Pylons vs. Wind Farms

Message Bookmarked

Bookmark Removed

Pylons = have been on the landscape for decades. Bring us electricity regardless of how it is generated.

vs.

Wind farms = more recently introduced to the landscape. generate electricity without pollution.

― MarkH (MarkH), Friday, 23 April 2004 11:59 (twenty-two years ago)

why do the wind farm windmills meet with all this opposition?

― MarkH (MarkH), Friday, 23 April 2004 12:00 (twenty-two years ago)

Pylons, although horribly dangerous for those living underneath, are ultra-cool because they inspire all sorts of artists.

I don't know why the anti-wind farm hatred. It's something about ruining all the scenics and scaring away tourists. I think they're beautiful.

― Super-Kate (kate), Friday, 23 April 2004 12:01 (twenty-two years ago)

Where's Ed when you need him? I'm sure he could provide lots of fascinating information and debate.

― Super-Kate (kate), Friday, 23 April 2004 12:05 (twenty-two years ago)

The wind farm windmill is quite an attractive thing; I wouldn't go quite so far as to say beautiful. They are usually white or grey so look less conspicuous than if they were, say, black, or a pastel shade.

I think pylons are quite ugly. Yet ppl don't object to them. Why? I can think of three possible reasons:

1) the usefulness of the National Grid overrides ppl's sense of them being an eyesore. This I feel is unlikely as the public at large rarely think that rationally.

2) they've been around for yonks so we're just used to them.

3) when they were a new thing we were in a more modernist society who regarded technology and engineering as Good Things regardless, in contrast to our more postmodern outlook today.

― MarkH (MarkH), Friday, 23 April 2004 12:10 (twenty-two years ago)

both suck. wind farms seem to be good because they're clean, but you need LOTS and LOTS of the giant things (the ones planned for the Cape Wind project off cape cod, MA are about 250 feet tall!) and they can hurt birds and make lots of noise. to me, the aesthetics isnt the problem, although to many it is.

pylons are ugly and cut through forests and are dangerous.

i guess wind farms lose by default since pylons have been around forever now.

― AaronK (AaronK), Friday, 23 April 2004 12:13 (twenty-two years ago)

I do think that wind farms are beautiful. They had one on the South Bank for a while (don't know if it's still there) and me and HSA and one of his mates went to look at it, and admire it, and sat underneath it for a while listening to the soft wub-wub-wub it was making.

I also think that (many, but not all) pylons are quite beautiful. But I would think that...

I suspect all three of your points are quite accurate. I think it's good in one way that viewpoints have changed, and people *are* now noticing, and trying to protect what countryside is left. But wind farms are not the enemy. Big, ugly nuclear power stations are a lot more of a blot on the landscape than wind farms. (Unless you're HSA who thinks that any and all power stations are beautiful.)

― Super-Kate (kate), Friday, 23 April 2004 12:16 (twenty-two years ago)

Wind farms are amazing, I love them. There's one solitary turbine (or whatever you call them) on the end of Dawlish Warren, it's so worth the 3o-minute walk across sand to sit and stare at it on a summer evening.

― Sick Nouthall (Nick Southall), Friday, 23 April 2004 12:17 (twenty-two years ago)

they can hurt birds

I've heard that they've been known to chop up birds if they are sited directly on birds' migratory routes which the birds are following by instinct. But I'd imagine individual birds simply avoid them much as they'd avoid any moving object. To site a wind farm without checking if it is on a migratory route would be cruel and irresponsible.

make lots of noise

How much is a lot? Kate says they just make a soft wub-wub-wub? Does this become unbearably loud in strong winds? How does it compare with, say, living by a busy road?

I've only visited one wind farm, St. Clether in Cornwall. I certainly don't recall loud noise.

― MarkH (MarkH), Friday, 23 April 2004 12:21 (twenty-two years ago)

I would imagine that a chopped-up birdkill of a windmill is actually far quicker and more humane than the usual horrible maiming and electrocution caused by birds sitting on the wrong wire of pylons.

― Super-Kate (kate), Friday, 23 April 2004 12:23 (twenty-two years ago)

I vote for wind farms, though in order for them to work efficiently they must be sited in an area with fairly continuous levels of wind. This works out reasonably well in coastal regions, but in the U.S. interior, the best areas for harvesting wind electricity also happen to be in the middle of nowhere far from any real civilization (North Dakota, Montana, etc.). Transporting the power long distances results in significant power loss, which ends up making the wind farms less useful.

― webcrack (music=crack), Friday, 23 April 2004 12:42 (twenty-two years ago)

The 'vs.' in this thread is a bit tricky, since the wind farms simply generate the power - you would still need the pylons do distribute it around the country. Wind farms in the UK feed power into the National Grid, which in turn delivers it to your home. So it's not really a matter of one or the other.

The windmill in South Bank is gone, and was a part of a temporary art/music installation put on by the good, environmentally-friendly people at SHELL.

The 'hurts birds' thing has been proven to be mostly false. And as for noise, I've been near large banks of them and could hardly hear a thing.

― Rob Bolton (Rob Bolton), Friday, 23 April 2004 12:54 (twenty-two years ago)

Shell? Ha ha, the ironing, etc. I did not know that. The more evil the corporation, the better the art, though.

― Super-Kate (kate), Friday, 23 April 2004 13:01 (twenty-two years ago)

I vote for Pylon, as their guitarist fixed my bike once (slinks off to name-dropping thread)

― Donna Brown (Donna Brown), Friday, 23 April 2004 13:51 (twenty-two years ago)

a soft wub wub isnt the impression i got from the reading i'd been doing online. "people" said they were noisy and i believed them, my bad.

― AaronK (AaronK), Friday, 23 April 2004 16:04 (twenty-two years ago)

Well, the only experience I've had of them up close is just that one on the South Bank. They may be noisier en masse. Or Shell may have been piloting a special quiet one as a PR exercise. Or Central London has such high noise levels that anything else isn't noticable.

(Though somehow I really doubt it, and I just think the anti-wind people are moaners.)

― Super-Kate (kate), Friday, 23 April 2004 17:26 (twenty-two years ago)

eighteen years pass...

Good thread. Anyway, what's a good present for someone who really likes electricity pylons?

― djh, Wednesday, 9 November 2022 20:41 (three years ago)

You must be logged in to post. Please either login here, or if you are not registered, you may register here.