Don’t deny that this happened it was witnessed by several people but wasn’t brought up knowing that it was a waste of time and effort.

Now is this lasting damage, NO! But it is detrimental for those who wish to use the playa afterwards. Loose chucks of playa can be picked up by buggy tires and thrown back quite a ways. This has happen to me several times and thats without the Windjet tearing up the playa.

Concerning the IRONDUCK. Yes the Duck was heavyer. It was all about weight. The duck didn’t slide when powered up and traveling over 100MPH! I was there the year they set the speed record. They did it on the other side of the lakebed and did not affect with the event in anyway. I went over there the next day, there was tire depressions but no torn up playa.

Lastly, I find the tone of the responses very defensive and rude. To claim that I must not of been there was childish and smacks of someone that is guilty and just been caught. Attack the messager not the message. Try answering the questions! Like what improvement have been made to prevent the Greenbird from damaging the playa? Is the weight of the side rigger enough to prevent tipping? Even in high and gusty winds? I pointed out what I witnessed not what others told me. I questioned what happened to the lakebed that day and am now attacked for it. Accused of alliances that aren’t there and attempting to thwart your effort to set a new speed record. This was typical of the your attitude on the lakebed to me and others. It was all about you and the Windjet and be damned others.

I will continue to offer my support to Richard/Greenbird or any one else who would like to use Ivanpah for wind powered sport.

Dennis Bassano
President;
North American Land Sailing Association

As a long time lake user, and friend of the lake, none of us would like to see any damage done to the lake.

If any sign of serious damage even began to be seen, i’m sure that Richard would curtail his activity.

Many people don’t realize that the only time there is NO motor vehicles on the lake is when the wind sailors are out there. This lake is lightly patrolled and has (illegal) motor vehicle traffic on it all the time. While this does not excuse any rough behavior on wind sailors use, it shows the lake is very hardy and can take more use than it gets. In addition, El Mirage has constant motor vehicle use and is still a very viable sailing surface.

We welcome Greenbird and Richard to the U.S. and hope that he is successful in obtaining the necessary permits to run there.

NABX is proud to be associated with the Greenbird effort and will assist Richard in any way possible.

dean jordan
event organizer
North American Buggy eXpo
Leave no Trace!

It is indeed asymmetric, but this simply means it is faster on one tack, than the other, but can easily sail in any direction under its own power, so we do not require a tow vehicle to be on the same surface as the Greenbird.

Of the hundreds of land sailors that have seen both Windjet and Greenbird in action, I am sure any one of them will confirm these observations.

After all, lets not forget that the Iron Duck set the record on Ivanpah back in 1999, and that yacht was over twice the weight of Greenbird, with much narrower tyres, so any damage to the surface would have been much more significant than Greenbird. However, despite some tracks, Nalsa ran a regatta the following week after the record, on the same area that the Iron duck used without a problem and there is certainly no lasting damage to the Playa.

I share your sentiment of wanting to keep Ivanpah pristine and free of motorised vehicles, but can assure you that our efforts to break the speed record do not damage the Playa in any way. There are certainly a few individuals who seem against the principle of a British team challenging an American held record on American soil and hence have been obstructive, so maybe you have heard some rumours from this camp?

If we do end up using some of the dry lakes in North America I would invite you to come along in person to see the vehicle running and allay any fears you may have.

I (and the BLM) have a concern, if you will be returning to Ivanpah in 2009. The last time you were there the WINDJET dug large chucks out of the Playa and left long tracks of crumbling chucks of the Playa. I was wondering what improvements have been made to the current version that will prevent this from happening again?

Second, by the design this is one way only. I’ll assume that getting back requires being towed. The BLM is cracking down on vehicles on the Playa. You will need to account for this if you are to use Ivanpah again.

Think about using the Blackrock Desert, in Northern Nevada (Site of Burning Man) instead. The land speed record was set there. So there is plenty of room for runs from any wind direction, No vehicle restrictions, and very remote.

On noise, when you say cumulative sound do you mean from more than one windmill in a group, or more than one group in an area? ETSU 97 does reference the latter in terms that when assessing background noise for the purposes of setting noise limits from a new group of turbines, the contribution of existing turbines is not counted in the background - therefore making sure that cumulatively groups of windmills don’t go beyond the noise limits for single groups set in ETSU 97. When it comes to cumulative noise within a group then there are well established ways to predict noise on a cumulative basis.

The grid in the UK (can’t speak for the rest of the world but it’s not dissimilar I think) comes in two types. The National Grid, owned and operated by the National Grid Company (funnily enough…:) and this operates at higher voltages, typically 132 kV and above. Then you have the local grid, of which there are really 12. They each cover a geographical area of the country and they handle lower voltages, 132kV and below, down to domestic levels. The local and national grids meet at places known as Grid Supply Points (or GSPs in our industry jargon) and this is where the transition from national to local takes place.

The large metal pylons you see around the place are part of the national grid and the wooden power poles (and smaller pylons in some cases) are the local grid. Big conventional generators will typically be connected to the national grid and smaller renewables generators typically to the local grid. All but the very largest of electricity customers are connected to the local grid. The local grids are owned and operated by the Distribution Network Operators (or DNOs in our jargon), there’s no longer 12 of these following consolidation post-privatisation. Hope that helps.

Cheers.

As for cumulative sound - I disagree with you there Dale, I can’t find anywhere in ETSU 97 where it is mentioned. And, as you saw, ETSU 97 is indeed tried and tested but there are quite a few experts who think that it’s blunt, outdated and basically incorrect.

You also mentioned the ‘local grid’. I’ve tried endlessly to speak to EDF about this but without success, how does it work and how large is each grid? If you search the internet for anything to do with ‘local grid’ there is nothing, perhaps you could explain it a little more?

thanks

I’m told that when the first of these old windmills were installed in the Fens of East Anglia, the Dutch engineers doing the work were literally strung up by angry locals. And we thought we had NIMBY problems! And, I’m also told, that some of the Dutch masters (the painters) refused to include windmills in their landscape paintings in protest. Fast forward a few generations and you probably can’t find an image of Holland that doesn’t have a windmill in it, and windmills all over East Anglia have become historical treasures. My point being that what was alien and thoroughly unacceptable when it was first introduced has become something we not only accept, but value highly. And to me modern windmills are just ‘future heritage’ - today’s slightly radical departure from the norm, tomorrow’s treasured heritage. Evidence of the steps this generation took to address climate change.

Cheers.

I don’t share your views on the collapsed economy thing though, and subsistence levels of winter living because of wind power - I actually think this vision of the future will occur if we don’t build enough renewables and fast enough, because the fuel source we rely on now is unreliable and becoming only more so.

The 15% threshold you talk of for getting wind onto the grid reliably has already been surpassed in parts of the world - without as yet any magic storage technologies.

I’ve been discussing the issue of how the gird can cope with big inputs of renewable energy on my blogsite, if you’re interested there’s a short post here that offers an interesting perspective on how the future grid will look and cope. I’m very confident we have the ability, and will have it increasingly, to crack this problem of supplying energy on demand with intermittent power sources and energy storage - the trick is to judge the future not by the present, but by what’s coming.

Gruesome architecture? that’s a pretty minority view, valid don’t get me wrong, but not widely held.

Energy storage is coming so stand by to revise that opinion, and one day you might even be driving a wind powered car (keep a copy of this and check back in a decade or so….).

Ultimately renewables are the only sustainable energy source we have on this planet, failure to run our lives from them is not actually an option. Well it might be for our generation, even the next - but not the one that follows.

Cheers.