Damned Central Heating!

On 4/4/2019 11:57 AM, Mark J. wrote:
On 4/3/2019 8:02 PM, David Scheidt wrote:
wrote:
:On Wed, 03 Apr 2019 20:22:33 -0500, AMuzi wrote:


:As far as I know "modern" cars no longer have "points" and plugs seem
:to last forever.

GM introduced HEI (a distributor that used a magnetic pickup instead
of points.)Â* in 73 or so, and it was universal by '75.Â* Pretty much
everyone else did it at about the same time.Â* Distributors themselves
started going away in the mid 80s, and I doubt there's any modern
engine that uses one.

Modern engines have plug replacement intervals longer than the engine
replacement interval in Andrew's car.

Yup, and a damn good thing, too.Â* My daughter got a long(!)-in-the-tooth
Prius.Â* It started to run a bit rough, and the on-board computer
(accessible with a ~$30 dongle and a bit of freeware for your
cellphone!) said she had a misfiring plug.

I nearly had to remove the windshield to replace the plugs. Exaggeration
aside, I /did/ have to remove the windshield wiper motor, or at least
the control arm, per the aftermarket service manual (Haynes, IIRC) to
get enough clearance to pull the plugs.Â* It's run fine ever since, but I
sure don't want to do that again soon.Â* The plugs spec'd were iridium
coated, and rated at something like 40k-50k /miles/, and said to often
last 70k miles.

Oh, and yes, "points" went out ages ago.Â* I put a "pointless"
aftermarket electronic ignition in my '69 Mustang in about 1978. I think
every car I owned after that was already "pointless."

My first adventure with pointless ignition was on a 1970 Kawasaki
motorcycle. It was a rotory valve two-stroke with surface gap spark
plugs and a capacitive discharge ignition system triggered by a
permanent magnet and coil.

Unfortunately, the CD ignition modules weren't sufficiently waterproof.
On one motorcycle tour in the Appalachians, a drenching thunderstorm
caused one of the boxes of electronics to spew sparks and smoke. The
only dealer in town said he couldn't diagnose separate components. He
claimed the entire system needed replaced - even the permanent magnet -
at a cost almost what I paid for the bike. So I converted to points and
coil, but I must admit the bike never ran quite as well.

I think our 1978 Honda was the last car I owned with points, which is
fine with me. My 1972 BMW motorcycle has points, and they seem to need
very little attention. But conversion kits are available if I should
choose to get rid of the points.


--
- Frank Krygowski

On Thu, 4 Apr 2019 08:57:08 -0700, "Mark J."
wrote:

On 4/3/2019 8:02 PM, David Scheidt wrote:
wrote:
:On Wed, 03 Apr 2019 20:22:33 -0500, AMuzi wrote:


:As far as I know "modern" cars no longer have "points" and plugs seem
:to last forever.

GM introduced HEI (a distributor that used a magnetic pickup instead
of points.) in 73 or so, and it was universal by '75. Pretty much
everyone else did it at about the same time. Distributors themselves
started going away in the mid 80s, and I doubt there's any modern
engine that uses one.

Modern engines have plug replacement intervals longer than the engine
replacement interval in Andrew's car.

Yup, and a damn good thing, too. My daughter got a long(!)-in-the-tooth
Prius. It started to run a bit rough, and the on-board computer
(accessible with a ~$30 dongle and a bit of freeware for your
cellphone!) said she had a misfiring plug.

I nearly had to remove the windshield to replace the plugs.
Exaggeration aside, I /did/ have to remove the windshield wiper motor,
or at least the control arm, per the aftermarket service manual (Haynes,
IIRC) to get enough clearance to pull the plugs. It's run fine ever
since, but I sure don't want to do that again soon. The plugs spec'd
were iridium coated, and rated at something like 40k-50k /miles/, and
said to often last 70k miles.

Oh, and yes, "points" went out ages ago. I put a "pointless"
aftermarket electronic ignition in my '69 Mustang in about 1978. I think
every car I owned after that was already "pointless."

Mark J.

Plugs difficult to access date back to at least 1he 1950's. The 1951
Oldsmobile 88 had to be on a lift to get at the spark plugs :-) I
worked in a filling station part time and my boss bought one :-(

--
cheers,

John B.

On 4/3/2019 12:40 PM, wrote:
On Wednesday, April 3, 2019 at 10:56:48 AM UTC-7, Bob F wrote:
On 3/26/2019 4:15 PM, wrote:
On Monday, March 25, 2019 at 8:07:45 PM UTC-7, Bob F wrote:
On 3/20/2019 12:04 PM, wrote:
On Wednesday, March 20, 2019 at 11:09:26 AM UTC-7, sms wrote:
On 3/19/2019 4:04 PM, Joerg wrote:

snip

We rarely use it anymore due to the price-gouging in the propane
industry. We switched to cord wood and pellets.

No natural gas in your area? Odd for California housing developments.

There's a big move now to all-electric since the electricity can be
generated without the use of fossil fuels.

I don't know where you get that idea. Those new windmills are more than 500 meters high and they will not start turning in anything short of hurricane force winds so the "generator" is driven like a motor to keep them rotating. Any that you see not turning are turned off and may be broken. The results of all of this is those windmills have a net power DRAIN in most areas because while they generate a good deal of power when the wind is above 20 mph that is rare.

Solar farms are almost as bad. They virtually kill the environment beneath them and they have efficiency of only 22% or so when new. They age 4 times faster than is claimed and if you do not keep them clean they can fail faster than that. At 22% efficiency at high noon when the sun is directly overhead that means that they can only generate 220 watts per square meter.

A friend was planning on putting solar cells on his home in Phoenix and dragged me off to a solar show. The salesmen were taunting 20 year lifespan. I talked to the engineers and they told me soto vox that they were 5 years to 50% output if the surfaces were cleaned all the time. And this is only under perfect conditions. They are only good for output on 2 hours either side of local true noon. Any clouds greatly reduce their output.

So virtually all of that crap about "green energy" is just that. They cause 100 times more environmental damage than they supposedly prevent. Birds cannot judge a windmill speed because the ends of the blades are traveling at 200 mph. The sound from the rotating blades even being driven via motor power confuse bats and when under full wind drive make super-sonic sounds so loud that they permanently deafen the insect eating bats that are environmentally important.

All of this is well known and there are plenty of papers written on these subjects. Why does the media avoid these at all costs and continue to promote the fraud of climate change when the climate has been more or less stable since the end of the Little Ice Age?


LOL! You actually BELIEVE this crap?

I don't know who you are or where you live but my brother used to be the electrician for the power company that runs the windmills in the Altamont Pass area. I have seen the destruction. You only have to ride an F-ing bike through the May Rd./North Flynn Rd. area to see it.

The new windmills now hardly ever generate power anymore because it takes 20 knots of wind or more to generate enough power to turn those huge blades. So they drive them by powering them up all the time to keep them revolving because they will not start in the amount of wind that is usually the highest wind they receive. The mills that are not moving are those that will not work with wind from the normal direction and they don't get powered up unless the predictions are for more northerly or southerly winds.

Pure B.S. They start from the wind. They aim into the wind.

https://www.energy.gov/eere/wind/ani...-turbine-works

I have gone to solar shows and while the salesmen are bragging about all sorts of efficiencies and long life the engineers tell me a far different story. Strange how an engineer can talk more openly to another engineer.

So tell me what YOU know about this "crap"?


It is not true.

https://www.quora.com/In-laymans-ter...ind-conditions

"So if the wind is only strong enough for the turbine to free-spin at 10 RPM, but the sync speed for the lowest gear ratio is 12 RPM, then the turbine will have to suck power from the grid to keep pace at 12 RPM! The coils work as a motor instead of a generator, and the turbine turns into a giant fan. In that case, you're much better off keeping the turbine stopped until the wind is strong enough to spin it faster."

This was the point I was making about the positioning of the wind turbines in the passes around the bay area. Since the hills block the wind for a large number of turbines they bring these to a complete stop when the wind isn't coming from the correct direction. Then to start them up again it requires quite a bit of power.

The wind turbines exposed to wind from all directions are always idling until the wind speed is high enough to provide sufficient power that they can generate enough power in sync with the power grid. This is not some simple task. In most cases these super large turbines require a LOT of power to bring them to syncro speed

So I hope you understand that wind turbines use almost as much power overall as they produce. Wind of the minimum usable velocity is rare even in the windy pass.

There are "low wind", "medium wind" and "high wind" turbines. Of course using the yearly average wind should be the proper way to select these turbines but that isn't what they do since they are selling "rated power". Instead what they do is select these windmills by judging the highest average wind velocity in the windiest months. Now that can be argued that this method prevents overloading and breaking the windmills so I don't quite know what to make of that.

As I said before, my brother was the electrician for the Altamont wind farm for several years until he got a civil service job that has a plush retirement. And around here somewhere I have a patent for windmills that my uncle took out in the 70's after I assisted him in constructing vertical windmills. Unfortunately he wouldn't take my advice and believed that since wind is erratic that you could generate more power using ocean currents. Simple calculations show that water currents such as the California Current though constant, despite being 800 times denser than air, the velocity is far too low to generate significant power.

So this isn't as if I haven't actually looked into the stuff and am just talking off the top of my head.


A pile of stupid assumptions. They just don't run windmills until the
wind is sufficient to spin them up to speed. If there is not enough wind
to get them up to speed unloaded, why would they spin them at all. They
would not get any power from them even if they do. They quite obviously
produce substantially more power than they use or they wouldn't have
been built in the first place, or the designer was an idiot, and they
would quickly go out of business. Maybe an idiot built the ones you are
talking about, but that is clearly not the case in general.

On 4/5/2019 7:58 PM, Bob F wrote:
On 4/3/2019 12:40 PM, wrote:
On Wednesday, April 3, 2019 at 10:56:48 AM UTC-7, Bob F
wrote:
On 3/26/2019 4:15 PM, wrote:
On Monday, March 25, 2019 at 8:07:45 PM UTC-7, Bob F wrote:
On 3/20/2019 12:04 PM, wrote:
On Wednesday, March 20, 2019 at 11:09:26 AM UTC-7, sms
wrote:
On 3/19/2019 4:04 PM, Joerg wrote:

snip

We rarely use it anymore due to the price-gouging in
the propane
industry. We switched to cord wood and pellets.

No natural gas in your area? Odd for California
housing developments.

There's a big move now to all-electric since the
electricity can be
generated without the use of fossil fuels.

I don't know where you get that idea. Those new
windmills are more than 500 meters high and they will
not start turning in anything short of hurricane force
winds so the "generator" is driven like a motor to
keep them rotating. Any that you see not turning are
turned off and may be broken. The results of all of
this is those windmills have a net power DRAIN in most
areas because while they generate a good deal of power
when the wind is above 20 mph that is rare.

Solar farms are almost as bad. They virtually kill the
environment beneath them and they have efficiency of
only 22% or so when new. They age 4 times faster than
is claimed and if you do not keep them clean they can
fail faster than that. At 22% efficiency at high noon
when the sun is directly overhead that means that they
can only generate 220 watts per square meter.

A friend was planning on putting solar cells on his
home in Phoenix and dragged me off to a solar show.
The salesmen were taunting 20 year lifespan. I talked
to the engineers and they told me soto vox that they
were 5 years to 50% output if the surfaces were
cleaned all the time. And this is only under perfect
conditions. They are only good for output on 2 hours
either side of local true noon. Any clouds greatly
reduce their output.

So virtually all of that crap about "green energy" is
just that. They cause 100 times more environmental
damage than they supposedly prevent. Birds cannot
judge a windmill speed because the ends of the blades
are traveling at 200 mph. The sound from the rotating
blades even being driven via motor power confuse bats
and when under full wind drive make super-sonic sounds
so loud that they permanently deafen the insect eating
bats that are environmentally important.

All of this is well known and there are plenty of
papers written on these subjects. Why does the media
avoid these at all costs and continue to promote the
fraud of climate change when the climate has been more
or less stable since the end of the Little Ice Age?


LOL! You actually BELIEVE this crap?

I don't know who you are or where you live but my
brother used to be the electrician for the power company
that runs the windmills in the Altamont Pass area. I
have seen the destruction. You only have to ride an
F-ing bike through the May Rd./North Flynn Rd. area to
see it.

The new windmills now hardly ever generate power anymore
because it takes 20 knots of wind or more to generate
enough power to turn those huge blades. So they drive
them by powering them up all the time to keep them
revolving because they will not start in the amount of
wind that is usually the highest wind they receive. The
mills that are not moving are those that will not work
with wind from the normal direction and they don't get
powered up unless the predictions are for more northerly
or southerly winds.

Pure B.S. They start from the wind. They aim into the wind.

https://www.energy.gov/eere/wind/ani...-turbine-works


I have gone to solar shows and while the salesmen are
bragging about all sorts of efficiencies and long life
the engineers tell me a far different story. Strange how
an engineer can talk more openly to another engineer.

So tell me what YOU know about this "crap"?


It is not true.

https://www.quora.com/In-laymans-ter...ind-conditions


"So if the wind is only strong enough for the turbine to
free-spin at 10 RPM, but the sync speed for the lowest
gear ratio is 12 RPM, then the turbine will have to suck
power from the grid to keep pace at 12 RPM! The coils work
as a motor instead of a generator, and the turbine turns
into a giant fan. In that case, you're much better off
keeping the turbine stopped until the wind is strong
enough to spin it faster."

This was the point I was making about the positioning of
the wind turbines in the passes around the bay area. Since
the hills block the wind for a large number of turbines
they bring these to a complete stop when the wind isn't
coming from the correct direction. Then to start them up
again it requires quite a bit of power.

The wind turbines exposed to wind from all directions are
always idling until the wind speed is high enough to
provide sufficient power that they can generate enough
power in sync with the power grid. This is not some simple
task. In most cases these super large turbines require a
LOT of power to bring them to syncro speed

So I hope you understand that wind turbines use almost as
much power overall as they produce. Wind of the minimum
usable velocity is rare even in the windy pass.

There are "low wind", "medium wind" and "high wind"
turbines. Of course using the yearly average wind should
be the proper way to select these turbines but that isn't
what they do since they are selling "rated power". Instead
what they do is select these windmills by judging the
highest average wind velocity in the windiest months. Now
that can be argued that this method prevents overloading
and breaking the windmills so I don't quite know what to
make of that.

As I said before, my brother was the electrician for the
Altamont wind farm for several years until he got a civil
service job that has a plush retirement. And around here
somewhere I have a patent for windmills that my uncle took
out in the 70's after I assisted him in constructing
vertical windmills. Unfortunately he wouldn't take my
advice and believed that since wind is erratic that you
could generate more power using ocean currents. Simple
calculations show that water currents such as the
California Current though constant, despite being 800
times denser than air, the velocity is far too low to
generate significant power.

So this isn't as if I haven't actually looked into the
stuff and am just talking off the top of my head.


A pile of stupid assumptions. They just don't run windmills
until the wind is sufficient to spin them up to speed. If
there is not enough wind to get them up to speed unloaded,
why would they spin them at all. They would not get any
power from them even if they do. They quite obviously
produce substantially more power than they use or they
wouldn't have been built in the first place, or the designer
was an idiot, and they would quickly go out of business.
Maybe an idiot built the ones you are talking about, but
that is clearly not the case in general.

Well, there's engineering (applied physics) and then there's
wind power economics (applied graft)

https://www.instituteforenergyresear...e-389-percent/

Between the taxpayers and the ratepayers, a guy can do well
without contributing much of anything to society generally.

--
Andrew Muzi
www.yellowjersey.org/
Open every day since 1 April, 1971

On 4/5/2019 9:35 PM, AMuzi wrote:
On 4/5/2019 7:58 PM, Bob F wrote:
On 4/3/2019 12:40 PM, wrote:
On Wednesday, April 3, 2019 at 10:56:48 AM UTC-7, Bob F
wrote:
On 3/26/2019 4:15 PM, wrote:
On Monday, March 25, 2019 at 8:07:45 PM UTC-7, Bob F wrote:
On 3/20/2019 12:04 PM, wrote:
On Wednesday, March 20, 2019 at 11:09:26 AM UTC-7, sms
wrote:
On 3/19/2019 4:04 PM, Joerg wrote:

snip

We rarely use it anymore due to the price-gouging in
the propane
industry. We switched to cord wood and pellets.

No natural gas in your area? Odd for California
housing developments.

There's a big move now to all-electric since the
electricity can be
generated without the use of fossil fuels.

I don't know where you get that idea. Those new
windmills are more than 500 meters high and they will
not start turning in anything short of hurricane force
winds so the "generator" is driven like a motor to
keep them rotating. Any that you see not turning are
turned off and may be broken. The results of all of
this is those windmills have a net power DRAIN in most
areas because while they generate a good deal of power
when the wind is above 20 mph that is rare.

Solar farms are almost as bad. They virtually kill the
environment beneath them and they have efficiency of
only 22% or so when new. They age 4 times faster than
is claimed and if you do not keep them clean they can
fail faster than that. At 22% efficiency at high noon
when the sun is directly overhead that means that they
can only generate 220 watts per square meter.

A friend was planning on putting solar cells on his
home in Phoenix and dragged me off to a solar show.
The salesmen were taunting 20 year lifespan. I talked
to the engineers and they told me soto vox that they
were 5 years to 50% output if the surfaces were
cleaned all the time. And this is only under perfect
conditions. They are only good for output on 2 hours
either side of local true noon. Any clouds greatly
reduce their output.

So virtually all of that crap about "green energy" is
just that. They cause 100 times more environmental
damage than they supposedly prevent. Birds cannot
judge a windmill speed because the ends of the blades
are traveling at 200 mph. The sound from the rotating
blades even being driven via motor power confuse bats
and when under full wind drive make super-sonic sounds
so loud that they permanently deafen the insect eating
bats that are environmentally important.

All of this is well known and there are plenty of
papers written on these subjects. Why does the media
avoid these at all costs and continue to promote the
fraud of climate change when the climate has been more
or less stable since the end of the Little Ice Age?


LOL! You actually BELIEVE this crap?

I don't know who you are or where you live but my
brother used to be the electrician for the power company
that runs the windmills in the Altamont Pass area. I
have seen the destruction. You only have to ride an
F-ing bike through the May Rd./North Flynn Rd. area to
see it.

The new windmills now hardly ever generate power anymore
because it takes 20 knots of wind or more to generate
enough power to turn those huge blades. So they drive
them by powering them up all the time to keep them
revolving because they will not start in the amount of
wind that is usually the highest wind they receive. The
mills that are not moving are those that will not work
with wind from the normal direction and they don't get
powered up unless the predictions are for more northerly
or southerly winds.

Pure B.S. They start from the wind. They aim into the wind.

https://www.energy.gov/eere/wind/ani...-turbine-works


I have gone to solar shows and while the salesmen are
bragging about all sorts of efficiencies and long life
the engineers tell me a far different story. Strange how
an engineer can talk more openly to another engineer.

So tell me what YOU know about this "crap"?


It is not true.

https://www.quora.com/In-laymans-ter...ind-conditions



"So if the wind is only strong enough for the turbine to
free-spin at 10 RPM, but the sync speed for the lowest
gear ratio is 12 RPM, then the turbine will have to suck
power from the grid to keep pace at 12 RPM! The coils work
as a motor instead of a generator, and the turbine turns
into a giant fan. In that case, you're much better off
keeping the turbine stopped until the wind is strong
enough to spin it faster."

This was the point I was making about the positioning of
the wind turbines in the passes around the bay area. Since
the hills block the wind for a large number of turbines
they bring these to a complete stop when the wind isn't
coming from the correct direction. Then to start them up
again it requires quite a bit of power.

The wind turbines exposed to wind from all directions are
always idling until the wind speed is high enough to
provide sufficient power that they can generate enough
power in sync with the power grid. This is not some simple
task. In most cases these super large turbines require a
LOT of power to bring them to syncro speed

So I hope you understand that wind turbines use almost as
much power overall as they produce. Wind of the minimum
usable velocity is rare even in the windy pass.

There are "low wind", "medium wind" and "high wind"
turbines. Of course using the yearly average wind should
be the proper way to select these turbines but that isn't
what they do since they are selling "rated power". Instead
what they do is select these windmills by judging the
highest average wind velocity in the windiest months. Now
that can be argued that this method prevents overloading
and breaking the windmills so I don't quite know what to
make of that.

As I said before, my brother was the electrician for the
Altamont wind farm for several years until he got a civil
service job that has a plush retirement. And around here
somewhere I have a patent for windmills that my uncle took
out in the 70's after I assisted him in constructing
vertical windmills. Unfortunately he wouldn't take my
advice and believed that since wind is erratic that you
could generate more power using ocean currents. Simple
calculations show that water currents such as the
California Current though constant, despite being 800
times denser than air, the velocity is far too low to
generate significant power.

So this isn't as if I haven't actually looked into the
stuff and am just talking off the top of my head.


A pile of stupid assumptions. They just don't run windmills
until the wind is sufficient to spin them up to speed. If
there is not enough wind to get them up to speed unloaded,
why would they spin them at all. They would not get any
power from them even if they do. They quite obviously
produce substantially more power than they use or they
wouldn't have been built in the first place, or the designer
was an idiot, and they would quickly go out of business.
Maybe an idiot built the ones you are talking about, but
that is clearly not the case in general.

Well, there's engineering (applied physics) and then there's wind power
economics (applied graft)

https://www.instituteforenergyresear...e-389-percent/


Between the taxpayers and the ratepayers, a guy can do well without
contributing much of anything to society generally.

Subsidies for energy have been around a long, long time. Some are
purposeful, some are perhaps unintended, but they are real nonetheless.
https://money.cnn.com/2018/02/02/inv...oil/index.html

Regarding wind, while there are certainly some wind turbine
installations that didn't work out (including one tiny one set up by a
local government), there's no doubt that they work well when properly done.

https://www.iaenvironment.org/our-wo...gy/wind-energy

(Tom's idea that they use motors to spin those things up is total nonsense.)

--
- Frank Krygowski

On Fri, 5 Apr 2019 17:58:49 -0700, Bob F wrote:

On 4/3/2019 12:40 PM, wrote:
On Wednesday, April 3, 2019 at 10:56:48 AM UTC-7, Bob F wrote:
On 3/26/2019 4:15 PM, wrote:
On Monday, March 25, 2019 at 8:07:45 PM UTC-7, Bob F wrote:
On 3/20/2019 12:04 PM, wrote:
On Wednesday, March 20, 2019 at 11:09:26 AM UTC-7, sms wrote:
On 3/19/2019 4:04 PM, Joerg wrote:

snip

We rarely use it anymore due to the price-gouging in the propane
industry. We switched to cord wood and pellets.

No natural gas in your area? Odd for California housing developments.

There's a big move now to all-electric since the electricity can be
generated without the use of fossil fuels.

I don't know where you get that idea. Those new windmills are more than 500 meters high and they will not start turning in anything short of hurricane force winds so the "generator" is driven like a motor to keep them rotating. Any that you see not turning are turned off and may be broken. The results of all of this is those windmills have a net power DRAIN in most areas because while they generate a good deal of power when the wind is above 20 mph that is rare.

Solar farms are almost as bad. They virtually kill the environment beneath them and they have efficiency of only 22% or so when new. They age 4 times faster than is claimed and if you do not keep them clean they can fail faster than that. At 22% efficiency at high noon when the sun is directly overhead that means that they can only generate 220 watts per square meter.

A friend was planning on putting solar cells on his home in Phoenix and dragged me off to a solar show. The salesmen were taunting 20 year lifespan. I talked to the engineers and they told me soto vox that they were 5 years to 50% output if the surfaces were cleaned all the time. And this is only under perfect conditions. They are only good for output on 2 hours either side of local true noon. Any clouds greatly reduce their output.

So virtually all of that crap about "green energy" is just that. They cause 100 times more environmental damage than they supposedly prevent. Birds cannot judge a windmill speed because the ends of the blades are traveling at 200 mph. The sound from the rotating blades even being driven via motor power confuse bats and when under full wind drive make super-sonic sounds so loud that they permanently deafen the insect eating bats that are environmentally important.

All of this is well known and there are plenty of papers written on these subjects. Why does the media avoid these at all costs and continue to promote the fraud of climate change when the climate has been more or less stable since the end of the Little Ice Age?


LOL! You actually BELIEVE this crap?

I don't know who you are or where you live but my brother used to be the electrician for the power company that runs the windmills in the Altamont Pass area. I have seen the destruction. You only have to ride an F-ing bike through the May Rd./North Flynn Rd. area to see it.

The new windmills now hardly ever generate power anymore because it takes 20 knots of wind or more to generate enough power to turn those huge blades. So they drive them by powering them up all the time to keep them revolving because they will not start in the amount of wind that is usually the highest wind they receive. The mills that are not moving are those that will not work with wind from the normal direction and they don't get powered up unless the predictions are for more northerly or southerly winds.

Pure B.S. They start from the wind. They aim into the wind.

https://www.energy.gov/eere/wind/ani...-turbine-works

I have gone to solar shows and while the salesmen are bragging about all sorts of efficiencies and long life the engineers tell me a far different story. Strange how an engineer can talk more openly to another engineer.

So tell me what YOU know about this "crap"?


It is not true.

https://www.quora.com/In-laymans-ter...ind-conditions

"So if the wind is only strong enough for the turbine to free-spin at 10 RPM, but the sync speed for the lowest gear ratio is 12 RPM, then the turbine will have to suck power from the grid to keep pace at 12 RPM! The coils work as a motor instead of a generator, and the turbine turns into a giant fan. In that case, you're much better off keeping the turbine stopped until the wind is strong enough to spin it faster."

This was the point I was making about the positioning of the wind turbines in the passes around the bay area. Since the hills block the wind for a large number of turbines they bring these to a complete stop when the wind isn't coming from the correct direction. Then to start them up again it requires quite a bit of power.

The wind turbines exposed to wind from all directions are always idling until the wind speed is high enough to provide sufficient power that they can generate enough power in sync with the power grid. This is not some simple task. In most cases these super large turbines require a LOT of power to bring them to syncro speed

So I hope you understand that wind turbines use almost as
much power overall as they produce. Wind of the minimum usable
velocity is rare even in the windy pass.

There are "low wind", "medium wind" and "high wind" turbines.
Of course using the yearly average wind should be the proper way to
select these turbines but that isn't what they do since they are
selling "rated power". Instead what they do is select these windmills
by judging the highest average wind velocity in the windiest months.
Now that can be argued that this method prevents overloading and
breaking the windmills so I don't quite know what to make of that.

As I said before, my brother was the electrician for the Altamont
wind farm for several years until he got a civil service job that has
a plush retirement. And around here somewhere I have a patent for
windmills that my uncle took out in the 70's after I assisted him in
constructing vertical windmills. Unfortunately he wouldn't take my
advice and believed that since wind is erratic that you could generate
more power using ocean currents. Simple calculations show that water
currents such as the California Current though constant, despite being
800 times denser than air, the velocity is far too low to generate
significant power.

So this isn't as if I haven't actually looked into the stuff and am just talking off the top of my head.


A pile of stupid assumptions. They just don't run windmills until the
wind is sufficient to spin them up to speed. If there is not enough wind
to get them up to speed unloaded, why would they spin them at all. They
would not get any power from them even if they do. They quite obviously
produce substantially more power than they use or they wouldn't have
been built in the first place, or the designer was an idiot, and they
would quickly go out of business. Maybe an idiot built the ones you are
talking about, but that is clearly not the case in general.

Apparently wind generators use a certain amount of power to control
the pitch of the blades, to control the angle of the blades to the
wind, for clearance lights, blade heat, etc. But:

Wayne Gulden https://windfarmrealities.org/?p=1594
has analyzed the daily production reports of a Vestas V82 1.65-MW wind
turbine at the University of Minnesota, Morris, from 2006 to 2008.
Those records include negative production, i.e., net consumption, as
well as daily average wind speeds. The data suggest that the turbine
consumes at a minimum rate of about 50 kW, or 8.3% of its reported
production over those years (which declined 2-4% each year)

But, steam turbine, water driven, tidal powered, generation all
consume power in the sense that they require considerable maintenance
and upkeep so the fact that a wind generator isn't free electricity
comes as no surprise.
--
cheers,

John B.

On Fri, 5 Apr 2019 22:03:07 -0400, Frank Krygowski
wrote:

On 4/5/2019 9:35 PM, AMuzi wrote:
On 4/5/2019 7:58 PM, Bob F wrote:
On 4/3/2019 12:40 PM, wrote:
On Wednesday, April 3, 2019 at 10:56:48 AM UTC-7, Bob F
wrote:
On 3/26/2019 4:15 PM, wrote:
On Monday, March 25, 2019 at 8:07:45 PM UTC-7, Bob F wrote:
On 3/20/2019 12:04 PM, wrote:
On Wednesday, March 20, 2019 at 11:09:26 AM UTC-7, sms
wrote:
On 3/19/2019 4:04 PM, Joerg wrote:

snip

We rarely use it anymore due to the price-gouging in
the propane
industry. We switched to cord wood and pellets.

No natural gas in your area? Odd for California
housing developments.

There's a big move now to all-electric since the
electricity can be
generated without the use of fossil fuels.

I don't know where you get that idea. Those new
windmills are more than 500 meters high and they will
not start turning in anything short of hurricane force
winds so the "generator" is driven like a motor to
keep them rotating. Any that you see not turning are
turned off and may be broken. The results of all of
this is those windmills have a net power DRAIN in most
areas because while they generate a good deal of power
when the wind is above 20 mph that is rare.

Solar farms are almost as bad. They virtually kill the
environment beneath them and they have efficiency of
only 22% or so when new. They age 4 times faster than
is claimed and if you do not keep them clean they can
fail faster than that. At 22% efficiency at high noon
when the sun is directly overhead that means that they
can only generate 220 watts per square meter.

A friend was planning on putting solar cells on his
home in Phoenix and dragged me off to a solar show.
The salesmen were taunting 20 year lifespan. I talked
to the engineers and they told me soto vox that they
were 5 years to 50% output if the surfaces were
cleaned all the time. And this is only under perfect
conditions. They are only good for output on 2 hours
either side of local true noon. Any clouds greatly
reduce their output.

So virtually all of that crap about "green energy" is
just that. They cause 100 times more environmental
damage than they supposedly prevent. Birds cannot
judge a windmill speed because the ends of the blades
are traveling at 200 mph. The sound from the rotating
blades even being driven via motor power confuse bats
and when under full wind drive make super-sonic sounds
so loud that they permanently deafen the insect eating
bats that are environmentally important.

All of this is well known and there are plenty of
papers written on these subjects. Why does the media
avoid these at all costs and continue to promote the
fraud of climate change when the climate has been more
or less stable since the end of the Little Ice Age?


LOL! You actually BELIEVE this crap?

I don't know who you are or where you live but my
brother used to be the electrician for the power company
that runs the windmills in the Altamont Pass area. I
have seen the destruction. You only have to ride an
F-ing bike through the May Rd./North Flynn Rd. area to
see it.

The new windmills now hardly ever generate power anymore
because it takes 20 knots of wind or more to generate
enough power to turn those huge blades. So they drive
them by powering them up all the time to keep them
revolving because they will not start in the amount of
wind that is usually the highest wind they receive. The
mills that are not moving are those that will not work
with wind from the normal direction and they don't get
powered up unless the predictions are for more northerly
or southerly winds.

Pure B.S. They start from the wind. They aim into the wind.

https://www.energy.gov/eere/wind/ani...-turbine-works


I have gone to solar shows and while the salesmen are
bragging about all sorts of efficiencies and long life
the engineers tell me a far different story. Strange how
an engineer can talk more openly to another engineer.

So tell me what YOU know about this "crap"?


It is not true.

https://www.quora.com/In-laymans-ter...ind-conditions



"So if the wind is only strong enough for the turbine to
free-spin at 10 RPM, but the sync speed for the lowest
gear ratio is 12 RPM, then the turbine will have to suck
power from the grid to keep pace at 12 RPM! The coils work
as a motor instead of a generator, and the turbine turns
into a giant fan. In that case, you're much better off
keeping the turbine stopped until the wind is strong
enough to spin it faster."

This was the point I was making about the positioning of
the wind turbines in the passes around the bay area. Since
the hills block the wind for a large number of turbines
they bring these to a complete stop when the wind isn't
coming from the correct direction. Then to start them up
again it requires quite a bit of power.

The wind turbines exposed to wind from all directions are
always idling until the wind speed is high enough to
provide sufficient power that they can generate enough
power in sync with the power grid. This is not some simple
task. In most cases these super large turbines require a
LOT of power to bring them to syncro speed

So I hope you understand that wind turbines use almost as
much power overall as they produce. Wind of the minimum
usable velocity is rare even in the windy pass.

There are "low wind", "medium wind" and "high wind"
turbines. Of course using the yearly average wind should
be the proper way to select these turbines but that isn't
what they do since they are selling "rated power". Instead
what they do is select these windmills by judging the
highest average wind velocity in the windiest months. Now
that can be argued that this method prevents overloading
and breaking the windmills so I don't quite know what to
make of that.

As I said before, my brother was the electrician for the
Altamont wind farm for several years until he got a civil
service job that has a plush retirement. And around here
somewhere I have a patent for windmills that my uncle took
out in the 70's after I assisted him in constructing
vertical windmills. Unfortunately he wouldn't take my
advice and believed that since wind is erratic that you
could generate more power using ocean currents. Simple
calculations show that water currents such as the
California Current though constant, despite being 800
times denser than air, the velocity is far too low to
generate significant power.

So this isn't as if I haven't actually looked into the
stuff and am just talking off the top of my head.


A pile of stupid assumptions. They just don't run windmills
until the wind is sufficient to spin them up to speed. If
there is not enough wind to get them up to speed unloaded,
why would they spin them at all. They would not get any
power from them even if they do. They quite obviously
produce substantially more power than they use or they
wouldn't have been built in the first place, or the designer
was an idiot, and they would quickly go out of business.
Maybe an idiot built the ones you are talking about, but
that is clearly not the case in general.

Well, there's engineering (applied physics) and then there's wind power
economics (applied graft)

https://www.instituteforenergyresear...e-389-percent/


Between the taxpayers and the ratepayers, a guy can do well without
contributing much of anything to society generally.

Subsidies for energy have been around a long, long time. Some are
purposeful, some are perhaps unintended, but they are real nonetheless.
https://money.cnn.com/2018/02/02/inv...oil/index.html

Regarding wind, while there are certainly some wind turbine
installations that didn't work out (including one tiny one set up by a
local government), there's no doubt that they work well when properly done.

https://www.iaenvironment.org/our-wo...gy/wind-energy

(Tom's idea that they use motors to spin those things up is total nonsense.)

One can use the sun to generate electricity, I did on the sailboat.
But there are a few "gotcha's" like you need a surprising amount of
space for enough panels to run a boat, never mind a house, they don't
generate at night or when it is overcast so one needs a battery bank
to run things when the panels are not generating and of course battery
power is finite so one needs a generator to recharge the batteries at
times. Then we have the maintenance and upkeep on the battery bank and
if powering a house the converter to change the DC battery power to
the AC that the household accessories require...

Of course the thing to do is what my grandparents, on my father's
side, did when they first moved off the farm. Own your own wood lot
and cut the stove wood that you need for cooking. Don't heat the whole
house, just the kitchen with the wood fired cook stove, use kerosene
lamps and an Ice Box to store food.

Just think of all that savings on electricity.
--
cheers,

John B.

On 4/5/2019 5:58 PM, Bob F wrote:

snip

A pile of stupid assumptions. They just don't run windmills until the
wind is sufficient to spin them up to speed. If there is not enough wind
to get them up to speed unloaded, why would they spin them at all. They
would not get any power from them even if they do. They quite obviously
produce substantially more power than they use or they wouldn't have
been built in the first place, or the designer was an idiot, and they
would quickly go out of business. Maybe an idiot built the ones you are
talking about, but that is clearly not the case in general.

This is true. If you drive over the passes where there are windmill
farms they are either going like crazy or stopped. They don't run them
at all in low wind situations because there's no point in doing so and
it causes more wear on them. The do put substantial amounts of
electricity onto the grid.

On 4/6/2019 1:56 AM, wrote:
On Fri, 5 Apr 2019 22:03:07 -0400, Frank Krygowski
wrote:

On 4/5/2019 9:35 PM, AMuzi wrote:
On 4/5/2019 7:58 PM, Bob F wrote:
On 4/3/2019 12:40 PM, wrote:
On Wednesday, April 3, 2019 at 10:56:48 AM UTC-7, Bob F
wrote:
On 3/26/2019 4:15 PM, wrote:
On Monday, March 25, 2019 at 8:07:45 PM UTC-7, Bob F wrote:
On 3/20/2019 12:04 PM, wrote:
On Wednesday, March 20, 2019 at 11:09:26 AM UTC-7, sms
wrote:
On 3/19/2019 4:04 PM, Joerg wrote:

snip

We rarely use it anymore due to the price-gouging in
the propane
industry. We switched to cord wood and pellets.

No natural gas in your area? Odd for California
housing developments.

There's a big move now to all-electric since the
electricity can be
generated without the use of fossil fuels.

I don't know where you get that idea. Those new
windmills are more than 500 meters high and they will
not start turning in anything short of hurricane force
winds so the "generator" is driven like a motor to
keep them rotating. Any that you see not turning are
turned off and may be broken. The results of all of
this is those windmills have a net power DRAIN in most
areas because while they generate a good deal of power
when the wind is above 20 mph that is rare.

Solar farms are almost as bad. They virtually kill the
environment beneath them and they have efficiency of
only 22% or so when new. They age 4 times faster than
is claimed and if you do not keep them clean they can
fail faster than that. At 22% efficiency at high noon
when the sun is directly overhead that means that they
can only generate 220 watts per square meter.

A friend was planning on putting solar cells on his
home in Phoenix and dragged me off to a solar show.
The salesmen were taunting 20 year lifespan. I talked
to the engineers and they told me soto vox that they
were 5 years to 50% output if the surfaces were
cleaned all the time. And this is only under perfect
conditions. They are only good for output on 2 hours
either side of local true noon. Any clouds greatly
reduce their output.

So virtually all of that crap about "green energy" is
just that. They cause 100 times more environmental
damage than they supposedly prevent. Birds cannot
judge a windmill speed because the ends of the blades
are traveling at 200 mph. The sound from the rotating
blades even being driven via motor power confuse bats
and when under full wind drive make super-sonic sounds
so loud that they permanently deafen the insect eating
bats that are environmentally important.

All of this is well known and there are plenty of
papers written on these subjects. Why does the media
avoid these at all costs and continue to promote the
fraud of climate change when the climate has been more
or less stable since the end of the Little Ice Age?


LOL! You actually BELIEVE this crap?

I don't know who you are or where you live but my
brother used to be the electrician for the power company
that runs the windmills in the Altamont Pass area. I
have seen the destruction. You only have to ride an
F-ing bike through the May Rd./North Flynn Rd. area to
see it.

The new windmills now hardly ever generate power anymore
because it takes 20 knots of wind or more to generate
enough power to turn those huge blades. So they drive
them by powering them up all the time to keep them
revolving because they will not start in the amount of
wind that is usually the highest wind they receive. The
mills that are not moving are those that will not work
with wind from the normal direction and they don't get
powered up unless the predictions are for more northerly
or southerly winds.

Pure B.S. They start from the wind. They aim into the wind.

https://www.energy.gov/eere/wind/ani...-turbine-works


I have gone to solar shows and while the salesmen are
bragging about all sorts of efficiencies and long life
the engineers tell me a far different story. Strange how
an engineer can talk more openly to another engineer.

So tell me what YOU know about this "crap"?


It is not true.

https://www.quora.com/In-laymans-ter...ind-conditions



"So if the wind is only strong enough for the turbine to
free-spin at 10 RPM, but the sync speed for the lowest
gear ratio is 12 RPM, then the turbine will have to suck
power from the grid to keep pace at 12 RPM! The coils work
as a motor instead of a generator, and the turbine turns
into a giant fan. In that case, you're much better off
keeping the turbine stopped until the wind is strong
enough to spin it faster."

This was the point I was making about the positioning of
the wind turbines in the passes around the bay area. Since
the hills block the wind for a large number of turbines
they bring these to a complete stop when the wind isn't
coming from the correct direction. Then to start them up
again it requires quite a bit of power.

The wind turbines exposed to wind from all directions are
always idling until the wind speed is high enough to
provide sufficient power that they can generate enough
power in sync with the power grid. This is not some simple
task. In most cases these super large turbines require a
LOT of power to bring them to syncro speed

So I hope you understand that wind turbines use almost as
much power overall as they produce. Wind of the minimum
usable velocity is rare even in the windy pass.

There are "low wind", "medium wind" and "high wind"
turbines. Of course using the yearly average wind should
be the proper way to select these turbines but that isn't
what they do since they are selling "rated power". Instead
what they do is select these windmills by judging the
highest average wind velocity in the windiest months. Now
that can be argued that this method prevents overloading
and breaking the windmills so I don't quite know what to
make of that.

As I said before, my brother was the electrician for the
Altamont wind farm for several years until he got a civil
service job that has a plush retirement. And around here
somewhere I have a patent for windmills that my uncle took
out in the 70's after I assisted him in constructing
vertical windmills. Unfortunately he wouldn't take my
advice and believed that since wind is erratic that you
could generate more power using ocean currents. Simple
calculations show that water currents such as the
California Current though constant, despite being 800
times denser than air, the velocity is far too low to
generate significant power.

So this isn't as if I haven't actually looked into the
stuff and am just talking off the top of my head.


A pile of stupid assumptions. They just don't run windmills
until the wind is sufficient to spin them up to speed. If
there is not enough wind to get them up to speed unloaded,
why would they spin them at all. They would not get any
power from them even if they do. They quite obviously
produce substantially more power than they use or they
wouldn't have been built in the first place, or the designer
was an idiot, and they would quickly go out of business.
Maybe an idiot built the ones you are talking about, but
that is clearly not the case in general.

Well, there's engineering (applied physics) and then there's wind power
economics (applied graft)

https://www.instituteforenergyresear...e-389-percent/


Between the taxpayers and the ratepayers, a guy can do well without
contributing much of anything to society generally.

Subsidies for energy have been around a long, long time. Some are
purposeful, some are perhaps unintended, but they are real nonetheless.
https://money.cnn.com/2018/02/02/inv...oil/index.html

Regarding wind, while there are certainly some wind turbine
installations that didn't work out (including one tiny one set up by a
local government), there's no doubt that they work well when properly done.

https://www.iaenvironment.org/our-wo...gy/wind-energy

(Tom's idea that they use motors to spin those things up is total nonsense.)

One can use the sun to generate electricity, I did on the sailboat.
But there are a few "gotcha's" like you need a surprising amount of
space for enough panels to run a boat, never mind a house, they don't
generate at night or when it is overcast so one needs a battery bank
to run things when the panels are not generating and of course battery
power is finite so one needs a generator to recharge the batteries at
times. Then we have the maintenance and upkeep on the battery bank and
if powering a house the converter to change the DC battery power to
the AC that the household accessories require...

Of course the thing to do is what my grandparents, on my father's
side, did when they first moved off the farm. Own your own wood lot
and cut the stove wood that you need for cooking. Don't heat the whole
house, just the kitchen with the wood fired cook stove, use kerosene
lamps and an Ice Box to store food.

Just think of all that savings on electricity.

FWIW, we drove through an Amish area a couple weeks ago. It's
interesting to notice the large houses that have no power lines or
telephone lines going to them. It must have been wash day, because many
of them had laundry flying from clotheslines in the sun. There were some
large piles of firewood, very neatly stacked; and we spotted several
solar panels.


--
- Frank Krygowski

On Friday, April 5, 2019 at 5:59:39 PM UTC-7, Bob F wrote:
On 4/3/2019 12:40 PM, wrote:

"So if the wind is only strong enough for the turbine to free-spin at 10 RPM, but the sync speed for the lowest gear ratio is 12 RPM, then the turbine will have to suck power from the grid to keep pace at 12 RPM! The coils work as a motor instead of a generator, and the turbine turns into a giant fan. In that case, you're much better off keeping the turbine stopped until the wind is strong enough to spin it faster."

This was the point I was making about the positioning of the wind turbines in the passes around the bay area. Since the hills block the wind for a large number of turbines they bring these to a complete stop when the wind isn't coming from the correct direction. Then to start them up again it requires quite a bit of power.

The wind turbines exposed to wind from all directions are always idling until the wind speed is high enough to provide sufficient power that they can generate enough power in sync with the power grid. This is not some simple task. In most cases these super large turbines require a LOT of power to bring them to syncro speed

So I hope you understand that wind turbines use almost as much power overall as they produce. Wind of the minimum usable velocity is rare even in the windy pass.

There are "low wind", "medium wind" and "high wind" turbines. Of course using the yearly average wind should be the proper way to select these turbines but that isn't what they do since they are selling "rated power". Instead what they do is select these windmills by judging the highest average wind velocity in the windiest months. Now that can be argued that this method prevents overloading and breaking the windmills so I don't quite know what to make of that.

As I said before, my brother was the electrician for the Altamont wind farm for several years until he got a civil service job that has a plush retirement. And around here somewhere I have a patent for windmills that my uncle took out in the 70's after I assisted him in constructing vertical windmills. Unfortunately he wouldn't take my advice and believed that since wind is erratic that you could generate more power using ocean currents. Simple calculations show that water currents such as the California Current though constant, despite being 800 times denser than air, the velocity is far too low to generate significant power.

So this isn't as if I haven't actually looked into the stuff and am just talking off the top of my head.


A pile of stupid assumptions. They just don't run windmills until the
wind is sufficient to spin them up to speed. If there is not enough wind
to get them up to speed unloaded, why would they spin them at all. They
would not get any power from them even if they do. They quite obviously
produce substantially more power than they use or they wouldn't have
been built in the first place, or the designer was an idiot, and they
would quickly go out of business. Maybe an idiot built the ones you are
talking about, but that is clearly not the case in general.

When I quote the actual manufacturers papers why do you say that I'm making assumptions? Does this contradict your religion?