Tuesday 15 December 2009

Daft question

I like windfarms, I like the aesthetics of them, I think they look good - especially when they're moving - and I like the scale of the individual turbines (not the ones in back gardens, the ones in fields). Leaving aside the electricity generation, I like wind farms.

Something that struck me earlier tonight, though - back in the olden days when I was at school studying hard (of course), my thorough investigations into O-Grade physics (oh, look it up you young people) led me to understand that energy is never created, it only changes form (ignoring particle physicists and their field of study known as alphysy, of course, which appears to have more connection with Michael Scot of Balwearie than Napier, Craig or Dewar) so if you use a wind turbine you're reducing the amount of energy that the wind has. Does this have an effect on the environment? I appreciate that each wind turbine takes a miniscule amount of energy when noted against the total wind power in the world, but we keep getting told that tiny events can have massive effects, so is there an effect from wind turbines? Has anyone worked out what the volume of wind turbine activity would have to be to have an actual effect? Is it off-setting one of the side effects of deforestation? (I think it was Douglas Adams who compared planetary tree nudity to a skater spinning, but I'll quite happily take the credit). I suppose that there are similar questions to be asked about tidal power, wave power, hydropower, and (probably) solar power. It would be interesting to know whether any work has been done on it - particularly by climatologists.

I would like to make it clear that no physicists were harmed in the writing of this blog post and that I have respect for these strange beings who do strange and fascinating things...

1 comment:

McChatterer said...

I don't even have a fag packet on the back of which to jot down some calculations, but guess the global effect would be negligible. Global ground windspeed would have been less than now (everything else being equal) back in the days when forests covered the earth. But very quickly as you gain altitude, the effect of friction of ground, trees or turbines on the wind wears off (the sea offers much less resistance to wind, which is why offshore turbines can be built lower down for the same power), and the upper atmosphere is very windy indeed. Perhaps we should stick turbines on tethered ballons and try to harness the jetstream. Would have to be a very long and strong tether though...