Highland Ham wrote:
Last month I went to Palm springs for the Faire, and there was no
noticeable difference in the numbers of windmills in operation.

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Having seen these machines near Palm Springs ,they seem to be rather small
and of an older design.

Rather small?!!!! You call 350kW or more with blades 150 Feet (45m)
long *SMALL*????

Modern machines are much bigger (up to 2 MW rated capacity) and more
reliable.

Even bigger!

In the Netherlands they are now planning a number of 2MW machines offshore
,approx 8 kms off the coast placed on seabed based stuctures.
Their designers are focussing on minimum maintenance ( only once every 3
years) .

To date land based machines produce on average only 16% of their rated
capacity ,due to periods without adequate wind and to technical outage /
maintenance. Yet they seem profitable. In the Netherlands many farmers have
them on their land ,especially
in the northern provinces.

I'd like to know what has to be done to get the generated power back
into the grid.

Frank GM0CSZ / KN6WH