Texas seems to be over the worst of the power outages. I have been wondering how many will have died from the cold: the Washington Post count currently has it at 47, but you would have to suspect there are many more yet to be found in homes, or amongst the homeless.
But one cool thing the event has alerted everyone to is that wind turbines can be made to be very rugged indeed, including the ones in Antarctica, of all places.
I admired the Jupiter 2 looks of this Belgian Antarctic outpost in a post many years ago, but I don't think that I knew then that it relies a lot on wind turbine power as well as solar panels:
Reading about this base, on its website here, I see that there is lot more to it than the UFO looking bit; but it also seems to only be a summer station and is not manned over winter.
Anyway, they some nice videos, but using Vimeo instead of Youtube. I presume I can still embed them:
There's also a short one showing what it looks like during a blizzard:
Bracing weather!
I see that Australia's Mawson base had two, more conventional looking, wind turbines installed in 2003 (much longer ago than I would have guessed.) One of them died in 2017 (fell over, actually), but the other is still going strong, apparently. Here's a photo:
It's a very messy looking base, as I am sure I have commented before. Still, gets the job done, I suppose.
Oh look - there's the wreck of a Russian transport aircraft near it:
Here's the story:
This week we ventured out to visit the remains of a Russian aircraft on the plateau. The plane is (was?) a Lisunov Li-2T, the Russian built DC-3, and a close cousin of the Basler aircraft which still service the Antarctic programs of many countries today. In 1968 this aircraft and crew dropped in to visit Mawson for Christmas, no doubt with a bottle of their finest de-icing fluid to share. A strong wind gust during take-off caused damage to a wing and propeller, stranding the hapless crew. A Mawson blizzard further damaged the plane, flipping it upside down and sealing its fate. In the following 52 years it has slowly been carried by the plateau towards the coast, about 30 metres each year. Reaching it now requires travelling through crevassed terrain, and the use of glacier travel technique, the party roped together for safety. Two groups made the trip this week, each being trained in glacier travel equipment and rescue skills before they departed.
The plane lies twisted and buried by the snow and slow creeping ice. One landing ski protrudes into the air, the empty cockpit dials poke above the snow surface, a hinged door reveals a fuselage full of snow. The horizontal stabilizer now points skywards making a great backdrop for a photo.
Anyway, these are tough turbines, that's for sure.
1 comment:
I think you will find that these are not grid turbines. The problem isn't with renewables. Its with tying renewables to the grid. Sometimes both left and right can never get that balance right.
Here is a typical statement from the right:
“Let’s face facts. Renewables are not only economically destructive, they kill people.”
Here is my answer to that statement:
If coupled to the grid yes. We should decouple them from the grid with extreme prejudice, then try and find off-grid uses for the intermittent energy. I spend a lot of time in hostile territory. And so I have to concede that much. Yes fine lets encourage the intermittent sources (but encouragement can never include straight per unit subsidies) … but they must not be part of the grid. I want to be able to speak the same way no matter whose turf I’m on. So I have to make that concession. Let them have all the renewables they want. But its got to be off the grid as a matter of urgency.
Here is an example that is quite analogous or symbolic of what we should think when it comes to intermittency:
If you are working with electric fences far from the house there are two points to be made.
1. The solar generated electricity must never be sent straight through the wires. You will kill your animals or alternatively you will have no real fence there when the sun goes behind a cloud.
2. The photovoltaic electricity always ALWAYS must go through a battery. So storage must be where generation is. Not 10, 100 or 1000 kilometres away. But right there on location.
3. If you leave your solar panel right next to the roadside it will always ALWAYS get stolen. I was taught this in electric fencing class. So intermittent energy is proven empirically as being valuable by the inevitable theft of these little panels. Valuable off the grid. Just not valuable as part of the grid.
4. Some forms of encouragement are okay. But never per unit subsidies. Because wealth creation comes from reinvestment and subsidies divert attention away from future capacity and onto current per unit production. So subsidies work against wealth creation and sustainability. Zero interest loans to sole traders are probably valid But subsidies are never valid. So its okay to give custom grazers zero interest loans to buy more electric fences. Its never okay to subsidise the solar panels for electric fences.
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