Serious campaigners should be wary of tabloid material like this!
Much as I appreciate the sentiments behind this article it is irresponsible and inaccurate in juxtaposing the woes of the US first generation turbines with the threat to tomorrow's, even if the so-called 1,000ft turbines ever materialise on land. They are not only primarily designed for off shore use, may never materialise, and will be covered by conditions to ensure removal. Could I suggest that it is really not necessary to 'scaremonger' in this way since the effective way to undermine government policy is to base arguments on current and relevant facts. Readers might be interested to hear about the 'peaking plant' application for diesel-fired generators here in Pembrokeshire which has been based on the applicants specific and necessary claim that they are needed because of the back-up requirement for increasing proportions of unreliable wind energy in our electricity portfolio. Of course there will be lots of other applications elsewhere based on the same 'need' but this is the first I have come across.
Geoff
Subject: Rusting useless wind turbines article
today's daily mail 2 page article - terrific article about the rusting hulks of wind turbines in the USA...
Broken down and rusting, is this the future of Britain's 'wind rush'?
By Tom Leonard
PUBLISHED: 01:00, 19 March 2012 | UPDATED: 07:54, 19 March 2012
* Comments (99)
Broken promises: The rusting wind turbines of Hawaii
A breathtaking sight awaits those who travel to the southernmost tip of Hawaii’s stunningly beautiful Big Island, though it’s not in any guidebook. On a 100-acre site, where cattle wander past broken ‘Keep Out’ signs, stand the rusting skeletons of scores of wind turbines. Just a short walk from where endangered monk seals and Hawksbill turtles can be found on an unspoilt sandy beach, a technology that is supposed to be about saving the environment is instead ruining it. In other parts of the U.S., working wind turbines are killing hundreds of thousands of birds and bats each year, but here the wildlife can perch on the motionless steel blades.If any spot was tailor-made for a wind farm it would surely be here. The gales are so strong and relentless on the tip of South Point that trees grow almost horizontally.Yet the 27-year-old Kamaoa Wind Farm remains a relic of the boom and inglorious bust of America’s so-called ‘wind rush’, the world’s first major experiment in wind energy.At a time when the EU and the British Government are fully paid-up evangelists for wind power, the lesson from America — and the ghostly hulks on this far-flung coast — should be a warning of their folly.Few people were talking about saving the planet back in the early Eighties. The wind rush was a free-for-all in which get-rich-quick companies exploited ridiculously generous tax breaks to pepper the States with thousands of wind turbines.For anyone who has questioned Downing Street’s controversial pledge — spurred on by EU green targets — to give £400 million-a-year subsidies to wind farms as well as hefty bribes to landowners in order to spur the building of an additional 4,500 turbines, the wind rush may sound eerily familiar.Indeed, America’s growing band of wind sceptics insist that what happened three decades ago in the U.S. could easily recur over the next few years in the UK if the wheels come off the wind energy gravy train once again.So what went wrong? It started with the late Seventies oil crisis that convinced America it had to look around for other sources of power. For a time, wind power was considered to be a serious alternative to fossil fuels.
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Turbines were built across several states, though there was a preponderance in California, where nearly 17,000 sprouted up from the dusty earth. Nearly all of these were concentrated in three giant wind farms: Altamont, east of San Francisco; Tehachapi, on the edge of the Mojave desert; and San Gorgonio near Palm Springs. In theory, conditions couldn’t have been better. Each of these are passes that benefit from just the right sort of wind that turbines need — strong and almost continual.Better still, they were crossed by under-used high voltage lines to take away the power.But most importantly for the scrum of investors who were thrusting their snouts into the trough, there was the extraordinary generosity of the government.Between 1981 and 1985, federal and state subsidies in California were so favourable that investors could recover 50 per cent of the cost of a wind turbine.Even better, the amount they were paid for their electricity was tied to the price of oil, which had shot through the roof. Turbines on the island of Hawaii which is soon to benefit from new subsides for larger wind farms
Turbines on the island of Hawaii which is soon to benefit from new subsides for larger wind farms
Paul GIPE, a former California wind company executive, calls what happened next a ‘tax credit frenzy’.‘The lure of quick riches resulted in shoddy products that littered California with poorly operating — sometimes non-operating — turbines.’ They were expensive and badly designed. Some were far too small to make a difference, others were just clunky machines designed by the aero industry with blades the length of a rugby pitch. But thanks to the subsidies, it hardly mattered that some of the untested turbines were so sub-standard they barely even worked.Not to put too fine a point on it, for some wind energy investors it was simply a tax scam.But as tends to happen with a business that is driven by financial incentives, it lasted only as long as the subsidies. In 1986, the price of oil tumbled and the subsidies started to die out. Suddenly, the wind energy sums didn’t add up any more.And just like the gold rush miners who had rushed to the same Californian passes a century earlier, the wind prospectors departed in such a hurry that they didn’t even bother to take down the turbines they had littered across the state.With so many moving parts to worry about, maintaining turbines is expensive — too expensive when the electricity they could produce was suddenly worth so little.‘So when something broke, you simply didn’t send a repairman because it just didn’t make financial sense,’ Hawaii wind sceptic Andrew Walden told me. With some turbine makers going out of business, there were no spare parts either. According to the California Energy Commission, the collapse in subsidies stalled the state’s huge wind energy industry for nearly two decades. No one who has driven past one of America’s mega wind farms today can fail to be struck by how few have blades that are turning, even in strong winds.The truth is that even fewer may be producing electricity than it appears. Many are switched to a mode in which the blades continue to turn just to keep oil moving around the mechanism, but no electricity is produced.Unfortunately, the frenzy of windmill building during the wind rush didn’t just ruin the view, but also devastated the wildlife.No one noticed until far too late that the 5,000-turbine wind farm at Altamont Pass is on a major migratory path for birds. The National Audubon Society, America’s RSPB, has called it ‘probably the worst site ever chosen for a wind energy project’.
Hawaiian Island of Maui, utilizes an array of 1.5 megawatt wind turbines to produce electricity
