Wind turbines are ugly, litter the landscape, endanger wildlife, generate erratically, destabilize power grids and even cause health problems. They also have a habit of coming apart and self destructing — thus creating a hazard to persons and property.
The Saxony online daily Sächsische Zeitung (SZ) here reports how a wind turbine collapsed near Leisnig just days ago. An investigation revealed how one of three blades failed catastrophically, thus creating a huge imbalance that caused the tower to buckle 15 meters above the ground and led to the structure to come crashing down. The site reports:
Through the force of the impact, the gearbox unit was driven almost 2 meters into the earth.”
The following short video surveys the damage. Note how one blade had totally come apart.
Earlier in December, Germany’s BILD daily reported how in the Mecklenburg Pommeria town of Süderholz a wind turbine tower snapped in half and crashed to the ground. An investigation is now underway. Süderholz mayor Alexander Benkert ordered the other remaining turbines to be thoroughly inspected.
Bild reports the tower simply snapped 25 meters up but that no one was injured.
Collapsing even when not in operation
In neighboring Denmark one wind turbine shows us that turbines can come apart even when they are not operating. Danish vejr.tv2.dk television site here reports how the blade of one turbine simply “tore off” during a recent storm.
Also here the English Manchester Evening News here reports how a recent storm ripped off all three blades from a turbine one afternoon in England, almost killing a man who happened to be taking his dog for a walk.
Mounting opposition to ugly, unreliable wind power projects
The seemingly collapse-prone turbines are likely yet just another reason on a long list why people now resist them. Once welcome and viewed as a source of clean energy, huge protests are now organizing and mobilizing against wind park projects. Germany’s online nordkurier.de here reports how an online survey found only 15% were in favor of installing more turbines in the Uckermark region.
In the Rhine-Main region, the Frankfurter Neue Presse (FNP) reports on how authorities in Darmstadt recently rejected the building of wind turbines on the Taunuskamm mountain, citing “groundwater protection” needs. The local Green Party, of all people, fumed at the rejection.
Sabotage
The resistance to wind energy in Germany has grown to such an extent that some people are now sabotaging them. In Fulda a person, or persons, broke into a tower and destroyed the electrical gear, causing the unit to halt. The wind park operator suspects wind energy opponents.
First the suspect(s) had on two earlier occasions stopped the turbine by simply pressing the emergency STOP button. In the third attempt on December 26 the switchbox was opened and its contents destroyed. The online Fuldaer Zeitung writes at the end of the article:
Indeed the opposition against further wind turbines in the Eiterfeld area was large in the past.”
Wind energy in Germany is no longer welcome.
Aaron Wienerdec writing in Mother Jones (29/12/2016) says that German opposition to Energiewende is due to the “Trump effect.” The article states it has 90% support of the German people, despite much higher energy bills. Mr. Wienerdec must have missed all of those other long-time, widely reported reasons for opposing IWT parks. Why bother researching a story these days when it so easy just to blame everything on Donald Trump?
I blame Russian hacking.
Collapse has different meanings. When an ice sheet collapses in front of a climatologist it takes several hundred years or more.
I wonder how a climatologist would describe a windmill falling apart in stormy weather (climate of cause)?
I would like to tell you of my latest book, “Human Caused Global Warming”.
The Biggest Deception in History.
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Trial date for Dr Michael Mann vs Dr Tim Ball, February 20th, 2017.
http://www.drtimball.com
“… to such an extent that some people are now sabotaging them.”
Tell them to stop doing that.
One, it is not right;
Two, someone might get hurt or killed;
Three, in the minds of regular folks, it provides an excuse for any failure;
Four, wind towers are quite capable of failing on their own;
Five, it is better to fight these in the open and thus stop more from being built and to decrease support for them.
Six, an insurance company and its share holders — a couple or three links removed from the energy provider — will bear the cost; again, not right.
There are more reasons — add your won.
Ditto.
Seven.. Not necessary.. they will blow apart or stop working of their own accord in due course anyway !!
I agree. Of course here sabotage is not the way. The arguments against wind are so clear that it is not difficult to convince the informed, sensible person without having to resort at all to any extreme measures.
I recall reading in a German Technical magazine that the blades only last 6 to 8 years and that thousands are replaced by maintenance a year. However, due to the size and material (lots of glassfibre) rubbish tips will not accept them. They need to be shredded then they can be fed to cement kilns as fuel and raw material replacement. I believe there are several firms (one in the Hamburg area) doing that. Of course, if little maintenance is done due to high cost then there will be dangers from failure. The Greens do not like cement production because it involves CO2 emission but I believe there is an out for using recycled fuel which the EU does not talk about.
This article is clearly failing to see the forest for the trees.
This failure of one wind turbine does not change the real development. Even oil companies are starting to understand that wind is the future:
http://www.wsj.com/articles/oil-producers-turn-to-wind-power-1482753616
The movement is picking up speed. Costa Rica again run on something like 98% renewables for the full year, with vast percentages of time above 100% (and continues 100% over phases of over 100 days).
http://mashable.com/2017/01/01/costa-rica-renewable-energy-2016/#DYHk8uEywOqk
This is big news, because 2 years ago even very pro-renewable sources were echoing the doubts that i hear here. Costa Rica being special, hydro being the real thing there and the 90+% being an oddity.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/mar/30/truth-behind-costa-rica-renewable-energy-reservoirs-climate-change
But the truth is, that Guardian article was much too pessimistic. a look at the electricity sector shows what is happening (the source is IEA, so no friend of renewables):
http://www.iea.org/stats/WebGraphs/COSTARICA2.pdf
hydro is basically flat and would have declined in Costa Rica (as percentage of total), while Diesel was about to pick up. The trend has been reversed. Diesel has basically been pushed up and wind is taking over (and some geothermal power). And Costa Rica has not really started to move into solar!
Changes will be fast now and folks here might miss it, because they ponder a single damaged wind turbine.
Hydro again… you really are totally FULL of mis-direction
Wind plays just a BIT PART
Just a small niche
You even admit it.
So sad that you have to keep falling back on hydro, the ONLY worthwhile renewable, so long as the climate doesn’t change 😉
Geothermal is NOT renewable… its like coal, a very large but finite resource.
Wind taking over from diesel, until there is no wind.
Wind can NEVER provide reliability or continuity of supply
Until you go totally on to wind yourself, instead of RELYING TOTALLY on fossil fuel back up, you PROVE this fact
Are you going to do that.. NO, you NEVER WILL, because you are blowing nothing but wind.
Can I ask you sop.. where is the closest wind turbine to you..?? 500m?? or are we talking several kms.
“Hydro again… you really are totally FULL of mis-direction”
I am not misdirecting. Please look at the facts again:
http://www.iea.org/stats/WebGraphs/COSTARICA2.pdf
Hydro was flat, the increased production came from diesel. Then Costa Rica decided to go for wind instead. Now they have 98% renewables and 100% most of the time.
Wind power has a purpose. It is cheaper than diesel. Lots of countries will follow this example.
Wind and solar.. Basically NOTHING.
Thanks for confirming that.
Wind has its purpose.. Niche, .. but must be backed up by something RELIABLE.
Yes.. very much mis-direction.
The thread topic is WIND TURBINES.
… so you bring up a country that is mostly hydro.
A very obvious attempt at mis-direction..
Its all you have.
“This failure of one wind turbine does not change the real development. Even oil companies are starting to understand that wind is the future”
Yes. Because they can get subsidies from the government. Don’t you really understand that?
Well then sod why don’t you migrate to Costa Rica?
One way of evaluating a country (surely not the only or best)
is to examine “gross domestic product” with regard to the population.
Here are 2 such using USD ($) and data** from 2015:
Costa Rica . . . . $9,129.53
Germany . . . . . $45,269.79
It is only as close as it is because Germany has . . . Never mind.
**
http://www.tradingeconomics.com/costa-rica/gdp-per-capita
“The movement is picking up speed. ”
Die Bewegung; well, international communism I’d call this Bewegung; as all around the world, wind turbines do not have the purpose of producing electricity but of defrauding the taxpaying population.
So you are saying that the international movement of communist fraudsters is getting stronger and stronger; and I agree, that’s what I see as well. We will have to change our government: SPD and CDU are accomplices of this international mafia. They are both communist in nature.
“This article is clearly failing to see the forest for the trees.” – sod
The forest is hard to see when they have to be cut down to install a bird and bat abattoir park.
Yes, it seems to have de-laminated. I wonder if that is the start of on-going failures for this type of blade construction…
Many years ago I bought a laminated recurved bow (the type used to shoot arrows).
With the first release, the thing shattered into about 40 pieces of wood and fiberglass.
The company said it had a “twisted tiller” and sent me a new one — it worked.
De-lamination is an old issue.
Anyone that goes outside experiences wind speeds that differ, sometimes just arms lengths from one another. When one blade of a turbine is up and the others are down(ish) hundreds of feet away the different forces can be considerable.
For those that come apart, can we call this the “twisted tiller” phenomenon?
You can call it predictable failure. Fibreglass laminates are prone to delimitation, i.e. separation of 2 layers laid down at differing times. They are also prone to fatigue and usually fail at the weakest place.
The twisting effect you describe places a good deal of stress on the fibreglass blades. The higher the stress the shorter the time to failure. The more cycles in stress the more likely failure will occur.
There was a case about 40 years ago in the USA where a boat disintegrated into 3 replicas of the hull. The owner/driver was thrown some distance and killed. When the relatives started making noises about sueing it was pointed out that the boat had been sold as a runabout with a 5HP outboard motor along with a comment “if more speed is required then another similar motor could be added”. The owner instead used 2 by 150HP and turned it into a speedboat.
There was a fault in the resin, but operating the boat under extreme stresses for which it wasn’t designed was excuse enough.
All this because boat construction technology was used for wind turbine blades. The problem is that a blade may be stressed 4 million times a year whereas boats were built with 100,000 to a million cycles in mind for their lifetime. The builders of turbines have done very well to reduce the number of accidents, but with the big increase in turbines installed recently there is likely to be a lot more reports of blade failure in the near future.
The situation in Germany , re: power sources, is shown , week by week, in the following link (which I probably obtained a few days ago from this very website )
https://www.energy-charts.de/power.htm
Wind and solar are a very variable source of power, and using the “precautionary principle” so beloved of Greens , the German Govt has sensibly ensured that power from conventional sources is there to rescue the nation when wind and sun fail.
In which month did solar and wind fail the country?
https://www.energy-charts.de/energy.htm
added together they look pretty stable to me…
TELL IT TO THE INVESTORS
If it were profitable, they wouldn’t be avoiding it.
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2016/12/29/investment-in-onshore-wind-solar-power-dries-up/
They were just in it for the subsidies, because that was the ONLY way it could be profitable. Now the free lunch is gone, so are the investors.
Thanks, suckers.
In Germany, in the end of 1016, the wind fraud lobbyists left a conference with the SPD-CDU government traitors very satisfied, German press told. Here we can expect faster rising electricity prices, more landscape destruction and more energy communism from the government.
Germany is currently the last holdout of entrenched CLINTON MACHINE-type communist resistance by the mafia groups SPD and CDU.
So, they are Clinton type crooks? I long ago came to the conclusion that, at least in the US, the balance of good and bad shifted in favor of bad with Clinton, and has only gotten worse since.
I know he has been working with the PES in Europe, so it may not be too much of a stretch to imagine that your bad guys and ours have been colluding on international tactics and strategy for a long time now. Any thoughts?
I recall that German law mandates that wind turbines must not be built within a certain distance from any housing, so that 1) when they self-destruct, no one is injured and 2) the infrasound produced by the blade tips (4 Hz – 6 Hz) will not affect residents.
Question: What is that distance? I recall 1 kM to 1.5 kM.
It depends from state to state. Bavaria, one of the strictest when it comes to Windpark approvals, uses the 10H rule, i.e. turbine must be set back from homes minimum 10 times the turbine height.
Thank you. Here in NC, a large wind park (blocked by Perquimins County for the moment) is planning on using turbines 599′ from blade tip to ground. So, we’re looking at just under 2 kM if the rule were to be applied. Fine. So far, however, no one is paying any attention to the problems Germany (and others) have had to face. Sad.
“1) when they self-destruct, no one is injured ”
How many people have been injured so far by “self-destructing” wind turbines?
You are in luck. None of the 165 fatalities associated with wind farms has been due to blades self-destructing. One man was killed in Germany but that was by ice thrown off a blade.
The 350 cases of blade accidents haven’t resulted in any injuries or deaths despite pieces of blade being thrown 1.3 km. Blades have damaged houses, shops, cars and trucks.
http://www.caithnesswindfarms.co.uk/AccidentStatistics.htm
I spent 25 years working for fibreglass resin producers who got to know of a lot of problems with various constructions. It doesn’t surprise me in the slightest that incidents of blades flying apart are happening. And they will increase as the turbines age.
sop. I asked you before, but you didn’t answer.
How close is the nearest big wind turbine to you.?
I bet that an inner-city latte ghettoist like you would never allow one near your place of abode.
“Question: What is that distance? I recall 1 kM to 1.5 kM.”
Northern state Schleswig Holstein has reduced it further and further to now 500m to get as many wind turbines as possible crammed onto the state.
Wind turbines aren’t the only thing that’s “crashing down.” With a lunatic at the helm, nothing is secure.
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2017/01/insanity-merkel-urges-germans-use-love-compassion-battle-islamic-extremists-communities/