Siemens Energy’s Troubles: A Case Study in the Misallocation of Resources

The stunning 37% plunge in Siemens Energy’s stock value should serve as a reality check for climate change alarmists. The cause, an escalating crisis in their wind turbine division, shows us that massive resources are being poured into a sector that is, in many ways, still uncertain and unproven. Instead of funneling resources towards potentially flawed green technology to tackle a problem that might not even exist, we should be focusing on optimizing reliable and efficient energy sources that have served us well for centuries, and a greater reliance on nuclear to provide base-load power.

The problem at Siemens Energy arose from a “substantial increase in failure rates of wind turbine components,” leading to a significant technical review and repair process expected to cost upwards of 1 billion euros ($1.09 billion). This is not just a company-specific problem but one that underlines the broader challenges facing the renewable energy sector.

The scale of these costs serves as a stark reminder of the vast amounts of money currently being funneled into green energy technology. While it might be considered commendable to explore new ways to generate power, it becomes problematic when the resources allocated towards these efforts are massively disproportionate to the measurable benefits they deliver, as well as proving to be unsustainable without massive government subsidies.

A significant portion of these investments is driven by the perceived need to combat climate change. However, there’s considerable debate around the magnitude and urgency of this issue. Is it truly necessary to disrupt entire sectors of the economy, invest trillions of dollars, and place our faith in unproven technologies to address a problem whose severity is far from unanimously agreed upon?

Siemens Energy’s troubles highlight the potential pitfalls of this approach. Despite enormous investments in wind energy, the technology is still prone to significant failures, leading to massive unforeseen costs. This raises questions about the overall effectiveness of this green transition and the wisdom of prioritizing these technologies over traditional energy sources.

Focusing on optimizing our existing energy infrastructure could lead to more immediate and cost-effective results. For example, improving the efficiency of traditional power plants, modernizing the electricity grid, and expanding nuclear power could all contribute to cleaner, more reliable energy without the risks and uncertainty associated with renewable technology.

Moreover, focusing on economic growth and technological innovation can also deliver environmental benefits. Prosperous societies have more resources to allocate towards environmental conservation, and technological advancements often lead to more efficient use of resources. Rather than rushing headlong into a green transition, if only saner heads could prevail, we could reconsider our approach to energy policy.

In conclusion, the fall in Siemens Energy’s stock value is a sobering reminder of the risks and costs associated with the foolhardy rush towards renewable energy. Instead of investing vast resources into a potentially overhyped climate change problem, we should take a more balanced approach, focusing on tried-and-tested technologies, economic growth, and innovation. This would ensure reliable, affordable energy for all, while still addressing environmental concerns in a realistic and economically sustainable way.

HT/resourceguy and Richard

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Scissor
June 25, 2023 6:19 am

$25 to $16 in 2 days does not bode well.

Reply to  Scissor
June 25, 2023 6:26 am

don’t worry, it’ll “be only 2 weeks to flatten the curve” 😀

Reply to  Jeroen B.
June 25, 2023 4:18 pm

… to vertical ( down) ! 😉

Mr.
June 25, 2023 6:34 am

Good points all Charles.

I reckon all the manic rush to install wind & solar power generation is driven by FEAR.

Not fear of any real climate catastrophe, but fear of being criticized by the Climate Crisis Cult that has infected all levels of societies, academia, the msm, politics and bureaucracies.

The words of FDR are applicable to this present lunacy –
“we have nothing to fear but fear itself”.

Reply to  Mr.
June 25, 2023 6:43 am

Blizzards of BS are best well avoided also

Reply to  Mr.
June 25, 2023 9:50 am

Utterly amazing to this very-soon-to-be 88 year young gent, that few seem to have taken those words from FDR, to heart.

Martin Brumby
Reply to  Mr.
June 25, 2023 11:30 am

In many cases it isn’t exactly “fear”.

More like cowardice.

Mr.
Reply to  Martin Brumby
June 25, 2023 12:43 pm

and what drives cowardice?

Reply to  Mr.
June 26, 2023 2:52 am

A strong sense of self-preservation?

Bob Johnston
June 25, 2023 6:45 am

Just like the subprime lenders in the mid-2000’s, it’s my sincere hope that every wind turbine manufacturer goes bankrupt.

June 25, 2023 7:08 am

“. . . it becomes problematic when the resources allocated towards these efforts are massively disproportionate to the measurable benefits they deliver. . .
Is it truly necessary to disrupt entire sectors of the economy, invest trillions of dollars, and place our faith in unproven technologies to address a problem whose severity is far from unanimously agreed upon?”

Important points. No one knows if even a successful effort at supposedly stabilizing the climate would be worth the investment that current thinking requires. The expense of this effort can’t come from government resources, which don’t exist, but only by subtraction from the wealth of the general population, like all government spending. If the AGW sociopaths have their way everyone will be immensely poorer, except for the administrators of the fantastical program.

Mr.
Reply to  general custer
June 25, 2023 7:21 am

Yes, like stockbrokers, the administrators get paid whether your investment pays off or not.

Reply to  general custer
June 25, 2023 9:53 am

Few in the ‘movement’ have even attempted to examine their ‘Premise’. NO ONE is ever going to “stabilize the climate”. Ignorance knows no bounds.

June 25, 2023 7:14 am

I wondered if this would get covered here.

Siemens problems had been popping up in my news feed for a week or more. I used to work for Siemens, well a company they bought to be exact, so the name is in my searches from time to time

It looks like one gravy train may have hit the buffers

Reply to  Ben Vorlich
June 25, 2023 2:54 pm

Siemen’s problems started several years ago when they found out that their wind turbine bearings, which were barely adequate on land, failed far quicker as they scaled the turbines up and, especially, built them off-shore. This problem has been a long time in the making and may have catastrophic consequences for Siemens and, possibly, the rest of the European wind industry.

Rick C
Reply to  Richard Page
June 25, 2023 7:33 pm

This situation is an entirely predictable consequence of rushing new designs into production and distribution without adequate testing and evaluation of life cycles. Problem – How do you determine if your product will function reliably for 20 years without actually testing for 20 years? Answer, you can’t actually.
Robust reliable designs evolve through experience with failures and incremental improvements to address failures. But wind turbine designs change very quickly to bigger, taller, heavier versions even before failures start appearing in earlier generations.

I can’t help but see a parallel with the recent tragic implosion of the Ocean Gate Titan submersible. If I were charged with evaluating the designs safety, I would have insisted on the fabrication of perhaps 6 identical units. I would then have selected 3 and cycled them unmanned to say 1.5 times the required depth limit over and over until the failed or reached 3 times the number of cycles specified as the design life without failure. Now that may be excessive, but the potential loss of lives justifies extreme conservativeness.

Mr Ed
Reply to  Rick C
June 26, 2023 9:41 am

“This situation is an entirely predictable consequence of rushing new designs into production and distribution without adequate testing and evaluation of life cycles.”

That’s been going on for many years, a couple of lifetimes ago I worked
for John Deere on the service side. At one time they would do as you
suggest in the design and production but that stopped 40-50+ yrs ago.
It’s a highly developed process at this point in time, at least in Ag
Equipment. With the new “smart tractors” they have sensors on the
units that know when a part is failing and send that info back to the dealer
who know about it before the farmer has a failure. And have a service tech
going out before the failure.

Back when JD built snowmobiles they used to do a “rainfall count” from satellites, when I first was told about that I didn’t believe it..I thought they were feeding me a BS story…
,

gunsmithkat
June 25, 2023 7:22 am

Unfortunately GE suffers from a similar malaise and it’s market price has suffered as well.

strativarius
June 25, 2023 7:24 am

Councils do deals with Siemens

“”Siemens installs over 1,000 on-street EV chargers in City of Westminster””
https://www.current-news.co.uk/siemens-installs-over-1-000-on-street-ev-chargers-in-city-of-westminster/

My council – Wandsworth – has done the same.

Kerrching

Dave Fair
Reply to  strativarius
June 25, 2023 12:14 pm

Isn’t it wonderful how governments provide recyclables (bread) to the black-markets? And just think of the entertainment value (circuses) of the violent fights over possession of the charging stations.

June 25, 2023 7:27 am

Regarding the images at the top of these essays. I asked about this several weeks ago. I believe someone replied saying they’re made by AI. Does each author make them in their own way with AI or there is a specific AI available online that you all use? I really like them and would like to make some to use in my own battles over forestry policies here in Woke-achusetts. I have plenty ideas just no art talent. That is, I know how to appreciate and evaluate art- just can’t do it. I am a fairly advanced computer user with some programming skills (from years ago) so I think I can figure it out once I get started.

Reply to  Joseph Zorzin
June 25, 2023 8:36 am

Art of this similar nature can found on music videos like those produced by a group (with videos dating back some 15 yrs now) known as “The Chemical Brothers” … findable on YT.

Reply to  John Hultquist
June 26, 2023 10:13 am

I was just looking for an absolute beginners guide to the subject of ChatGPT and found “ChatGPT Tutorial: How to Use Chat GPT For Beginners 2023” at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gaf_jCnA6mc
That video really blew my mind. At some point after experimenting with it- I’ll later experiment with AI generated imagery. This is exciting stuff. Until now, I only imagined robots walking stiffly and talking stupidly. Now I can imagine robots sounding like geniuses.

Dave Fair
Reply to  Charles Rotter
June 25, 2023 12:15 pm

You have a twisted mind, Charles.

Reply to  Charles Rotter
June 25, 2023 4:36 pm

great, thanks John and Charles!

Reply to  Charles Rotter
June 26, 2023 5:47 am

JOSH has a great new cartoon.

FzjG-JuWwAAOwXU.jpeg
mleskovarsocalrrcom
June 25, 2023 7:29 am

No one with common sense divested from fossil fuels to save the planet.

observa
June 25, 2023 8:04 am

The industry has been pushing the bounds of engineering making them taller and bigger-
Why Are Giant Wind Turbines Mysteriously Falling Over? (popularmechanics.com)
You get better economies of scale harvesting more wind energy but the tradeoff is hitting a fragility ceiling. Just think about the impact of rain hail snow and ice out on the higher speed tips of the turbine blades (107 metres long when they started out around 30 metres). You wouldn’t catch me out in a dust storm at 120-180mph-
What Is The Tip Speed Of A Wind Turbine Blade? – UtilitySmarts
We learn by doing just like carbon fibre subs.

Reply to  observa
June 25, 2023 8:33 am

The ‘point of diminishing returns’ (WRT to turbine size vs reliability) – yet to be definitively determined?

Reply to  _Jim
June 25, 2023 12:16 pm

I think we’re getting there. The bigger the turbine the bigger the crane to install and service it. Those costs are now becoming large, particularly for offshore. But perhaps the real issue is more to do with differential wind speeds. Remembering that energy in wind scales with the cube of velocity the ratio of wind speeds at the top and bottom of the swept area implies big stress at top dead centre for a blade, and possibly even stress in the opposite direction as it passes the support tower at the bottom of its travel. This sets up oscillations that become harder to damp, and pivoting stresses on the hub bearing. These cause fatigue and wear and result in the need to replace components. You have to shut down until the crane can get there in calm enough conditions to effect repairs, and maybe wait for spares too. Maintenance costs soar, and downtime dents the economics.

This phenomenon was observed with designs for tidal stream turbines. Attempts to build larger ones failed because they were soon battered by similar effects (plus random oscillations from waves above). The sea is very unforgiving at ~800 times the density of air.

Reply to  It doesnot add up
June 26, 2023 3:57 am

Remembering that energy in wind scales with the cube of velocity the ratio of wind speeds at the top and bottom of the swept area implies big stress at top dead centre for a blade, and possibly even stress in the opposite direction as it passes the support tower at the bottom of its travel. This sets up oscillations that become harder to damp, and pivoting stresses on the hub bearing.

I am not an engineer, meteorologist, or physicist, and have no experience or familiarity with the nomenclature, so I am struggling to understand. Yet I am educable, so I hope you can bear with me and try to remember when all of this was brand new to you.

Does this mean, as an example, that if wind is blowing at 10 mph, there is 1,000 units of energy in that wind, and that if wind is blowing at 20 mph, there is 8,000 units of energy? What are the units of energy, and how is this measured?Is “top dead centre” the middle of the blade when it’s pointed straight up? Or does “top dead centre” mean the end of the blade? Either way, why is “big stress” “implied?” (By putting these words in quotes, I don’t mean to suggest that I’m arguing; rather, I have isolated those words because I don’t understand.)Why the oscillations? I am guessing that “big stress” is also “implied” when the blade is at “bottom dead centre,” whatever that is, and that somehow the stresses compete with each other. Why are these “pivoting stresses,” and why do they set up oscillations? Is there some sort of reversal as the blade moves from “top dead centre” to “bottom dead centre?”How do designers attempt to damp the pivoting stresses, and why are these attempts failing?Would the same stresses be present in a propeller blade? Is there anything to be learned by comparing wind turbine blades to propellers on airplanes or ships?
Please understand that my questions are genuine, posed in good faith, and that I am candid about my ignorance. I am asking in an attempt to gain understanding, and nothing more.

Reply to  JakeJ
June 26, 2023 4:28 am

Please forgive the type blob above. I formatted it as a numbered list, but the Word Press software removed the formatting.

Reply to  JakeJ
June 26, 2023 6:52 am

You’ve got the right idea about wind speeds and energy. You can get a good idea of how wind speed varies with altitude at the ventusky site which provides estimates for speed at 10, 100 and 250m altitudes.

https://www.ventusky.com/?p=46.8;-45.0;4&l=wind-250m

100m is an approximation to hub height for a big turbine, while 250m is roughly tip of blade height when pointing straight up – I used top dead centre as a term that would be familiar to motor mechanics where it refers to the top point of a piston travel in an engine, with the con rod extended straight up from the crankshaft for maximum compression. 10m can be thought of as the tip of the blade at the bottom.

There are all sorts of different measurement units for power and energy, but it is customary for wind turbines to use metric units as for electricity, so typically MW and MWh for commercial turbines. Simple calculations assume that hub height wind speed is an approximation for weighted average wind speed across the swept area of the turbine blades. The energy in the wind is derived from a formula for energy you might have encountered in school

E=1/2 mv^2

In the case of wind you replace a solid object (a car or a bullet say) with a cylinder of wind moving at velocity v. The cylinder has a mass of its volume multiplied by air density (which varies according to pressure and water vapour content and temperature if you want to be precise). The size of the cylinder is given by the area swept by the blades, πr^2, and the length defined by the wind speed in metres/sec to give a power throughput and the cubic relationship with wind speed, which you can multiply by a time interval to give energy over the given time.

The maximum energy that can be extracted by a wind turbine in theory is 16/27ths of the energy in the wind: look up proof of Betz limit for details, which get a bit more mathematical. In practice real world turbines have a peak efficiency of about 45% over a span of wind speeds close to their design sweet spot. They need a bit of breeze to get going, and efficiency drops as they have to feather their blades as wind speeds increase. Here’s a typical efficiency curve.

https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/GqyyC/1

Reply to  It doesnot add up
June 27, 2023 1:05 pm

Thank you VERY much for both your answers and your patience.

First, I am now believing that “top dead centre” means the tip of the blade when pointed straight up. If I’m incorrect, please tell me. And sorry for my redundancy. I want to be absolutely certain.

Second, in that kinetric energy formula (never learned it, but I just looked it up), here’s what I took away: The object that’s moving is wind. It has a mass, and because it’s wind and not just air, it has a velocity. So you muliply the mass by 0.5; multiply that result by the square of the velocity. The result is the kinetic energy measured in joules. Correct? If not, please school me.

Third, how do I think about the mass of the wind? Would it be the mass of the air that hits the blades? If so, how should I think about that in terms of the dimension of the air whose mass we are measuring? Does it have a thickness? You went at this in your paragraph beginning with “In the case of wind …” and I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around that “cylinder” you mentioned. My problem not yours, but is there any way you can help me past my mental stickiness on this?

Fourth, when it comes to efficiency of wind turbines, i.e. in the real world they capture 45% of the wind’s kinetic energy, two questions. Is the inefficiency caused by that part of the wind that doesn’t cause the blades to move, i.e., it gets through the gaps with no energy transfer? And does that efficiency number include the process within the hub that converts the rotation into electricity, measured in watts, the rate of energy transfer? Thus, if the wind has X joules of energy, does the turbine convert 45% of those joules into current, with the other 55% not converted because of the factors I have mentioned?

I hope my questions make sense. Given my background (and lack thereof relative to these issues) I feel clumsy. I hope you’ll answer, and maybe stick around in case I have more questions. I want to understand this, and have a quaint urge to know what I’m talking about, even if it means that I have to learn unfamiliar concepts and measurements.

Again, many thanks for your patient answers above.

John Hultquist
Reply to  observa
June 25, 2023 9:14 am

The Wild Horse Wind facility east of Ellensburg, WA was built in 2006. Blades are 39 m. (129 feet) long. { one hundred twenty seven 1.8-megawatt Vestas V80 turbines and twenty two 2.0-megawatt Vestas V80s]

David Wojick
Reply to  John Hultquist
June 25, 2023 11:16 am

These are tiny land based turbines. Offshore jumped overnight from 8-9.5 MW up to 14-15 MW. Siemens led this uphill charge. Very bad engineering.

John Hultquist
Reply to  David Wojick
June 25, 2023 1:05 pm

“tiny” 😂
I was in the base of one. At the time “tiny” did not come to mind.
The new 3X larger ones do not compute!

Reply to  observa
June 25, 2023 10:00 am

“just like carbon fibre subs.” I have read that there were quite a few “warnings” about the gradual weakening of the materials that were used, but these warnings were dismissed. That potential passenger from Las Vegas must be one happy fella.

June 25, 2023 8:06 am

1) We have a serious misallocation of resources driven by multiple bad government policies.

2) The greenies have a strange belief that we just need to build these wind farms and we’re set for life. They have no clue about ongoing costs, service life of turbines, failure rates etc.

3) The fact that climate change activists don’t embrace and advocate nuclear power is more evidence that the movement isn’t really about the climate.

Mr.
Reply to  More Soylent Green!
June 25, 2023 8:30 am

It’s the climate of fear that greenies enthusiastically embrace.

Reply to  More Soylent Green!
June 25, 2023 4:25 pm

“Kakistocracy”

AWG
June 25, 2023 8:17 am

The thing that puzzles me is that Siemens Energy is a player in the natural gas generation industry. the more wind resource, the more fast-spin-up capacity sources. It happened in the former USA’s northeast states where as more wind is deployed, nuclear energy is pushed out (due to almost all of their income is derived from energy production) and is replaced by natural gas which makes a huge chunk of money in capacity reserve money – that is, being paid not for generating electricity, but being able when to supply when grid conditions require.

Siemens Energy sells more windmills, they end up selling more natural gas plants to provide reserve capacity.

I would love to see their Hollywood Accounting for their energy division.

JBP
June 25, 2023 8:19 am

huh. fix required:

to address a problem whose severity is far from unanimously agreed upon?

to address a problem whose existence is unproven?

obtw, there are several wonderful diversity hires currently unemployed who ought to really be able to help siemens and score esg points for larry fink. their previous employer made small subs

June 25, 2023 8:27 am

I love the image chosen for this post. It has inspired me to refer to windmills as “wind reapers” from now on.

June 25, 2023 8:28 am

Is – is it a problem with, oh, say composite materials as used in the turbine blades failing, requiring massive re-work and warranty claims? This (CF thing) seems to be an issue lately (CF composites mis-used in applications).

John Hultquist
Reply to  _Jim
June 25, 2023 9:21 am

CF now seem to be everywhere. Lots of auto parts, but that may be okay. I haven’t seen references to issues. Yet!

Rud Istvan
Reply to  _Jim
June 25, 2023 10:55 am

The main problem in not the composite blades. The main problem with the bigger turbines is failing axial bearings. Inherent and unsolvable. Wind speed is higher aloft, so blade loading is not symmetrical. This induces a wobble to the rotor spindle that eventually deforms then cracks the critical axial bearing(s) (some designs use one race, others two).

David Wojick
Reply to  Rud Istvan
June 25, 2023 11:24 am

Good explanation. And the longer the blades the greater this potential effect.

Someone just proposed a 30 MW turbine for a pending project!

Reply to  Rud Istvan
June 25, 2023 12:35 pm

Thanks. A lot of us (non-engineers) want these explanations.

Reply to  Rud Istvan
June 25, 2023 12:55 pm

Thanks, Rud Istvan. You covered the “main problem”. Would not one other problem be the “composite” blades? I am asking because of that “sub” failure… would repeated “pressure” (wind/temp) weaken the structure as it apparently did to the submarine structure? Hope this isn’t a dumb question.
(should have said “blade structure”) sorry.

Reply to  sturmudgeon
June 25, 2023 12:58 pm

again, not a clear query.. should be: “as did the repeated water pressure”.

Reply to  Rud Istvan
June 25, 2023 1:26 pm

This is very interesting. Do you have a link to a longer version that’s digestible by the curious layman? I don’t even know what an axial bearing is, but I can learn fast.

Reply to  Charles Rotter
June 26, 2023 3:14 am

Thanks for the link, but not for your condescending attitude.

Reply to  Rud Istvan
June 25, 2023 5:35 pm

The wind speed is higher aloft and much of the load variations are due to the tip vortices changing rather than the drag from lift over the aerofoil. Tri- blade designs dominate because the tip speed/air speed ratio is good (around 7), or so. Also an even number of blades has much higher shuddering when the machine has to yaw to face the changes in direction, or to turn out of the wind at over speed conditions. Yawing is done slowly in an attempt to reduce the chaotic imbalance but has no influence on the wind doing what it wants, meaning the yawing stresses can’t be eliminated. The tip vortex drag is fluctuating differently on each blade as wind direction shifts. And of course each blade falls and rises under gravity. It’s a tough design assignment.

Melvyn Dackombe
Reply to  Rud Istvan
June 26, 2023 6:05 am

Your comments seem perfectly sensible, the question is why the ‘experts’ at Siemens did, or do not, know of these problems.

roaddog
Reply to  Rud Istvan
June 26, 2023 12:05 pm

That’s simply not true. It’s more of a groupthink problem. Every major wind turbine manufacturer uses bearings which are not suited to the application; and the industry is so insular and mired in groupthink that they are all reluctant to bear the risk of being the first one to convert to an appropriate and functional bearing design.

James Snook
Reply to  Mr.
June 25, 2023 9:44 am

This should be huge news in Europe, but the only reference that I can find is the one linked above. Is it a credible source?

Mr.
Reply to  James Snook
June 25, 2023 9:57 am

Dunno.
(but why would you expect the msm to publicize a story that’s negative about “renewables” and favorable about nuclear?)

James Snook
Reply to  Mr.
June 25, 2023 10:09 am

Found another reference. Reuters report that on 20th June the new right wing Swedish government changed its policy from adopting 100% renewable to 100% fossil free generation, thus opening the way to for nuclear.

Mr.
Reply to  James Snook
June 25, 2023 11:29 am

Thanks James.
The great thing about posting or commenting here is, as Willis often says, readers will check your submissions almost immediately, and tell you if they need clarification.

Mr.
Reply to  James Snook
June 25, 2023 2:41 pm

Excerpt from the linked article –

In a statement announcing the new policy in the Swedish Parliament, Finance Minister Elisabeth Svantesson warned that the Scandinavian nation needs “a stable energy system.”

Svantesson asserted that wind and solar power are too “unstable” to meet the nation’s energy requirements.

Instead, the Swedish Government is shifting back to nuclear power and has ditched its targets for a “100% renewable energy” supply.

Reply to  James Snook
June 26, 2023 3:02 am

As a point of clarification, the Swedish ‘Moderate’ party in power is a centrist party, centre-right at a stretch. Reuters and other media outlets often characterise parties that aren’t strongly left wing as ‘right-wing’ as a catch-all group, somewhat lazy and intentionally misleading.

Phillip Bratby
June 25, 2023 8:58 am

When will sanity return to western industry>

Dave Fair
Reply to  Phillip Bratby
June 25, 2023 12:26 pm

When Western industry no longer exists.

Reply to  Dave Fair
June 25, 2023 12:43 pm

Getting there…

June 25, 2023 9:35 am

“Instead of funneling resources towards potentially flawed green technology to tackle a problem that might not even exist…”

___________________________________________________________________

Companies should be free to pursue whatever remedies to problems that they believe exist. If it can be shown that selling those remedies to unsuspecting customers amounts to fraud, they should be sued.

There have been nine articles here at WUWT with wind “Turbines” depicted in the lead illustrations in the last two weeks. They don’t work as advertised. It’s getting to the point that loss of taxpayer money due poor investments needs to wind up in court.

There should be a flip side to the frivolous lawsuits against oil companies for knowingly promoting “Climate Damaging” products. It cannot be shown that CO2 has caused any real problems for the last ~40 years. All those claimed problems can be shown to have happened before or that they have been happening right along. However, the loss of taxpayer invested money to solve those problems that haven’t happened and aren’t likely to happen, can be shown to be real.

June 25, 2023 9:45 am

Preaching to the choir.

June 25, 2023 10:12 am
James Snook
Reply to  sturmudgeon
June 25, 2023 11:38 am

Thats on a par with Al Gore in Davos with his stupid “the oceans are boiling” rant.

Reply to  James Snook
June 25, 2023 12:46 pm

And, of the two of these imbeciles, one almost became President… well… another one DID.

Reply to  sturmudgeon
June 26, 2023 12:58 am

You can’t misallocate what you don’t have.

June 25, 2023 10:57 am

These things are literally seizing from not spinning enough, to spinning themselves to destruction – 9mph winds before they spin – at 55mph winds, they brake & lockout to prevent damage by spinning too fast – they start to deliver nameplate output with 33mph to 55mph winds – with increasing global wind stilling, they are an incompetent engineering power source, at best

Reply to  Energywise
June 25, 2023 12:47 pm

but…but…but… aren’t we on the way to controlling the wind speeds???

Reply to  Energywise
June 26, 2023 4:25 am

I recently completed a 4,300-mile road trip between WA State and the Midwest, and saw many wind turbines, plus we live in the Columbia River Gorge where there are hundreds of them. We remarked about the variations within turbine fields both elsewhere and here, where there are often idle turbines in close proximity to ones that are spinning.

If this is a maintenace issue, then there seems to be a big problem, given how many non-spinning turbines we see. Could it be that there’s wide variation of wind speed within turbine fields? How about limiations in electricity transport capacity or electricity demand?

AGW is Not Science
Reply to  Energywise
June 26, 2023 5:10 am

The really laughable thing is, not a moment’s thought has been given to what the effects on weather patterns, insect migration, etc. might be due to the extraction of energy from the wind.

Dave Fair
June 25, 2023 11:55 am

Part of the problem Siemens has is that they are a (used to be?) high-precision company in a (used to be?) high-precision country that bought a low-precision subsidiary (Gamesa) located in a low-precision country (Spain). Their executives just couldn’t imagine how slovenly some “professionals” could get.

Additionally, they got into a new industry where they didn’t understand its operating environment and volatility, relied on fickle government (subsidies) and Leftist boosterism and bet on volume production rather than reliability (not enough engineers in management).

mikelowe2013
Reply to  Dave Fair
June 25, 2023 1:08 pm

….. and too many accountants!

June 25, 2023 1:23 pm

I would be interested in a lot more detail on the problems. Is it just Siemens or do GE and Vestas have the same issues? And what are the issues? All the stories are vague. I can say this much: We just took a 4,300-mile car trip from WA State to Milwaukee and back, and saw lots of idle turbines alongside ones that were spinning. We live in the Columbia River Gorge, and see a lot of idle turbines adjacent to spinning ones.

Reply to  JakeJ
June 25, 2023 3:08 pm

Siemens have had a severe problem with getting the bearings to work properly for many years. GE and Vestas seem to be a bit more generalised – they both scaled up the size of their existing turbine designs which, as a consequence, led to far more maintenance problems – in different areas of the turbine as well as the bearings. Since the problems arose, both GE and Vestas have scaled back to just making the smaller, slightly more reliable turbines whilst Siemens have continued to experiment to try to fix the bearings issue, apparently with little success.

Reply to  Richard Page
June 26, 2023 4:18 am

Do GE and Vestas bearings work better in a wind turbine of the same size? If so, what about Siemens’s bearings makes them inferior? Or does the oscillation issue (mentioned in other comments here) render all wind turbines more or less equally deficient?

Reply to  JakeJ
June 26, 2023 2:29 pm

Aha, I don’t know. I could speculate that the increased size caused increased stresses on various parts of the turbine but I don’t know for sure. You’d probably need an industry engineer with insider knowledge to give you that depth of information. I’m going on bits and pieces I’ve picked up in various reports which don’t go into fine detail, sorry.

Bob
June 25, 2023 3:36 pm

Build new fossil fuel and nuclear generators and remove all wind and solar from the grid.

travis
June 25, 2023 3:51 pm

says it all. ” we should be focusing on optimizing reliable and efficient energy sources that have served us well for centuries, and a greater reliance on nuclear to provide base-load power.”

Denis
June 25, 2023 7:10 pm

Unsustainable without Government subsidies? Please explain how Government subsidies converts a source of electricity which is erratic and at time zero and is not synchronous into a sustainable source. As near as I know, money will not cure either of these fatal shortcomings, regardless of the amount provided.

Blokedownthepub
June 26, 2023 4:09 am

Story tip.
Paul Homewood has this related story online, as noted on twitter here.
<blockquote class=”twitter-tweet”><p lang=”en” dir=”ltr”>Just another £200 billion!<a href=”https://t.co/LMTkVqeaTJ”>https://t.co/LMTkVqeaTJ</a></p>&mdash; Notalotofpeopleknowthat (@Notalotofpeopl1) <a href=”https://twitter.com/Notalotofpeopl1/status/1672997437923901440?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>June 25, 2023</a></blockquote> https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

Reply to  Blokedownthepub
June 26, 2023 4:12 am

That post is garbled and unintelligible.

ResourceGuy
June 26, 2023 2:22 pm

Research idea: Do large tax incentive encourage large scale over promises in both engineering specs and financial assumptions?

June 26, 2023 2:31 pm

The Wind Energy Index shot up in 2020, as a Biden win was becoming increasingly likely.

All his policies favoring wind energy with subsides, tax breaks, rebates and mandates to force diffuse, intermittent, anti environmental, fake green wind energy on the market for crony capitalism and politics.
Then, in January 2021, it was buy the rumor, sell the crap since Biden was inaugurated.

https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/wind

Screenshot 2023-06-26 at 16-19-00 Wind Energy Index - 2023 Data - 2017-2022 Historical - 2024 Forecast - Price - Quote.png
June 26, 2023 2:59 pm

We identified this issue in these pages many years ago, unless I am having false memories.
Stated more succinctly, it was plainly obvious quite some time ago that these turbines were failing in far less than the stated lifespan of the units.
Some were going bad right out of the gate. And they kept failing at a steady clip, from the get go.
Next, it will be found out that the one’s mounted offshore in a salty environment will do very badly indeed.
Even most kinds of stainless steel do very poorly in a marine environment.
Add in some electricity for galvanic effects, and…oopsy daisy! So solly…not gonna get no 25 years, no how, no way.

And even 25 years is a very short lifespan for critical industrial infrastructure.

KevinM
June 26, 2023 7:11 pm

To author, a day later: “Instead of funneling resources towards potentially flawed green technology to tackle a problem that might not even exist, we should be focusing on “

“we” or “they”? The flow of the writing had a corporation as the primary actor.

KevinM
June 26, 2023 7:13 pm

still uncertain and unproven.

Not sure those are the correct adjectives. Walking across the street can be described that way, but usually the person applying those words is …