Hey, there! Log in / Register
The windy city
By Ron Newman on Wed, 09/10/2008 - 2:18pm
Here's why I enjoy living in a two-newspaper town.
Neighborhoods:
Topics:
Free tagging:
Ad:
Support Universal Hub
Help keep Universal Hub going. If you like what we're up to and want to help out, please consider a (completely non-deductible) contribution.
Comments
Blades of thunder
Well, the windmill atop City Hall, at any rate:
Scale and Perspective
When the Herald discusses wind turbine initiatives - stuff that would clarify zoning issues and the like - their graphic arts people always drop wind turbines into the land scape that are the size of the ones used in Denmark and Germany and can only be mounted in the ocean because they are too huge to ship and assemble any other way! These things are even larger than the ones used to power a fair amount of Oregon in the central high deserts.
The Herald isn't the only newspaper or magazine to make the same out-of-scale error or intentional bias.
This is more like it!
?
wtf are you talking about?
An example
Take a look at the massively out of scale graphic from a couple of weeks ago.
The looming and freakishly-out-of-scale bit seems to be par for the course with the Herald.
What do you expect
From a tabloid like the herald?
And unfortunately....
both stories leave out some key details that would allow the reader to come to their own conclusion about whether the turbine is worthwhile or not. Stuff like how much this will reduce City Hall's electric bill, what the maintenance cost would be, etc.
well thats not too hard to figure out
electricity in boston runs about 20cents a Kwh...1.9Kwhx24hx365x0.2 = $3328.8 a year.
assuming....
that the thing is spinning full speed at all times. In reality it will be something different. If it runs at 75% on average and costs very little to maintain, it's a worthwhile investment. If it runs at 25% power and costs $2k per year to maintain, it would be a wasteful expenditure and potentially give anti-wind people a new hobbyhorse.
But that wasn't my point, which was that neither writer did a very good job of supporting their position that the wind turbine is a great thing (the Globe) or a waste of taxpayer money (the Herald).
Test of Concept
City Hall probably isn't a good site for it, relatively speaking. However, it will probably break even in terms of energy costs and installation and maintenance. In most places, wind turbines have a better ROI than solar photovoltaic.
The turbine on city hall may not make money, but that is not the point. Having one on city hall opens the way for other buildings to put them up - buildings that are in far better places.
It is easy for the BANANA crowd to exploit the fear of the unknown, particularly when the paper that doesn't like wind power puts in lots of gargantuan graphics that give the wrong impression of scale. This is much harder when you can just go to city hall and point out the relative size of the turbine versus a cel tower.
I was just assuming
19 100 watt bulbs running 24 hours a day. It has nothing to do with the turbine running xx% of the time.
Not quite
That's working under the assumption that wind is blowing over the roof at Govt Center 24/7.
All of this is under the assumption that it was installed in order to save money. It wasn't primarily. It was built in order to promote urban green energy initiatives. It's a proof that you can generate electricity from urban rooftops using wind power. 1.9 kWh is barely enough juice to keep one of the central rooms in City Hall lit during the day. They weren't looking to reduce their bills, they were looking to demo green technology for others to look to and adopt themselves.
EDIT: AAAaaannd, all this was said by others while I was off doing work. :)
I can't see it working well downtown
First is that there are too many other buildings in the way. The wind gets blocked or gets turbulent as it bends around buildings, wrecking a nice clean airflow. The wind may be steady from the SW, but by the time it gets to the turbine, it's coming from directions all over the compass.
There may be some wind directions that would work better, but it would probably be quite limited. Prevailing wind in the summer is SW, and City Hall is blocked from there. Cold weather brings northerlies, generally NW and N - blocked pretty good there, too. About the only direction that semi-works is E (think sea breezes), which aren't as common.
I'm thinking the harbor islands would be a great spot. Deer I (is this really an island?), the refurbished Spectacle I, or others. The turbines would get nice, clean air, and would work from all directions. Functionally, City Hall would be a waste.