That is actually quite debatable when you look at everything rather than, well they produce xxMW of electricity.
Wind Energy in Iowa...Your Thoughts
- Thread starter Beernuts
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The amount of cover crop going in has skyrocketed compared to 10 years ago as well. I think we're up towards 800,000 acres in Iowa now. The amount of minimum/no till has also increased dramatically.
I have no idea where Iowa is at for soil loss but to say nothing is changing is foolish.
Yeah, tillage practices are rapidly adjusting to both the economic climate for agriculture, and the fact that we're starting to get rain by the foot on a regular basis.
I think the general public fails to understand the extent that grain farmers want to prevent soil loss, and take measures to do so.
Tiling farmland and pouring a pad of concrete are two entirely different things, not even remotely similar, and the impact on the soil/farm is completely different.
I don't have a great way to measure actual topsoil depth, but guessing by our organic matter numbers rising I am assuming we aren't losing a ton of topsoil here. Continuous corn, tillage, and a lot of manure have led to some amazing increases in OM on our land. The cover crop/no-till gurus won't agree with me, and that's fine - different ways to skin a cat!
I've often thought about having our large old unused silo knocked down and offering that space for them to put one up. I think it would be cool to have it on the corner of my property.
I am still trying to figure out the mass psychology of this.
Part of me thinks people simply do not understand what are the very basics to the economists, engineers, and scientists involved in these questions. Option A and Option B each have their strengths and weaknesses, and coming up with an optimal route requires a lot of thought, research, judgmental calls, and ultimately, a lot of compromise.
That process is exceedingly boring and does not have a clean narrative. It also lacks an "ending." It does not have a three act structure, like most of our entertainment products, and it does not have a clear winner and loser like watching a ball game. Unable to deal with that reality, people either (1.) filter it like that or (2.) have it filtered like that by the media providing them the relevant content, who need to do that for their own commercial interests to draw eyeballs.
When one consumes media, unless you are paying for it, you are the product, not the customer. It is no small wonder that news has become more like entertainment over time as content has become free, with simpler plots and more obvious "sides" for you to choose.
I also wonder if people kind of sense those hard decisions are there to make about many important issues and, instead of embracing the challenge, they recoil at it. People do not like making hard decisions that remind them of life's limitations, especially regarding issues they know deep down that they barely understand. We as as country are going to have to make some very hard choices about the next era of our foreign policy, energy industry, education, fiscal policy, retirement and income security, and healthcare in the next decade or two.
Very few of those choices will involve more free stuff without significant amounts of pain, even if that is what is being sold us right now. I am not buying.
Therefore, as a psychological self-defense mechanism against the complexity of the issues or the trade-offs involved, they just simply everything down to good-and-bad and use that as a crutch. It is not ignorance, but more willful ignorance to avoid the depth of the problem. You always delay a hard choice if you can, to maximize your utility in the short-term before making it and for the possibility that something more attractive for you might open up if you wait.
Amazing how the two parties have basically collapsed around the same thing -- a series of unrealistic and frankly fantastical promises, each from the perfect avatar of their collective id and cultural identity. One side offers a rich game show host from Queens, and the other side offers a broke bartender from Brooklyn. Not seeing much Eisenhower or Truman.
Yep it's a slow process and often takes the next gen to give it a shot. Hard to argue with the guys that have been doing it for years on end and raising great crops doing what they did. Even in my immediate area the amount of strip till has increased a boat load, vertical tillage is taking off ahead of beans and even some no-till beans taking place.
What is going to happen to all of these windmills when everybody can afford to put solar shingles on their rooftops? Or when we figure out how to make solar powered roads that make the little electric cars go vroom..???
Nope. Wind is driven by differences in atmospheric pressure.
One area cooling (while another is still warm) is going to cause the needed airflow.
Now, to be fair, there is a ton of variation between individual wind locations, regions, different months, different days, and just natural variability between days.
The net effect is, however...
-- wind is best at night
-- wind is best during the winter
...when demand is at its lowest.
I could quote a million sources here, but I will keep it simple from LLNL...
https://www.llnl.gov/news/power-generation-blowing-wind
The team found that wind speed and power production varied by season as well as from night to day. Wind speeds were higher at night (more power) than during the day (less power) and higher during the warm season (more power) than in the cool season (less power). For example, average power production was 43 percent of maximum generation capacity on summer days and peaked at 67 percent on summer nights.
"We found that wind turbines experienced stable, near-neutral and unstable conditions during the spring and summer," Wharton said. "But daytime hours were almost always unstable or neutral while nights were strongly stable."
That article also brings up another point I forgot to mention -- wind at night is fast and steady, which makes it easier to run a power system, while it tends to go more in fits-and-starts during the day, which taxes your backup and transmission resources more. Having that on top of the typical demand fluctuations during the day can be challenging.
California is weird, though, in the sense its wind is better in the summer. That is sometimes the case with offshore wind, but it is not the case on the Great Plains.
Here is a chart for Texas, which has a lot more wind and wind potential than California...
Wind being better at night is just an engineering fact -- not a "stick your head out of the wind and tell me when you think the wind is blowing at the highest levels."
Not a wind hater here -- the engineering around it just make it an awkward fit into the system on the fundamentals. You have to work around them. Some of these awkward things could turn into long-term benefits, however... providing cheap, steady power at night when you need to charge storage assets... in the long-term. We are just not there yet.
This literally blows my mind. I understand the whole temperature variation causing air flow piece and agree hence the afternoon sun providing the energy to fuel storms for example. Also the energy being added to the system causing the warm are to displace the cooler air. The concept of the cooler air displacing the warm air hasn't occurred to me.
I'll definitely have to do more research on this. It just goes against everything I've ever observed or read! Everything that I can find on the good ol web discusses wind speed at night being lower than during the day. I'm not sure what impact that has on "usable" wind as discussed in your link. Maybe the afternoon winds are more volatile/less stable therefore they can't use as high of a percentage. While at night things are more stable and they are able to convert a higher %. Again...mind blown!
I'm still skeptical that cover crops improve yield in low-erosion environments at this juncture, but I'm a big fan of vertical tillage and see scenarios playing out that make no-till and cover crops better options than they once were.
Cover crops and no-till have always made sense in more traditionally erosive settings. What we're seeing now is that areas that didn't previously have problems with soil loss are starting to experience it due to the rain patterns.
This changing reality is forcing a change in land management practices, pure and simple. Just because something didn't make a difference 10 years ago doesn't mean it won't tomorrow.
I invested in an early wind project. Hoax is certainly one word I'd use to describe the financial projections they used to raise the money, convince farmers to lease land for the windmills and maintenance roads, and dupe the county into thinking it was an economic development project.
The lifespan of the equipment was 1/2 what was projected. Everyone that invested got screwed, the farmers that leased the land got screwed, and the county got screwed when the company went broke and someone had to tear them down.
I'm sure the equipment may be better and less expensive now but I have never looked at one of those deals since. I did talk to someone that was considering a project in the Garden City KS area a couple years ago and it sounded like they still use much longer usable life than is realistic when they pitch these deals.
The lifespan of the equipment was 1/2 what was projected. Everyone that invested got screwed, the farmers that leased the land got screwed, and the county got screwed when the company went broke and someone had to tear them down.
I'm sure the equipment may be better and less expensive now but I have never looked at one of those deals since. I did talk to someone that was considering a project in the Garden City KS area a couple years ago and it sounded like they still use much longer usable life than is realistic when they pitch these deals.
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Honest question.
How do these windmills generate energy as they seem to spin at such a low RPM? I would think they would need to be spinning like crazy! The faster, the better. But I never see one spinning fast. I know the blades are moving fast (because they are so long), but how does that matter if the RPM's are so low?
How do these windmills generate energy as they seem to spin at such a low RPM? I would think they would need to be spinning like crazy! The faster, the better. But I never see one spinning fast. I know the blades are moving fast (because they are so long), but how does that matter if the RPM's are so low?
Yeah, but there aren't hundreds of coal plants strung across the country side either. I like the view of Iowa's rural landscape. My family really enjoys that view from our front porch/yard. I'd be bummed if they decided to put a hundred of those things up in front of us.
On a side note, does ice collect on the wings? Could they fling a big chunk of ice several hundred yards? That would be awesome to see. And, when are one of those guys from "JackAss" going strap themselves to one of those blades on a windy day?
Fossil Fuels and the plants that burn them take energy to harvest, mine, ship, as well as the combustion output. Yes, right now everything has a carbon footprint, but for every Watt of energy we can produce that expels less CO2, it's a win. Now...with electrical vehicles starting to take a market share, we have the ability to lower that initial footprint as electric vehicles hauling parts etc, while being charged from solar, wind, water. Right now there isn't a magic bullet to solve everything but we should be doing what we can to lower our harmful emissions. As battery technologies improve, we're able to better store excess production, resulting in even more losses in emissions.
Someone mentioned it earlier, if we aren't able to use the old technologies to get to the new, then we'll never advance. Iterate.
Someone mentioned it earlier, if we aren't able to use the old technologies to get to the new, then we'll never advance. Iterate.
Most turbines are not direct-drive. Meaning that between the input (rotor) and output (generator) there is a gearbox that increases the output rpm. Usually around 1:100 ratio.
