Nathan Cahill

Professor Deborah Visser

English 101M

November 18, 2010

Blowing in the Wind

! “Just then they came in sight of thirty or forty windmills that rise from that plain.

And no sooner did Don Quixote see them that he said to his squire, “Fortune is guiding

our affairs better than we ourselves could have wished. Do you see over yonder, friend

Sancho, thirty or forty hulking giants? I intend to do battle with them and slay them. With

their spoils we shall begin to be rich for this is a righteous war and the removal of so foul a

brood from off the face of the earth is a service God will bless.”

! “Take care, sir,” cried Sancho. “Those over there are not giants but windmills. Those

things that seem to be their arms are sails which, when they are whirled around by the

wind, turn the millstone.” Miguel de Cervantes penned this famous scene four centuries

ago. Today, we gallop into a new era. The giants advance on every front; from the land, the

sea, the deserts and mountains. But now, they are turning something much larger then a

millstone. Today, entire populations are sustained by giants arms whirling in the wind.

! This brave new age of independence from non-renewable energy is upon us.

Because renewable energy in inarguably a good idea. Unless you are an oil tycoon. But for

the rest of us, renewable energy is what the future of energy should be.

! Almost everything you did today depended on electricity in some way. Did you

turn on a light when you woke up? Did your car start when you turned the key? Were you

able to talk to friends on the phone or email people from your computer? Was the
temperature nicer inside your house than outside? We are so dependent on electricity

today that it make no sense to place our entire electrical grid in the cold hands of fossil

fuels. Oil reserves are being depleted every year, coal and natural gas are going fast too. In

a short time we will have to have a good alternative to conventional energy or forget about

life as we know it.

! So we usher in renewable energy. Solar, wind, geothermal, hydroelectric, biomass

leap out onto the scene. Walls of solar panels glisten in the desert like a mirage, dams

spring up in deep valleys and wind turbines rise from the plain like so many giants.

Between 2007 and 2008, renewable energy consumption increased by ten percent, and

another eight percent from 2008 to 2009. We currently obtain eight percent of all of our

energy from renewable sources. The United States is second only to China in this regard,

closely followed by Brazil and Canada. (U.S. Energy Information Administration, 2010).

Over the next few decades, renewable energy will increase until it accounts for seventeen

percent in 2035.

! With this sudden rush into these alternate sources of power, we should take a step

back and examine the nature of each of these sources and the effects they might have once

introduced at a large scale. Are all renewable energy sources created equal? Are there

unforeseen drawbacks? Are all the ideas feasible in the real world, even if they work out

fine in the ideals of paper?

! One of the fastest growing sources of energy calls for an especially close

examination. Wind energy topped the charts over the last few years in growth among all

sources of energy. The idea is simple enough in theory. Winds blow across the sky all the

time. Turbines generating energy spin all day and night, not needing the sun to produce.
Constant ocean winds can be harvested off-shore and great plains can become wind farms

without excluding other crops from the area.

! These are the ideals that many of us are familiar with. Unfortunately, most of what

we have been told about wind energy is strongly biased. Incorrect data is provided by

groups with financial interests in the matter and emotional responses from the extremes of

both sides. So few scientific facts are known to the general public about the pros and cons

of wind energy that it can be painted as favorable to many different causes. Is wind energy

a really a feasible option for renewable energy or is it just a quixotic idea?

! One of the main problems with wind energy is the physics. In 1919, a German

physicist named Albert Betz discovered that the maximum amount of energy gather by a

wind turbine is around fifty-nine percent of the winds energy. This law, called Betz Law,

caps the potential of wind turbines unassailably. If the energy of wind could be extracted

with one hundred percent efficiency, there would be a dead calm on the other side of the

turbine. No kinetic energy would be left in the wind.

! Another problem with the efficiency of wind turbines is that they are built to work

at an optimal wind speed, ten meters per second for example. If the turbine is most

efficient at this point, all other wind speeds give less then optimal output. Given that the

speed of the wind is always changing, the wind turbine will almost never operate at it’s

designed speed.

! The changing volatility of the wind possess more interesting difficulties. No matter

where wind turbines are built, there are times when there is no wind or to much wind to
be collected. Since there is currently no way to store wind energy for the times when this

happens, other backup sources of energy have to be relied upon to steadily provide the

grid with enough power. These backup sources are most often conventional sources of

power, like coal or oil. Fossil fuel generation is impossible to start on call when wind dies,

so it is kept running all the time.

! The secondary power sources needed to backup wind energy are not the only

damage wind energy bring to the environment. The construction of the towers causes a

large impact to the immediate natural landscape. The use of large equipment and the

platform the tower rests on, damage the local environment. On a larger scale, bird and bat

deaths are the most controversial biological issue related to wind turbines. A recent study

spanning wind farms in Oregon and Washington show that wind turbines kill over 6,500

birds and over 3,000 bats annually (Seattle Times, 2010). Although these numbers are

insignificant compared to other causes of death, they could grow exponentially with the

expansion of wind farms across the United States.

! The visual impact is one of the most obvious impacts wind turbines have on our

landscapes. Many of the places where there is a large amount of wind are also scenic

destinations for people to visit. The aesthetics of wind farms are unattractive compared to

the vistas previously enjoyable. Visual pollution is not the only type of pollution caused by

the wind turbines. Noise pollution is a huge problem around wind farms. Many people

report that they can not sleep or have difficulty staying asleep. The low frequency

humming noises can travel long distances from their origins. The sound is repetitive and

annoying, as Raymond Babbitt shows in Rain Man, when they drive past the wind farm.
! If we imagine that the physics of wind turbines works, the environmental issues are

solved and the visual and noise pollution can be minimized, we still run into another road

block. This is the shear cost of a wind energy operation. Building turbines, power stations

and transportation systems from remote areas to load centers on the grid does not come

cheap. This is reflected in the price of electricity produced by the wind compared to that

produced with conventional methods. Wind energy is approximately 30 times more

expensive. The cost of installing a wind power system actually increasing this year. The

growth of wind energy is due largely to the governments subsidizing the price and the use

of production tax credits (PTC).

! Even though wind energy as it stands today is not a good idea, renewable energy

sources are needed to decrease dependence on fossil fuels, to reduce carbon emissions and

to provide a cheap, green alternative to conventional energy. But until we change the way

wind power is produced, we will just be tilting at windmills.