If wind power is so wonderful and the saviour of the earth.?

Question

Why is it that the wind powered street lights outside my house hardly ever work.
Its been blowing a gale here for a few days now and not a glimmer from them.
This is a regular occurance.
Theres nothing wrong with them , they do come on once in a while.

.

Right now they aint stopped...if they spin any faster, they'll take off.

Answer 1

Wind power is not so wonderful - the technology isn't good enough yet - the generators are not robust or reliable enough - and (to be honest) the economic justification exists only in a few isolated areas where it is too expensive to run normal power cables.

Answer 2

The electrical power grid has many sources of power; nuclear, hydro electric (water),coal, natural gas, wind, solar and such.

Your city may contract power from an electrcal company that produces electricity from wind power, but that does not mean the power used by your street lights came from that electrical companies wind generator. The power is supplied from the same electrical grid that all the providers input their power to.

Think of electric grid as an pool of water, that everyone adds to. You need to contract for 100 gallons of water, and purchase it from seller A who has 150 gallons stored in the pool. Seller A tells you to go to the pool and extract 100 gallons. Seller A must now subtract those 100 gallons from his inventory, so he only has 50 left.

Did you get the 100 gallons that Seller A had deposited in the pool? Not too likely. It is a large pool with everyone's water added togther. Does it matter? No. Water is water, all that matters is that Seller A has desposited 150 gallons to the pool to be stored. Once he sells his 150 gallons, he has no reserves left in the pool, so cannot sell any more, until he adds more water. That is somewhat similar to how the electricity grid works.

The fact that your street lights have been off for a few days, and it is very windy; more likely the wind has knocked down trees that have broken the power line wires. So there is no power to the street lights. Very often the street lights are powered by separate power lines then your house for the neighborhood.

Someone mentioned the wind generators may be turned off because the winds are too strong, that does happen. But an unlikely reason your street lights are off. Again, your street lights are probably powered from the electric grid, and the electric company with the wind generators has power reserves in the grid that can be supplied when it is not generating power.

I do not mean to imply electrical power can be stored, but for your answer, the generalization works.

Answer 3

Wind turbines are stopped when the wind is too strong, so as to avoid breakage.
Perhaps that is the reason why?

Answer 4

you cant sell wind like oil so when someone comes up with a way of selling wind they will start working

Answer 5

wind power kills thousands of bats and birds on a daily basis...don't think it is so wonderful myself!

Answer 6

punks stealing light bulbs?

Answer 7

its good having it but bad for many reasons