A Place to Stand

Whitelee windfarm

Scotland's 322-megawatt (MW) Whitelee project – Europe’s largest wind farm, located near Glasgow, Scotland – was brought to a standstill after a rotor blade snapped off one of the Siemens-made turbines.

The 150ft blade reportedly crashed to the ground on the evening of 19 March, triggering an alarm in the control room. Operators initially shut down the unit in question, before moving to halt the entire project

From the Telegraph. Which makes it worth reprinting, for UK readers, some recent stuff from Al Fin:

A recent detailed analysis (focusing mainly on Spain) finds that for every job created by state-funded support of renewables, particularly wind energy, 2.2 jobs are lost. Each wind industry job created cost almost $2-million in subsidies.

and

turbine gearboxes have yet to achieve their design life goals of twenty years, with most systems requiring significant repair or overhaul well before the intended life is reached [3,4,5]. Since gearboxes are one of the most expensive components of the wind turbine system, the higher than expected failure rates are adding to the cost of wind energy. In addition, the future uncertainty of gearbox life expectancy is contributing to wind turbine price escalation. Turbine manufacturers add large contingencies to the sales price to cover the warranty risk due to the possibility of premature gearbox failures. In addition, owners and operators build contingency funds into the project financing and income expectations for problems that may show up after the warranty expires.

and

Many wind farm operations and maintenance teams are so resource constrained that they are barely able to keep up with unscheduled maintenance repairs. Even regularly scheduled preventative maintenance such as gearbox lubrication and oil changes are falling behind.

and

I wish no one the hell we are living in ! Do not let them fool you just to make money on your home and neighbourhood like they did to ours. Wind turbines close to your home is nothing but torture... Protests do not often help - the democratic rules and ordinary laws do not apply to wind turbines. Strange ! Then they, like we, find out the hard way that the noise is unbearable for human beings and that the shadows from the rotating blades in your home and garden drives you and your children mad. Just to look at the wind turbines rotating stresses you and finally you cannot stay in your own home. In Sweden many people have left their homes, many more are planning to. Nobody is interested in buying my house unless I make a huge reduction in the price.

and

-- the unpredictability of big wind energy is the equivalent of sabotage. In fact, it would be easier to deal with an eco-terrorist dynamiting a high voltage tower, than to deal with the violent fluctuations of power output from large scale wind.

and

some wind-farms are now being built solely for tax credits, and to fill renewable energy portfolios. Such "tax credit" wind farms are likely to end up idle and rusting in the weather -- never having generated significant power, but still having served the purpose of providing tax breaks for wealthy and cynical green investors.

Warren Buffet’s MidAmerican Energy project calculates that it can break even after six years, without ever producing any electricity. And Boone Pickens is offering his investors a 25% return on a 4000 MW wind-farm based entirely on federal tax credits.
(It has also been admitted that UK windfarms make more money from subsidy than from electricity) and

Pieces of blade are documented as traveling over 400 m, typically from much smaller turbines than those proposed for use today. In Germany, blade pieces have gone through the roofs and walls of nearby buildings.

Windmills are simply a scam promoted by those with political access. They can form no part of baseload & cost 10 times as much as nuclear. There is no case whatsoever for turning our countryside into an industrial landscape dominated by these useless & dangerous 300 ft monsters.

Labels: eco-fascism, Fear, Fixing the economy