MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency
IDB 216m dollars loan for Uruguay to support construction of wind farms
The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) continues to support the expansion of renewable energy in Uruguay through two financial packages, totaling 216 million dollars, which were approved for the private sector to finance part of the construction of the Colonia Airas and Valentines wind farms and their related works. Read full article
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Disclaimer & comment rulesThat's an awful lot of wind,
May 13th, 2015 - 11:16 am - Link - Report abuse 0that's the trouble nowadays, there's far to much man made wind about, but no really useful energy..lol
The picture looks like the view you get from Ruta 12 Minas / Maldonado.
May 13th, 2015 - 11:25 am - Link - Report abuse 0I was on that road on my grande moto two weeks a go, lovely day, only a slight wind and NOT ONE of these useless windmills was rotating, not one.
It was stated in the press that the contract with the manufacturer was on a cost per MW only, no power, no cost. Do I believe this? Not a chance.
No Money Pepe has been continually bamboozled by “not so new” technology and misled by the “experts” of UTE (the government monopoly electricity supplier) who seem to misunderstand everything that they tackle, even to the point of blackballing Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, the preferred supplier on the combined power and heat project (which seems to have died a death anyway) when the search they did related to a similar sounding name in China (instead of Japan).
But what can we expect of the MPP and The Broad Fraud parties? Another U$D 216 M wasted it seems.
Waste of money.
May 13th, 2015 - 12:46 pm - Link - Report abuse 0In the end they won't work, be too expensive to maintain and Uruguay will still be paying the loan back.
What a shame.
This is good news indeed and an excellent way of putting dollars to work for Uruguay. Of course there are those who would have vouched for coal or nuclear instead. The old, dirty technologies must now give way to sustainable means that don't pollute and will be there forever.
May 13th, 2015 - 05:15 pm - Link - Report abuse 0Huh...?
May 13th, 2015 - 06:18 pm - Link - Report abuse 0Seems to work in Scotland...
“But the annual average suggests that the SNP’s target of generating the equivalent of 100 per cent of the country’s electricity was all but met in 2014, six years ahead of the party's 2020 deadline.”
“Separate figures showed a record £53.2 million was paid out to wind farm companies in 2014 to switch off their turbines because their electricity was not needed or would have overloaded the Grid.”
So what you are suggesting, is that if all of the UK turned to wind farming,
May 13th, 2015 - 06:33 pm - Link - Report abuse 0we would all get free leccy, and have more than enough left over to sell to the EU,
??
@ 5 Voice
May 13th, 2015 - 07:02 pm - Link - Report abuse 0You need to educate yourself on the problems experienced with these devices from CVT blowing themselves up because there is not an oil in the WORLD that can take the utter variability in power stuffed through it to generator and CVT fires, never mind killing the wildlife.
I suppose you want Uruguay to move to Scotland then?
Sistah, If not for the MASSIVE SUBSIDIES wind power would be an utter failure.
May 13th, 2015 - 09:09 pm - Link - Report abuse 0• In Scotland, which has 203 onshore wind farms — more than anywhere else in the UK — just 2,235 people are directly employed to work on them despite an annual subsidy of £344million. That works out at £154,000 per job;
You'd be better off paying people's electric bills directly and giving up the program all together.
7/8
May 13th, 2015 - 10:49 pm - Link - Report abuse 0Sour grapes
According to new numbers published by WWF Scotland this week, wind turbines generated enough electricity in October to power 3,045,000 homes in the U.K. — more than enough for all the homes in Scotland.
In the first quarter of this year, Scotland generated a record 6,678 gigawatt-hours of renewable electricity, according to government figures, an increase of 55.9 percent from a year before. Wind generation in the first quarter of 2014 was also at a record high level of 4,214 GWh, up 4 percent year over year.
...and why not in Uruguay.. Scotland is no windier than England or anywhere else...
They are also going to use the excess to pump water back into the Hyrdo dams off peak to be exported on peak...the rush is the development of batteries to store it...and that will come....
Voice, those two have their money tied to the oil sector...
May 14th, 2015 - 04:39 am - Link - Report abuse 0Wind power in the United Kingdom
May 14th, 2015 - 10:29 am - Link - Report abuse 0https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_the_United_Kingdom
they say, all this wind puts extra costs onto everyone’s bills each year,
so someone is lying.
.
As i said, without the massive subsidies it would be a total failure. Aren't you stealing from the UK population to give electrical subsidies to Scotland?
May 14th, 2015 - 12:29 pm - Link - Report abuse 0Looks that way to me.
If you like wind pay for it in the higher electric bills but don't claim its a good thing.
Its making the poor poorer.
@ 11, @ 12
May 14th, 2015 - 05:20 pm - Link - Report abuse 0Exactly, the climate change morons think windmills are great, so I think THEY should pay for all the excess costs and waste of natural resources used up with these monstrosities.
Seems fair to me..
May 14th, 2015 - 06:43 pm - Link - Report abuse 0Chris R @ 2, @7 . I intend to avoid misunderstandings (at least, gross ones). Please, correct me when neccessary:
May 15th, 2015 - 03:53 am - Link - Report abuse 0“I was on that road, .....lovely day, only a slight wind, AND NOT ONE of these useless windmills was rotating, not one”.
Then, I´d think : the wind was too weak to overcome static friction between mobile parts of the machines. When stronger, its ENERGY (old definition: capacity to produce WORK, and both measured in JOULES) will push the blades and prove that the mill is gifted with POWER (=ability to supply WORK within a certain interval of TIME). So, POWER =Time into Work, and is measured in watts: 1 WATT= 1 JOULE/ 1 SECOND. (1 MW= 10 raised to 6 - WATTS).
“It was stated in the Press that the contract with the manufacturer was on a cost per MW only, no power, no cost. Do I believe this.?. Not a chance” .
If we interpret this as meaning “no cost when the mill is still”, I would have understood better the statement if it were “on a cost per MWh (Mega Watt hour”, a measure of ENERGY, or power (MW) multiplied by the number of hours the mill runs, and so it would have been: “no ENERGY, no cost”. If, however, this is the intended meaning after all, namely “no cost when the mill is still”, we´ll agree with Chris that this remains a wrong statement, because of write-off and maintenance costs,
“there is not an oil in the WORLD that can take the utter variability in POWER stuffed to it through generator and CTV fires..”
Here we conceive “the utter variability in POWER” because for equivalent time spans, POWER is directly (albeit not lineally, possibly,) proportional to the wind velocity. So, it ranges from zero to a máximum value determined by friction heat, when lubrication (ANY ONE, according with Chris) can´t cope with it. And this carries us to another difficulty: ¿how is it possible to think in any evaluation of windmill POWER without a certain degree of CONSTANCY of the wind speed...?. And, if this is not the case..?
@ 15 argfellow
May 15th, 2015 - 01:03 pm - Link - Report abuse 0I will award you 10/10 for trying and 2/10 for understanding.
FACT: the US have published a WORLD-WIDE challenge for anyone who can come up with a lubrication system that copes with the demands placed on the CVT during operation. So far ALL the major oil companies have failed.
So, I will put the question to you: WHO has come up with a suitable lubrication system: a clue, it won't be an argie company.
Yes, strictly speaking it IS MWh, happy now?
But you mix up the terms ENERGY by being confused it is an OLD term.
If I were you I would stick to blathering on about something you actually KNOW, not misunderstood in a technical reference work.
IS there anything?
@16 Chris R
May 18th, 2015 - 05:27 pm - Link - Report abuse 0Yes, Chris, I am afraid there is a lot. In former occasions, I almost believed that Semantics was your Nemesis. Now, I invite you to listen yourself again:
“Yes, strictly speaking it IS MWh, happy now?”
I suppose I have no choice. Because if I “should stick to blathering on about something I actually KNOW”, my only escape lies in being right and judicious on matters I actually don´t know, a feat for any person, if it improves (as acknowledged by himself) an statement made by a REAL EXPERT on those matters, as I thought you were. This was precisely my reason to address you on them. And you award me 10/10 for trying...? This is flattering enough: “The loftiest way of KNOWING -says M. HEIDEGGER- is INQUIRING”.
“But you mix up the terms ENERGY by being confused it is an OLD term”
Chris, what I wrote was: ”When stronger, its ENERGY (old definition: capacity to produce WORK, and both measured in JOULES)“ . Old DEFINITION, Chris, DEFINITION...:
”The scientific history of energy begins with THOMAS YOUNG (1773-1829), appointed by Count Rumford as the first Professor of Natural Philosophy at the Royas Institution of Great Britain. JAMES CLERK MAXWELL acknowledged Young novel contribution in his 1877 introductory physics book. He wrote: “The use of the term Energy in a precise and scientific sense TO EXPRESS THE QUANTITY OF WORK WHICH A MATERIAL SYSTEM CAN DO, was introduced by Dr. Young”.
( hermital.org./book/holoprt2.htm )
And let us now turn to our Wikipedia :
“ENERGY: a property of objects which can be trasferred to other objects or converted into different forms, but cannot be created or destroyed”.
”(Note 1):This is just a restatementof the laws of thermodynamics. Physics defines how energy BEHAVES in various formulas, but not what energy IS. To quote Richard Feynman (The FEYNMAN LECTURES ON PHYSICS VOL I): “It is important to realize that IN PHYSICS TODAY, WE HAVE NO KNOWLEDGE OF WHAT ENERGY IS”.
@ 17 argfellow
May 18th, 2015 - 06:43 pm - Link - Report abuse 0Please tell me what YOU understand by the term:
ENERGY: a property of objects which can be trasferred to other objects or converted into different forms, but cannot be created or destroyed”.
If you wish please provide and multiplex example of how energy is transmuted.
Then we will know whether YOU understand anything instead of just setting out semi-contradictory statements made by anybody else, but NOT you.
@18 Chris R
May 20th, 2015 - 04:46 am - Link - Report abuse 0“ ENERGY : a property of objects which can be TRANSFERRED to other objects...” ¿What do I understand by this...?. Well, we may begin with thermal energy TRANSFERENCE:
Let us imagine two bodies of the same chemical composition, form, mass and volume, within a perfectly adiabatic (=insulating, in ordinary words) envelopment, and separated at first. Then, we put them in contact. We´ll state that they were at the same THERMAL STATE at the beginning, if all the INTENSIVE properties of each one, namely, those that are independent of the mass (as density, resistivity, specific heat, etc.), that had certain values prior to the contact, REMAINED (for each of them) the same after it. ( In common terms, THIS MEANS THAT THEY HAD EQUAL TEMPERATURES before and after the contact ). Otherwise , a THERMAL ENERGY TRANSFERENCE would have occurred from the warmer to the colder, and the above- mentioned properties would have begun to vary in both; until the recovery of their mutual equilibrium of the start , however AT DIFFERENT NUMERICAL VALUES, leaving the bodies at the same final temperature, and its measure would have been an intermediate one between the warmer and the colder.
But please, understand, that I´m very far from conviction on the soundness of my knowledge on this matters, and that is the reason because I am continually inquiring, inquiring learned people, and inquiring myself. The “old definition” was good enough -in my exceedingly modest opinion- when it appeared, and remained a good one for PRACTICAL PURPOSES , with the neccesary caveat that it is only aproximative, because of the 2nd. Law of Thermodynamics, affirming that the work a system can perform is always inferior to the amount of the total energy of it, owing to waste heat.
@ 19 argfellow
May 20th, 2015 - 05:59 pm - Link - Report abuse 0Good try but you fall for the old chestnut that the theories are all.
Consider the statement ”Then, we put them in contact. We´ll state that they were at the same THERMAL STATE at the beginning, if all the INTENSIVE properties of each one, namely, those that are independent of the mass (as density, resistivity, specific heat, etc.), that had certain values prior to the contact, REMAINED (for each of them) the same after it.“
Consider materials which alter state on heating and ask yourself a question: Do these materials alter because of the heat or because of MORE or LESS heat than expected to change the state. ICE is a good example, you have to put in far more heat than expected to change it from a solid at zero degrees to water at zero degrees, why?
BTW I have to mention that your point about ”the stiction of the bearings was probably why the windmill didn't turn” is most likely not the case. Having seen three of the massive blades, each on it's own low loader I have no doubt at all that the phenomenon known as the mass moment of inertia is undoubtedly the culprit!
I agree with your comment the 'old definition is acceptable for earthly problems and don't overlook that there are people who are convinced that there is no such thing as time! But that is for another 'time'.
@20 Chris R
May 21st, 2015 - 12:55 am - Link - Report abuse 0Chris, I´m sorry, but a confusion has appeared in your fourth paragraph:
I have NEVER written , neither here nor in any other place, the phrase: “the stiction of the bearings was probably why the windmill didn´t turn”. What I DID write (@ 15, third paragraph) was: “Then, I´d think: the wind was too weak to overcome static friction between mobile parts of the machines”.
In regarding your third paragraph´s dilemma, common sense (not always a commendable fellow...!) seems to answer : IT DEPENDS on the precise meaning you adscribe to the phrase : ALTER STATE ON HEATING. Because if it means “alter state of AGGREGATION ”(from solid to liquid, for example), it´s clear that the numerical value of Q (quantity of heat), solves the dilemma with the second option (=“more or less heat”) . Nevertheless, minute quantities of heat, afforded to the body or subtracted from it, while keeping it in the same state of AGGREGATION, change (minutely, as a rule), the numerical values of its already mentioned INTENSIVE properties, and, consequently, ALTER (on heating) ITS T H E R M AL STATE. If we focus on this last, we´re pushed now through the first choice of Chris´ dilemma :“the materials alter state because of heat” , irrespective of its “quantum”, while in macroscopical levels.
With respect to ICE, and owing to the concept of “latent heat of fussion” , I think it requires a bit more reflexion on my part.
@ 21 argfellow
May 21st, 2015 - 11:02 am - Link - Report abuse 0”What I DID write (@ 15, third paragraph) was: “Then, I´d think: the wind was too weak to overcome static friction between mobile parts of the machines”. ”
True, I was paraphrasing your statement and using the correct term for what you have described: it's stiction. It is a well known phenomenon whereby surfaces, mechanisms including gear trains require more force to get the initial movement going. The force to keep it going , even at very low speed is much lower: this is the frictional force.
@22 Chris R
May 22nd, 2015 - 05:36 am - Link - Report abuse 0I had never heard the word “stiction”, and I thank you for introducing me to it. I went to WIKIPEDIA for more data:
“ STICTION is the STATIC FRICTION that needs to be overcome to enable relative motion of stationary objects in contact. The term is a PORTMANTEAU of the term 'STATIC FRICTION', perhaps also influenced by the verb 'stick' ”.
............................................................................................................................
”A PORTMANTEAU, also called a BLEND in linguistics, is a combination of taking parts (but not all) of two (or more) words or their sounds (morphemes) and their meanings into a single new word”
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