VIEW: 17-18: Misguided Industry

VIEW FROM HERE
By Bob McDowell (Born Neil Carson) Number 17-18
MISGUIDED INDUSTRY Week of 2017/05/01
In the April 23 issue of the daily news(?)paper was a "Viewpoint" column the headline
of which caught my eye. It carried the headline of: "Wind farms cause cultural, economic
damage" and was authored by Geoffrey M. Standing Bear. Principal Chief of the Osage
Tribe/Nation. It is not in my memory file the necessary information to comment on his
recitation of the cultural problem they have with the 'wind farms' in relation to their ancient
tribal customs. However it seems to me that they may be most valid and distasteful to them,
and thus deserve and have my sympathies.
However it has long been my position to oppose the use of giant 'windmills' such as
can be seen in these multi-unit wind farms for the generation of electricity. That is both
from the point of esthetics and practicality.
My first encounter with one of these was in California in February 1993 when wife and
I had been in Las Vegas for a meeting of the ISAA (International Shrine Aviation Association).
At that time my oldest son, Bob, III was Public Works Officer of the 29 Palms Marine Base, so
we had decided when the meeting ended we would fly on down there for a few days to see him and
his family, especially my grandson. They were unavailable on Friday so I had called one of our
8-member Cascia graduating 'Class or '43' who had a home in Palm Springs and been invited down
for dinner. On heading west to go around the national park we saw one of the early such 'farms
' to the west covering a hill and both remarked how it destroyed the view of the hills behind
it.
Putting on my 'engineers hard-hat' some thought was given to this movement and there
were several things that immediately came to mind, many if not most of which have later proven
to be a serious problem. It later developed that bird killing has been a serious problem, to
the extent that the PRESBO Administration had issued 'exemptions' for them from the
restrictions on killing bald eagles. In addition many other species have been victims of these
relatively slow turning blades. Also, we all know that at these latitudes there is no
prevailing wind blowing all the time, so no wind equals no generation. Further, later reports
from different sources have indicated that there are serious problems with maintenance of the
units with many being our of service, even broken apart, much of the time.
Now, is there an alternative machine? Well apparently yes. A number of decades ago,
the number buried in my memory, there were published stories, in engineering magazines, about
true "wind turbines" that could be used for generation, as well as other power providers. To
be grammatically correct, the media use of the term "turbine" for the currently used
"windmills" is totally erroneous and misleading. The round units often seen on building roofs
freely turning by wind power to pull hot air out of the building are true turbines. The ones
shown in the stories were also vertical but also had the design ability to expand or contract
their diameter to adjust to the differing wind speeds and maintain the same rotational speed,
most desirable for electric generation.
Because of their multiplicity of blades, it is highly unlikely that birds would fly
into them because they are more easily seenP. Also they are much less noisy than the
three-bladed 'windmills' complained about by Chief Standing Bear, and have my agreement. They
also exhibited much more reliability and can work in both faster and slower winds.
In short, it seems to me that these existing 'wind farms' have been developed, with
federal and State financial benefits, at the insistence of a misguided EPA bureaucrat staff.
Possibly this is with the intent of underhanded benefits to the manufacturers and the utilities
using the power, at a subsidized discount. In this case at the expense of we users. Hopefully
the new PRESDT administration will take a long look at the situation and correct it.
End
Composed April 27, 2017
Robert W. McDowell, Jr. © 2017 841 Lynwood Lane
918-451-1051 Broken Arrow OK 74011-8608
Email: abdmcfpi@localnet.com