Windmills of Your Mind?

People around the world will easily associate windmills or images of it, like the one below, with Holland or anything Dutch, from landscape artwork, photos, postcards, etc.  Readers past high school literature are also reminded of Don Quixote. At one time in Holland's history there were more than 10,000 fully functioning windmills used to pump water, run all kinds of rotary and pulley driven machines and later on as a source to power electric generators. Today, meticulously preserved for posterity and as tourist attractions there are only 1200 of them left and one day each May the Dutch observes National Windmill Day.

It is believed that as early as 2000 BC windmills had been used to pump water and grind grains.

Today, another image is more ubiquitous. It is the tri-bladed wind turbine that is more imposing than the old windmills for sheer size and height. The largest wind turbine in the world can be found in Hawaii. It is 20 stories tall at its hub and each blade is the length of a football field.  Data from 2015 showed that the 114 windmills in Hawaii produced 6.4% of its total electrical energy needs. 

But first, as a way of acknowledgement, let me recognize the French composer Michel Legrand's musical score of "Windmills of Your Mind" and lyricists Alan and Marilyn Bergman and the original vocalist, Noel Harrison, who sang the Oscar winning song from "The Thomas Crown Affair" that starred Steve McQueen. There, I won't feel bad or guilty about borrowing it as a title for this musing.  By the way, Andy Williams was the first choice to sing it but he declined. However, the much beloved crooner who passed away a while back is instead well known for his signature song, "Moon River".

I digressed.

So, wind turbines it is, for the idle mind to ponder. What do we make of the data accumulated thus far?  We will not make this an either/or debate for or against wind turbines. But we owe it to ourselves to know the hub and rotor blades - faces of the same .. 

"As the images unwind, like the circles that you find                                   In the windmills of your mind!"

The Economics of Wind Turbines 

1. The largest turbines built, so far, can harness energy to power 600 homes in England.

2. Wind turbines on average will operate at 35-65% (onshore-offshore, respectively) of their theoretical maximum capacity because wind changes in strength and direction on  a daily basis.

3. MidAmerican Energy announced they were about to build the tallest wind turbine in the US, a 2.3 MW 554 foot tall (with 173 foot blade extended) about the same as the Washington Monument. The Hawaiian turbine will look like its little brother.

4. Money Making Machine

Note to consider only the 35-65 % of capacity. 100% is only theoretical. 

5. "In 2017, wind energy made up about 6.3 percent of the United States’ total electricity generation, according to the Energy Information Administration. That’s compared with about 30 percent each for coal and natural gas and 20 percent for nuclear energy. At 7.5 percent, hydropower contributed the most out of any renewable source. Solar energy made up only 1.3 percent".

6. "The general rule-of-thumb for wind farm spacing is that turbines are about 7 rotor diameters away from each other. So an 80-meter (262-foot) rotor would need to be 560 meters -- more than a third of a mile -- from adjacent turbines. Researchers at Johns Hopkins University have proposed that twice as much spacing would increase overall efficiency".

So,

What Does It Take To Harness Wind Power In Lieu Of Oil? 

1.  I calculated that each turbine will need 1.5 acres of land based on the above recommendation.  A "grand total of 1,642,000 turbines will be needed to replace oil over the next 50 years". That is assuming that the turbines operate at 100% capacity, which they will not.

Just for grins, I calculated that 1.6 million turbines will require a land area (or water, offshore) of 3,854 square miles.  That will be about the size of the state of Rhode Island. It will be silly, of course, to place all of them in one place because they will need to be spread out across the globe to be close to the consuming household that will need electricity.

2. "A 2 MW (megawatt) wind turbine weighs 1688 tons: 1300 tons concrete, 295 tons steel, 48 tons iron, 24 tons fiberglass, 4 tons copper, .4 tons neodymium, .065 tons dysprosium and more (Guezuraga 2012; USGS 2011).. an average house weighs: from 72 to 104 tons.  So each 2 MW wind turbine weighs as much as 23 homes."

3. Wind power is renewable. Keep in mind though that the wind turbine itself is not because each one has a life span of 25 years maximum based on current estimates although there is not enough data at the moment. Furthermore, maintenance on average is about $45-50,000 annually.

4. "Assuming a normal lifetime of a wind turbine, about 5 pounds of steel, fiberglass, and other materials are needed to generate 1 megawatt hour (MWh) of electricity. If you include the concrete foundation, the weight jumps up to 25 pounds per MWh." It is not a trivial matter to consider, especially that current refineries, pipelines, all peripheral infrastructures are  all "sunk" costs already - producing energy.  Furthermore, to get rid of them will mean abatement costs that are difficult to assess or contemplate at the moment.

5. If people around the world - governments, scientific establishments and financial institutions - will put their mind to it, it is conceivable that fossil fuel sources of energy can be replaced by renewable energy. The question is the will and at what expense.

Things to Consider:

A. An inventory of different kinds of fossil energy source must be maintained because: (1) hospitals and building complexes will permanently need diesel or natural gas powered engines for emergency power in case electricity goes out for any reason; (2) For national defense, tanks, jet engines, all military transports will need fossil fuel (diesel and aviation fuel). Even nuclear submarines have emergency diesel engines in case of reactor failure. (3) For all general services, fire trucks and emergency vehicles  and excavation and mining equipment will need fossil fuel. (4).  For general transportation, intercontinental air travel, container and cruise ships, excavations, heavy rail transport, etc., fossil fuel is still necessary. (5). To maintain that relatively miniscule inventory, a "skeleton" oil extraction and refining infrastructure must be maintained at tremendous cost. 

B. Civic duty and responsibility ought to be tempered with an open mind. There will always be a Greta Thunberg, sincere proponents of every conceivable cause but there must always be a pragmatic view requirement from each of us to make wise decisions toward anything perceived to be harmful to the environment. Drastic, draconian measures must be restrained with real assessments free of emotions and semi-truths.

Facts and information may be consistent but, as always, it is often about the story. Or, who is able to tell the most convincing one.  It is about what can be spun to garner the most credibility. It is always a matter of which tales get the most credit or persuasive power, no pun intended. 

To Be or Not To Be

 "To be, or not to be: that is the question:"

"Now, seriously", the frog complained. "I can never be  but a frog. I wanted to be a prince from a fair lady's warm and lovely kiss but it is not to be. So, my dear old Billy, William is much too formal and too upper lip, let Hamlet's soliloquy, famous or not, remain where it belongs - bound in parchment or let its echoes be heard only by those who really understand it. Or, by the multitude who pretend they do".

"I yearn to be free of flies and slimy worms from my diet, but futility is all I have and, alas, what is there not to be but me ." Poor froggy muttered to himself in utter frustration.

Now, how about ..

Why not?

It is 2:00 a.m. A love-struck young man, stroking his chin was standing on the parking lot of one huge apartment complex.  Not too long earlier he just met the most beautiful young woman at a bar.  After a couple of drinks, they both agree to get to know each other more, somewhere away from the bar.  Since they both had their cars, the lady instructed him to just follow her and told him her address in case they got separated through traffic and  they drove off.

So, there he was, thank goodness she gave him her address because they did get separated.  But then ..

The young man can't seem to remember the apartment number she gave him. 

"2 B, or not 2 B or was it 2 D?", that was the pressing question. The poor young man was saying softly to himself, a lesser form of soliloquy, but clearly no less important as he tries to recollect freshman year, English 1, second semester.

"To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles"

Indeed, what sea of troubles his night became, now faced only with .. 

No more; and by a sleep to say we end ..

To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub; .."

Diane Chambers from "Cheers" (reruns anyone?) said it best to explain why that young man forgot the address, "His hormones had staged a coup d'etat on his brain".

Our animal friends make no pretension about Shakespeare's odes or grammar that often borders on anachronism.

A not too hungry lion one  late afternoon as the setting sun was about to bid goodbye to  the denizens of the plains of Serengeti decided to engage in a conversation with an adult wildebeest busy re-chewing half-digested grass.

"Let me ask you something", the lion said, startling the surprised wildebeest.  "I will ask this as delicately as I can. Have you ever considered becoming a meat eater?"

"You want me to be a carnivore, like you? That is the question?", the incredulous wildebeest replied with two questions of its own.

The lion ignored the questions and said, "Well, you could be spending more time, napping, resting, eat only once in a while, sometimes just once in a week, twice at most.  Instead of spending all of your waking hours munching on grass and chewing your cud till into the wee hours. And that's everyday.  What kind of life is that?"

"First of all, I ruminate on my nourishment because I am of the species known to biologists as ruminants. Our food does not run away from us and we never hurry when we eat and least bit concerned about hyenas stealing it from us"..

"Yeah, right, and you trek many hundreds of miles twice a year to find your green pastures across rivers where crocs await and tall fields filled with hyenas and wild dogs and other inferior cats.  You go one way, come back the same way and again go through it again every year of your life", the lion smirked

To which, ignoring the lion's shallow analysis, the wildebeest continued, "Second of all, we get to travel, see the sights, our ladies give birth all at the same time before we head back when the calves are strong enough.  Despite every brute that prey on us we are still millions strong.  While you number  a mere handful in every ten thousand acres of land. You call yourself king? In your life, To be king or not to be king is what, four maybe five years tops till a stronger lion or two of them brothers come along and take your ladies? You're lucky if you can retire".

Both agreed to disagree.  The lion said, "So long for now, maybe next time we see each other we'll have you for dinner".

What a morbid farewell from the lion. The macabre parting shot, was not lost on the wildebeest.  It knew what the lion meant. To be or not to be a lion's meal, that is the question. 

"To be, or .. wait a minute!"

A young lady contemplating something about a book report on English literature 101, was pulling her hair out, figuratively speaking only, of course, and she was confused.  "Why do I have to be, or not to be? Are those my only two options? Why can't I just be like so pretty, so happy and like popular in this or that and a lot more.  To be or not to be is so limiting, so confining and so like depressingly unreal".

Unreal? Not to the chicken that was minding its own business at one side of the road when a car screeched to an abrupt stop.  A tourist got out and approached the chicken. "My wife would like to ask you a question.  She'd like to know, if you don't mind of course, if you'd cross the road, and when you get there, please tell us why you did".

"You want me to be on the other side of the road and answer your question?"

"Right!"

"Would you ask your wife to come out of the car , please?"

"She'd rather not, no. You see we are sightseeing, enjoying the scenery and then we saw you.  What an opportunity to test the  age old theory about, you know, you crossing the road and all that".

The chicken replied, "Let me quote from my favorite English poet because I think if you listen carefully, you will have your answer".

"The undiscovered country, from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have,
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all" ..,

"And I'll tell you why I won't cross the road.  See that nice café over there on the other side of the road? A block or so beyond it is a chicken coop. I escaped from there a few years ago.  I suggest, since you look famished, you go over there to the café and you and the misses have a nice country-style grilled steak dinner. And you'll have the answer to your question there".

The tourists obliged, so the husband maneuvered their car over the other side of the road and went inside.  The tourists can't wait to ask the hostess who met them with a menu and ready to seat them. "Tell me something. Do you know there's a talking chicken from across the road over there", the husband asked.

The young smiling hostess,  said, "Oh, yeah. She is part owner of this restaurant."

The chicken from across the road had another quote she just remembered,

"When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause. There's the respect
That makes Calamity of so long life:
For who would bear the Whips and Scorns of time,
The Oppressor's wrong, the proud man's Contumely ..,"

Note: Full disclosure to the readers and literary critics all, the Shakespeare quotes are real, the rest I made them all up.  I quoted the Diane Chamber's quote from memory and she may have said it with more alacrity. And no animals were hurt during the writing of this musing.