Re: Wind Farms.
I'm with Swimfeeders here, as I so often find myself.
I actually really like the huge wind turbines and think their gentle turning is quite majestic. A part of this is likely my affinity for Nature and using nature's forces.
One of my hobbies (which I haven't done for a while) is dinghy sailing. There is simply something inherently wholesome and rewarding in allowing the force of nature, the wind, to propel you along the water, often at speed. It's something you either "get" or don't.
You can get from A to B with a sail, or using a diesel motor. I would want the former as often as possible.
Thus, harnessing the wind to turn the blades of a wind turbine has the same feel and satisfaction to me.
If I could have a turbine in my garden or on the roof of my house I would have one. I would absolutely love to have my electricity provided freely by the wind, no question.
I'm not entirely clear on the complete technical case for wind turbines and remember hearing that the overall wear and tear in parts and the maintenance required, can often produce costs that are no conducive to the overall aim.
A key problem we have is that all of this free eco energy is usually controlled by the government and they tend to set these "free" tariffs for them, like the "Feed In Tariffs" we saw for solar panels. All this does is make unscrupulous greedy companies flock to grab as much of the allotted space as they can purely to profit from those tariffs.
The next major event that is coming in this space is renewable heat, to which I have strong connections and am heavily invested. This is the area of drilling into the ground to take heat from there and using heat exchangers and heat pumps to generate your heat. This is going to take off massively very shortly and is set to become an actual service. i.e. The companies will sell you heat as a service like selling you electricity. They will install all the gear, and you will simply pay a monthly fee for the heat produced.
Watch this space !
All in all though we still have a situation where the real rulers of this world, still want to keep us controlled and want to keep generating their ridiculous profits from keeping us dependent on fossil fuels. Their lucrative position is compromised if we use free energy.
So ultimately we need to get governments to stop pandering to these moguls and ensure they are geared towards rolling out free energy for the proper reasons.
Finally, in terms of the wind turbines we see today, they are pretty much all the same, a high supporting pole structure with 3 propeller like blades. Whilst I like those I would quite like to see far more of the other type that you sometimes see, which are the vertical spiral type. Called Vertical Axis turbines which look like this: