#windturbines
#WindTurbines generate more than half of #UK’s #electricity due to #StormPia | #WindPower | The Guardian
At the time of writing this post, 55.3% is being generated by #Wind and only 8.1% by #Gas. Demand is moderately low at 30.2 GW.
The second full day of our visit to #BannauBrycheiniog was devoted to visiting #PenYFan, the tallest #peak in south #Wales. This was a very nice #walk of 15 km with some steep ascents and descents but no climbing.
Starting from the car park, a path started to climb gently upwards. You can see Pen Y Fan on the horizon near the centre of the image.
As we approached the #mountain, we could make out a #path up towards the summit.
The path passes a small #reservoir and the #dam has an interesting castellated feature on it.
Along the way there are several valleys leading to #farm #fields.
As the path turns, you can see where you've just come from.
The land around the mountains are used for grazing #sheep. Here are two who have been shorn of their winter #fleeces.
On the final steeper ascent up Pen Y Fan you can here see the craggy north side of the neighbouring mountain, #Cribyn.
Looking back south, you can make out the edge of the reservoir we passed.
The path gets steadily steeper and is partially paved to provide durability and grip. The view keeps getting better.
Arriving at the summit with some effort, you are rewarded with an all-round view. We were very lucky as I was told by someone that the day before, the peak had been shrouded in cloud. Dozens of other people were also enjoying the spectacle.
Here I am at the summit at an elevation of 886 m. From the start point, that's a climb of about 650 m.
The path back to the start is along a #ridge affording views of the valleys either side.
The path on the ridge is not dangerous unless you get carelessly close to the edge but it is uneven and has large stones in places whereas in others, it is covered in black #peat.
Looking back towards Pen Y Fan, you can just make out the figures of people waling on the horizon.
The valley edge looks precarious but in summer, I don't think it is a great danger.
In the south western horizon are a group of #WindTurbines. I am sure wind will be an important energy resource for #Wales in the coming decades.
The return to the car park as along this path down across the valley.
To get to it, required us to descend some steep roughly buiilt stone stairs. For me this was the most hazardous part of the walk as I was tired by now and my knees were getting very sore. It was a relief to get back to the car.
V236-15.0 MW: Größtes Windrad von Vestas liefert erstmals volle Leistung - Golem.de
Vestas zeigt, was sein größtes Windrad kann: Das derzeit leistungsfähigste Windrad hat erstmals seine volle Leistung geliefert.
Erstmals habe der Prototyp des V236-15.0MW seine Nennleistung von 15 Megawatt erreicht, teilte der dänische Windkraftanlagen-Hersteller über Twitter mit. Das Windrad steht an Land auf dem Windkraftanlagentestfeld Østerild an der Nordküste Jütlands. Gedacht ist es aber für Offshore-Windparks.
Das ist schon ein krasses Teil
Bird deaths down 70 percent after painting wind turbine blades – The study ran for nine years at Norway’s Smøla wind farm
Something as simple as black paint could be the key to reducing the number of birds that are killed each year by wind turbines. According to a study conducted at a wind farm on the Norwegian archipelago of Smøla, changing the color of a single blade on a turbine from white to black resulted in a 70-percent drop in the number of bird deaths.
See https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/08/black-paint-on-wind-turbines-helps-prevent-bird-massacres/
#Blog, #birds, #environment, #windturbines
Finding solutions to climate change is not as easy as you may think.
On the dark side:
On Contact: Mainstream Environmental Movement Lies.
https://www.rt.com/shows/on-contact/533294-mainstream-environmental-movement-lies/
The mainstream environmental movement receives a lot of criticism for their proposed ‘green’ technical solutions to climate change.
”This is a fantasy sold to us by an environmental movement that promises we can continue to indulge in orgies of consumption and maintain the levels of waste and perpetual growth that define the industrial age.”
On the bright side:
China maintains 'artificial sun' at 120 million Celsius for over 100 seconds, setting new world record.
https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202105/1224755.shtml
Medium: The Earth has 57.27 million square miles of land, we only need to convert 0.2% of it to solar.
https://medium.com/predict/why-dont-we-cover-the-sharah-in-solar-panels-3692a5bf89bd
”We can power the whole world with a relatively small amount of solar panels. The Earth has 57.27 million square miles of land, we only need to convert 0.2% of it to solar, and we can power ourselves entirely. To give some perspective, it is estimated that 1% of land is built up and human-occupied (cities and towns not farmland). In other words, if we can convert 20% of urban areas around the globe to have solar on them, then we can fully power ourselves!”
However, large-scale photovoltaic solar farms envisioned over the Sahara desert would do more harm than good:
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2020GL090789
”Large-scale photovoltaic solar farms envisioned over the Sahara desert can meet the world's energy demand while increasing regional rainfall and vegetation cover. However, adverse remote effects resulting from atmospheric teleconnections could offset such regional benefits. We use state-of-the-art Earth-system model simulations to evaluate the global impacts of Sahara solar farms. Our results indicate a redistribution of precipitation causing Amazon droughts and forest degradation, and global surface temperature rise and sea-ice loss, particularly over the Arctic due to increased polarward heat transport, and northward expansion of deciduous forests in the Northern Hemisphere.
#tokamak #fusion #energy #renewable #solar #windturbines #hydroelectric #lithium #EV #batteries #climatechange #ChrisHedges #OnContact #growth #consumerism #overpopulation #capitalism
A new wind turbine blade recycling strategy deploys gravity-based energy storage technology for maximum circular economy impact
Actually, the wind turbine recycling issue is a bit of a red herring. After all, the fossil energy industry has squeezed who knows how many trillions of tons of raw resources out of the ground, to be used once and never to be replaced, reclaimed, recycled, or reused again, let alone upcycled, unless you count their contribution to global carbon load as a kind of recycling, which is a bit of a stretch.
Nevertheless, the global wind industry is coming of age in an era when public policy and consumer demand are beginning to steer the global economy into a more sustainable, circular form. That pushes wind turbine blade recycling into priority status.
The typical wind turbine blade lasts about 20 years, which means that a flood of spent blades is about to hit the global market. In partnership with the firm Arkema, Inc., the National Renewable Energy Laboratory has also been hammering away at a new resin-based turbine blade material that can be reduced to a liquid and reformed into new blades and other items, while reducing labor and energy inputs.
See New Recycling & Energy Storage Plan Claps Back At Wind Turbine Critics
#environment #windturbines #recycling #renewableenergy
A new wind turbine blade recycling strategy deploys gravity-based energy storage technology for maximum circular economy impact.
Papilio is a wind-powered street lamp that reduces light pollution
Berlin design student Tobias Trübenbacher has developed a lamp post with an integrated wind turbine that produces its own renewable energy and only lights up when needed.
Papilio was designed to slash the light pollution and emissions associated with street lighting and mitigate its impact on both humans and animals as well as the environment.
The motion-activated design uses wind – a natural, renewable energy source – to power its turbines.
Above and top image: the Papilio light can be wall-mounted or freestanding
"If we want to maintain a future worth living in, we urgently need to transform our cities into climate-neutral, sustainable and less harmful places," Trübenbacher told Dezeen.
"We urgently need to tackle light pollution and the loss of biodiversity coming along with it. This can only happen if cities generate energy themselves – through locally embedded, decentralised systems and 'prosumer' products in huge quantities spread all over urban spaces. In this context, wind represents an often underestimated yet constantly growing potential."
Its matt black body is designed to reflect as little light as possible
Papilio can be mounted to walls or set up as a freestanding lantern. The lamp should ideally be placed between three to six metres above ground, where ground-level winds are the strongest.
These winds are harnessed by a turquoise, pinwheel-shaped wind turbine with four aerodynamic rotor blades made of folded sheet metal.
The turquoise wind turbine is propelled by urban airstreams
Angled diagonally, the rotor can reportedly make use of complex airflows in urban environments including natural currents, wind tunnels created by tall buildings and smaller airstreams caused by passing vehicles.
The turbine then converts the wind's kinetic energy into mechanical power, before an integrated 300-watt generator turns it into electricity and stores it in a rechargeable battery.
Its shape resembles a pinwheel
"I have already tested the lights at several locations in Berlin and under normal wind conditions, the generator generated an average of up to 12 volts of electricity at any given time," Trübenbacher explained.
"Since today's LED technology is becoming more and more efficient, this amount of energy is easily enough to charge the integrated battery and operate bright light."
Applied at scale, he says the light could help to illuminate our cities without generating carbon emissions along the way.
"The world's population continues to spend nearly a fifth of the total global electricity consumption on public lighting and thereby releases a significant amount of greenhouse gases," Trübenbacher said.
"In Germany alone, street lightning emits at the moment around 2.5 million tons of CO2 per year."
Each turbine has four rotor blades made of folded sheet metal
Papilio is completely self-sufficient and could operate without the need for an "expensive underground electricity infrastructure", Trübenbacher explained.
Alternatively, the lights could be hooked up to the local power grid and divert any surplus energy to the city.
The light is a full cutoff fixture, meaning its head is pointed directly downward to minimise light pollution
To mitigate the effects of light pollution on both people and animals, Papilio is equipped with an infrared motion sensor that only switches on the light when someone is passing by.
Its head is a so-called full cutoff fixture, meaning it is angled straight down towards the floor and does not emit any light upwards, while the light itself has an extra-warm, insect-friendly colour temperature of 2,800 Kelvin.
Trübenbacher tested the light in various locations in Berlin
Trübenbacher fine-tuned the light spectrum in collaboration with a group of scientists and researchers to be less appealing to insects, whose attraction to conventional blue-toned street lights makes them vulnerable to predators as well as collisions, overheating and dehydration.
"Light pollution not only has bad health effects on humans – like causing sleep disorders, depression, cardiovascular diseases, diabetes and cancer – but has also a serious impact on flora and fauna," Trübenbacher explained.
"It is estimated that currently in Germany alone, in one single summer night around 1.2 billion insects die because of street lighting."
It can be assembled from simple components
In a bid to illuminate our cities in a more sustainable way, other designers have instead drawn on the energy of the sun to create self-sufficient street lights.
Mathieu Lehanneur created petal-shaped outdoor lamps with integrated photovoltaic panels and spindly wooden stems for the 2015 Paris Climate Conference, while Ross Lovegrove worked with Artemide to set up his Solar Tree in cities around the world.
The post Papilio is a wind-powered street lamp that reduces light pollution appeared first on Dezeen.
#all #lighting #design #technology #sustainabledesign #studentprojects #streetlighting #graduates #windturbines #renewableenergy
