Wind isnt just mysterious, destructive and exhilarating capturing just 2% of it would solve the
I had not realized that these wind turbines had gotten so HUGE!
Wild is the wind: the resource that could power the world
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/oct/15/wild-is-the-wind-the-resource-that-could-power-the-world
Wind isn’t just mysterious, destructive and exhilarating – capturing just 2% of it would solve the planet’s energy needs at a stroke. And as the windiest country in Europe, Britain is at the forefront of this green revolution
by Paula Cocozza
Sunday 15 October 2017 09.00 EDT
The wind rips along the Humber estuary in Hull. It’s the kind that presses your coat to your back and pushes you on to your toes. “A bit too windy,” shouts Andy Sykes, before his words are swept away. He is the head of operational excellence at the Siemens factory, which supplies blades – the bits that turn – to windfarms in the North Sea. At 75 metres long, they are hard to manoeuvre when it’s gusting.
Inside the vast factory hall, the blades lie in various states of undress. Several hundred layers of fibreglass and balsa wood are being tucked into giant moulds by hand. There are “naked” blades that require paint and whose bodies have the patina of polished tortoiseshell. Look through the hollow blades from the broadest part, and a pale green path, the tinge of fibreglass, snakes down the long tunnel, tapering to a small burst of daylight at its tip.
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Since the government ruled out new onshore windfarms in England – a promise in its 2015 manifesto – energy companies have been forced offshore, making the UK the world’s offshore leader. Allowed to develop beyond the vision of land-dwellers who see windfarms as a blot on the countryside, the turbines have grown steadily larger, as have the farms to which they belong. Dong’s Hornsea Project Two will span 480 sq km, and Toulson’s PowerPoint outlines a large jagged blue diamond for Project Three and an even larger blue rocket shape for Four.
Toulson has a slide that shows one very clear reason for the falling cost of wind energy. Over time, the diameter of the blades have enlarged. A turbine commissioned in 2002 swept 80 metres; in 2005, that figure rose to 90 metres; in 2011, it was 120 metres. By 2020, it will be 180 metres.
Of course, the supply chain has improved, and there have been engineering refinements. But put baldly, wind energy costs less, and will go on costing less, because the turbines are growing taller and the blades longer. The manufacturers of these machines are in a race to produce the largest.
Making something bigger in each incarnation seems a very basic idea of advancement. How much of a future is there in a pursuit of progress through perpetual excess?.......................................
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