Wind Farms

[samhass]

In chatters talk happy and sad, we have been discussing the feasibility of a wind farm in TV. Say everyone in TV put up X amount of money to buy ground, build the farm,
get the power to the grid, etc. We would need input from various types of engineers, financial guys, real estate people, lawmakers , etc. to determine how it could be done. If your electric was less per month that would be beautiful. Better yet would be the knowledge that we are not squandering the earth resources. T, Boone Pickens plans to do it. With all the brain power available from our residents, we could as well. It would take huge sums of money, I'm sure, but it could be spread out over a long period of time. I think we have enough wind (but am not sure). We could try to apply for grants, etc.
Brainiacs unite. I think it could be done and Villagers could be the shareholders in the company.

[JohnN]

I bet Florida would be OK, there's a breeze all the time and I'd put up a few bucks out of my meager nest egg. But Oklahoma is the wind capital of the country and plenty of space out there, that's the likely place to go big-time first.

I'll place my big bet with T.Boone Pickens

[efrahin]

I think that everyone will buy stock in a company set up to serve TV. However it is an inmense task to start from ground zero. Lets see what the brains in TV opine.

[travelstiles]

Not so immense a task if we get the right publicity and subsequent assistance from proponents of alternative energy.
However, and this is a big However, I have written to most of our elected representatives in Florida about tax credits for alternative energy for end-use consumers with disappointing results. The funding is minimal, and the allocated credits for 2008 were used up months ago.
I have been pounding the pavement trying to get you TOTV people to write to these representatives about increasing these energy credits, but have only heard from a handful of people who are interested.
No one else is going to do this for us - when will we step up to the bat?
I will not post the names and emails of these representatives again (already did this three times). If you want this info, you'll have to ask for it or look it up yourself.
I'm on board if there's enough interest, but from my experience in trying to get TOTV members involved in political action, I can't say I'm too hopeful.
Please prove me wrong!

[Sidney Lanier]

We were involved in alternative energy and energy conservation going back to the 1970s, long before the current oil situation, and we were naturally very disappointed when all government involvement in encouraging it was effectively ended in the mid-1980s (that is, effectively discouraging it...). Evidently the goal of the government at that time was to support the petroleum industry. We were interested in all forms of alternative energy then and we are still interested in it now; we'd very much like to know more.

Unfortunately, samhass, the idea of "everyone" being involved is, IMHO, completely unrealistic. You have those who insist that there is no problem at all; others who are intimidated by new ideas; yet others who have no problem with "squandering the earth's resources" and who in fact joyfully do so (those who live by the premise that "it's a free country and I can do what I want"); and still more, as discovered by travel, who are apathetic. You're suggesting a monumental undertaking. And I'm not suggesting that it cannot be done, just that it would be a real challenge. At the same time, regarding this suggestion and in truth anything else potentially worthwhile:

EXTRAORDINARILY DIFFICULT = DO-ABLE!

EXTRAORDINARILY DIFFICULT ≠ IMPOSSIBLE!

[njgranny]

I would love to see wind farms everywhere that they could "catch some wind." Besides being green, I think they are beautiful and soothing to watch.

[JohnN]

thinking a bit...
writing representatives is a good idea, however, I'm deeply disappointed with our representatives efforts thus far over the last 60 years (while I've been around) so I'm not inclined to think they'll change direction - too busy lining their pockets.

so.... . how does capitalism take over and make this work??

we need land, we need wind turbines, and we need someone with deep pockets besides (in addition to) us TV'ers. Anyone got any good contacts out there to sprearhead a bit?

I'll do a little side research too....

[JohnN]

here's the Pickens Plan, good reading,

www.pickensplan.com

as travel said, we would need publicity,
and some good connections wouldn't hurt

Here's what I wrote to T.Boone when I joined his site earlier today.
================================================== ===
This is important to note. I live in The VIllages, FL 32162.
A 55+ retirement community of 70,000 people. On our "Talk of the Villages" website http://64.92.167.158/smf/ , the topic of alternative energy is a hot one, and I've been advocating T Boone Pickens support - us for him, and him for us, all of us together. These retirees are a potent force, but we need expertise and direction. What we'd like to do is establish a wind farm power grid to support our town.

Please advise if possible

[travelstiles]

here's the Pickens Plan, good reading,

www.pickensplan.com

as travel said, we would need publicity,
and some good connections wouldn't hurt

Here's what I wrote to T.Boone when I joined his site earlier today.
================================================== ===
This is important to note. I live in The VIllages, FL 32162.
A 55+ retirement community of 70,000 people. On our "Talk of the Villages" website http://64.92.167.158/smf/ , the topic of alternative energy is a hot one, and I've been advocating T Boone Pickens support - us for him, and him for us, all of us together. These retirees are a potent force, but we need expertise and direction. What we'd like to do is establish a wind farm power grid to support our town.

Please advise if possible



John, Sidney, others who are interested enough to do something ~
I, for one, have the time and energy to work on this project. A good start is correspondence such as that provided by John above.
We at The Villages are a huge and influential voting block, and as we all know from past experience, Florida can make or break any election! Even if you have never been politically or economically motivated before, here is an opportunity to do something.
Maybe we can work on a wind farm experiment where the Buffalo used to roam? No kidding!

[samhass]

I think we'll need much more room than that. There is so much we'll have to research, but we have the manpower and the talent here in TV to make this happen.....if we have enough wind. (I know some of us are a windy bunch, but that doesn't count.) I'm still tied up for the next few days but intend to start researching ASAP.

[samhass]

I just watched the Pickens video. Boy, I love that man. I absolutely want to find a way to be a part of this. I am tired of our dollars going to foreign oil interests. This can help to staunch the bleeding of our dollars to foreign nations.

[JohnN]

samhass,
His site is trying to establish a million members. I signed up and shared my personal email list of folks I thought might be willing to sign up too (I didn't have yours!!!).

But I'd suggest signing up, maybe we can get a lot of Villagers on there, and some attention.

[Rokinronda]

I'll sign up....Always was an advocate for progress and change!

[samhass]

I signed up. After the granddaughter leaves, I will get much more involved.

[chelsea24]

I'll sign. I'm from the "Windy City" anyway. Sounds like a wonderful project.

[Sidney Lanier]

I just watched the Pickens video, read a good bit of the info on the website, and signed up. Do I dare believe it could bring back the directions we were moving in back in the '70s until the mid '80s, at which point the government put the kibosh on alternative energy and thus forced the continuation of our dependence on the petroleum industry? We toured and spent some time in the wind farm area outside of Palm Springs, CA and it is just awesome! This is exciting--wow!!! Thanks, samhass, for getting this info out on TOTV!

[beady]

Count me in.

It makes the most sense. This ia a project that will definately take some work but we retirees have the time. We owe it to our earth to make an effort to undo some of the harm we have inflicted upon her.

[benj]

I graduated in 1972 EMU Ypsilanti Mi. Nuclear energy was hated and feared. I remember someone had invented a power generator the size of a refrigerator that used a thimble sized piece of some kind of nuclear stuff that was safe and you buried this thing in the back yard and it made all the energy your house could use forever. It couldn't explode or create a "spill". I mentioned EMU because it could of been in some kind of study hall or something. Has anyone else ever heard of anything like this? Benj

[islandgal]

I signed up and sent it to everyone on my email list. Can't wait to "let's roll".

[ebliss1]

Just out of curiosity, why are you focusing on wind farms? It would seem to me to be a lot more reasonable to go for a solar plan rather than a wind farm.

The wind farms require a fair bit of wind, not just breezes, to be efficient. TV would seem to be better positioned to take advantage of solar. There's not an overabundance of tall trees to block the sun, you don't have to worry about wintertime snow covering the panels on the roofs, and you would not need to buy up large tracts of land for the farms - you all have all the surface area you need right on your roofs.

It would seem to be a little more realistic to get a large group of people in TV to get together and pool resources to get some sort of "group discount" from a major installer of solar power systems to do multiple installs in a small area at the same time. The panels are unobtrusive, efficient, do not have moving parts that increase maintenance cots, etc.

Just my 2 cents.

[joeutter]

As a new comer to the Villages here are my thoughts. Counting on the government just doesn’t work. If you really want to make this happen it seems to me you would need to start at the manufacture of the turbines. The manufacture wants to sell the product so I’m sure they would have suggestions on how to start a wind farm. Always remember people are going to say not in my back yard. That is my take on the subject.

[Sidney Lanier]

ebliss1, thanks for your worthwhile suggestion. Solar certainly could work; we have a solar water system on our house in the Mid-Hudson Valley of NYS which works well, and I couldn't even figure how much fossil fuel it's saved since we installed it in the mid-1980s, just prior to the ending of credits by the government at that time. Another thing to think about, although the Pickens plan already has a national structure, which could make a huge difference....

[travelstiles]

ebliss1 - I totally agree with the solar approach in Florida as well, but am interested in all alternative energy sources.
I know I sound like a broken record, but I've written to 7 Florida legislators (twice) regarding increasing the funding for homeowner tax credits on solar panels here in Florida. All credits for 2008 have been allocated, and there is a waiting list. We are in the perfect climate zone to make this work. To date, I have only received a response from Paige Kreegel.
Governor Crist recently hosted an International Climate Change summit in Tallahassee - check out the website:[http://www.myfloridaclimate.com/env/home/]
There is a contact link to communicate your thoughts.

[JohnN]

joeutter,
Just so happens, a maker of wind turbines opened up in the manufacturing plant here in Little Rock that I used to work in, (replacing the telecom business I worked in for 30 years). I'm searching for contacts there (and at pickensplan.com) to answer 3 questions:
1) is wind farming even feasible in Florida given geography (ie: hurricanes) or (as suggested by ebliss1) is solar a better option here. T.Boone's farms are slated for the Texas panhandle.

2) If applicable to Florida, how much land is needed to support a city the size of TV.

3) How much capital investment, up front and ongoing, is required?

Other thoughts welcome, I'm still learning

[JohnN]

https://www.talkofthevillages.com/smf/index.php/topic,8681.0.html

Muncle's thread on VHA QUESTIONS FOR CENTER DISTRICT AND DEVELOPER’S REPRESENTATIVES

can the possibility of TV developer support for alternative energy be posed to the District and Developer's representatives? How does that happen?

[sschuler1]

A friend of mine used to date a guy that worked for a research firm that was developing a wind turbine that was going to be launched into the jet stream. That was a few years ago that she told me about what he was working on. (She isn't dating him anymore, so I haven't had any recent information.) Don't know how far into the future that project is supposed to come to fruition. It would solve the issue of not enough wind, and would not need large amounts of land to house the wind turbines. Just wanted you to know that your project might become obsolete as soon as you finished it.

[JohnN]

sschuler1, good point and well taken!
Just discussion to learn test viability at this point.

The world's largest maker of wind turbines is LS Glasfiber at this site, interesting to visit.
I've written 'em asking if they've any info to share
http://www.lmglasfiber.com

[JohnN]

http://i344.photobucket.com/albums/p335/JohnN1949/plan_3tiermap.jpg

There's a US map of wind speeds, Florida is about in the middle.

T.Boone says 20% of the US needs can be met from the Texas venture he's working on.
If you've not gotten to his website, this part was interesting:

Building wind facilities in the corridor that stretches from the Texas panhandle to North Dakota could produce 20% of the electricity for the United States at a cost of $1 trillion. It would take another $200 billion to build the capacity to transmit that energy to cities and towns.

That's a lot of money, but it's a one-time cost. And compared to the $700 billion we spend on foreign oil every year, it's a bargain.

[JohnN]

From the LS Glasfiber newsletter:

One wind turbine with these 61.5-meter blades can generate a power output equivalent to the annual power consumption of almost 5,000 households.

So TV would need a couple dozen for 120K people.

[Jim007]

I am not yet a resident of TV, but hope to be with in the next year. I would be happy to be involve with an alternative energy solution for TV.

Does anyone know if lightning could be a factor when thinking of wind turbines? It seems to me that the Ocala area of Florida is kind of like a "lightning alley".

[JohnN]

Jim007,
The LS Glasfiber site says they put on lightning protection on the wind turbines.
I was also curious about the hurricanes/storms

[travelstiles]

Perhaps the Developer can be encouraged to offer (as an option on new houses, add on for pre-existing homes) solar panels for water heating. Many residents have them already, and as we can't seem to get any additional state funding for credits to consumers for 2008, perhaps the developer can work with Florida on initiating a new program to encourage this in construction going forward.
I'm sure The Villages management has more influence than any one of us alone.
Do you think homeowners in TV would be interested in this?

[Mikitv]

Instead of putting up the huge wind turbines to generate that kind of power there are some more personal alternatives available. HGTV showed it on Living With Ed. He has solar power and his own wind turbine on his roof top. Looking at it on the program it didn't sit that high on his roof top. He also uses solar tubes. Just a thought.

[samhass]

I have no clue about the "lightning" affect on wind turbines. Be it wind turbines or solar, we should be able to do more here in TV to lessen our dependence on oil or other nonrenewable energy sources. Energy is not my field, but I'm not to old to learn something new. I am sure there are experts amongst us. I hate trying to reinvent the wheel. Hellooooooo out there.

[samhass]

I am finding that we are a little short in the wind department. Central Florida gets a rating of 1-2. A three seems to be a starting point for wind turbines.
There has to be some way we can make things better. We use our carts as much as possible. We are the sunshine state. Maybe solar has to be the push. I am amazed at the output of the 10 solar panels on my roof. I wish I had purchased them immediately.
Sid, you get hot water in NH for how many months with your solar rig?

[Sidney Lanier]

We are actually in the Mid-Hudson Valley of New York State. Our solar water system, installed in 1985, supplies all of our hot water needs for about six months of the year, and for the rest of the year it serves as a pre-heater. This means that the water comes up out of our well at about 42 degrees into the solar tank, and then the panels either heat the water to usable in the house on bright sunny days or warm the water to whatever extent there's sun to whatever temp (could be 60, 80, 100, whatever...), so that when it goes into the boiler, the latter doesn't have to work as hard (hence less fuel use) to bring the temp up to usable in the house. It really surprised us that more people didn't take advantage of the program that encouraged this use of solar power before it was wiped out in the mid-1980s.

Our electric bills are now lower than they were when we first moved into this house over 30 years ago, even though we've added many more things that use electricity (e.g., a stand-alone freezer, computers that are on all the time, etc.). Originally the hot water was heated electrically; we later installed a multifuel boiler ('foreign' oil/'good old American' coal) containing a hot water coil, so it's hard to be precise exactly what the benefits are in terms of winter hot water generation. There is an electric back-up element in the solar tank, but it's been shut off since we installed the new boiler some 20 years ago.

Hope all this helps; please ask any questions if anything isn't clear. Thanks!

[samhass]

Why isn't our govt giving more tax credits for proven solar improvements such as yours?
If we don't have wind in Florida, we do have sunshine and tides. I wonder if SECo and the other electric companies have seriously researched either. You would assume they have and have found both to be cost ineffective. Or, has coal/natural gas and nuclear power been so cheap that these other means haven't really been considered? Sun, wind, hydro and other such sources seem like the way to save our earth, plus you don't have to pay for them over and over like oil. Yes, you still have operating and initial startup costs , but as far as I know, no one is selling sunshine yet. (unless you consider our congress) OMGosh. I'm a Republican. Am I saying these things???

[Sidney Lanier]

That was the point I was making. Until the mid-1980s, there were significant tax credits for individuals and businesses who were willing to put themselves on the line for the rest of the costs in the hopes that we could at least to some extent relieve ourselves of our increasing dependence not just on oil but on foreign oil. I believe those credits were put into place following the energy crunch of 1979, but someone please correct me if I'm not accurate on this point. As the Pickens video points out, our use of foreign oil has increased dramatically in only a couple of decades! And even if we overlooked the 'foreign oil' issue, the use of alternative sources of energy (in this case solar), certainly for us, has resulted in significantly less use of electricity (often generated by oil) and oil itself. To us, at the time and now as well, it was and is a no-brainer; that was why I was surprised back then that others weren't willing to gamble a little while it was still affordable to do so. What a shame--because today's problems to some extent (maybe a great extent?) stem from this eliminating any focus at all on alternative energy sources, thus forcing us to continue to increase our oil dependence....

[samhass]

We should have seen this coming and our government should have really seen this coming. Maybe if we had weaned ourselves from foreign oil way back then, we wouldn't be in Iraq right now. As I said earlier, a friend just returned from the UK and said gas costs about $ 11-11.50 per gallon. Can you imagine that in this country??? We are home of the SUV. We have a big one sitting up in Pa. That's a good place for it...sitting!!

[Sidney Lanier]

We were not the home of the SUV after the gas crunch of 1979. Then a few years went by and we got complacent--and that seems to be the story of our lives. We travel to other parts of the world quite a bit, and believe me the UK is not the only place where the price of gas makes our price look like kindergarten. But Europeans have always driven little VWs and more recently Smart Cars and other economical cars. Americans so identify with their 'wheels' that it's going to take a major overhaul in our thinking to come to terms with the new reality. (That is, for those who know that there is a problem and don't see everything as 'hunky dory' and 'just fine' the way things are....)

[efrahin]

I am for conserving everything, that said, I believe we are very arrogant believing we can save the earth, we are only 350 milliion people. Some provinces in India or China have more than that amount. Yes we consume a lot of oil, but it will be consumed anyway, if the US dont buy that much the price will go down and will be available for billions of people who can not afford it now. I remember George Carlin once said: We are going to destroy the earth with a cup of styrofoam? ........(x rated). When the volcan Mount Hellen erupted in Alaska a few years back, it put more pollution in the air that all the pollution men had done in 5000 years. China today is making all the pollution manufacturing (ineffiencely) our products, so we are sending our pollution somewhere else where there is no public opinion. We are destroying forests through China too, the corrupt officials there together with the super-corrupt cleptogovernments in Africa are stealing all the hard woods to manufacture furniture in China for the American market.

[travelstiles]

efrahin,
I believe we are beginning to realize what damage China is doing to it's own citizens and the world with it's disregard of scientifically accepted pollution prevention standards.
Already several Olympic athletes have voluntarily dropped out of the Olympics because they cannot perform in such a polluted environment.
It's amazing how we look the other way on all the abuses the Chinese government is responsible for all in the support of "free trade." It also bothers me that China has executed more citizens in the last year than any other country (Iran was number 2) - yet we freely export our technology to them and still insist on a trade embargo with Cuba?
Hopefully we are not looking to China as an example of what our energy policy should be! Energy independence is good for us, regardless of what other nations do or refuse to do.

[The Great Fumar]

Has anyone stood under a wind generator??? the WHINE would drive you nuts... There is a large wind generator farm about thirty five miles west of palm springs California.........the noise is deafening, thats why the only one's you hear of are in deserts or very remote areas........someone commented that they have lightning protection on them...There's no such things as 100% lightning protection.......Anything that high in an area of low terrain (Florida) would draw lightning and we are the lightning capitol of the world..The answer is nuclear power.............. France has the cheapest electricity in the world.... But the flower children of the sixty's forced us to tear down all our nuke power plants and now they want them back , well as John Wayne says TO LATE NATHEN , TO LATE................
ps Mt. st. helen is in Washington and was just a blip next
to Krakatoa.....

fumar

[efrahin]

Travel: I know from first hand experience, I had to leave my land (Cuba) in 1960. You have to live under that political system to understand it. That is our hate for anything that has to do with liberal thoughts.

[Sidney Lanier]

Energy independence is good for us, regardless of what other nations do or refuse to do.



I could not agree more!!! And if it's not to be an official national thing (as it was for a few years prior to the mid-1980s...) but a grass-roots thing, then it will have to be regardless of what our nation (meaning governmentally) does or refuses to do.

[travelstiles]

efrahin,
My post was not in any way excusing the abuses in Cuba, but questioning why we look the other way with China. Money talks, unfortunately.
Travel

[efrahin]

travel: no ofense perceived.