Who would have thunk? Maybe it had something to do with this video of a Vestas wind turbine:
I wonder if it used “Lucas” electronic parts? I owned an Austin Healy Sprite and a Triumph TR6 at one time, and the failure above looks familiar.
Excerpts from an article in the Guardian:
Vestas is to shut down its Isle of Wight factory in the face of collapsing demand from a wind-farming industry hobbled by the recession and red tape.
The group had planned to convert the factory in Newport so it could make blades for the British market, but said this morning that the paralysis gripping the industry meant that orders had ground to a halt. Such low demand could not justify the investment, Ditlev Engel, the chief executive, told the Guardian.
The UK’s only wind turbine manufacturing plant is to close, dealing a humiliating blow to the government’s promise to support low-carbon industries.”
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/apr/28/vestas-wind-turbine-factory-close
See Vestas Wind Power Solutions here
Of course, windmills produce clean emissions free power, they don’t pollute.
Just to be fair, anyone have video or photos of a coal fired power plant exploding or uncontrollably catching fire?
h/t to David Segesta
The AGW connection is the Isle of Wight.
April 2009 – Windmill plant on the Island threatened with closure.
April 1912 – Titanic passes by the Isle of Wight on way to Cherbourg and then onwards for rendezvous with iceberg.
The iceberg that sank the Titanic could have been prevented from calving if the Victorians had installing more wind turbines. Case closed, science settled.
DaveCF
Yes we have ambient temperature beer which allows the subtle aromatic hoppy flavours to develop on the palate, and in the part of England where I was born we have no need of windmills to blow off the froth – we prefer it flat!…..which means…..low CO2…….. which makes me …… a warmist – AAARGH!
I’m no stranger to wind farms as there are several nearby in Colorado and Wyoming, and thought that they looked kinda cool at a distance.
However, I recently had the opportunity of driving past a huge new wind farm in Kansas. There was a stiff wind blowing, and many of the turbines were not in use. Several of these turbines were remarkably close to I-70, and I wondered about the danger of an accident like in the video, but more importantly, what danger there was to travelers after an ice storm has coated the blades of the turbine.
I no longer think that they look kinda cool. They are most definitely ugly and block the scenery. As a part time Nature Photographer, I already have enough trouble trying to keep power lines out of my photos, something that looks like a giant robot invasion from a Japanese movie, I don’t need.
Soon it will be so freakin cold that we will burn whatever is available to keep us warm and heat the greenhouses to grow our foods and maybe run hot water pipes or use microwave arrays to melt the glaciers that will be knocking at our doors.
Aron
The problem with wind energy is that the wind does not always blow.
When it doesn’t blow, you need standby gas-fired power plants to kick in. The rule is that for every megawatt of wind capacity you have, you must also have one megawatt of gas-fired generators on standby.
That means in order to assure 100% supply, you need 200% capacity.
If that doesn’t make economic sense to you, well then welcome to the club! Unfortunately today, economics is off the radar screen for the “progressives” in power.
There are many recorded instances of fires breaking out at Coal Fired plants, any time dust is present there’s a chance of an explosion.
See once case below
http://www.wisn.com/news/18629803/detail.html
I agree with Anthony’s earlier comment about the stress that is put through the gearboxes of the wind turbines. They chew up transmissions which was probably the cause of the fire in the video.
Aron,
This is why T Boone Pickens, who is deep in the gas industry, has suddenly turned “green”.
There’s money in them thar mills (for the natural gas industry that is).
Reports of wind farm health problems growing
http://toronto.ctv.ca/servlet/an/local/CTVNews/20090422/wind_farms_090422/20090422/?hub=TorontoNewHome
But also read the comments… some people have no clue of the problems those windmills cause and of course if they were to have a windfarm built next to their homes, they would certainly be the first ones to oppose it. I mean, we are not talking about those cute windmills like in Don Quixote.
I understand that maintenance of the blades is time consuming and expensive. First they are prone to ice up and become unbalanced. Then too I have heard they pick up bugs and other debris which also affects dynamic balance and can cause pitting so that they must be washed routinely.
Proponents often claim that the land in and around the installation is suitable for farming, but it looks a bit noisy and dangerous to me. I wouldn’t even want to mow the grass around a wind farm.
It’s all a big gaddamn scam.
superDBA (12:00:58) : like a giant robot invasion from a Japanese movie
Do you remember the UFO crash in Roswell?, do you?, well HE was one of them, the dark prophet of doom. You were really invaded!. Those windmills are HIS hardware, intended to drive all of you crazy with its low frequency noise
Climate change or otherwise, coal, oil, natural gas, uranium, are all finite resources, so one way or another, we’ll need 100% renewable energy at some point.
Hopefully everyone on this blog recognizes that.
Ben
Technically, I’d like to point out, that this self-destructing windmill was a runaway.
Something failed in the generator that led to zero rotational resistance.
With no resistance, the rotors simply sped up until the centrifugal forces exceeded the mill’s limits and caused it to fail catastrophically.
The manufacturer of the turbine generator could have been bigtime liable had someone been injured or killed.
Adolfo Giurfa (12:19:15) :
I knew it!!! And everyone said I was crazy!!! I like my tin foil hat in a cone shape with a point at the top. How about you? 🙂
Regarding “We see advertisements on TV from the alternative energy supporters about wind power being “Free” . It’s free energy, they state. ”
Hydro power is also free … it’s building the dam and power plant that aren’t.
Nuclear power is also free, it’s the mining and enriching uraninum, building the reactor and power plant that aren’t.
According to Einstein (E=mc^2) free energy is all around us, in every speck of matter. It’s the turning it into a form that energy that can do work that isn’t free.
Appologies for my earlier reference.
Another response to Dan Gibson (10:14:49) who wrote “I have a hard time understanding all the opposition to any new form of energy on this site…..”
Dan is misreading the sentiment expressed on this and other sites. Imagine if the horse (think coal, oil, and nuclear) had been outlawed for the decades it took to develop the horseless carrages (think wind, solar, etc). People don’t object to wind and solar, they object to the government making them pay for energy that wind and solar isn’t capable of providing while at the same time preventing the construction of reliable sources of energy. Personally I would like to see nuclear power plants being built while other altrernate solutions mature. Let the people and the market place decide. Passing laws that select winners and losers is a guaranteed way to criple this nation and its people from insufficient energy.
And now, for a cold dose of reality. Or, as Sgt. Friday said on Dragnet, “Just the Facts, Ma’am.” Here is a 32-page report from U.S. DOE on state of the wind industry in the U.S. at the end of 2007.
http://www1.eere.energy.gov/windandhydro/pdfs/43025.pdf
Why don’t you guys stick to the science rather than picking on everything you think is related or even partially related to the AGW argument … it would make this site more interesting … and credible!
Just West of Reading UK, by the side of the M4 [Major west auto route out of London] is a large wind turbine. The other morning [early] with absolutely No wind and the nearby Brewery steam venting vertically to a greater height than the turbine, guess what? The blades were merrily turning, presumably drawing power from the National Grid [ at much a cheaper rate than it could generate any power, had the wind been blowing] as I suppose they have to keep the blades turning for maximum Greenie points. What a total waste of our money. Vesta are blaming the local NIMBY population and Planning Laws and saying they will triumph in the USA and China. As a result of their claims their stock climbed some 3% today.
Scam, Scam, Scam, Scam, Scam. The whole stupid Green attitude. Shows what medieval mindsets they have.
At least commonsense is beginning to appear over the horizon. Even the once AGW biased UK paper The Independent is altering its views.
It’s important that turbine designers, windpark operators and designers be held accountable for the property and personal damage caused by these wild contraptions.
There are a lot of people out there who don’t like the West and disruption to our supplies of oil/gas must rank as a much greater threat than AGW, quite apart from the huge transfer of wealth that buying imported power represents.
Consequently It makes perfect sense for each country to use whatever mode of energy generation is most appropriate to their circumstances. As someone remarked previously, the UK is stuffed full of coal and if the co2 scare hadn’t started we would undoubtedly be building several coal fired power stations at the moment (thanks Mr Hansen)
That doesn’t mean to say we shouldn’t be exploring other means as well-including renewables- so we have a balanced energy portfolio.
Unfortunately- unlike Anthony’s experience- solar power is a non starter in the UK as a serious source of power. Wave and tidal generation is at least ten years behind wind, and is fraught with problems -environmental and practical.
This all helps to explain our current power dilemma. The present UK govt is composed of ministers who actually marched against nuclear thirty years ago and so are reluctant to go down the nuclear route. They are scared stiff of using coal. Solar is inappropriate, wave and tidal doesn’t exist in any meaningful way so….you’ve guessed it, wind is the only answer (in their minds).
Unless someone sees sense soon the UK will have the most enormous energy gap. I think it would do consumers-including the greens- a lot of good to realise just how much energy the simplest task requires-such as boiling a kettle.
The sad fact is that despite the warm words and pious aspirations a modern economy can’t exist on renewables for its base load energy-however nice that may sound. In twenty years time perhaps, but there is an awful lot of trial and error to go through first, and in the meantime we need to build some new power stations using coal or nuclear-and quickly.
Tonyb
Here in Missoula, MT, the biodeisel supply has dried up, because a supplier in Washington went belly up as did a local plant set up (and subsidized by the state) to make the fuel out of locally produced oilseed. The local (subsidized) bus line has used in for 7 years and the city has maintenance vehicles set up to use it but lack of funding (read: subsidy) forced the city to stop using it 2 years ago. Money quote: “There are a lot of ethanol and biodeisel plants that are distressed”. It doesn’t pay (literally) to ignore economics in favor of feel-good public policy.
I own a TR6. Nice car, but not really a workhorse I’d stake my economic life on.
If we are to seek for alternative sources of energy, one is using hydrogen as fuel, but generated “in situ”, and in order to produce it cheap you have to have high surface area electrodes, only achievable with nanoparticles.
By the way, some time ago, I discovered a method for producing metal nanoparticles in big quantities (as much as you could need), so making them cheap enough for these applications. The process has not been patented yet, but you can see the nanoparticles at: http://www.giurfa.com/ultranano.htm