Grumblebum
That will be the case if we keep listening to the greenies and the lunatic left. We’ll all be rooned said Hanrahan..
Before we go any further down the dry gully of renewable cheap clean green wind power, it behoves that we look at some overseas experience in this area. Here are some things to focus on.
Wind turbine failure compilation:
It’s not all beer and skittles in the wind turbine business, and there have been some costly and hard to fix failures:
• Wind turbine blades susceptible to damage by local heat-induced vortices (willie willies) as they blow across open country
• Wind turbine generating equipment is designed for minimum weight, so that thermal stresses are probably higher than in land-based machines of comparable size and capacity. Forced cooling is therefore essential.
• Nacelle covers are usually made from fibre glass or carbon fibre materials. Means that once a fire starts, it can spread rapidly, fanned by high winds.
Minnesota Wind Turbine Damage:
Windmill on Fire Spain:
Next, it’s time to look at what experiences other countries have had with large wind turbine farms, particularly the financial costs, the political costs, and the effects on communities where wind turbine farms are situated.
“Down Wind” Ontario, Canada – Wind Power Opposition:
The Liberal (not conservative) Provincial Government of Ontario has a “green” agenda, and has railroaded farms / occupants in rural areas to accept massive wind farms on rural land, and curtailed local government planning powers to stop appeals against wind farms at the planning approval stage.
There was no justification of the need to install extra generation capacity prior to the big push into wind farms. No cost / benefit study was undertaken prior to giving the wind farm approval.
Wind farms are typically privately financed and owned, and hence demand, or are given, twenty-year supply contracts, regardless of whether the power generated is used or not.
Consumer power costs doubled or nearly tripled since 2004. High cost of power is driving manufacturing industries away from that province. This just tells us that wind power is uneconomic.
The Economic arguments start at 25 mins into video in an interview with an economics professor:
• “Wind turbines do not run on wind, but subsidies.”
• Wind turbines are backed up with base load gas turbine plants. This is achieved by shutting down hydro plants???, bleeding off steam from nuclear plants, and selling excess power at below cost to neighbouring provinces. This system also is subject to price fluctuations in the price of natural gas for gas turbine generating plants.
Wind towers are sited too close to existing farm houses / dwellings, with no input or objection allowed by the wind farm operator – lifestyle of senior citizens greatly affected.
The catch phrases “Green Energy” and “Green Jobs” are a misnomer. True that there may be manufacturing jobs during construction and installation of wind farms, but after that is finished, there is need only for a small mobile maintenance crew and a few operations staff at a central power control centre.
Wind Energy – the Big Swindle:
The video is narrated in French, but with English Subtitles by “Friends against Wind”. Lovely views of medieval towns, but with spinning wind turbine blades competing for the attention of your gaze:
• Key outcomes – for every wind turbine, you need equivalent back up fossil fuel generating capacity.
• Corruption in town councils by the wind power vested interests.
• Individual freedoms curtailed.
• Power prices increased by a surcharge for clean, green, renewable and cheap wind energy.
• The idea of “energy poverty” is canvassed, which covers all those with lower incomes who cannot pay for heating costs in the winter months.
• There are currently 5,000 wind turbines in France at present, and the “big plan” is to increase this to 25,000 long term.
• The economic life of a wind turbine is reckoned at 25 years, which covers the 20 years exclusive power payback for private capital funding of wind farms.
• Has any thought been given to what happens after the majority of wind turbines reach the need for replacement at their end of life?
• The turbine foundations each consume 900 tons of concrete plus steel reinforcing sunk into the ground. Has any thought been given to what happens if these ever have to be removed? Hitler’s “Atlantic Wall” fortifications were bad enough, and some are still in existence, some 80 years after they were built.
“It is time for the French people, the politicians and ecologists who have remained somewhat honest, to put a stop to this monstrous boondoggle whose consequences will become rapidly irreparable.”
Can we rely on Solar and Wind Energy? (Praeger University Centre for Industrial Progress):
The presentation introduces the ideas of:
• these two energy sources as being diluted compared with fossil fuels, hydro, and nuclear power fuels
• wind energy is also classed as “unreliable” – you cannot bank on it being available at times of peak demand.
As yet, there is no economically viable effective battery storage of energy from solar and wind energy.
Musselroe Bay Tasmania. Made by HEC (government power generator):
This site is so remote on the north-eastern tip of Tasmania that the nearest town, Gladstone, is about 40 kms away. There is one farm house at this location, and a nearby national parks camping area on the coast.
The area is good for beef cattle production (Black Angas) and also has plenty of kangaroos and wallabies.
Of all sites in Australia, it is probably the best place to site a wind farm. This of course, depends on Tasmania having plenty of water in the hydro system lakes on line backup when wind speeds fall, and a secure Bass Link cable to Victoria.
There is also another wind farm at Cape Grim on Tasmania’s North West Tip.
“We’ll all be rooned, said Hanrahan, before the year is out.”
“Grumblebum” is a white Anglo Saxon male baby-boomer whose ancestors came by sailing boat from the UK in the 1880’s and settled in the southern states. They farmed (not always successfully) and built the land, and passed onto myself their heritage of democracy and laws based on the Judeo-Christian principles. I am just wondering why I am being harangued into forfeiting this by a bunch of under-educated, historically illiterate, unwashed and unemployable knuckle-draggers from the political left.