Even tiny offshore wind farms with a few dozen turbines can be seen easily at distances of more than 25 km (15 mi), according to this preliminary study! and that facilities with 100 turbines may be seen from a distance of 35 kilometers (22 miles)! or much further, in various weather and lighting conditions…
Is it possible to see offshore wind turbines from the beach?
“Aerial conditions and the curvature of the Earth make the turbines exceedingly difficult to view, especially from the beach,” Alexandra Horn, chair of the NJ Sierra Club’s offshore wind committee, stated. She lives in Atlantic City as well.
Wind turbines can be heard from how far away?
However, some homeowners living within a mile of the blades have complained that they make too much noise. So, how loud are these wind turbines? A wind turbine is normally located 300 meters or more away from a house. A turbine will have a sound pressure level of 43 dB at such distance.
What is the depth of wind turbines in the sea?
Floating wind turbines are moored to the seabed by mooring lines, whereas most offshore wind turbines are anchored to the ocean floor on fixed foundations, limiting them to depths of roughly 165 feet. These massive buildings are built on land and then towed out to sea by boats.
How far away from the coast are wind farms?
Nearshore wind turbines are those that are located within 15 kilometers of the shoreline. Although distance is not the sole key cost driver, it is the attribute that is linked to both economic benefits for nearshore development and disadvantages resulting from public opposition to nearshore wind turbines.
Are there any offshore wind farms visible?
“The turbines will be visible only on the clearest of days, according to Martinez. ” On cloudy days, you won’t be able to view them. When the wind farm is operational, a video included in the construction and operations plan submitted to BOEM for Ocean Wind simulates what the wind farm will look like from shore on a clear, sunny day.
What is the maximum height of an ocean wind turbine?
The hub height of a wind turbine is the distance from the ground to the center of the rotor. Since 1998-1999, the hub height of utility-scale land-based wind turbines has climbed by 59%, to around 90 meters (295 ft) in 2020. That’s around the same height as the Statue of Liberty! In the United States, the average hub height for offshore turbines is expected to increase from 100 meters (330 feet) in 2016 to around 150 meters (500 feet) in 2035, which is nearly the same height as the Washington Monument.
Why do some people dislike the appearance of wind turbines?
Despite widespread support for wind turbines as a sustainable source of electricity, significant portions of the community, particularly those who live near them, are opposed to the technology for aesthetic and environmental grounds.
This mindset, also referred to as the NIMBY phenomenon (Not In My Backyard), has gained political traction to the point where some areas (such as my home state of Virginia) have no utility-scale wind generators.
However, there could be other, unspoken reasons for such hostility, such as a long-standing rivalry between rural and urban interests.
Some people may reject wind turbines for a variety of reasons, including the technology’s visibility, which contrasts with the typically invisible (and so less disagreeable) form of electricity production from massive, but centralized and out-of-the-way fossil fuel and nuclear power plants.
Many residents in Midwestern rural towns, on the other hand, have eagerly welcomed the installation of renewable energy machines on their property.
Indeed, their acceptance has spawned a neologism ridiculing the NIMBY phenomenon: the PIMBY (“Please in My Backyard”) approach.
Farmers do receive lucrative fees for enabling the massive turbines to be installed on their land, but even those who do not benefit financially support them.
Perhaps the PIMBY phenomenon in the rural Midwest, like widespread acceptance and use of complex technologies in general, is just the most recent manifestation of a long-standing process of farmers forming an ultramodern identity, one that is still largely unappreciated by relatively backward city dwellers.
In this session, I use research I did with two colleagues (Benjamin Sovacool on the NIMBY impact and Joshua Brinkman on the PIMBY phenomena) to identify unspoken reasons for people’s attitudes toward wind turbines.
We believe that understanding both NIMBY and PIMBY concerns is aided by understanding the hidden aspects of technologies and how individuals incorporate them into their lives.
We intend to provide policymakers, energy experts, and social scientists with practical insights by uncovering the previously unseen.
Richard Hirsh is a Virginia Tech professor of technology history and science and technology studies.
He has an uncommon academic background, with a Master’s degree in Physics and a Ph.D. in Science History from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Richard shifted his attention to the recent history of electric utilities after previously writing about astronomy performed from space (published as Glimpsing an Invisible Universe in 1983).
He wrote Technology and Transformation in the American Electric Utility Industry in 1989, a book that explains the technological, managerial, and cultural causes for the industry’s issues in the 1970s.
He has also served as a consultant for the Pacific Gas and Electric Company, co-authoring a management history on the utility’s “ACT-squared” energy-efficiency research and development project.
Power Loss: The Origins of Deregulation and Restructuring in the American Electric Utility System was published in 1999.
Working with engineers, scientists, and policy analysts at Virginia Tech and other colleges, he continues to write and talk on policy-related challenges involving electric power systems.
Richard is writing a book about the mostly ignoredbut relatively successful efforts to light up farms in the years before the federal government founded the Rural Electrification Administration, which is an interesting twist for someone who focuses largely on modern policy-oriented problems (in 1935).
What is the noise level of a wind turbine?
Wind turbines are no exception to the rule that everything with moving parts makes noise. Wind turbines, on the other hand, are normally quiet in operation, especially when compared to the noise produced by road traffic, trains, airplanes, and building activities, to name a few.
What is the depth of wind turbines in the ground?
The steel tower is supported by a platform that is 30 to 50 feet across and 6 to 30 feet deep, and weighs over a thousand tons of concrete and steel rebar. To assist anchor it, shafts are sometimes driven down further. To produce a flat area of at least 3 acres, mountain tops must be blasted. The platform is essential for supporting the turbine assembly’s massive weight.
How big is the world’s biggest offshore wind turbine?
The world’s largest wind turbine is presently held by MingYang Smart Energy, a Chinese wind turbine manufacturer.
The MySE 16.0-242 is a hybrid drive offshore wind turbine. It has a diameter of 242 meters, blades that are 118 meters long, and a swept surface of 46,000 square meters.
The turbine has a nameplate capacity of 16MW and is intended for high-wind IEC IB including typhoon-class IEC TC (this refers to the international standards issued by the International Electrotechnical Commission governing wind turbines).
The MySE 16.0-242 is reported to have the largest rotor and the highest nominal rating in the industry. Over the course of a year, a single turbine may create up to 80,000 megawatt-hours of electricity, enough to power more than 20,000 households. By comparison, the MySE 11.0-203, the company’s previous turbine model, produces 45 percent less energy.
When compared to coal-fired power generation, the turbine is expected to last for 25 years and eliminate over 1.6 million tonnes of carbon dioxide.
The turbine’s full prototype deployment is scheduled for 2022, with prototype installation in the first half of 2023 and commercial production in the first half of 2024.
MingYang’s new 15 MW+ offshore product platform begins with the MySE 16.0-242. The company’s goal is to create a variety of model variants that can adapt to a variety of offshore conditions, ranging from Europe’s always-windy North Sea to the typhoon-prone South China Sea.
