Re: Another Pipeline Believer


"jeff" <jmiller110@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:7%tsi.118$Zk5.107@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

OBROFF: Jeff, the thought was that energy transfer is energy transfer
be it from the wind or any other source. If you have a wind blowing up
a ridge in Wyoming and a field of windmills dampening it, what is the
reduced wind power on the lee side of the Ridge?

Your pal,

TBone
Guilt replaced the creel


i reckon it's just hard for me to "concept it". wrapping my brain around
the idea that wind is consumed on a large and static scale is
difficult...no doubt a deficit in my brain rather than the concept. i
know that wind gusts can be disrupted in a fixed time and space...as in
one sailboat covering another's wind as part of racing strategy...but the
idea that it is ingested or gone completely...smothered...so as to alter
climate or "respiration" is what i'm trying to grasp. certainly there are
microcosms or spaces within mountain ranges and ridges where wind is
disrupted in the manner that concerns you...what is the effect?

are the deserts in east washington a product of prevailing wind disruption
by the mountain ranges?

don't windmills allow large amounts of wind to seep between the blades?
does wind really operate in the linear and constant manner necessary for
the disruption you suggest?

is the lee side of the ridge on one day necessarily in the lee every day?

Interesting questions, one and all, but they betray a misplaced concern,
doubtless engendered by.....um.....shall we say a certain lack of
sophistication in basic engineering principles? The trouble is not that
there isn't enough wind to go around. No, the trouble is that the wind
isn't evenly (and equitably) distributed. One day we have an excess in one
neighborhood while at the same time there is a dearth in another. Another
day, the situation will be reversed. With the experience gained in the
construction and implementation of a continent wide water grid, a similar
project for wind would be child's play.....after all, wind is a great deal
lighter (and correspondingly easier and cheaper to transport, right?) than
water. Moreover, the power required to move all that wind will be
absolutely free. Remember that the water grid depends on siphons to move
the water from Lake Michigan to Pueblo. Siphons, as any naif should clearly
understand, require nothing but gravity* for their motive force. The net
elevation gain (4000+ feet, for those who may have forgotten) represents an
enormous gain in energy potential......energy which can be used (bearing in
mind that all that water has to go back down some time or other) to generate
the electricity required to pump the wind to where it is needed.

jeff (whose first wife, named "lee", was a lovely zephyr...and, yes, the
black rum is at work)

Remind me sometime to give you my thoughts on a worldwide ethanol
distribution grid. I think I may have figured out a way to make it work.

Wolfgang
*yes, i am aware that it will take a LOT of gravity to move that much water
that far, resulting in temporary local scarcities. critics should try to
keep the big picture in mind. remember that the wind grid is merely a means
of assuring that there will always be plenty of it where needed to generate
electricity (and, of course, to pollinate those plants dependent on it)
which, added to that created by the falling water, will allow for the
cost-free operation of a continental gravity gird! sweet! :)


.

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