Illustrating the aesthetic impacts of offshore wind turbines in Lake Erie

[News]

In Ohio, residents are hotly debating whether wind energy facilities should be located off the Lake Erie shore. The Ohio Department of Natural Resources' Office of Coastal Management created visualizations of a theoretical wind farm using Lake Erie photos taken from various vantage points along the Cleveland lakefront.

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[SteelEyes]

Even without the aesthetic impact, impact to migratory birds, power cables littering the lake floor, abandoned turbines in 30 years, etc. I don't see how they can justify 'giving away' public real estate in the lakes to private power companies. Especially when there are so many companies that made investments installing wind turbines on land throughout western Ohio, Indiana (& Illinois?) who will now be a a competitive disadvantage because they did the right thing and actually bought (or rented) real estate.

[Line Dancin]

Fugly is all i can say. not to say how would you troll around those things.

[danthebuilder]

Why would you put them so close to shore?

[Priority1]

Why would you put them so close to shore?

$$$$$$$$$$$$$. The power is needed on shore.

The wind power is a joke. If the subsidies went away so would the wind turbines. They are expensive to maintain.

[SteelEyes]

$$$$$$$$$$$$$. The power is needed on shore.

The wind power is a joke. If the subsidies went away so would the wind turbines. They are expensive to maintain.

You got it, the power is needed so badly onshore that First Energy is shutting down 4 real power plants along the shore of Lake Erie. They are not worth upgrading do to the overabundance of power on the regional grid.

[danthebuilder]

The price of natural gas right now is $4 a million BTU's. The rest of the world is paying around $12 a million BTU's. The gas companies are trying to get permission to export natural gas. People want to use it in trucks and other uses. I think its fairly safe to say we will see $8-10 natural gas. When that happens. Wind power is going to be the cheapest thing out there. You'll be glad we're working the kinks out now. We can't rely on 30+ year old nuclear power plants forever. Then you got coal plants that don't make financial sense to build anymore or environmental sense to operate.

As for the bird comment I love hearing it because it points you out as a person who doesn't know what their talking about. It's pure ignorance to be against wind turbines because of their bird kills. Why? Because there are things we do that you accept that kills millions of birds. The wind turbines do kill birds but no where near the amount killed by cars & house windows. Nuclear power plants kills hundreds of thousands of birds a year. Fossil fuels kills millions of birds a year. Lights at airports hundreds of thousands of birds. Should we turn off the lights? Are you giving up driving? Should we make windows in buildings illegal or stop all usage of fossil fuels in the name of birds? NO! Of course not.

But you wanna shut down wind... When there record for bird kills has improved greatly and they do a much better job than almost all the examples i said above. Even when calculated out to the MWH produced. When it comes to wind power they have also learned some things to help greatly reduce the bird kills. Such ideas of turning off the turbines when the birds migrate through the area on their runs south for the winter and north for the summer. Not building them in pathways that are heavily trafficked during these migrations. That's where this bird kill thing all started. They build these small wind turbines in a large migration pathway. One wind farm was responsible for half of all the bird kills. Its clear that we have learned a lesson for this. Changing the speed the blades turn has also reduced the bird kills. So if you really love birds. You should be for wind.

As for the government land thing. Do you know any wind farm owners that are upset that the government is going to allow people to build them in the lake and it will be cheaper? I wonder how much cheaper it is to put a wind turbine in 100+ FOW than it is to pour a cement pad and build one on land... You also know they can write a law mandating that they remove/tear down once the life cycle is up. They did this for nuclear power plants. They must put X dollars a year into the fund so by the time the life cycle is up they have money to tear it down. We're also not dealing with salt water in the great lakes so we won't have near the corrosion issues the oceans have.

I understand the wind isn't also going to blow. But I also understand that they build gas plants to only be used during peak usage/time of high rates. I have nothing against gas plants being used on the less windy days & days of heavy bird traffic. It appears that the natural gas plant owners have no problems building them when they're going to be used for non-base-load use. We could turn our 100 year natural gas reserve into 200 years. That would be great for our national energy security.

Those subsidies for wind are about 2 cents a KWH. Its not that much. Other sources of powers have subsidies. With everyone removing their subsidies. Wind would win. People factor in the costs when comparing wind to costs of power plants that were built 30 years ago and already paid for. Not costs of what it would cost to build now. Those things can't last forever & some are showing signs and are having to be shut down more often for maintenance. I don't hear many people crying about the other subsidies to be done away with. The wind subsidies are definitely money well spent if you look at the big picture.

[SteelEyes]

There are no 'kinks' to work out in wind power generation, it's been around for quite a while. The midwest has wind farms all over the place, they are up in the rocky mountains from California to Alberta, heck there is a 504 MW wind farm out in the North Sea. There are no engineering obstacles to overcome, no major efficiency technologies on the verge of development.

There is an overabundance of power on the regional grid in both base and peak load generation. All an Erie wind farm would be is another unneeded peak load source among the glut of other wind farms that haven't been able to compete with other sources on the PJM and MISO grids. And wind generation can only be peak load generation as it will never be able to meet the legal/regulatory requirements in regards to reliability in order to be considered base load generation.

[tbromund]

Well, it's easy to see who in this thread has a vested interest in wind power. Anyone wanna bet danthebuilder builds windmills for a living.

You certainly hit all the cliche' pro wind talking points in your rant, but I still have never heard a good reason for destroying our lakes to put these eyesores IN them. Put em on land wherever you want, but keep the pinwheels the heck out of my Great Lakes.

Does anyone really believe there isn't going to be a large buffer zone around the pinwheel field that will be off limits, both for security and to protect the boats from flying shrapnel when a gearbox blows up?

Again, not so mush against wind, despite it's horrendous inefficiency , but pay the farmers rent and keep em on land, NOT in the lake, EVER.

Tim