Wind Energy’s 8 Serious Disadvantages: Hurts Everything From Wealth To Health

What follows is a list of reasons compiled by this German site here on why wind is a poor source of power.

There are eight disadvantages that cannot be ignored, the site writes. What follows are the eight reasons along with my own descriptions.

1. Unstable, erratic power supply

The wind doesn’t blow constantly, and so the supply is unstable and wildly fluctuating. In many locations the wind may disappear for days or even weeks at a time. Then in periods of high winds the power grid can become overloaded, or the turbines have to be shut down to avert serious mechanical damage. Overall wind turbines in Germany put out only a lousy 18% of their installed rated capacity.

2. Wind turbines are expensive

The ROI for turbines can take many years, and makes sense only in places where the wind blows often, e.g. coastal areas, offshore or hill tops. But that makes the installation far more expensive. Many investors have seen very disappointing results from wind projects. Moreover in Germany, electricity prices have skyrocketed over the past years in large part due to the mandatory feed-in of wind energy.

3. Excess power is extremely difficult to store

So far scientists and engineers are a long way from finding a solution for storing electricity. Batteries are expensive and heavy, and require massively extensive mining operations. Pump storage techniques are possible only in limited places, and they too are horribly inefficient. Converting wind-generated electricity into a gas such as hydrogen and then back into electricity when wind is calm is expensive and inefficient as well.

4. Destruction of natural habitat

As installing wind turbines in residential areas is problematic, wind parks often are located in rural or natural areas – even in the middle of forests. This entails the industrialization of natural habitats. Plants and wildlife lose their habitats, or are adversely affected. Areas are often deforested to make way for the turbines. Access roads rip though the forests, permanently damaging or even destroying the local biotope. The same is true for offshore turbines. Turbines often pose a hazard to endangered species.

5. Bird kill: death from turbine blades

If industrializing natural landscape were not bad enough, wind turbines are also a real hazard to migrating birds. Each year millions of birds are (unnaturally) killed by wind turbines worldwide. According to Nature, up to 440,000 birds are killed in the USA each year. Conventional power plants on the other hand, do not kill anywhere near as many birds. Wind turbines also kill many bats.

6. Danger from flying ice

In the wintertime, ice is known to form and build up on the blades, only later to dislodg and be thrown projectiles, posing a danger to people and property located nearby. Already near misses have been recorded.

7. Aesthetics and property values

In early times wind turbines were a fascination. But today they are much larger in size and people have grown tired of their ugliness. In North Germany, for example, it is often difficult to leave your home without having to see one. In Germany there have been literally hundreds on citizens initiatives against the construction of wind parks. People are fed up with the industrial blight in the middle of Natur that wind energy really is.

Ugly wind turbines seriously depress property values.

8. Wind turbines produce noise and infrasound

Wind turbines are not quiet. Moreover they produce infrasound: low frequency sound below the human threshold of hearing. However, infrasound is sensed by the inner ear as pressure pulses that have been scientifically found to make people ill and even damage their health.

25 responses to “Wind Energy’s 8 Serious Disadvantages: Hurts Everything From Wealth To Health”

  1. claude brasseur

    Until 2 years I present a very easy method to estimate the loss of life wear near wind mills.Nobody accept that I do the job.

  2. Kurt in Switzerland

    Add #9: poor power density.

    Wind Turbines require 2-3 orders of magnitude more land area compared with nuclear or fossil fuel power plants with the same nameplate capacity.

    When you consider the capacity factor (typically < 20%, vs. 90+% for fossil fuels and nuclear), any remaining arguments for wind power disappear.

  3. Robin Pittwood

    Hi Pierre, The very first word in your list is ‘Unstable’. So true. I have been slowly unpacking what stability and instability means in relation to the grid at my blog. Sat night’s post was a detailed analysis of a frequency excursion and the response needed to restore stability. Text book theory and not too technical. Cheers, Robin. http://www.kiwithinker.com/2017/07/analysis-of-an-under-frequency-event/

  4. DMA

    Another problem for wind farms is the increased wear and decreased efficiency for the base load equipment that is required to change power output o balance the variable wind generation. As this reduces the base load generator’s profit and reliability the grid drifts further and faster toward blackouts.

    1. Graeme No.3

      And decreased efficiency for the base load equipment means higher emissions. I am sure you meant that, but emphasised it for the benefit? of people who believe in wind as a solution.

  5. Kurt in Switzerland

    #10: poor EROEI (Energy Returned on Energy Invested)

    This is similar to #2, “Wind Turbines are Expensive”, which becomes less obvious when the playing field is skewed through quotas (or ‘renewable energy supply’, tax credits, feed-in tariffs, primacy for wind, …).

    Wind power, while slightly better than solar polar, still requires an unacceptably high energy investment compared with the return. Put another way, the amount of time for energy amortization is long: 5 y in the best cases, but the average is probably > 10 y.

    Put simply, the amount of fossil fuel combustion necessary for carpeting the planet with wind turbines is prohibitive. Think of all the steel and cement and the backhoes necessary to re-landscape a formerly pristine forest environment.

  6. Vincent

    #11 “weak recyclability” (already published there): 1)old turbines are hard to dismantle and recycle, and 2) giant concrete foundations will remain in the soil forever

    1. yonason

      Vincent writes…
      “2) giant concrete foundations will remain in the soil forever”

      I would have thought that of all peoples, the Germans would have remembered.
      http://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-bunker-and-concrete-emplacement-for-german-second-world-war-two-mammut-73635897.html

      If you want your screw-ups to be immortalized, concrete is definitely one way to go.

      1. Hivemind

        I was going to point out that the Nazis loved their concrete too. Just like the modern Green Nazi party.

  7. DirkH

    O/T Warmunist Scientists from Sweden demand that developed countries stop having babies. A baby “harms the climate” as much as 20 BMW’s, say the frauds.
    http://www.stern.de/panorama/wissen/umweltstudie—20-bmw-schaedigen-das-klima-weniger-als-ein-baby-7539938.html?google_editors_picks=true

    These frauds of course are payed by the PAN-EUROPA parties -like the CDU- with our tax money – the very same movement that demands unlimited immigration from Arabia and Africa – and welfare payments to the immigrants which increases their resource consumption to more than those “climate-damaging” babies.

    Conclusion: They demand that Whites go extinct and are replaced by Arabs and Black Africans.

  8. yonason

    Slowly but surely, it will begin to dawn on those in accounting that providing customers with a defective product can’t be disguised forever.

    Another study finding wind to be worse than useless is here.
    https://www.thegwpf.com/studies-find-wind-turbines-unsustainable-and-harmful-to-wildlife/

    1. AndyG55

      I doubt any of the wind turbine concrete monoliths will be treated as a “historic” site, though….

      … except to the monumental idiocy of the whole AGW AGENDA. !!

  9. Kees van der Pool

    Dismantling windmills made look easy:

    “Rückbau Windkraftanlagen Pellworm”

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBeiOqOeRbY

    1. Hivemind

      I prefer this version:

      https://youtu.be/pcjxWXJq8RU

  10. edmh

    Wind power was pretty good for grinding corn and pumping water. These are tasks where you can store the result and it does not matter too much when you do them.

    No wonder they worked so well 100 or more years ago.

    One would be mad not to use an electric motor for such tasks now.

    Renewables as a whole are however an
    “appalling delusion”
    see Professor David Mackay final interview just before he died min 13.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCyidsxIDtQ

    For an updated 2016 estimate of Renewable Energy costs in Europe see
    https://edmhdotme.wordpress.com/renewable-energy-cost-and-performance-in-europe-2016/

    highlights:
    Long term European costs about €2.5 trillion to generate about 4% of Europe’s generating need
    Overall Renewables cost about 11 times more in both foe capital costs and for long term costs

  11. lemiere jacques

    irrelevant….
    what is relevant is firt : you pay even if you don’t want it even if you don’t get any benefit from it…second there is no reason it will lower the use of fossil fuel…
    if you want to stop fossil fuel : just DO IT greens!!!!! and then when i will realize you are happier, welthier and the climate has changed a bit..i will follow your steps

  12. Juergen Uhlemann

    What’s about the impact of wind turbines in relation to air circulation?

    Every wind turbine is destroying a certain amount of wind power, which will then reduce the air circulation to some degree. This means that the diesel particulate matter could concentrate in certain areas more. If you know Stuttgart than you know what I’m talking about.
    I don’t know how much it really means but it is a factor.

    That we change the air flow and circulation is known for a long time. Just look at the impact of high rise buildings.

    1. John

      They create a lot of heavy turbulence, dangerous for aircraft.
      They take energy from the wind, thereby slowing and warming the air behind..
      They influence the climate.
      They should be taken down at once.

  13. Greg61

    Where I live the ideal locations for wind power are also the natural migration routes for many the bird species that fly south to avoid winter. Many species are being destroyed by this environmental madness

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