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.
I do have to give the school credit for trying to find a creative way to share science with their students. I know there is failure and expense, but not involving the students leads to boredom and that leads to minds being wasted. Hands on creativity of some kind increases involvement from students who may otherwise be bored. I think trying to make a dent should be an attribute. Many times we are criticized for noisy classrooms, and excited students who can’t settle. What exactly was wrong about involving the students. That is high order learning.
You do have to mix the types of learning, because some students won’t learn unless they are made to write, and listen one to one. I found in my teaching that if I involved the children, they learned more, and their scores were wonderful, compared to the year before when they were uninvolved, quiet, and like zombies in the classroom. I am retired, but I believe more science projects, more hands on projects, and reality in the school would make it a good one. The students should not just learn facts, they should experience what they learn also.
Dave Springer says:
October 7, 2011 at 7:35 am
“Even more noteworthy is when a no-nonsense communist nation like China is the world leader in installed wind power that’s also compelling evidence that wind power can be done in a cost effective manner. ”
“No-nonsense communist”? Dave, think about this contradiction in terms.
While the communists in China let free market capitalism thrive and those companies flood the West with cheap products, the rulers are still technocrats bent on showing off; their ill-fated high speed trains run largely empty but it’s a prestige project. They misallocate capital on a grand scale and build much to much infrastructure to keep the economy going (creating an artificial building boom but piling up debt in the process – yes, debt; a lot of Chinese banks sit on mountains of non-performing credit).
What tells you that their own wind power installations are “no-nonsense”, hard-nosed communist economic savvy and not just another technocrat extravaganza? The rulers still run a lot of centrally planned schemes there…
“You may have noticed a reference to “Transition” in the main story. This is an insidious bunch of communist eco-loons trying to subjugate school children and their teachers. They have the same vision of a sustainable future as Mao Tse-Tung. Beware.”
I’m not a member of the Transition movement, I don’t really share their views, but I do know well a few people who are involved and to say they a bunch of commies, eco loons and Maoists is simply untrue. Why is it that such stereotypes are put about? Is it because scaremongering, even self scaremongering, works?
Pete H
Dave Springer says:
October 7, 2011 at 4:29 am
……..The fact of the matter is that wind power makes a certain amount of sense and when deployed in a sensible manner it’s a good thing. …..”
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And that Dave, is the key. Get the blasted government, con-men and others out of the equation.
A windmill moving H2O up hill in the middle of nowhere makes a heck of a lot of sense. A windmill grinding grain in the middle of nowhere (Africa?) makes a lot of sense. That is why the USA had a lot of them a century ago. However shoddy hard to maintain monstrosities that use up more energy to produce and transport then they will make in their life timeare nothing but a con.
My personal choice is Thorium Nuclear. If it is ever approved here in the USA I will be trying to get a mini nuclear plant brought into my town. Right now I look out the window at the neighboring county’s Nuclear plant. So I am not a NIMBY.
(China had plans to build 60 nuclear reactors over next decade)
REFERENCES:
Reintroducing Thorium: Chem & Eng News: http://pubs.acs.org/cen/email/html/8746sci2.html
Journal of Energy Security: Thorium as a Secure Nuclear Fuel Alternative http://www.ensec.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=187:thorium-as-a-secure-nuclear-fuel-alternative&catid=94:0409content&Itemid=342
World Nuclear Assoc: http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/default.aspx?id=448&terms=thorium
Change.Org: Thorium Nuclear Energy’s clean little secret: http://news.change.org/stories/thorium-nuclear-energys-clean-little-secret
MiniFuji Thorium Reactor Group Talks (includes possible nuclear ships) http://nextbigfuture.com/2010/10/minifuji-thorium-reactor-group-talks-to.html
Proven liars?
On the Chinese front, they’re exporting windmills and building their own coal fired power stations, every week. No wonder they can bankroll the world.
quote: “The system was seen as a green blueprint for clean, sustainable energy”
I’m sure they’re pretty BLUE, now!
What? No warmist have the guts to appear here to defend wind power? Not even with “the consensus” on your side?
Dave Springer says:
“The cost. According to many studies on the subject, the cost per kilowatthour solar power is about ten times the cost of the same kilowatthour from a coal plant. ”
Studies I actually believe (US Department of Energy) peg it at 4 times the cost of the lowest cost alternative (combined cycle natural gas).
The study I quoted is from the University of Stuttgart, Germany from 2008. It computes the raw productions costs of several electricity generation technologies for conditions in Germany. [Source see end of posting]
As you see I misremembered, the factor is closer to 20 (60 EUR-cents solar in the worst case vs. 2.5 cents for lignite). The factor for wind is in the range of 5 (10 to 17 EUR-cents vs 2.5 cents). Obviously conditions vary among countries and differences in factors will result. Even assuming the 10 cents/kwH for coal and nuclear in the US is plausible (3 fold more than in Germany, I wonder how that comes about), solar is still “merely” 4 times more costly, which still makes it uncompetitive beyond hope, don’t you agree?
Furthermore there are implicit cost of solar and wind not added in those computations, namely either a conventional power plant on standby which buffers irregularities in the “green” sources’ outputs, or God forbid enormous storage facilities. You have to add those, unfortunately we have no solid figures, because there are many unforeseeable variables, except a reasonable assumption that those additional costs will be enormous.
Another point: If your quoted figures were true, subsidies and regulations in favour of wind turbines could cease even from the point of view of its supporters, because it would be genuinely competitive. So do you advocate the cessation of such subsidies? Come on :). The greens in this country certainly don’t. Among you and me, it’s because in their hearts they know that wind is not competitive on its own merits. 😉
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Source for Stuttgart study:
http://www.ier.uni-stuttgart.de/publikationen/arbeitsberichte/Arbeitsbericht_04.pdf
Warning German language, but there’s a graphic on page 18. Translations for anyone interested:
Braunkohle = lignite
Steinkohle = hard coal
Erdgas = natural gas
DWR = pressurised water reactor
Laufwasser = running water
Wind onshore/offshore = (same)
PV = photovoltaics
” and the fool’s burnt, bandaged finger wobbles back to the flame.” R. Kipling, please forgive if my memory is not perfect.
Its not the school that will pay for this loss. It’s not the government – its the poor bloody taxpayer as usual. And as usual there’s no recourse against the decision makers.
To Steve Keohane:
Love the quote from Kipling’s “The Gods of the Copybook Headings”!
Think about all the energy wasted on this project.
What is the carbon footprint of all of these type of failed projects?
And the Greens think that nuclear power is dangerous??
Try Googling for ‘wind turbine fire’, ‘wind turbine fail’, or ‘wind turbine collapse’ and just see how many of these things are falling over.
Here are a couple, just for starters.
http://www.chantler.plus.com/NOWAY/Pictures/collapse2.jpg
http://www.australianclimatemadness.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/wind_turbine_fire.jpg
Anytime anybody anywhere proposes a solar or wind project be built with public money, people need to stand up and ask what will it really cost? Are there really any savings? Which is longer the payback of the purchase, installation and maintenance (through energy savings) or the useful lifespan of the equipment?
I do work for a supplier to the windmill industry. Until 2008 I was amazed by incredible increasing demand for equipment. Prices and costs were not an issue. I started to ask questions about this and the usual answer was that money was plentifull in the world of windmill construction, enjoy it!
Since 2008, the big projects are gone and I experienced that the windmill construction industry has become “pushy”.
They, the windmill industry are now pushing the “smaller” prospects, who don’t have much (financial and technical) experience to purchase a windmill and at the other hand they’re squeezing suppliers and prices and hence quality.
Well, the company I am working is reacting: what you want is what you get!
If it didn’t have the potential for injury or death, this would be really quite laughable. At least we see teachers putting into practice what they preach. Then we see all too obviously why some teachers should stick to teaching. They can’t recognize a scam if it jumped up and bit them on the nose.
What? No warmist have the guts to appear here to defend wind power? Not even with “the consensus” on your side?
Oh, I’d happily see more windmills in the right, windy, places of the UK. Having visited a few wind farms I find them to be rather pleasing to the eye actually, unlike say pylons, I think they generate electricty when we need it and I think they add to electricty generation options.
Can expect roses for daring to have that view?
I’ll bet that the directors of ‘Proven Energy’ are still in their big CO2 guzzling cars and CO2 unfriendly mansions? I wonder how much government grant money they ‘used’ up too?
One day soon the birds will have their day.
The inoperable turbines can be converted into great nesting box condos
What a view!
Are you keeping tabs on all the setbacks in energy production? Burning railroad tank cars and LNG terminals? Tankers breaking up in storms? Coal mine disasters? disasters in the Gulf of Mexico and other drilling rid disasters? Exploding transformers? Railroad derailings that spill and burn oil?
No matter how it is done, harvesting energy is dangerous and error-prone.
Septic Matthew says:
“Are you keeping tabs on all the setbacks in energy production? Burning railroad tank cars and LNG terminals? Tankers breaking up in storms? Coal mine disasters? disasters in the Gulf of Mexico and other drilling rid disasters? Exploding transformers? Railroad derailings that spill and burn oil?”
Shades of Chicken Little! There are always ‘setbacks’. That’s why there is an insurance industry. But in fact, the developed world is getting safer, not more dangerous. Afther the massive hand-wringing following the Deepwater Horizon blowout, which resulted in endless, universal predictions of ecological doom, there are only faint traces of the 3 month long event.
Luddites who believe the worst are always proven wrong.
Smokey: There are always ‘setbacks’.
That’s what I said. Falling wind turbines (what I responded to) are not signs that anything is fundamentally wrong with wind turbines. The city government of Austin TX gets all of its power from a wind farm. There is nothing “Luddite” like in a modern wind turbine.
Some people say they saw a ghostly figure like the Quixote wandering around during the night before the crash…. 🙂
Failure makes a great teacher.
‘Teachable moment,’ anyone?
I suggest they place the generator on its back in the middle of a field. Tie 20 mules to each blade with a carrot dangling just in front of their noses. Will generate in any weather.