From the Calgary Herald and the “waiting of the government cash cow” department:
Oldest commercial wind farm in Canada headed for scrapyard after 23 years
By: DAN HEALING, CALGARY HERALD
The oldest commercial wind power facility in Canada has been shut down and faces demolition after 23 years of transforming brisk southern Alberta breezes into electricity — and its owner says building a replacement depends on the next moves of the provincial NDP government.
TransAlta Corp. said Tuesday the blades on 57 turbines at its Cowley Ridge facility near Pincher Creek have already been halted and the towers are to be toppled and recycled for scrap metal this spring. The company inherited the now-obsolete facility, built between 1993 and 1994, as part of its $1.6-billion hostile takeover of Calgary-based Canadian Hydro Developers Inc. in 2009.
“TransAlta is very interested in repowering this site. Unfortunately, right now, it’s not economically feasible,” Wayne Oliver, operations supervisor for TransAlta’s wind operations in Pincher Creek and Fort Macleod, said in an interview.
“We’re anxiously waiting to see what incentives might come from our new government. . . . Alberta is an open market and the wholesale price when it’s windy is quite low, so there’s just not the return on investment in today’s situation. So, if there is an incentive, we’d jump all over that.”
I’ll bet they would. Does anyone need any more proof that wind power just isn’t economically feasible on large scales without subsidies?
Coal and nuclear plants last longer and provide far more power…and production isn’t tied to the vagaries of wind and weather.
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Our NDP Gov’t has already stated they will shut down our 4 coal fired plants. These wind mills are a blit on our view of the foothills. I can hardly wait for them to be removed. HOWEVER, our NDP Gov’t will shell over our tax dollars for more of the newer versions…and we will pay for it for years….I can hardly wait for the next election when the NDP will be thrown out like last weeks garbage.
It didn’t stop the problem in the USA. The government “Santa Clauses” handed out years of subsidies and tax credits before Obama left (Including the Republican Santas). Wind installations are reportedly up and will be up till 2020. Stopping a freight train financed by the government Santas is very, very difficult. The dead birds and destroyed areas will continue. Your grandchildren will be cleaning them up—or living under them or in them, depending on how things turn out.
… just use them as trellises for vegetables.
… not much return, I know, but it could be a fun project.
OR
Convert them into watch towers to spot a failure coming from miles away.
I go with the second option.
Better still, “re-purpose” these relics as an installation earth-art sculpture to signify the gross failures of well-meaning minds. You could get a grant, maybe. Hype it in the media. Make it a stop on bus tours. Light them up at night on Christmas.
Power them up with fossil fuel electric motors, … just because this would look interesting. Is it hot there? — use the motorized retro-engineered versions as big electric fans, as you provided beach chairs and served cold lemonade. How refreshing !
Here’s a link to a whirligig park & museum in NC:
http://www.wilsonwhirligigpark.org
Do anyone know what the original predicted life span of this wind farm was?
They are all about 20-25 years, so a relatively short lifetime. It’s why you rarely see a 40 year PPA with a wind farm. I thought there was an article here a few months back about the Brit offshore wind farm that was I think 27 years old, at the end of its life span. The new towers and bases, infrastructure etc, and interconnection details would last a fair bit longer, but would still need to probably replace the nacelle and blades after 20-25 years. Especially for anything in a salt water environment.
According to this article the original design lifespan was 20 years:
https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2016/03/14/cowley-wind-farm-powers-down/
Paul Benrose
I did not exactly feel safe when I approached a site by foot where they bury the nuclear waste deep into the ground……
The idea is that wind must work when you want it to work. Yes, you need a dam, preferably a dam that is already existing? …with below an area where there is wind.
I suggest to do some research on that before you start. I am just the guy who is giving you the idea on how wind perhaps could work, more effectively.
Who is Paul Benrose? Are you quoting him, or replying to him?
…replying
Dear Henry,
Your feelings of fear are driven by a lack of complete and/or accurate information about the safety of spent fuel storage. In the U.S. the safety record impeccable. France, for instance, has been sending its nuclear “waste” to be stored here for around 40 years. With no complaints (based on facts).
Learning will set you free of fear!
Janice
Dear Janice
Why should I want dubious nuclear energy – 3 x big fail already –
when gas and gas turbines are so much cheaper and more CO2 is better?
bw
Henry
Dear Henry,
There have been no “3 x big fail” in the United States (nor in Japan — Fukushima was a Sunami disaster, not a nuclear disaster).
Yes, more CO2 is, at worst, benign. Yes, gas is just fine.
Nevertheless: GO, NUCLEAR POWER!
Janice 🙂
Three times fail? Good heavens, with your definition of “fail”, a natural gas explosion once a decade should be more than enough to instill utter terror in your heart. I just saw three houses exploded on the news due to that natural gas stuff.
I’ll give you one fail due to bad construction, one due to an act of nature and one over-hyped nonsense event to terrify the easily duped. I’m sure I can find enough examples of natural gas explosions, workers killed, etc, to keep you awake for weeks. Why, it could be seeping into your water as I type……..
That wont change the price of nuclear neither will it change public perception and opinion.
Gas and gas turbines r much cheaper. Have never heard of any accidents in gas power plants…
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2013/03/long-beach-gets-morning-wake-up-call-with-power-plant-explosion.html
http://io9.gizmodo.com/5783526/what-is-the-worst-kind-of-power-plant-disaster-hint-its-not-nuclear
It may not change the perception and opinion (since people tend to suffer from interminable clinging to false beliefs), but the fact is gas, hydro and geothermal are more deadly than nuclear—we just DO NOT CARE. Seriously, pipelines explode bringing gas to the power plants, power plant inner workings come apart, etc and as long as it’s not nuclear, WE DO NOT CARE. That’s the harsh reality of human caring.
The problem with nuclear is that the problem sticks around – like forever. Any other disaster we clean up and move on. No residuals. But nuclear is different.
Chernobyl has to worry about forest fires that release radioactivity back into the air. The area is currently being plundered of anything of worth resulting in lots of radioactive materials sold elsewhere. They clean up an area affected by Fukushima and then later find it radioactive again – like school playgrounds. The contaminated soil (from cleanups) lies sealed in tens of thousands of vinyl sq. meter bags stacked on top of each other that they fear will catch fire due to methane produced from organic matter decomposition. The contamination of the Pacific with high level radioactivity will never stop. And this is just the tip of the iceberg.
Doesn’t sound very clean to me.
I came I saw I very left,
Try a visit to Nagasaki or Hiroshima. They needed safe treatment of nuclear matter for about 20 years, then resettlement began and continued with no problems.
One of the anti nuclear propaganda pieces is that used fuel hasnto be managed for 100,000 years, or another version with 10,000 years. It is easy to mount an argument that 100 years is adequate.
The crux of the matter is that dilution of the radioactive material reduces the time for which it needs management. You have as many scenarios and options as you wish. None of them costs very much. The technology was worked out decades ago.
Those who fear peaceful uses of nuclear power need to study the reason for their fear. Invariably, it will me either misinformation or lack of information.
It is a perverse world when activism tries to turn safest into least safe.
Geoff
it is estimated that 5 months after the Fukushima disaster, the amount of radioactive cesium released into the environment was 168 times greater than Hiroshima. There’s been 6 years of ongoing radioactive releases since then because of ongoing fission. Hiroshima/Nagasaki were one-time fission events. Fukushima is the gift that keeps on giving.
What’s interesting here, exemplified by henry and Icame, is that wind power advocates always feel the need to deflect from the defects of the system they prefer to imagined failings of nuclear power. And also that they persist in restating their false chestnuts even after long ago having been shown to be wrong.
I’m not a proponent of wind power, cgh, except for beach houses and windy spots that are off the grid. Nice try at deflection, but no prize.
This is just the beginning in a long line of these reaching the end of their life. I can’t wait to see how much tax dollars are needed to subsidized the building of new windfarms to meet mandates while simultaneously replacing the old ones after 20 years. Behold the carousel of croney capitalism, where “profits” and “uneconomical” take on a whole new meaning.
Are there any good articles about the old “farms” in CA. Surely, some of the early ones have been mothballed.
Mothballed or simply abandoned? Take your pick.
https://www.google.ca/search?q=pictures+abandoned+wind+farms&biw=1536&bih=760&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiOrpjj7L3UAhWj4IMKHXHJCAQQsAQIJw
Some from California, some from Hawaii.
The article is from last year, so maybe an update is in order?
+100
Still searching, but the most recent I have been able to find is the statement on the company website saying the windfarm has been decommissioned. This article seems to document the event that led to the shut-down:
http://www.fortmacleodgazette.com/2012/cowley-ridge-wind-farm-shut-down/
And that was not the first tower collapse:
http://www.pinchercreekvoice.com/2015/09/wind-topples-cowley-ridge-turbine.html
Give Griff a roll of duct tape and he can fix that tower and wind turbine … true faith will overcome all obstacles.
The story of the decommissioning can be found here: http://www.windpowerengineering.com/featured/business-news-projects/decommissioning-canadas-oldest-wind-farm/
It’s odd (or rather it beggars belief!) that this form of ‘subsidy farming’ was never properly costed to include all operational costs – including replacement – just as the Greens always seem to insist applies to nuclear generation and to coal power stations. Maybe when such windmill contracts are agreed then the generator companies should meet any and all actual lifetime costs that exceed those that were anticipated at the outset?
Required “clean up” would make wind plants look “dirty”. We cannot be doing that. 😉
PP
ROTFL!
“It’s odd (or rather it beggars belief!) that this form of ‘subsidy farming’ was never properly costed to include all operational costs”
The business model (if any) was done by politicians (or consultants paid by politicians; some of whom might have once been politicians) and THEY HAVE ABSOLUTELY ZERO INCENTIVE TO LET TAX PAYERS KNOW THE REAL COST OF THESE BOONDOGLES.
More than just operating costs, many of the turbines erected in Ontario have no decommissioning provisions. And none require removal of the concrete foundation. The landowner is stuck with it.
This follows Vatenfall’s shutting down a project at end of life. 25% of design output delivered. But now what happens to the machines. Drop the towers, ready. Scrap the steel, easy. Scrap the blades, no viable use for the arisings. What will happen to the bases, will their being on site inhibit future use? Could they be inspected and certified for re – use? Not the deliverance our green friends have forecast
The other green insanity here is the green opposition to Site C hydroelectric dam in British Columbia. It is fought tooth and nail by the aboriginals, a few farmers and the green blob. This dam could directly replace 1/8 of the coal fired capacity in Alberta or, as is intended, power up an LNG compressor export facility without burning some of the LNG to run generators.
Yes it will flood or utilize 6800 acres of good farmland. However, it’s big brother, WAC Bennett dam flooded the forest to create the Williston Lake reservoir which I lived beside for a few years. The forest was continually floating up from deep below decades later and was known to puncture or capsize boats on the lake. So… if future generations wish to reclaim the land under the reservoirs, ( maybe because fusion power is perfected and cheaper), it’s still there and then they may do so. Same thing for flooded agricultural land.
After all, a1 agricultural land is flood plain isn’t it?
Suzuki’s rant that our food is largely coming from 3000 km away ( California ) is of course true. What he leaves out of the rant is that there ain’t nuthin ‘ growing on those lands at 40 below in the winter anyway and that the Callifornia and Mexican produce suppliers are not dummies and understand leverage. If the ‘local’ supermarket wants produce in winter then they are forced to commit to buying it in summer too. Such was the response I got years ago from our local supermarket produce manager. It’s a holdup, but that’s the situation.
The land area of BC is 365,000 square miles and the area to be used for the dam is 6800 acres/640acres per square mile or…. a little over 10.6 square miles. Surely we can find enough land in the other 364,990 square miles to feed a population (a mere 4 million.)
Nah. Build the subsidy farms and rebuild them again 25 years later. Right?
“After all, a1 agricultural land is flood plain isn’t it?”
Before the WAC and Peace Canyon dams were built in the 1960’s, the Peace River flooded a lot of that Class 1 farmland most years. The first two dams actually stabilized the flows so no annual flooding occurred and made that river bottom flood plain farmland viable for agriculture.
If this new harebrained BC NDP/Green alliance kill the Site C firm renewable 800 Mw project after already under construction and spending or committing to nearly $3 billion then that will be an act of treason. And by the Greens no less and it’s dear leader, Dr. Andrew Weaver of IPCC fame. Who sues his opponents who disagree with him on AGW. And who was running the second hottest climate models as a mathematician for the IPCC reports. He is part responsible for all the alarmism and now he says no to Site C clean renewable energy. Just appalling and clearly a reason why the Greens can never be taken seriously.
Anyone know why my reply to Tom Halla more than an hour ago hasn’t appeared ?
The cyber space Gods were not working in your favor on that one. Close your eyes next time. Sometimes that works for me. Typing and reposting is the best—both versions will show up at the same time!!!
(I either have to laugh at these things or pull all my remaining hair out!)
OR click your heals three times and repeat, “There’s no place like WUWT, there’s no place like WUWT.”
bill h — I just checked and, it apparently still hasn’t appeared. I have had comments in moderation (that’s when you can see your comment, but, no one else can and it has a message with it saying something like, “Awaiting moderation”) for hours before they appear. Anthony was just saying (on the “please help” thread today) that he is short-handed with mods, so, that could be the reason.
If your comment just *poof* disappeared, it is in the spam bin. It may or may not get out. If a mod finds it, it almost certainly will appear, often hours later. Sometimes, though, Anthony/mod has replied to tell a chagrined commenter that they simply cannot find the comment anywhere.
You go into moderation if you used a “bad” word, e.g., (spelled wrong here) sc@m or den1er (I think you can just spell them correctly, but put a space between each character, per MarkW that should work — I haven’t taken the time to test it enough to feel comfortable relying on that method).
If you use more than about 3 links inside your comment, that sends you into oblivion. Also, using a LOT of bolding/blockquoting seems to trigger it, too.
You can test “bad” words on the Test thread.
Always save a copy of your comment. I usually just highlight the entire comment, type “Ctrl – c” and if it doesn’t appear, then past that (with “Ctrl-v”) into a blank Word doc to save it in case I want to try to re-post it.
Sorry about your frustration!! Boy, have I been there.
Oh. Another thing to watch out for — I get caught up by this once in awhile — if the LINK you are using for a source cite has a “bad” word in it BAM! —> into moderation (easy to miss those — can’t get around that one and have an active link to another commenter’s comment — just have to insert a blank or write out part of it in an “okay” version and tell people you have done that so they can correct it when they type it into their browser.
Okay. Now that you have come to the end of this comment, 4 hours later — your comment will probably appear!
Hang in there — try testing your comment with words removed on the Test thread and then, re-post above.
Janice
Seems to have been a bit of a delay on the line earlier this week…!
(thanks for helpful advice above)
This “news” is from May 2016?
“Coal and nuclear plants last longer and provide far more power…and production isn’t tied to the vagaries of wind and weather.” Couldn’t agree more.To me, solar is the worst because you know every evening the sun will not shine for a fixed amount of time. At least with wind, it blows night and day in some locations. Trying to depend on wind and solar for base loading any electrical system is foolishness of the highest magnitude.
Actually if you do a luminescence study on solar, you find it’s even worse than that. On a clear day, no clouds and no visual obstructions, you find that solar has peak production of about two hours on either side of noon, with severe dropoffs in energy output before 10 a.m. and after 2 p.m.
Why haven’t these people gone Geo-Thermal? At least they don’t have ugly towers to look at that way. I’m sure giverments would subsidize a hole in the ground.
Idiot power indeed. Making our energy infrastructure dependent on the weather is about as big a step backwards in human progress as I can think of, short of nuclear war.
Doesn’t anybody recognize naked rent seeking when they see it?
23 years old? and going to be dismantled?
That’s odd: I keep reading comments about the short lifespan of wind turbines and how they will never be dismantled but just left to rust…
I’d be surprised if these are not replaced with modern, more efficient designs… that regularly occurs in (for example) Germany
Griff
Those in California are left to rust. Altamonte Pass (and all the other wind tunnel passes) in CA are covered by miles after miles of eyesores.
The “newer” far taller windmill nacelles and towers are not compatible with uprated (more powerful) blades nor generators. Once up, the entire tower must be replaced y a new tower, nacelle, and foundation – which will not be done in most site in the future. (The foundations, although invisible, are sized also for the specific size of generator and blade and tower forces at that spot for the original design – NEVER for future uprates.
Useful life is much shorter than the “advertised” minimums too: Because maintenance is NOT subsidized (unlike construction tax write-off’s!) it will not be done. Today’s windmills will deteriorate rapidly, far more rapidly than their Chinese-advertised “rated lifetime” at an unreasonable, never-to-be obtained rated power.
Today’s “estimates” of future lifetimes are NOT VERIFIED, because today’s designs are still in their early years of operation. A repair period of 8 years, for example, has not yet been exceeded for the new designs installed through Obama’s reign. And Bush’s windmills were far smaler, only now reaching 1-1/2 lifetimes. You can “predict” 20-30 years service. But nobody knows what the real lifetime will be. With maintenance. Or without proper maintenance and regular service. Under good companies, or under bad times. Never richer, but always poorer. Till death and decay does it asunder.
Of course Griff is saying that 23 years is long compared a disposable consumer item. Compared to the life of real power station it is really short, e.g.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferrybridge_power_stations
– station A, 1927-1976 – 49 years
– station B, 1957-1992 – 35 years
– station C, 1966-2016 – 50 years
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiddlers_Ferry_power_station
– 1971 to date – 46+ years
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drax_power_station
– part 1, 1975 to date – 42+ years
– part 1, 1986 to date – 34+ years
And Cowley Ridge had a capacity of 21 MW. Compare that to
– Ferrybridge A/B/C 125 / 300 / 2,034 MW
– Fiddlers Ferry 1,989 MW
– Drax phase 1 only / both phases 1,980 / 3,960 MW
I’m saying that this old design exceeded its designed life, but also that in lasting 23 years it contradicts the oft expressed anti-renewable view that wind turbines ‘are lucky to last 10 years’
https://stopthesethings.com/2014/05/28/wind-turbines-lucky-to-last-10-years/
and the ‘mess doesn’t get cleared up’ meme
https://stopthesethings.com/2015/10/02/the-staggering-cost-of-cleaning-up-the-mess-when-the-wind-power-fiasco-ends/
Can anyone suggest sources of economics and cost experience on wind power from the producer’s side and the price paid by utilities for purchase of electricity? This information seems to be hidden from view, perhaps purposely. I have one source, the best I have found and quite revealing, but I believe there is much more…http://instituteforenergyresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Giberson-study-Final.pdf. From this source one can roughly tally that the all-in cost of wind power is at least $1.24 /kwhr from identifiable tangible costs, although there are other intangible and hidden costs that cannot be identified.
It is hidden. In Ontario, it’s government practice never to divulge the contract terms for its wind generation private producers. it’s not divulged to customers in their electricity bills either. It’s simply aggregated into the total cost of power the customer has to pay. It’s something called the Global Adjustment Fund, which is simply a dumping ground for all sorts of things that the government adds to the cost of power to avoid telling the customer what are the specific items.
What’s also not disclosed is that all wind turbine contracts have a free connection to the grid, something which no other producer or customer has. And this hidden cost is NOT divulged anywhere.
Bill H: “Meanwhile offshore wind projects in the North Sea are coming in with strike prices of 60 dollars or less per MWh.”
do you have a link for that?
They should save a couple for a monument to government stupidity. With Trump bringing down the hammer, it might retain a record for longevity in the world. I think a great new investment would be the windmill scrap business. Is this what was being touted as providing thousands of green technology jobs? Another moneymaker would be selling rare earth metals short. Windmills may be the largest world resource of dysprosium and neodymium. I would call the business ‘Windfall Resources’.
I think you could get defunct solar farms for the price of the sterilized land, too and the scrap would be free. Like the wind farms the land would be well fertilized by dead birds and bats. The higher CO2 will also make arid land more productive with reduced water needs. Another swathe of green tech jobs. I’m looking for help from WUWT readers on what the company name should be.
There’s a secondary reality involved, a larger one than the fact it’s not economically feasible, Greg. If it is shown that it’s not economically feasible to build it now, 23 years later, it’s proof that a 23 year long experiment in one of the most windy areas of their country, never was worth it, and they could have skipped the first 23 years of blunder.
“Yes but the article doesn’t say all this.”
Every article’s not an education, it’s a supplement to the one, one has.
For decades real scientists have stood up and told government employees their fakery is nothing but energy markets fraud. When people are somehow forced under threat of great danger coming to them, if they don’t acquiesce to anything, this is definitional terrorism under at the very least, US criminal code.
Everyone worldwide is watching these people tear these monstrosities down, and big oil, has won again.
They supplied the grants to the lying thieves who claimed oil will harm the world,
they made the entire world pay for the research into what market they need to move into next – think Al Gore and his association however subtly hidden with Occidental Oil company his father got rich alongside the owners of,
The grants paying for the initial runs of the scam were provided very much by oil companies themselves.
The greatest business benefactors from this are the oil companies themselves.
They took a public beating and have been ”proved right by science” and all proceeds as normal for them.
Particularly
for the political top dogs such as Gore and other national leaders who profit from the power to their party as well as the enormous – enormous access to purely and simply, stolen wealth.
—————————————–
Greg June 13, 2017 at 11:40 am
Note that this was part of a predatory take over. Such operations are usually followed by asses stripping and job losses. They seem more interested in the real estate and scrap value of 680,000 tons of steel; or demolishing in order to such up some more grant money than limited income from the existing site.
This has little to do with whether the site has given a ROI since its constructions, it is an asset stripping manoeuvre. No more.
—————————-
I imagine that a lot of the subsidy is related to new construction. You probably don’t get any tax credits for maintenance or equipment replacement; hence, end of life, end of project.
So predictable, yet another wind-energy bashing article. No mention, though, of the smashing success wind power has enjoyed in the US, with more than 82,000 MW operating now. Modern turbines have 40 percent or better output on an annual basis.
Turbine owners are making a profit at 4.3 cents per kWH delivered.
Grids are stable, retail prices are stable.
And all that with the teenage years of turbine technology: the mature, advanced technology is yet to be installed.
When the 8 MW turbines replace thode of 1 MW and smaller, economics really improve.
But, we won’t be seeing any of this on WUWT.
Sowell as odd as it sounds to you the people writing about all this, PAID for those wind turbines. They know what they cost and they know what they return and they know how often they see them standing, stock still, on ridges all over the country: disasters having already happened once, eventually going to happen again.
They kill birds.
They drive peoples’ property values down with their enormous low-frequency, ground rattling grinds.
They’re HUGELY expensive to put in for a MISERABLE return.
They’re hugely expensive to even cart AWAY.
Stop pretending your magical understandings mean idiocy is genius. Natural Gas and Coal plants have on-line status that are able to be managedand KEPT SECURE.
Wind power is extremely subject to VANDALISM and terrorist activity. They’re an Al Qaeda bombers’ DREAM come TRUE.
Same thing for solar.
What is wrong with you people who can’t understand how many drawbacks there are to these ill designed monstrosities?
You’re pretty obviously not one of the people who understands just how monstrous these wrecks are. For this planet, with it’s atmospheric density, the most efficient place to put the rotors for these is up on the edges of cliffs.
At that point percentages’ efficiency climb quite a bit. But it’s impossible to place them on the edges of buildings and cliffs not designed for such so the idiots who told you magical gas makes the sky hot, so you owe the government money, decided to scam your grandchildren out of any hope for education or you having any money, by taxing you – YET AGAIN – so they can take big trips and
teach your children that there is magical insulation that makes more firelight leak out of rocks, it made less firelight ever get into. You’re not ”forward thinking” when you see ill designed monstrosities operate at less than 50% efficiency, that someone could completely disable forever – FOR EVER – WITH something as trivial as a fertilizer bomb.
You’re just dumb sounding is what you are, for being such a fan boy of vulnerability and waste.
Seriously. At some point in your life, some adult has to tell you to
snap out of the insaniac,
kook-0-dynamics.
That’s how you sheeple got caught swearing adding carbon dioxide to air can heat it, destroying environmental science with the fraud to the point we’re going to pretty much dismantle a bunch of it and start over.
Too many con men
teaching too many gullible children
who grow up gullible quasi-adults.
Wow…the spin and partial-truth of this particular post left me dizzy. Also, why is this being posted now? Cowley Ridge was decommissioned due to obsolescence, and the quoted article published, over a year ago. The headline that the decommissioning of this facility, which was less than 0.2% of the wind powered generating capacity in Canada, somehow represents a general failure of wind power in that nation is ridiculous. Does the negative cash flow of the coal and bitumen companies which occurred in Canada at the same time indicate the failure of those industries?
A sample of one of the many portions of the referenced article which were not quoted:
“The lifespan of the original turbines was 20 years, but the company was able to keep them running in part by cannibalizing nine similar towers from TransAlta’s Taylor wind farm near Magrath in southern Alberta, retired in 2012, Oliver said.
He said there’s only one other wind farm still in operation in North America using the same technology and it’s becoming impossible to find replacement parts. TransAlta has known for some time that Cowley Ridge would have to close — a decision was made in February.”
That was February 2016, by the way.
Back in the day Alberta used to massively fine companies who killed birds, like this one:
Syncrude to pay $3M penalty for duck deaths (2010)
That equates to $1,875 per duck. I have no idea how many birds that wind farm has massacred but with 57 turbines you could expect a couple hundred per turbine each year, and twice that many bats.
Let’s be generous and make it a round 100 birds per turbine per year. That would mean a fine of 57 x 23 x 100 x 1,875 = $245.8 million.
The Cowley Ridge wind farm was originally 57 x 375 kW turbines, for 21.4 MW. At the end of its life it had a capacity of 16 MW. So if we average it to 18.7 MW and apply the usual 25% average yield the power they’ve produced is:
18.7 x 0.25 x 8760 x 23 = 941,919 MWh
At the roughly average Canadian wholesale electricity price of $60/MWh in the last decade that comes to $56.5 million.
So if they were fined at the same rate as an oil company the fines would be just over 4 times the value of the electricity the wretched things have produced in their whole miserable bird munching lifetime.
We truly live in a world where some people are more equal than others.
I also hate wind turbines for several reasons. First, just for the amount of raw materials that it takes to build them for such a low power density. Second, for the number of birds and bats that are killed by them. I met a man who stated that his daughter was an engineer for a Wind Turbine company and she told him that Wind Farms only kill as many birds and bats as do natural predators. I was speechless. That means the bird mortality is now doubled since Wind Farms have come into existence. Now, here is my proposal: They should carefully dismantle each turbine. Ship one to every museum in the world and have it displayed at the front of each building with a plaque that reads: “A testimony to the folly of man.”
Mark, cgh, DCE
Well,
I think anyone who is clever will have figured out cgh and Mark and DCE are the people here always advertising nuclear energy. I think most people here will also have figured out that it is not worth pursuing nuclear energy because it makes no eco- or economical sense.
Goodbye, good luck
… and DCE are the people here always advertising nuclear energy. Really? I am? I have made mention of support for nuclear power a few times over the years. I have not hidden the fact that, from an engineering viewpoint, it makes sense. (I am, after all, and engineer.) I look at data, verifiable data. If I cannot find a reasonable source for such data (The New York Times, Washington Post, Mother Jones et al are not credible sources), then I have to take any such data with a huge grain of salt.
My biggest problem with certain renewables is that on a level playing field, meaning no subsidies to make such a thing viable, they are not truly cost effective. Hydro is one of the few renewables that can generate power consistently at reasonably low cost and are not vulnerable to the vagueries of weather, with the exception being lengthy droughts.
The point has been made that the nuclear industry also receives subsidies. That’s quite true. But they pale in comparison to wind and solar on a per megawatt-hour basis. Because nuclear plants can receive fuel only by way of the federal government, there are some subsidized costs involved, just as there are for disposal or storage of nuclear waste.
I do not base my support or lack thereof based upon the opinions or feelings of others. I do not take numbers that proponents of any energy source throw out into the blogosphere as gospel. I do my homework.
I think my biggest problem with renewables like wind and solar is the very low energy density in comparison to coal, oil, gas, or nuclear plants. Both wind and solar eat up an incredible amount of land to even come close to the generation capacity of the none-renewable power sources. (One has to remember that the label plate generation capacity of wind and solar do not reflect that actual amount of power generated. Most achieve at best 40%, with the average being closer to ~30%.)
One last thing: Wind has some major ecological (bird kills and other adverse wildlife effects) and health issues (infrasound) that too many of its proponents choose to pretend don’t exist. Then again, most of its proponents don’t live anywhere near a windfarm, so I doubt they really care about the negative effects..at least as long as they don’t have to deal with them directly.