WRY MOUTH EXCLUSIVE: The Wind Turbine Forest Expands Eastward
*** UPDATE 1/26/08 ***
Here's some video of the turbines. You can see a hatch for humans at the base of the nearest pole, if you look for it. Given that the hatch is probably about 6 feet tall, I would estimate the overall height of the towers at 200-220 feet now. I want to get the best possible estimate before I look it up online, because I like to see how good of a guesser I am.
The music is Squire's The Fish (Shindleria Praematurus) from Yes' inimitable album, Fragile. Old school overdubbed bass lines in 7/4. Dig it.
And here's another vid I for which I claim no credit. It provides a little more information and pics of some of the other types of windmills:
*** EOF ***
Here's another example of the way the Global Weather Change Crisis has Enriched the Lives of Ordinary Citizens. The Coachella Valley's West end has long been an experimental station for scads of wind turbines. Interestingly, local opinion is that these turbines have had scant effect (ever since the late 1970's, by my recollection) on the price of electricity here in the Southern California desert, which is similar in climate to Israel and Iran/Iraq, etc. Our electricity prices routinely cause persons from other parts of the country to blanche in disbelief, when first heard.
Anyhoo. The Great Wind Turbine Forest of the San Gorgonio Pass is a local landmark of some repute.
And it's expanding eastward, threatening the peace of the unincorporated mobile homes outside the Desert Hot Springs and North Palm Springs areas. Here's a picture or two of some new turbines that got green-lit to be erected near Indian Canyon Avenue (the old Indian Avenue), north of Interstate 10. These turbines are nearer the street than the ones further south, near Garnet Hill and the old Hole In The Wall autobody shop. The pictures were taken on-the-fly at about 55 mph, so the quality isn't what I would normally like. But as this is an "exclusive breaking story," I couldn't wait for the more artistic ones to be created.
My plan is to get some closer pix in the next week or so, before they are all built up, of the components laid out on the ground. Because, once the towers are up, the eye cannot comprehend how large they are, especially out in the desert pass area with little or no contextual cues nearby.
I have high-lighted the Winnebago-type vehicle on the road, above. It was blind chance that it happened to be in the shot, but it helps clarify the Fun Fact, below. I have also highlighted on of the motor housings that grace the tower-tops, most likely (I estimate) about 300 feet above ground level.
The Wind Turbine Forest is one of the greater ones in existence (the country? the state? — I dunno); here's an overhead shot courtesy Google Earth. The Forest extends throughout the box-shaped region, below, from Cabazon, CA on the western border (home of the famous Dinosaur Buildings), past the intersection of Interstate 10 and HWY 62 (scene of the nearly famous "windmill chase sequence" in the nearly famous film, Mission: Impossible 3) and now out to Indian Canyon Avenue on the eastern side. The area of the new wind turbines is indicated by the green arrow, below:
We saw a water truck parked near the motor housings at the base of the towers (visible in the photo below, in yellow ellipse):
And now:
FUN FACT: The motor housings you routinely see atop the towers are much larger than a water truck. Somewhere between Winnebago-sized and school-bus-sized.
Here's some video of the turbines. You can see a hatch for humans at the base of the nearest pole, if you look for it. Given that the hatch is probably about 6 feet tall, I would estimate the overall height of the towers at 200-220 feet now. I want to get the best possible estimate before I look it up online, because I like to see how good of a guesser I am.
The music is Squire's The Fish (Shindleria Praematurus) from Yes' inimitable album, Fragile. Old school overdubbed bass lines in 7/4. Dig it.
And here's another vid I for which I claim no credit. It provides a little more information and pics of some of the other types of windmills:
*** EOF ***
Here's another example of the way the Global Weather Change Crisis has Enriched the Lives of Ordinary Citizens. The Coachella Valley's West end has long been an experimental station for scads of wind turbines. Interestingly, local opinion is that these turbines have had scant effect (ever since the late 1970's, by my recollection) on the price of electricity here in the Southern California desert, which is similar in climate to Israel and Iran/Iraq, etc. Our electricity prices routinely cause persons from other parts of the country to blanche in disbelief, when first heard.
Anyhoo. The Great Wind Turbine Forest of the San Gorgonio Pass is a local landmark of some repute.
And it's expanding eastward, threatening the peace of the unincorporated mobile homes outside the Desert Hot Springs and North Palm Springs areas. Here's a picture or two of some new turbines that got green-lit to be erected near Indian Canyon Avenue (the old Indian Avenue), north of Interstate 10. These turbines are nearer the street than the ones further south, near Garnet Hill and the old Hole In The Wall autobody shop. The pictures were taken on-the-fly at about 55 mph, so the quality isn't what I would normally like. But as this is an "exclusive breaking story," I couldn't wait for the more artistic ones to be created.
My plan is to get some closer pix in the next week or so, before they are all built up, of the components laid out on the ground. Because, once the towers are up, the eye cannot comprehend how large they are, especially out in the desert pass area with little or no contextual cues nearby.
I have high-lighted the Winnebago-type vehicle on the road, above. It was blind chance that it happened to be in the shot, but it helps clarify the Fun Fact, below. I have also highlighted on of the motor housings that grace the tower-tops, most likely (I estimate) about 300 feet above ground level.
The Wind Turbine Forest is one of the greater ones in existence (the country? the state? — I dunno); here's an overhead shot courtesy Google Earth. The Forest extends throughout the box-shaped region, below, from Cabazon, CA on the western border (home of the famous Dinosaur Buildings), past the intersection of Interstate 10 and HWY 62 (scene of the nearly famous "windmill chase sequence" in the nearly famous film, Mission: Impossible 3) and now out to Indian Canyon Avenue on the eastern side. The area of the new wind turbines is indicated by the green arrow, below:
We saw a water truck parked near the motor housings at the base of the towers (visible in the photo below, in yellow ellipse):
And now:
FUN FACT: The motor housings you routinely see atop the towers are much larger than a water truck. Somewhere between Winnebago-sized and school-bus-sized.
I see that we have mastered photo shop ...
Reply to this
Well, MS Paint, actually. I fancy myself somewhat an MS Paint expert.
Photoshop remains awesome and alien, like an airplane to some ancient and backwards tribe.
Reply to this
over 4,000...
$330,000 apiece...
each generates 300 Kw/hr, enough for one household for a month...
... when turning. Notice that at any given time many turbines are locked down, probably for good reason...
There is a peak efficiency, I'm sure so that when the sustained winds are greater than, who knows? 40 mph? (in the San Gorgonio pass, that is roughly the 60 days from March through May), the machines need to be locked down and the foils turned with the wind to avoid overstresses...
even then, the 4,000 machines (built at an expense of 1.2 billion dollars) are reported to generate enough annual power to 610,000 households for a year.
Sounds great for the valley, whose population is less than 1,000,000 persons....
so why the subsidies? How come the power rate hikes every year? isn't the wind power free?
Considering that simple stats like "the blades are 100 ft long" and the "towers stand 150 ft tall" are SEEN to be contradictary (look at how far up the tower the 100ft blades pass, that's more that half, certainly not 1/3)... well, if they'd lie about THAT, they'd lie about anything...
Residents of the Coachella Valley know they can count on rate hikes in utilities tied to rate hikes in petroleum, even though this windmill farm and the Hoover Dam are accused of generating power for them.
Green technology is aptly named, except that our money is no longer green, so it will have to be called red,white and blue technology in the future...
can't wait for the apolcalypse, then I can enact my plan...
Reply to this
Thanks for high-lighting the hidden, skeptical subtext, Raymurgy. You and I have watched these beasties proliferate since the fuel crisis of the 1970's.
Some more tid-bits from around the information hwy:
From two sources:
" it is really hard to get a sense of scale; the blades on the windmills with the latticework towers in the distance are more than half a football field in length!..." that would put a blade at 50 yards, or 150 feet long, which I think may be excessive. I am going to try to find one lying on the ground awaiting deployment.
And from the Bureau of Land Management:
"Electrical power is generated by individual wind turbines that range in size from 80 to 309 feet tall and in generation capacity from 65 to 1,000kilowatts per hour. "
-- 309 feet! Ha! Maybe I'm not seeing things!
and
and
Not that we notice. A summer electricity bill here usually ranges in the $350 - 400 per month range.
Let's see: at "65 to 1,000 kW per hour," how many of these do we need to make 80,000 MW (is that per hour or per year or what? I dislike vague statistics muddled together)?
Let's generously estimate one tower giving 500 kW/hr ... that's 500,000 Watts of dynamism!
80,000 MW looks like this in comparison: 80,000,000,000 Watts (per hour?). Well, heck; we'd only need 160,000 towers to get up to "5%" of the nation's output by 2020.
Of course, I also wonder how stagnant the nation's energy needs tend to be from decade to decade. How long before 80,000,000,000 W(per hour?) is back to being "a drop in the bucket?"
There are currently just over 1,000 turbines on public land in the Turbine Forest area of the San Gorgonio pass. Maybe with the new towers we can top out at only about 30,000 towers nationwide?
;o/
Reply to this