactors in the US are similar to it. Three Mile Island is the worst nuclear mishap in the US and it may have scared a lot of people but fortunately that is as far as it went.

And while we're on the subject, the newest designs out there are far safer still.

[truebrit71]

27. Does Chernoybl ring a bell with your Nuclear defense stat?

How many deaths there?

Nuke's are not safe...if a nuclear power plant goes bang it will be a VERY bad day for ALOT of people...If a wind turbine goes bang, unless you're standing underneath it, bugger all happens...

But keep on telling us how nukes are safer than wind turbines....

[jpak]

6. Danish Study of Offshore Wind Farms Finds Limited Impacts on Birds, Fish, and Mammals

http://renewableenergylaw.blogspot.com/2006/12/danish-study-of-offshore-wind-farms.html

The Danish government has published the results of an eight-year study of the impacts of offshore wind farms on the aquatic ecosystem. The study evaluated the impacts of the world's two largest offshore wind farms, Horns Rev and Nysted, on birds, fish, and mammals, among other things.

The Report, “Danish Offshore Wind – Key Environmental Issues” (large PDF) was released to the public during a conference at the end of November. It was prepared by the Danish Energy Authority, Danish Forest and Nature Agency, and the two companies that own the offshore wind farms (Dong Energy and Vattenfall wind).

The report includes some key findings on the two projects' impacts on birds, fish, and mammals and contains commentary from the International Advisory Panel of Experts on Marine Ecology, which gave the report a positive evaluation.

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[PetrusMonsFormicarum]

7. Birds ain't stupid

although out here in Oregon, several windfarm projects are on hold because of nesting groundbirds.

Another energy alternative being researched here on the Pacific coast is wave/tidal power. Basically, buoys are moored to the ocean bottom and a submerged flotation device slides up and down on the mooring line, generating power as waves pass and the tide comes in and goes out. As clean power as you can get. here's a link:

Pollution-free energy from tides

[OKIsItJustMe]

10. Tidal power's great!

(For those of us who live by the sea.)

The fact of the matter is that if we hope to replace fossil fuels, we will need a diverse portfolio of solutions. (Wind, Solar, Tidal, Geothermal, Small Hydro...)

[nradisic]

11. Cool!

More clean power for NJ. Wind & Solar is the way to go. Low cost and zero pollution. Impact on the environment is minimal. Very cool...

[soothsayer]

15. The ones in Atlantic City are kind of cute. I haven't heard about them (in particular)

hurting birds since they've been in operation.