Nuclear waste disposal is NOT a scientific problem throughout the world, it is only a political problem in the US. Environuts are opposed to the dispose of it in the ground from which it came, as they do in other counties. We now store it less safely under six feet of water at the sites.
mike hunt
You are entitled to you own opinion but the proof is in the pudding, as they say. You can prove it too yourself if you wish. Drive in hilly or mountainous parts of the county and notice which vehicles fall behind others when you come to a grade. ;(
mike hunt
Excuse me, dead birds? Cites, please. (IOW, Prove It.)
I've gone by the Tehachapi wind farms several times, and there are a few local turbines in Palmdale, and there weren't workers out there sweeping up vast piles of dead birds at the base of the turbines - matter of fact, I've never seen a single one. If this is such a "Major Issue", where are they?
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Not trying to be adversarial: around the Mojave/Tehachapi wind farms I'd expect the local coyotes and other predators to have discovered, long ago, that the Places With The Thrumming Trees are good spots at which to catch up stunned, dead or otherwise helpless meals: within hours, nothing to sweep up. ;-) Going by what I have seen of the admittedly often scrawny vegetation there over several visits, even a big bird could lie unseen by passing road travellers. But I am willing to learn otherwise.
One parallel is not exact but close: power lines commonly snag birds as they fly past. That's why you will see silvery balls strung on the lines, especially at valley mouths where flyways lead up into (and down from) hill country. Here in the UK the power company have cut local swan deaths by this precaution.
I've read articles that said that birds occasionally flew into the blades of the propeller-type horizontal-axis turbines. I've seen a private one near Reno, NV close up and have driven by the ones at Tehachapi many times in the past and have not noticed any dead birds either, but I suppose that the occasional bird does get chopped. Even though turbine RPM may be relatively low, the speed of the tip is pretty high due to the diameter of the blades so a bird that is flying to a particular space which is clear one moment has a blade coming around the next. Because of this, planners try to place wind farms out of the path of flocks of birds.
I just happened to read about a company that is developing a vertical axis wind turbine
The wind-turbine-powered house I saw was built in the high desert near Reno over 20 years ago. It had 2 turbines and a room about the size of a one-car garage filled with lead-acid batteries. The house had 2 sets of wiring, 12 volt for lighting and 110 volt for appliances. I suppose the technology has advanced quite a bit by now, but it was kind of irritating to watch the picture on the TV shrink and expand, and the lights fluctuate in intensity.
I drive through the Sierra Nevadas frequently and the Rocky Mountains once every few years. Our V-6 Honda is much, much better at this than is our V-6 Oldsmobile.
John
USA Today:
John
Please don't feed the trolls.
In general, I'd AOL that. In this case, Mike Hunter doesn't even make it to "troll" status, just "loud-mouthed ignoramus". And we seem to be creating an interesting discussion despite him.
Sorry, but no. That's not the primary reason why the visibility balls are placed, or they would be installed on all power lines.
The power lines in selected locations tend to snag more METAL birds than live birds as they fly past, I.E. light airplanes and helicopters. Some power lines cross small valleys and rivers laterally from peak to peak, and the power transmission wires can be very high over the terrain below - where a pilot following visual flight rules would assume he has clear air. If the light is wrong, you can't see those wires till you are right on top of them.
All it takes is the local radio station's traffic reporting plane or the local police patrol helicopter flying too low in the wrong place, trying to spot a traffic tie-up or follow a pursuit. If they happen by at the same altitude as the power lines, it gets really messy.
The visibility balls on the static wire are there to show the wire location clearly, even in low visibility conditions where the pilots can't see the towers.
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Yeah, it is - and here's the top two hits I got, which coincidentally enough show the other side:
A bird flying into a stationary tower or a stationary wind turbine blade is not the fault of the tower. It's the bird's responsibility to spot and navigate around fixed obstacles. They have eyes. Too bad they're connected to a brain the size of a pea.
And the other -
To conclude: It's tough to be a bird.
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San Francisco Chronicle
12/19/04 Jane Kay, Chronicle Environmental WriterTaming the Deadly Wind Farm Key Source of Renewable Energy Often Lethal For Birds
If environmentalists and state officials have their way, the towering windmills that dot the Altamont Pass will be replaced and moved to prevent the killing of thousands of birds annually, including species protected under federal and state laws. ... With 5,000 windmills in a 50 square mile area, the Altamont Pass is the world's largest windfarm, producing electricity to power
200,000 households annually. But it is also the worst in the country for slaughtering birds.Altamont Pass is a prime hunting ground for golden eagles and other raptors, and scientists estimate _conservatively_ that the turbines kill some 4,700 birds every year. ...
Ah, the unsupported "underpowered" assertion again. Can'te leave it alone, can you? But you can't supply any facts, either, can you? You're the bllowhard.
The '05 Sienna has more power than the '05 Freestar. Remember what Edmunds had to say about the Freestar:
The Camry is one of the most popular cars on the market. Toyota actually makes money selling them. Most people think the 4 is at least adequately powered or they wouldn't buy them and Toyota wouldn't make money selling them. Friends who drive them think they move out just fine (and none of these owns one of the latest with VVTi and a better power-to-weight ratio than ever before).
Case closed.
Of course, we're talking about normal sedans and other passenger cars, not fuel-wasting penis-substitutes such as the Mustang GT. If you really need your fuel-wasting penis-substitute, and consider anything less than a fuel-wasting penis-substitute to be underpowered, well. we can't help you there.
Camry may still be the number one selling car but it was never the number one vehicle sold in the US. The F150 is the number one seller and has been for nearly thirty years, at just about twice as many sold as the Camry. Camry is aparently not as popular as it was last year either. Cold it be becse they are underpowered? The Camry was the ONLY vehicle in the top five to lose sales in 2005, it dropped around 20,000 sales, falling from third place to fourth below the Dodge Ram. The others all gained sales, including the Honda Accord, which is actully made in the US, not merely assembed of imported parts like the Camry
VEHICLE Sales Y-T-D 2005 Last Yr. '04 Rank Chg.
1 Ford F-Series pickup 760,929 740,817 1 +2.7 2 Chevrolet Silverado pickup 616,139 575,886 2 +7.0 3 Dodge Ram pickup 409,252 362,122 6 +13.0 4 Toyota Camry 383,478 403,136 3 -4.9 5 Honda Accord 371,307 367,210 5 +1.1
Wow! I never realized that the top 3 selling vehicles in America are pick-up trucks. That's enlightening. Rich
Thanks for the insights on the USian setup. However, our local power company here in the eastern UK did install such power line decorations to save swans/geese/etc from accidents, when flying around favoured grazing/landing sites. Maybe they saved the odd plane too -- dunno.
Back to the windmills: perhaps I ought to enquire as to rates of bird strike locally, now that more and more of the whirly things are being installed. Mind, some are offshore, by a mile or two, and I am guessing we can spare the odd seagull (breeding to pest numbers).
What's the relationship between torque and HP? I never understood that.
And I had a year of physics at an engineering shchool.
I know power is work and torque is twisting force (F * r), but somehow I would think the two would be very similar.
The difference is in the rpm curves. It really all hinges on the torque anyway, as you point out, since for a given torque the hp rises in proportion to rpm.
The low end torque is stuff I never really got a handle on, but at the high end (where most of the controversy is anyway) it is all related to breathing. Things like intake and exhaust design and cam considerations of valve lift, duration and overlap can increase the useful torque at high rpms and thereby increase the maximum power.
The torque/power debate really comes down to gearing. If we could select any gear ratio we wanted any time we wanted, we could make good use of maximum power and nobody would talk about torque. Back in the real world, within each gear ratio, the torque curve determines the acceleration we feel.
Mike
Yes - here in the States the balls are orange, and are mandated by FAA regulations where lines cross open expanses that helicopters might want to cross. Interestingly, birds won't go near high tension lines (although they sometimes build nests on 69KV poles). The "induction" apparently bothers them as much as it bothers us. Lower voltages don't seem to affect birds much.
Interesting to use windmills for piecework production. They are poorly suited for public grids because they are too intermittent. Some think any windy spot is suitable, but the requirements are daunting. The site must have reasonably predictable winds mostly around the rated speed (presently about 12 m/s or around 25 mph). Since the power output changes with the cube of the wind speed, dropping the wind speed from 12 m/s to 10 m/s means a 40% drop in output - a real budget breaker when you are contracted to deliver so many MW. Here in the States many wind farms too often operate at a loss because of failure-to-deliver penalties, and proposed FERC rules relating to power hygiene (such as phase regulation... wind farms have been bad neighbors on the grids so far) could make that worse. But for producing hydrogen they could theoretically be made to pay off.
Mike
"st-bum" wrote
Re-read the chapters of the text on work, power, and torque.
No. Power is work delivered per unit time.
Google for explanations that will probably be better than any given off the top of one's head here or at any personal web site.
-- Honda home studies:
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