Apple to Build Two of the World's Largest Wind Turbines in Net-Zero Climate Impact Pledge

[klunernet]

Indeed, in the 70s, the basic fear was an ice age was coming.

stop repeating that insane lie. Since the 1950’s science has consistently said that the planet was warming. And time and time again, the measurements align. The models for predicting are often off, yes, but that does not negate all of it, or any of it. It just means the timeline is unpredictable.

some of the media in the 50’s reported the next ice age was coming, but science had little to do with it.

 

[WWPD]

What we need to do is begin harvesting the vast amounts of Helium-3 from the Moon.

 

[urbanslaughter1997]

I just came here for the wind cancer comments. I wasn't disappointed. The same people telling us not to let our lives be ruled by fear are also terrified about the suburbs and plane-loads of "thugs."

 

[pedzsan]

however, we are multiplying the natural amount of these gasses historically being released into the atmosphere by many thousands of times.

The current PPM of CO2 is 414.38. The utopia they want is 300 PPM. That's a change of 100 PPM or 0.01%

You are going to tell me that the earth's natural balance must be kept to within 0.01% AND that that small change will cause global catastrophe?

The other tidbit worth noting is generally everyone agrees that the earth is getting greener -- but I guess that's a bad thing.

 

[Schranke]

Note that Denmark has the highest prices for current in Europe (together with Germany) - and their backup relies heavily on fossil fuel.

I can't remember if that is the price with or without all the taxes we pay on current + the network fee. But yah, it is high. We are still in the progress of going away from coal as a back up, but most of our daily power comes from renewable sources. However since we started bio mass/gas and burning of trash for energy, we face a new problem. We do not produce enough trash (which can't be recycled) so we have to import it.

 

[Jakeycov]

Nuclear is way better. The main problem with solar and wind is that they are really inefficient, as we don't have any good energy-storing technology at the moment. Too much wind or sun gets totally wasted, whilst too little wind or sun requires using other technologies to provide the electricity in times of deficit.

Generating electricity by solar and wind isn't wasting it, even if it can't be used at night or stored. If you generate wind power and don't use 20% of it, that isn't a waste of 20% it's a gain of 80%. If you hadn't generated that wind power in the first place then you'd have wasted 80%. We "waste" energy every single day by not capturing it.

 

[Jakeycov]

Waste is no problem, it is fuel for Fast Reactors. And meltdowns are not a danger for the public, as Fukushima paradoxically demonstrated (zero radiation deaths, zero cancers, unnecessary evacuation - the information is available at UNSCEAR and WHO).

Because there were no deaths at Fukushima doesn't mean meltdowns are not a danger to the public. I just avoided hitting a boy on a bike with my car, but that doesn't mean he isn't in danger.

 

[macjunk(ie)]

Will probably make up for the energy expended by its customers for multiple store visits made over the past 3-4 years to get their keyboards fixed.

 

[randyhudson]

PR stunt. Meanwhile, most of their iCloud runs on AWS

 

[ZzapDK]

" Apple explained that the new 200-meter-tall turbines will produce 62 gigawatt hours of energy every year, enough to power almost 20,000 homes. "
there is no way 1 of them can power 10K homes..

maybe each working 1 whole year can power 10K home for 1 day. if so, this article is very misleading

This Wiki page, List of countries by number of households, provides no data for the danish average number of people per household, but Norway has appx 2.2 people per household.

The Danish Energy Agency reports that the average danish person uses 1 600 kWh of electricity per year.
That would grow to 3 520 kWh for a household and so 20 000 households would use appx 70 GWh of electricity per year on average. Pretty close

 

[drcre8tive]

The decision to do this was a breeze. Apple blows away the competition!

 

[jlocker]

Generating electricity by solar and wind isn't wasting it, even if it can't be used at night or stored. If you generate wind power and don't use 20% of it, that isn't a waste of 20% it's a gain of 80%. If you hadn't generated that wind power in the first place then you'd have wasted 80%. We "waste" energy every single day by not capturing it.

The best is fusion reactors when they get them perfected and they move out of the lab. One of the big race to the moon is to start mining Helium 3. The US wants it and the China wants the Helium 3, What is great about Helium 3? No radiation and little waste. A 100 years from now are grand kids and great grand kids will be looking at are current rockets, like how we look at the wright brothers plane and say? people flew in that!

 

[gomichaelgo]

Not sure if serious?

Well, they will destroy the bird population

 

[iReality85]

Via a press release, Apple explained that the new 200-meter-tall turbines will produce 62 gigawatt hours of energy every year, enough to power almost 20,000 homes. The area will also function as a test site for more powerful offshore wind turbines that may be constructed in the future.

I was curious about the numbers involved, the kind of turbine being used, and just how much energy we're talking about in relation to household energy consumption.

So I did a little digging. To figure out a turbine's watt-hours per year, the equation is:

MW x Days-per-Year x Hours-per-Day x Capacity%

Obviously, we know days (365) and hours (24). So the question is, what's the rated watt capacity of the turbines, and at what % watt capacity do they operate?

Well, as it turns out, 200 meter wind turbines are massive. They're the enormous ones you see usually off shore. From the presser, these models will be tested on shore before more are built off shore, so a new generation. These newer generations of 200 meter turbines tend to have anywhere between 8-10MW of capacity. And for % capacity, turbines usually top out around 35-40%.

And from the presser, it seems there's (2) being built, for a combined 62 gigawatt hours (GWh) each year.

So we play around with the numbers:

10MW x 365 x 24 x .35% = 30,660 MWh (30.66 GWh) x 2 = 61,320 MWh (61.32 GWh)

Close enough for government math.

But wait, they mention powering 20,000 homes. Recent statistics put U.S. average household energy consumption at around 11,000 KWh per year. Multiply that by 20K, and you get 220 MWh. Those fancy Danish are more energy concious, so put that at 3,500 KWh per household per year. That's only 70 MWh (0.07 GWh)... compared to 62,000 MWh (62 GWh) being provided by these two turbines.

Safe to say, Apple could power a lot more than 20,000 homes with these. I don't know how much energy a 40k sqft data center consumes, but I'm pretty sure these will still give a lot of surplus back to the grid.

(Edited for correct Danish energy use)

 

[gnipgnop]

Nuclear is way better.

Nuclear is prohibitively expensive versus what it actually generates. It was a scam back in the '60s and '70s and it's still a scam today.

 

[iPadified]

The current PPM of CO2 is 414.38. The utopia they want is 300 PPM. That's a change of 100 PPM or 0.01%

You are going to tell me that the earth's natural balance must be kept to within 0.01% AND that that small change will cause global catastrophe?

The other tidbit worth noting is generally everyone agrees that the earth is getting greener -- but I guess that's a bad thing.

How is 414 PPM down to 300 PPM be 0.01% change. It is 30% reduction.

The point is that global warming is happening (look at two historical extreme points says very little) and exaggerating it with green house gases only makes it worse and more rapid. Earth survives fine and the human species will survive as well what ever sea level and temperature raise we see (within reasons for the latter). We would also survive 1% CO2 in the atmosphere. If we were living in the stone age, this would not pose any problem at. Uproot your tent and move inlands.

It is the coastal regions where the majority of people live that will be one of the problem. For instance, New York under water would be a massive loss on capital and relocating the people would take time. Now multiply that with 200 and you get the picture of the problem. But hey let's put the coastal regions under water as fast as possible, it makes perfect economic sense!

Where is the peer reviewed journal article describing the measurements that Earth is getting greener?

 

[ZzapDK]

But wait, they mention powering 20,000 homes. Recent statistics put U.S. average household energy consumption at around 11,000 KWh per year. Multiply that by 20K, and you get 220 MWh. Those fancy Danish I'm sure are more energy concious, so maybe put that at 9,000 KWh per household per year. That's only 180 MWh... compared to 62,000 MWh (62 GWh) being provided by these two turbines.

Not even close. US consumption is atrocious compared to danish consumption.
An average danish household uses appx 3 520 KWh of electricity per year (read my post above for some back-of-the-envelope calculation)

 

[iReality85]

Not even close. US consumption is atrocious compared to danish consumption.
An average danish household uses appx 3 520 KWh of electricity per year (read my post above for some back-of-the-envelope calculation)

I knew it was lower, but wow that is a lot lower. 😮

 

[rgbrock1]

Great idea!!! We've got windmill farms around here. It's flat. REALLY flat, and areas here get ripping winds. People used to say that they should put windmills in here, and now that they have, people complain about them. *shrug*.

The wind is free. It's always here, well almost always. In order to win the future, we will have to rely on things to power it that don't come from the ground. At some point, there won't be any gas, or oil. Humans need to start now to plan for that eventuality, otherwise it will decimate the global economy, and destroy many nations.

What I wish is that more companies would get into battery research. I hear that is what is holding up widespread adoption of wind and solar power. Those home solar kits can cost $60,000 or more. It's hard to get a payback in a reasonable time with an outlay like that. Yikes.
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Windmills don't cause cancer. Ignorance causes cancer...

You so realize that Wind Turbines expected life expectancy of 20-25 years is not quite the case anymore, with many countries reporting a more likely 10-15 year life expectancy.

Then, when they do wear out do you know what happens to the Turbine's blades? They're tossed into a landfill.

Additionally, do you know how much energy is required.... to manufacture one single wind turbine? According to a study identified by Forbes, to construct one foundation for an offshore wind turbine requires the use of 18,857 barrels of oil to manufacture that foundation.

Germany has halted the production of any further wind turbines due to cost and other considerations and, instead, have decided to invest more in existing energy-producing infrastructure.

More here, if you're interested in facts.

Dirty Secret Behind Wind Turbines, They Need Lots Of Oil

Building and operating an offshore wind turbine requires immense amounts of oil to build, according to a Wednesday Forbes article.

dailycaller.com

 

[grantew1]

Nuclear is way better. The main problem with solar and wind is that they are really inefficient, as we don't have any good energy-storing technology at the moment. Too much wind or sun gets totally wasted, whilst too little wind or sun requires using other technologies to provide the electricity in times of deficit.

Until you have to figure out what you need to do with the nuclear waste...

 

[rgbrock1]

The basic raw unpopular truth is that Global Climate Change, just like we've seen with the CCP Virus, is and has always been based upon models. And the models have never been correct. You can go back and find fear mongering about climate change for countless decades. Indeed, in the 70s, the basic fear was an ice age was coming. Search for "letter to nixon from brown university about ice age" (without the quotes)

Compare today's temperatures with the 1930s (high) or the 1970s (lows) and you will find that we are rather comfortably between those two "extremes" which, historically over 2000+ year time frames are not the historic highs or lows (i.e. Medieval Warm Period)

You can also look at "catastrophic" weather events and find that we are having fewer and smaller not more and bigger as the fear mongers claim.

The other problems with wind turbines is in 20 years, the huge blades are disposed of in landfills and not recycled. The materials they are made of will almost never deteriorate back into the environment. Wind turbines tend to kill birds, especially raptors. These are relatively rare birds that are being needlessly slaughtered just to make SJWs feel good about themselves. And, you still need to add gas power generation to fill the peak needs when there is no sun or wind. i.e. we still have no real viable large scape storage except for water pump back stations which are few. This ultimately raises prices of energy. The currently occurring rolling blackouts. CA assumed they could buy power from other states but when the other states need the power, there is none to buy.

If you really want to dig into climate change, all the data is at NOAAs FTP site. Go find it and analyze it yourself; otherwise you are just assuming "the experts" are unbiased which we've seen (e.g. HCQ retracted "scientific" studies) is not true.

Ach zu liebe, facts. You've come up with facts, how dare you. Off with your head. /sarc

 

[rgbrock1]

Don’t think we’re getting anything this month
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I think they look pretty cool and they dont make any noises

Good. We'll install 25 of them in your backyard and then you can marvel at them each morning upon waking. Would you like that?

 

[CarlJ]

Nuclear is better, if there was a way to deal with the waste. Well, and the eventual oops that causes a meltdown, and the eventual decommisioning. Unlikely as that might be, the effects of a meltdown far outweigh the convenience of nuclear power.

There have been very well designed ways to deal with the waste... they keep getting stonewalled by people who just want to kill nuclear power period. It’s disingenuous to talk as if there’s no way to deal with the waste. As well, if the waste is highly radioactive, that means it’s full of energy we haven’t properly used. And there are designs now for much safer reactors, like thorium-based reactors, that are inherently much safer than older designs.

If you start talking about the number of people injured or killed by nuclear power over the years, then you have to properly compare it against the number of people killed or injured by fossil fuels over the years (including all those dying sooner from breathing smog). Folks like to talk about nuclear waste being deadly for thousands of years. Well, guess what, the scrubbers on the exhaust stacks of fossil fuel plants produce positively enormous amounts of toxic sludge that’s highly poisonous forever. Too much of the argument against nuclear energy over the years has assumed that the alternative is magical unicorn energy that has zero drawbacks. Great, they shouted down nuclear energy in the 70’s and patted themselves on the back for making things better - and we got decades of fossil-fuel energy, and smog, and carbon emissions, and a whole raft of other problems instead.

 

[jlocker]

Until you have to figure out what you need to do with the nuclear waste...

That is why you use fusion reactors with helium 3 no radiation and a small amount of waste.

 

[quatermass]

stop repeating that insane lie. Since the 1950’s science has consistently said that the planet was warming. And time and time again, the measurements align. The models for predicting are often off, yes, but that does not negate all of it, or any of it. It just means the timeline is unpredictable.

some of the media in the 50’s reported the next ice age was coming, but science had little to do with it.

Ahem... go ahead and read this list of 'insane lies' - https://climatechangedispatch.com/120-years-of-climate-scares-1970s-ice-age-scare/