"wind farms like this one in california..."

exactly, of the hundreds of these monstrous scams only 5 were actually turning.

This is very typical, you can drive over the altamont pass any random day/night of the year and the entire massive acreage is sitting there doing nothing.

well nothing except generating tax dodges for the con men who pushed this scam thru.

personal turbines = good, mega-corporate wind farms = fraud.

^ I'd love to see some backing for that fraud claim there, probie.

At any rate, I do agree that we need more personal power generation to reduce the load on the grid and encourage personal responsibility for power consumption.

Put a couple of these in your yard, get a plug-in electric car for the daily commute, natural gas powered stove and water heater... no more dependence on foreign oil.

You of course understand the presence of the word "wind" in "wind farm"? As in, when there's wind, they "farm" it.

But anyway.. how is that new style friendlier to birds? It probably has more area in which to hit a bird, and if the bird goes through one side of the turbine it then has to go through the other side.

E.T. call home!

Seems like a good idea but seriously, if a bunch of billionaires are complaining that wind turbines are an eyesore for their ocean-front resort, imagine how much love these will get when they're visible from people's backyards.

>> ^RedSky:


You really have to stand next to a regular wind turbine to realize the scale of the object. To compare, they are generally twice or even three times the height of the statue of Liberty (the one in New York, not the miniature version in Paris!)

This smaller design is like comparing a flashlight with a lighthouse : not the same impact.

Mr. Beer Belly noted that these turbines do not rotate as quickly at maximum speed (2.5 times the speed of wind was his quote), and thus are still visible to birds/bats when its dark and windy, indicating that the problem is the propeller turbines actually spin so fast that birds don't see to avoid the blades.

>> ^dannym3141:
But anyway.. how is that new style friendlier to birds? It probably has more area in which to hit a bird, and if the bird goes through one side of the turbine it then has to go through the other side.

Oh.... teach me to skim watch informative videos and then ask questions

If this version is more "bird-friendly" then that is nice, but it is worth noting that mirrored buildings kill far more birds than wind turbines (though usually different species).

what you should notice about this though is that the egyptians invented it, and mysteriously JP Morgan didn't invest in it. Hmmmmm. i wonder what he was thinking.

an argument over an assumption as yet unproven.

I drive by a lot of the big, regular wind turbines between Portland, OR and Spokane, WA, more of which go up every trip i make, it seems. They are rarely ever still. Not sure if that's just because we have more wind around here, but it seems to be anything but fraud from my angle.

Anyway, i'd love to have one of these for my home, but we use maybe $40 in electricity per month. Even if we pushed our usage up to $50 a month and our turbine generated 100% of our need, it could take 10 years to break even on the purchase and installation price of $6000. Maybe if we had an electric car, baseboard electric heating, and some sort of electric water heater...

"Smaller, quieter and safer?" Buddy, that'll NEVER sell with Americans! If this thing consistently flew off its pole and lopped off heads like Tamarlane on a bender, shit, you'd have Americans trampling each other to death to buy these things!

Easy to sell in the US: "Three easy payments of $1000!!! (plus $2000 SH&H). PLUS : Call now and get a FREE portable solar panel! (great when not windy!)"

If what was said is true, then there should be a huge tax break for people getting of the system like this.