[UK-CONTEST] Wind Turbines..

[Dave Sergeant]

On 12 Feb 2010 at 9:49, Ken Eastty wrote:

> Reading the 'blurb' on the proposed windfarm I noticed under the heading
> of "Wind Farm Myths, Myth 7: Wind produces little power: A single
> 1.8-megawatt turbine can produce enough power for 1,000 homes". Maths
> was never my best subject so perhaps someone else can confirm that 1.8 x
> 10^6/10^3 = 1.8kW per house or am I making a basic mistake? (1.8kW - not
> even enough to run some linears!)

Windfarm proponents like to cook the figures to their advantage. 
Averaged over a 24 hour day this figure may well be true. I use around 
7kWH per day here and know I am a low user relative to Mr Average (and 
don't even have a linear...). 1.8kW is 43kWH/day, so I guess even 
allowing for a 20% efficiency in the wind turbine it is about right. 
But of course it only produces power when the wind blows, and the 1.8MW 
figure is the turbine's absolute maximum output which it only achieves 
in a sizeable gale (and it is probably stopped from turning in such 
conditions anyway...). 1000 homes is not that many, even an average 
town with say 50,000 houses would need 50 of them, not including what 
the factories and offices consume! And as for solar, the figures are 
even more depressing even when the government is paying you through pay-
back tarrifs - solar PV is simply not cost effective apart from maybe 
powering that QRP rig when /P.

As to your case, I suspect the only consideration is if you do VHF/UHF 
as you would have to consider reflections/blocking from the turbines. I 
don't think there will be much of an issue at HF.

I will stop, we are getting WAY off topic...

73 Dave G3YMC

http://www.davesergeant.com