It all started when the Gorran School got the bright idea that a wind turbine would solve all their electrical bills while doing some feel good environmentalism. The BBC was ecstatic when they reported on it back in 2008:
A Cornish primary school could soon be almost completely powered by a single wind turbine.
The turbine should be up and running by the end of March
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Gorran Primary School on the Roseland, has secured more than £50,000 from different agencies to carry out the work on the 15m (49ft) high turbine.
It should be up and running at the end of March at the school made famous by Anne Treneer’s autobiography The Schoolhouse in the Wind.
The head teacher Matthew Oakley says it should save the school £5,000 a year.
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And then, reality came crashing down to Earth:
Wind brings down turbine 02/12/2009 The Newquay Voice
THE eco-dream of a village school turned into a Friday 13th nightmare when high winds destroyed their wind turbine.
Two blades flew off from the 15m tall turbine in Gorran School’s playing field during the bad weather earlier this month. The turbine was part of the school’s £53,000 plan to generate its own electricity,
On the afternoon of Friday, November 13, the school was advised to turn on the brakes to stop the turbine, but the brakes failed, causing two blades to detach in the early hours of Saturday morning.
A concerned parent said: “Thank God it happened when the children were not out on the field. Looking at the size and weight of those rotor blades, I dread to think what would have happened if they had snapped off while they were there.”
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This is not the first problem Gorran School have experienced with their wind turbine. Only seven months after it was erected in July 2008 it went on the blink. It was repaired by the manufacturers at the time at no cost to the school, and they were reimbursed for the lost generation while the turbine was not working.
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Now today, the company has walked away from the mess according to the Telegraph, and the school has a pile of scrap:
Eco-friendly school left out of pocket after ‘unproven’ wind turbine breaks
An eco-friendly school has been left £55,000 out of pocket after its wind turbine broke – with governors admitting that it was based on “completely unproven technology”.
The company that installed the turbine has gone bust leaving the school with a pile of scrap.
The Gorran School in Cornwall revealed its 15 metre turbine in 2008 which was designed to provide it with free electricity – and sell any surplus power to the National Grid.
The system was seen as a green blueprint for clean, sustainable energy for schools nationwide and received grants from various bodies including the EDF power firm.
But soon after being installed the wind turbine became faulty and after a few months seized up – showering the school’s playing field with debris.
Since then the school has been locked in a battle with suppliers Proven Energy which has now gone into administration leaving the school with little hope of any money being returned – and a pile of scrap in their field.
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Having learned nothing in Gorran, they are still at it, from the BBC on August 19th:
19 August 2011 Last updated at 03:31 ET
Wind energy for Gorran community
The turbines at Gorran may be generating power within a matter of weeks
The small community of Gorran in south Cornwall will soon be generating its own energy and exporting surplus to the national grid.
Work to erect two community wind turbines at a cost of £500,000 is well under way.
Community Power Cornwall, a local co-operative, is behind the project.
The organisation has helped the villagers in Gorran to look at its energy needs and developed a renewable energy scheme.
‘Big symbol’
Villager Ella Westland, from Transition Gorran, said clean energy production and low carbon living were “things many villagers have been working towards for a long time”.
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Yeah ‘Big Symbol’ alright – of FAIL. Just look at all the FAIL in California.
What’s the old saying about fools & their money parting ways?
Well there is no fool like a greenie fool.
The perfect mark for the AGW con artists and eco-grifters.
I suspose someone will pay to have the garbage carried away and also perhaps for a hazardous material spill if any of the gear oil leaked.
Supplier of the downed wind turbine: “Proven Energy.” Perfection in inadvertent irony.
What a shower of “windbags” these people really are. No other idustry would be allowed to erect industrial buildings this tall all over the scenic countryside, riding roughshod over planning regulations. Euro MEP Roger Helmer almost explodes when talking about these turbines, as do many of his Conservative and UKIP colleages in Brussels.
See some videos on the subject of winfarms at the Fraudulent Climate website (see the Audio & Video index). See also this article written by Roger Helmer, when describing a new book by Struan Stevenson MEP, “The Rape of Britain”, about the proliferation of turbines in the UK.
http://rogerhelmermep.wordpress.com/2011/10/03/the-rape-of-britain/
No doubt, an extreme weather event caused by CAGW. (You’ve got to learn to read between the lines.)
I can’t help but see the similiarity between the word scrap and crap. “the school has a pile of _____”
It’s not the only school to fail:
http://www.dorsetecho.co.uk/news/8252862.Portland_school_turns_off_wind_turbine_to_halt_seabird_slaughter/
Last year another primary school in the area had a similar problem. It was killing so many passing sea birds that the head teacher had to come in before school each morning to collect up the carcases so as not to offend the kids sensibilities.
Mr McLeod said he worried about the impact on the birds and his pupils, who got upset when deaths happened during playtimes and lunchtimes. “We’ve tried so hard to be eco-friendly but now we can’t turn it on. We can’t get rid of it either because we bought the turbine we had to apply for grants and the grant from the Department of Energy and Climate Change states that it has to stay on site for five years.”
Hmm, I think I know where the Gorran School can get a replacement turbine cheap.
Who will they sue when the damage happens?
epetitions.direct.gov.uk%2Fpetitions
repeal the climate change act
all uk bloggers on wuwt might feel like adding their name to this
But the dam fools want my money to pay for it here in the US…. and Obama is killing coal and oil by fiat through the EPA.. shooting us in the foot for a failing miserably green weenie… stupidity should be painful and were about to find out..
I’ve heard about people who try the same thing expecting different results. But what about people who not only double down, but go in ten times bigger than before expecting different results?
What surprises me is that they are now considering a solar power scheme as a replacement, despite the hard lessons from their mechanically failed wind turbine and its financially failed producer, ‘Proven Energy’.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2045862/Schools-green-dream-blown-away–55-000-wind-turbine-breaks-firm-installed-goes-bust.html?ito=feeds-newsxml
Are we looking at a repeat failure here with the solar scheme? Maybe the only thing that will come out of this is that the school’s pupils will have a better view of the true infeasibility of renewable power, rather than the official line from the educational system.
quote: “The system was seen as a green blueprint for clean, sustainable energy”
And so it remains.
Its just that what the blueprint describes, is foolish to implement.
Unlike these wind turbines, the world will continue to turn and this spiteful ideology will be consigned to the dustbin of history where it will exist as an example of how, for all our modern cleverness and supposed evolution, the human species is fundamentally no different than it was centuries ago.
Did anyone do any investigation before plunking down the schools cash?
Such as looking at the record of the supplier, apparently nil, based on the article, or at least perhaps getting a performance guarantee for some years.
Based on seeing many wind turbine installations, it is rare that even half of the units are running. Most of the time, it is a few out of the dozens that are built.
So pinning the schools hopes on a single unit of technically fragile equipment is just foolish.
Perhaps it will cause the parents to be a little more skeptical of the school’s dicta in the future.
What’s that old saying about repetition and madness?…… Yeah, well it applies here…;-)
When I saw the headline I thought of this school wind turbine in South Dakota, down the road from where I live. It’s not exactly about catastrophe like the above story, but it’s interesting to ponder as an educational tool: http://articles.aberdeennews.com/2011-03-07/news/28667593_1_wind-energy-wind-for-schools-program-turbine
“The Andes Central school district participates in the South Dakota Wind for Schools project, which promotes wind energy through project development and education. Andes Central and Charles Mix Electric officials recently dedicated the 60-foot turbine.
“A website records the wireless data, which is transmitted off the turbine to a computer, he said. Twice since its Jan. 13 installation, on Feb. 1 and 14, the turbine has produced 25 kilowatt-hours of electricity in a 24-hour period, he said.
Mueller acknowledged the turbine hasn’t cranked out a huge amount of electricity, averaging around 60 cents’ worth of power daily.
But the lessons learned by the students are worth far more than 60 cents, Mueller said. The project familiarizes students with wind energy and other forms of “green” power, Mueller said.
Schools should not be investing money in fashionable energy policies/projects. Such spare money that the school may have should be invested in education, more teachers, smaller class sizes, more books and equipment, updating old infrastructure etc. That said, a useful lesson has been learnt, green technology at its present level will never financially pay for itself and is a waste of valuable resources.
A ‘few’ more examples of wind turbine failure:
http://www.windbyte.co.uk/safety.html
including these at schools:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1232540/School-wind-turbine-collapses-crushes-contractors-van.html
http://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/Article.aspx/1492247?UserKey=
and as an added bonus, some more dead birds:
http://www.windbyte.co.uk/birds.html
In fact this could be a fine opportunity for a realistic education for the kids.
They could all learn the bitter truth about these flimsy ‘green’ projects.
Except I doubt they will.
The cost of cloudy vision. That’s over $81,000 on this side of the pond. Ouch.
It never ceases to amaze me how willing so many people now seem to be to take advantage of OTHER peoples money. I mean, who’s really going to wind up on the hook for the £55,000+? The article says: “secured more than £55,000 from different agencies to carry out the work.” So, were those private ‘agencies?’ I’d bet government, but maybe just different use of the term over there vs. here across the pond… So who will really wind up paying for the ‘unproven technology,’ the school? or the ‘agencies?’ Which, of course, if agencies means government then this really means all the other taxpayers who would never benefit for a second from the school’s ‘savings.’ And why in the world did they go for ‘unproven technology’ instead of at least some long established company with some history at least of reasonably reliable service and product? (are there any actually with wind?)
Does anyone happen to know just how far one of these can throw a blade or turbine housing/blades when they blow to peices? I know, it will vary by size, type, etc., but I wonder what the furthest is that’s been calculated as a risk. I can’t help but think of large industrial turbines, such as you’d see at electrical power stations, where turbine ‘missiles’ are a very serious consideration and the facility layout and design has to factor in that possible problem.
When faced with the prospect of losing future monies, by not spending the current monies, what is a taxpayer funded entity to do ?