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"Wind industry jobs jumped to 85,000 in 2008, a 70% increase from the previous year, according to a report released Tuesday from the American Wind Energy Association. In contrast, the coal industry mining employs about 81,000 workers. (Those figures are from a 2007 U.S. Department of Energy report but coal employment has remained steady in recent years though it’s down by nearly 50% since 1986.) Wind industry employment includes 13,000 manufacturing jobs concentrated in regions of the country hard hit by the deindustrialization of the past two decades."

So...all wind-related jobs outnumber coal mining, but not the entire coal industry. The article's title was kind of comparing apples to oranges. Nonetheless, good - and surprising - news.

Seeing how the title here at tmc is different from the current title at cnn, I assume they changed the title after noticing that it was misleading.
 
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Wind passes the 1 percent mark of power generation in the US.
Total Generation 2008: 4,114,880 Thousand Megawatthours

Wind Generation 2008: 52,017 Thousand Megawatthours

So wind was about 1.25% of U.S. electricity in 2008 — higher really now, since that averages over many months during which the record wind construction last year was taking place (see “U.S. wind energy grows by record 8,300 MW“).

So I guess it is time to start bragging.

Interestingly, EIA reports that last year, wind generation soared while coal and natural gas dropped:

...

In Obama’s first term, wind is likely to at least double its production, and be a large fraction of whatever growth in demand their is given the economic slowdown and Obama’s big push on energy efficiency.
 
The Sierra Club supports wind because they feel it kills less birds than any option.

Now A new study backs this up.
When these avian deaths are correlated with the units of electricity those power plants produce, some may find the results surprising. Based on real world operating experience of 339 wind turbines comprising six wind farms constituting 274 MW of installed capacity in the U.S., average avian mortality for wind appears to be about 0.269 fatalities per GWh.

Based on real world operating experience for two coal facilities as well as the indirect damages from mountain top removal coal mining in Appalachia, acid rain pollution on wood thrushes, mercury pollution, and anticipated impacts of climate change, average avian mortality for fossil fueled power stations appears to be about 5.18 fatalities per GWh.
 
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I just read an article in a Norwegian newspaper about this project. Statoil being the largest and stateowned oil company in Norway (State-oil). The scary thing is the amount of NIMBY'ism connected to this project when it's not even on land...

Cobos
 
BBC NEWS | Science & Environment | Wind 'can revolutionise UK power'

The cost of electricity would then be determined not by consumer demand, but by how hard the wind is blowing.
When it is windy power will be so cheap that other forms of generation will be unable to compete, the report says.
However...
If the wind were to drop everywhere round the UK (as happened during the January high pressure cold snap), other generators would make their money by switching on back-up fossil fuel power stations for a very short time, charging extremely high prices, it predicts.
 
Thanks for this.

I'm not clear if it uses AC induction for the generator or if it is a DC brushless design with permanent magnets.

Magnetic bearings is a fun idea but how well do they cope with annual temperature ranges?

In any case, as with model aircraft, isn't aerodynamic rather than mechanical drag the main problem with small-scale wind turbines?
 
I could not disagree more.
You probably could, but at any rate you are of course entitled to your opinion.

It certainly depends on the particular turbine, but I think some of the concerns are legitimate. I would not be happy with noise at night and during the day, a strobing shadow and can make some feel ill.

Power lines aren't that bad. Probably the power can be generated more efficiently at wind farms with larger turbines a good distance from where I'm trying to sleep.