I watched recent episode of Impossible Engineering about a North Sea wind farm described as the London Array.
In the story they described a groundbreaking windmill which pioneered many great innovations. This turbine supposedly produces 2MW and has over its lifetime produced 21 million KWH of electricity. This would then be 21 x 10^9 WH. The statement they made that I disagree with is they said over its life it produced enough energy to power New York City for THREE YEARS! This did not seem right to me. According to Google search, NYC consumes 11,000MWH per DAY; bringing back to the above common terms, that would be 11 x 10^9 WH. So you can see from this that the output of that turbine over 40 years would have only supplied NYC's needs, using round numbers, for only TWO DAYS, not 3 years! To put it another way, IF That turbine does in fact put out 2 GW (and it probably doesn't considering the wind does not blow all the time), then it would require (11 x 10^9)/(2 x 10^6) = about 5000 such turbines working at full capacity to meet the needs of that mighty city. There is a lot of talk about misinformation these days. If the misinformation comes from a conservative it seems to get branded as "Fascist" or other bad words. But in a case such as this, the creators would probably respond with a shoulder shrug and mumble something about a typo or honest mistake, because, after all, it was in support of the GREEN agenda.
Don't misunderstand, I am in favor of wind and solar power when placed in optimum locations and when it makes economic sense, but misleading people with a false fact such as described above is detrimental to the discussion. I DO enjoy watching the show, and I think it is great to inspire (especially) young people to do great things; this particular piece just stuck in my craw.
In the story they described a groundbreaking windmill which pioneered many great innovations. This turbine supposedly produces 2MW and has over its lifetime produced 21 million KWH of electricity. This would then be 21 x 10^9 WH. The statement they made that I disagree with is they said over its life it produced enough energy to power New York City for THREE YEARS! This did not seem right to me. According to Google search, NYC consumes 11,000MWH per DAY; bringing back to the above common terms, that would be 11 x 10^9 WH. So you can see from this that the output of that turbine over 40 years would have only supplied NYC's needs, using round numbers, for only TWO DAYS, not 3 years! To put it another way, IF That turbine does in fact put out 2 GW (and it probably doesn't considering the wind does not blow all the time), then it would require (11 x 10^9)/(2 x 10^6) = about 5000 such turbines working at full capacity to meet the needs of that mighty city. There is a lot of talk about misinformation these days. If the misinformation comes from a conservative it seems to get branded as "Fascist" or other bad words. But in a case such as this, the creators would probably respond with a shoulder shrug and mumble something about a typo or honest mistake, because, after all, it was in support of the GREEN agenda.
Don't misunderstand, I am in favor of wind and solar power when placed in optimum locations and when it makes economic sense, but misleading people with a false fact such as described above is detrimental to the discussion. I DO enjoy watching the show, and I think it is great to inspire (especially) young people to do great things; this particular piece just stuck in my craw.