As many know, I was on a road trip for two weeks. On my return into California, I traveled a road I had done many many times – California Highway 58 through Tehachapi pass, one of the windiest areas of California, and loaded with wind turbines like you see in this photo from www.wind-works.org which seems to be taken during 2003. All the turbines seem to be spinning.
But, the reality I encounter when I drive through there is much different than what you see in the photo above. I often drive this road, but always wished I had a video camera with me to show how many turbines are inoperable since this doesn’t show up well in still photos. Unless you have a slow shutter speed to show “blade blur”, they all look inoperable.
But this day was different. I did have a video camera with me. Plus, the day I drove through, Tuesday, March 15th, 2011 was near perfect for wind turbines. There was a front coming in, and strong winds ahead of it.
Here’s the wind data from the ASOS at the Tehachapi airport during the time I drove through:
The wind data displayed above are measured at 1000′ lower elevation than the wind turbines on the top of the ridge, where the wind velocity will be higher.
And here is what I saw of the wind turbines along the ridge top, there were quite a few inoperable on this windy day. This video was taken right about 11AM PST:
There were many more inoperable turbines, but could not be filmed from a safe vantage point along the highway. This video was take from the semi-truck staging area near the agricultural inspection station.
My best guess from the video and others I saw that I could not film is that about one in four turbines were not operating.
The problem is maintenance. The location, while perfect for wind, is treacherous for work and support equipment. Even on a flat terrain, like in Texas (shown below) where I photographed these turbines, doing maintenance on gearboxes and generators high up on a post isn’t easy.
Imagine the complications on a mountain ridge for maintenance.
On the wind-works.org website “tour” section, they lament the condition of the Zond (Enron) wind power sites:
Wind Plant Maintenance Items to Note
Throughout the Tehachapi-Mojave area look for turbines without nose cones, turbines without nacelles (blown off and not replaced), oil leaking from blade-pitch seals, oil leaking from gearboxes, road cuts in steep terrain, erosion gullies, non-operating turbines, and “bone piles” of junk parts. One Zond bone pile of abandoned fiberglass blades is visible on the east side of Tehachapi-Willow Springs Rd. near Oak Creek Pass. (Kern County doesn’t permit on-ground disposal of fiberglass.) While touring wind farm sites look for blowing trash and litter (plastic bags, soft-drink cups, bottles, electrical connectors, scrap bits of metal, and so on). These all reflect management’s attention to maintenance and general housekeeping. At the better sites, you won’t see any of this.
Even on the valley floor, the smaller four turbines just west of the Tehachapi airport that greet visitors who drive in from Bakersfield had a problem, and these are on flat ground and accessible:
In Palm Springs, CA, another windy place, they have similar problems:
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Florida’s broken windmills: A California problem
The permit allowing windmills to go in didn’t say they could sit there broken. Palm Springs is getting tough. If windmills are going to exist in the city they must be operational. A city that has welcomed windmills since it was first approached about them in the early 1980’s is finding that many of those windmills are no longer working and it wants them fixed. The question is who’s responsible for fixing them? Florida Power and Light (FPL), the owner of the inoperable windmills, was allowed to install and operate local windmill farms under a conditional use permit (CUP) stipulating if the windmill does not run for six months, it’s declared a public nuisance and without a hearing, must be abated.
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Here’s a video showing the inside operations of a wind power facility in Washington State
And, the lack of maintenance problem is not just in California. In 2001, I visited Kamoa wind farm near Southpoint in the big island of Hawaii. The wind is so strong there, trees grow horizontal like this one:
As much as I was surprised by the horizontal trees, I was equally surprised to see dead wind turbines there. It was my first experience with a wind farm.
From this American Thinker article “Wind energy’s ghosts”:
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Built in 1985, at the end of the boom, Kamaoa soon suffered from lack of maintenance. In 1994, the site lease was purchased by Redwood City, CA-based Apollo Energy.
Cannibalizing parts from the original 37 turbines, Apollo personnel kept the declining facility going with outdated equipment. But even in a place where wind-shaped trees grow sideways, maintenance issues were overwhelming. By 2004 Kamaoa accounts began to show up on a Hawaii State Department of Finance list of unclaimed properties. In 2006, transmission was finally cut off by Hawaii Electric Company.
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Image from Waymarking.com
Again, like in California, Hawaii’s turbine problem is lack of maintenance.
But isn’t that the way it always has been with windmills?
It seems the more things change, the more they stay the same:
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UPDATE: It appears Idaho is getting set for putting a wind power moratorium in place:
State Lawmakers Look At Wind Energy Moratorium
Mar 18, 2011 6:16 p.m.
BONNEVILLE COUNTY, Idaho — Construction of wind turbines may be coming to a halt in Idaho.
State lawmakers are considering a bill that would prevent the construction of any new wind farm for the next two years.
Over the last year, dozens of new wind turbines have gone up on east bench just outside Idaho Falls, but many of the neighbors and their legislators want to put a temporary end to new construction.
When the legislature adopted the 2007 energy plan, it did not envision so many energy companies wanting to build wind farms in Idaho.
Bill sponsor Erik Simpson said he and both his Republican and Democratic colleagues agree they need to take a look at the long-term consequences.
“Local governments need some direction as to what should be included in some of their ordinances, recognizing some of the impacts that are out there on wind, and we need to find out what those impacts might be,” said State Affairs Committee member Tom Loertcher.
To conduct the study, the bill proposes a two-year moratorium on wind farm construction.
“It may be a problem mostly in eastern Idaho now, but it’s likely to be a problem in (other legislators’) communities as well unless we take this two year pause and study this a little more in depth,” Simpson said.
Wind power is not the cheapest way to produce energy, and lawmakers want to make sure their constituents don’t have to pay top rate.
“Utility rate payers are paying more for this unreliable intermittent energy source,” Simpson said.
Many are also concerned about the environment.
“A lot of these projects are going up in pristine wildlife areas,” Simpson said.
But not everyone agrees. Some local people like Bonneville County farmer Tory Talbot want to continue to see more turbines.
“The moratorium will basically limit businesses wanting to come into Idaho. Southeastern Idaho and southern Idaho has a huge wind energy potential,” Talbot said.
The State Affairs Committee plans to continue the debate on Monday when they hear from utility companies and energy companies.
They will then vote on whether they should move the bill to the House floor.
If the bill passes, any project already approved would be allowed to move forward.
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UPDATE2: The maintenance problem also extends to Germany:
From: jcwinnie.biz
“Gearboxes have been failing in wind turbines since the early 1990s. Barely a turbine make has escaped. The problem reached epidemic proportions with a massive series failure of gearboxes in NEG Micon machines. At the time, the NEG Micon brand was the most sold wind turbine in the world. The disaster brought the company to its knees ; It was taken over by Vestas, the world’s largest wind turbine manufacturer, which still is challenged by gearbox and rotor failures.
As previously noted, a large number of gearboxes have had to be replaced “in large numbers.” Der Spiegel reports that the German Insurance Association is none too happy…
“In addition to generators and gearboxes, rotor blades also often display defects,” a report on the technical shortcomings of wind turbines claims. The insurance companies are complaining of problems ranging from those caused by improper storage to dangerous cracks and fractures… The frail turbines coming off the assembly lines at some manufacturers threaten to damage an industry that for years has been hailed as a wild success.
At Spiegel Online, Simone Kaiser and Michael relay a concern about installed wind turbines:
After the industry’s recent boom years, wind power providers and experts are now concerned. The facilities may not be as reliable and durable as producers claim. Indeed, with thousands of mishaps, breakdowns and accidents having been reported in recent years, the difficulties seem to be mounting. Gearboxes hiding inside the casings perched on top of the towering masts have short shelf lives, often crapping out before even five years is up. In some cases, fractures form along the rotors, or even in the foundation, after only limited operation. Short circuits or overheated propellers have been known to cause fires. All this despite manufacturers’ promises that the turbines would last at least 20 years.
I live in Southport, on the generally windy NW coast of England. My home is 1/4 mile from the shoreline, near a Eco learning centre. Naturally, they have a windmill; about 100 foot high. I walk my dogs close to this facility on a daily basis and have often noticed that, despite good winds, the rotors are stationary. For almost a year, from 2009 through 2010, the rotors and head were removed. Presumably, this was for repair/maintenance, although the machine was only installed in 2004/5. Hardly cost-effective.
red432 says:
‘……the significance of the structures as religious symbols.’
Quite true – check out this quite long-winded (sorry, that wasn’t meant to be a pun) article in today’s Mail:-
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1367949/What-Mayans-teach-wind-turbines.html
I can’t understand why greenies who claim to want to save the environment also want to cover beautiful landscapes (and seascapes) with these ghastly things. Sure, a nuclear power station isn’t exactly pretty, but at least it’s just one big building. These monstrosities despoil miles of lovely countryside. Save the planet? Who for? Not for people who will have their views ruined, and not for birds and bats (the latter being a protected species in the UK:-
http://www.bats.org.uk/pages/bats_and_the_law.html
Greenies actively supporting a technology that ruins the landscape and kills protected species!
http://www.pse.com/energyEnvironment/energysupply/pages/EnergySupply_ElectricityWind.aspx?tab=3&chapter=5
Each tower foundation reaches a minimum depth of 25 ft and a maximum of 32 ft depending on bedrock depth and takes an average of 100 to 260 cubic yards of concrete.
Each foundation requires 120 anchor bolts that span from the surface of the ground to the bottom of the foundation. A single 28 ft anchor bolt weighs approximately 150 lbs.
I am of the impression that concrete manufacture creates a lot of CO2 emissions.
I wonder where the break even point is given the massive concrete foundations?
Dave Wendt says: March 19, 2011 at 10:09 pm
And in the video, besides the ones that aren’t moving, I thought I spotted at least a couple that were counter rotating, indicating that they were actually drawing power off the grid.
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No, Dave. If you drive up Oak Creek Road in the middle of the Tehachapi windfarms, you see windmills made by Mitsubishi, Vestas, NEC Micron, GE/Zond, and others. Some of them turn right-handed and others turn left-handed.
I drive that road weekly, and I live and work where I can see several hundred. The wind here is not like the wind around offshore windfarms or on the plains of Texas. The wind here varies considerably as it flows around and over the mountains. While it is common to see 30% or 50% of the mills not turning, that is because the wind is below minimum speed to generate power. I actually do sit in my living room and take count of the number of mills not turning (nerd!), and I have never seen more than about 10% shut down in a good wind speed.
As for subsidies, they take several forms. There are loan guarantees, there are State requirementsfor the utilities to buy a minimum of “renewable” power regardless of cost, and there is the Federal Production tax credit (PTC). The latter amounts to $.015 per KWH, or roughly half the cost to generate with coal or neutrons.
Finally, I find it instructive to understand that “windmills do not generate power, they generate energy” Meaning that over the course of a year, they displace coal and gas fuels, but do not reduce the requirement for other generating capacity. The Tehachapi windfarm has a new high tension power line to the nearby Castaic Lake / Pyramid Lake pumped storage reservoir, which can run at up to 1500 MW. This means that the grid is not unduly affected by the windfarm output. http://www.industcards.com/ps-usa.htm
I was sent to work in the US in the early 90’s and often flew over California (roughly Barstow area) at low level.
I was struck by the number of derelict wind farms.
Near my parents home in northern England the wind turbines are now derelict.
Here in Washington, Avista is having problems with too much wind power at times when it’s not needed. There’s no spare grid capacity to carry the power away from the area.
Makes sense from the overall weather pattern. The coldest AND hottest parts of the year have firm high pressure and no wind. Wind is strong during transitional periods when temp is moderate and power usage is lower.
BlondieBC says:
March 20, 2011 at 5:09 am
Twenty-Five percent of the turbines being down at any given times seems to be on the low-end of the expected range. What percentage of nuclear plants, fighter aircraft, or merchant ships are at sea at any given time?
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You cannot be serious.
Ships and nuclear plants go down typically for scheduled maintenance, and still they have a reliability factor that so-called wind power couldn’t dream of. Moreover they meet or exceed the performance requirements, which have made them PROVEN technologies. Fighter aircraft are a very high performance type of equipment and their high maintenance is accounted for kinda like a top fuel dragster. They’re hardly an apt comparison.
Only an ignorant green can look at a wind ‘turbine’s’ huge mechanical rotating mass and at times severe thrust loads and not see a very high maintenance piece of equipment.
Dan in California says:
March 20, 2011 at 2:52 pm
My emphasis.
This is misleading. The delivered average cost of electricity in the U.S. is close to $0.15/kwh so the wind subsidy is only 10% of the delivered cost.
Also according to the DoE the levelized unsubsidized cost of nuclear generation is about 33% more than conventional coal. Coal with carbon capture is about equal in cost to nuclear power. Unsubsidized levelized cost of wind generation is about equal to conventional coal. By far the cleanest most cost effective method is combined cycle natural gas. All it produces as combustion byproducts, without any filtering or other means of removing pollutants, are water and CO2 neither of which is a pollutant if we discount the EPA’s brain-dead finding that CO2 is a pollutant. The cost of generation for combined cycle natural gas is half the cost of nuclear power. No other generation method even comes close to it. As far as that goes you can burn biomass (sawdust, cardboard, lawn clippings, etc) to fire your boiler and that’s equal in cost to nuclear power. I have no idea what data the nuclear power cheerleaders are using to justify the wonders of nuclear power but it clearly isn’t based in reality.
Justa Joe says:
March 20, 2011 at 5:49 pm
“Ships and nuclear plants go down typically for scheduled maintenance”
Probably more than you know too. 11% downtime for maintanance for a nuclear power plant is considered excellent and only the best and newest are that good. Older plants like the one that just destroyed itself are down about 20% of the time for regular maintenance.
“Only an ignorant green can look at a wind ‘turbine’s’ huge mechanical rotating mass and at times severe thrust loads and not see a very high maintenance piece of equipment.”
Only an ignorant anti-green can be unaware of the fact that high neutron flux causes even the best steel to go brittle and become a very high maintenance piece of equipment. So there.
The saddest part of the multi-billion dollar effort to spread these pernicious eyesores across every plot of open land in the country is that, if you add hydro into the calculations, we are actually acquiring less of our electricity from renewable sources now than we were in the mid 90s when hydro’s contribution peaked. In ’97 when hydro peaked at 356 millionMWhrs other renewables including wind were at 77 milMWhrs, making a total of 433 MMWhrs. In 2010 other renewables rose to 168MMWhrs, the difference provided almost entirely by wind, but hydro provided only 257 MMWhrs for a total renewables contribution of 425 MMWhrs. Meanwhile total usage went from 3942 MMWhrs to 4120 MMWhrs indicating an even larger decline in the percentage of renewable electricity provided than the absolute numbers suggest.
In other words all we have accomplished after investing hundreds of billions and almost a decade and a half is to trade 100MMWhrs of the cheapest, cleanest, most easily modulated electrical supply for a slightly smaller quantity from the most expensive, most erratic, and most troublesome source available. A little more of this kind of wonderful energy policy and the leftists may achieve their goal of having all the rest of enjoy a “Little House on the Praire” lifestyle.
The numbers I quoted are from here
http://www.eia.doe.gov/electricity/data.cfm#generation
Whoops! should have been 3492 to 4120 for the change in total demand from 1997 to 2010, not 3942.
There seems to be a general vast underestimation of what it takes to inspect a nuclear reactor vs. a windmill.
Granted the height of the windmill and size/weight of the parts and mechanical forces on gears and bearings makes it a challenge but that’s nothing compared to a nuclear reactor.
First of all one must be aware that the high neutron flux in a reactor causes the finest steel to go brittle and fail prematurely. Every microscopic flaw in every weld over time becomes a potentially disastrous failure point. So you have to shut down the reactor and it takes a week for it to cool down enough to get anywhere near it. Even then you can’t just walk up to it and eyeball the welds because it’s still a deadly radioactive environment. The inspection has to be done robotically with equipment that can detect subsurface defects in the steel. The reactor after a week of shutdown is just barely friendly enough so not fry robotic inspection gear. There’s whole cottage industry built just around the inspection equipment and improvments to same because every day you can shave off the time it takes to perform the inspection is a large profit incentive. So reactor designs over the years have not changed substantially in terms of underlying technology they have changed substantially to make maintenance easier to perform.
None of these problems go away with the ballyhooed LFTR reactors. They only get worse because LFTR reactors are more complex. The only real improvements you get with LFTR are safety issues. The cost of the fuel, whether thorium or uranium, is so small to begin with that doesn’t make any difference. Neutron flux remains the same as that’s the primary energy source in all reactors so your reactor chamber, steel pipes, valves, etcetera all must still be laboriously inspected and because there’s more to inspect in the LFTR there’s more maintenance overhead. The advantages of LFTR are twofold – they don’t produce weapons grade fissionable byproducts and they don’t go into meltdown upon castastrophic failure. Economically the first advantage is a disadvantage as weapons grade fissionable byproducts are a secondary source of income – that’s some extremely valuable material. Pound for pound plutonium is more valuable than perfect gem quality diamonds. The second thing, that they don’t go into meltdown, is reassuring for the nervous nellie nattering nabobs of negativity in the ecoloon community but there are so few nuclear accidents among thousands of reactors operating for many decades now that meltdown is almost a non-concern when considered objectively. So what does LFTR get for you? Nothing that I can determine except even more expensive electricity which handily explains why a technology that’s been known for 50 years (Livermore built and operated an LFTR research reactor for five years in the 1960’s) was the only reactor of this type ever built – there are no real advantages to it!
This also handily explains why nuclear energy didn’t turn out to be the virtually cost-free unlimited source of energy that people once thought it could be. It wasn’t then, it isn’t now, and it won’t be in the future. Get used to it.
And while I’m on the topic fusion generators are even more destructive of the materials which contain the reaction. No material known or anticipated can withstand the fusion environment long enough to make them economically feasible.
The future of energy (and a whole world of other useful things) lies within the scientific realm of synthetic biology. This is the only technology anywhere near ready and able to harvest the energy provided by the sun. There is enough solar energy falling on the Texas panhandle to supply all the energy needs of the entire U.S. many times over if only it could be economically collected. Synthetic biology is the key to economic collection. Sunlight, nutrient-rich wastewater, non-arable land, and atmospheric CO2, and genetically engineered microorganisms are the only ingredients required to produce natural gas and direct replacements for all hydrocarbon liquid fuels currently derived from fossil sources. Genetic engineering is advancing on a par with Moore’s Law right now.
Bryan A says:
March 20, 2011 at 1:58 am
I hink the article mentions tthat the conditions at the time of observation were approximately those requiring peak generating capacity.
Dave Springer,
please stop shooting off the top of you own head and include links to these wonderful reports that CLAIM that wind is equivalent to coal. I would love to show you what you are obviously too ignorant to understand about those documents!!
Dan in California,
sit down and compute how much wind power and volume of pumped storage you would need to actually make wind somewhat comeptitive and useful. It is outrageous.
Bryan A says:
March 20, 2011 at 1:58 am
I think the article mentions that the conditions at the time of observation were approximately those requiring peak generating capacity.
Economic dispatch by a power producer calls for utilizing as much of the cheapest available generation as possible – for obvious reasons … are you saying that wind may_not_ fit the profile of the cheapest available generation for ‘economic dispatch’?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_dispatch
http://www.ferc.gov/eventcalendar/Files/20051110172953-FERC%20Staff%20Presentation.pdf
IBEW should be seeing to that …
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So far, blood has not successfully been extracted from turnips; so, too, it is with companies that have gone insolvent regardless of what lease agreements may contain …
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If we are going to have these at all, I think the current design is flawed and should be replaced by a better design. As a mechanical engineer, I don’t like those really long propeller blades. They make me cringe. A LOT. I have seen the videos of them self-destructing, and looking at ANY of them scares me. To self-destruct like that, the design simply is not robust enough. That should be obvious. I think a good deal of it is the cantilevered (known as an “overhung”) design. A center-hung design or balanced gravity load design would be better, IMHO. Center-hung mans the blades would be between the support bearings; having two blades both overhung at both ends would balance the forces on the shafts and bearings. Both of these are inherently more stable, although overhung is also okay, if the design is strong enough.
But mainly I think shorter blades would be more efficient in the long term. I’d put 2 perhaps 4) on the same pivoting base, with a large rudder to keep it turned into the wind. I think a fore-and-aft design with smaller blades would withstand the forces better and more reliably. By “fore-and-aft” I mean the propeller shaft would line up with the wind as now, but one set of blades would be on the windward side and one on the lee side.
It cannot be the wind turbine idea itself that is bad; it has to be ignorant mechanical design. I chose that word – “ignorant” – carefully, BTW, because rotating shafts that deal with forces are designed all the time, by engineers all over the world. There are MILLIONS of rotating shafts out there in industry that don’t self-destruct. Some of that comes from preventive maintenance (PM). Most of it comes from proper understanding of the forces being dealt with. Bearings if sized properly simply do not seize up and rotors simply don’t fall apart.
People need to know that there is nothing at all mystical or magical or inherently vicious about wind. Wind is just one of many applied forces that rotating shafts are designed to deal with. Force is force, after all.
I suspect strongly that the companies making the darned things simply are cutting corners and putting out deficient designs. For one thing, I know that these designs are not capable of handling high winds – and that, to me, is simply ridiculous. The things aught to be designed primarily for high winds. After all, that is when the most energy is available! If they were designed for those high winds, with sufficient SF (safety factor or service factor), then they would be even more safe in “normal winds.”
To me, this is an utterly unacceptable failure rate and life span. Who is designing these things, anyway? If they were surgeons, they would have their patients dying right and left.
I can think of many ways I would look at these designs and try to improve them. I won’t go into them all, but the three I would deal with first are 1.) how to shorten the blades so that their operating tip speeds are not so close their stress limits, 2.) the overhung design, and 3.) automatic lubrication or (preferred) manual lubrication from the ground level, which of course has inherent difficulties, but not impossible.
All of this is basic design, folks. Shame on them for having failures. And shame on them for designing ones that have to shut down in high winds. (I’d design them for 120-mph, as a minimum, with a SF of 1.5.)
Dave, since you’re in Texas, would it be too much to ask of you to point that part of the ERCOT website where/how *settle-ups are accomplished on this open bid/ask deal?
*Settle – To agree, to approve, to arrange, to ascertain, to liquidate, or to reach an agreement. Parties are said to settle an account when they examine its items and ascertain and agree upon the balance due from one to the other.
The term “settle up” is a colloquial rather than legal phrase that is applied to the final collection, adjustment, and distribution of the estate … It includes the processes of collecting the property, paying the debts and charges, and remitting the balance to those entitled to receive it.
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Dave Springer says:
March 20, 2011 at 6:19 pm
“Probably more than you know too. 11% downtime for maintanance for a nuclear power plant is considered excellent and only the best and newest are that good. Older plants like the one that just destroyed itself are down about 20% of the time for regular maintenance.”
The Average Capacity Factor for the entire U.S. nuclear industry, old and and new alike, hasn’t been below 90% since ’06 when it hit 89.6%. From ’07 to ’09 it averaged over 91%. That’s as a percentage of its theoretical maximum running 24/7/365 at Net Summer Capacity which is about 5% off nameplate capacity
Forgot the link, Alsheimer’s may be setting in.
http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epa/epat5p2.html
I think CDI has that market cornered; they did the demolition work on the Big Rock Nuclear Plant that existed on the shores of northern Lake Michigan (that site has been ‘returned to nature’ as the greens say) … they ‘softened up’ the reactor containment concrete structures so the wrecking ball would have a fighting chance …
http://www.controlled-demolition.com/
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Google “WTS”, Wind Turbine Syndrome. The goats aren’t the only ones who can’t sleep!
Anthony, Edit Note: As previously noted, a large number of gearboxes have had to be replaced “in large numbers.”
Only one large number(s) needed, I think!
REPLY: posted as written on the other site, translated by third party. -A
Another good example, Anthony, of the failed government energy/environmental policy. We should end these stupid subsidies.
Another observation: I suspect that it isn’t just maintenance that keeps one in four of these turbines quiet. It isn’t just how hard the wind blows, it is the direction of the wind, too. Winds in those mountainous areas like what you drove through and videoed can swirl, suddenly change directions, you name it. And of course, if the winds are too vigorous, their gear boxes break down, like the ones shown in Germany.