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True of coal and nuclear plants as well. Hotel loads are quite small in all cases.
Coal and nuclear don't normally shutdown unless there's an outage and many (all nuks) are equiped with engines to supply station power. Wind farm shut down every day and requires a firm soure to restart.....The latest trend in wind power is to also install fossil fuel engines or turbines in order to sell firm power all the time....But of course any good developer would know that....
Coal and nuclear don't normally shutdown unless there's an outage and many (all nuks) are equiped with engines to supply station power. Wind farm shut down every day and requires a firm soure to restart.....The latest trend in wind power is to also install fossil fuel engines or turbines in order to sell firm power all the time....But of course any good developer would know that....
The hotel load for a wind farm is inconsequential. Nukes do not use their standby generation during a routine shutdown. They use system power. Coal plant have large hotel loads compared to wind farms and may be down a couple of months a year.
Early installations of wind certainly have siting issues. As we learned of this all new wind farms conduct bat and bird impact studies. These are reviewed as part of a normal Environmental Assessment. My experience is that each of these studies lasts over a year. If there is a problem, siting is changed. There are still some issues with legacy wind farms that I think should be further mitigated out in California, but they represent small amounts of capacity.
Early installations of wind certainly have siting issues. As we learned of this all new wind farms conduct bat and bird impact studies. These are reviewed as part of a normal Environmental Assessment. My experience is that each of these studies lasts over a year. If there is a problem, siting is changed. There are still some issues with legacy wind farms that I think should be further mitigated out in California, but they represent small amounts of capacity.
One thing about mortality rates is that NFWS has no clue how many bird deaths around turbines occur because the energy companies claim the count as proprietary information.
I've seen on a small scale how a couple cell towers impact waterfowl habits so to claim a 200 windmill site has negligible impact is disingenuous at best.
Along with solar I have had a wind mill over 10 years and not one bird had hit it and I have a lot of birds here all the time .
I feed them.
Birds do stupid things just like people do daring fate and deliberately flying in front of moving cars ,like squirrels running across traffic or pestering a lion or sitting on the horn of a rhino .
Animals suffer from poor vision just like people do and it has nothing to do with the environment so they run into things too.
Stupid people have no idea what actually goes on in the wild and make issue because some one is looking for some one to blame because they think all animals are smart . a few are to some degree a few but not all ,and just like humans fallow leaders blindly not learning on their own. These test things/predators and die, the smarter ones already learn to avoid .
Some birds fly into my barn and make nests ,problem is I don't know if they have done this so the door get's closed . If I happen to see them trying to find a way in I open the door and leave it open. it's no big deal and they deal with the spiders as well so it's a win/ win. Farrell cats hunt for mice and birds that poorly place their nests every thing has a right to survive and stupid end up being food for some one else.
As for wind an solar ,I built my system a little at a time being poor and buying used equipment to start with some of which is older than many of you I bet, and still functional, which is more than I can say for most people over 40 and 50 years .
When I am living alone and other s are not adding to the energy demand MY electric bill is a whapping $25. a month.
I have big air compressors and welding equipment and machine tools that bump the bill but those are extraordinary costs.
And without solar and wind power what is your bill per month ?
My solar and wind are built on my shop trailer so they are not part of the house though they power the house .This is so that if/when I move my investment goes with me .
Solar does not have to be o a house , ideally it could be on a carport or gazebo or awning or cabana or on the ground for that matter .if you lack the imagination probably you should stay away from solar your self . I was a D student in high school and did this all on my own. and what grade level are you ?
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