The Reality of Wind Turbines

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The reality of wind turbines in California – video

 10 years ago
 Anthony Watts
As many know, I was on a road trip for two weeks. On my return into California, I traveled a road I had done many many times – California Highway
58 through Tehachapi pass, one of the windiest areas of California, and loaded with wind turbines like you see in this photo from www.wind-
works.org which seems to be taken during 2003. All the turbines seem to be spinning.
But, the reality I encounter when I drive through there is much different than what you see in the photo above. I often drive this road, but always
wished I had a video camera with me to show how many turbines are inoperable since this doesn’t show up well in still photos. Unless you have a
slow shutter speed to show “blade blur”, they all look inoperable.
But this day was different. I did have a video camera with me. Plus, the day I drove through, Tuesday, March 15th, 2011 was near perfect for wind
turbines. There was a front coming in, and strong winds ahead of it.
Here’s the wind data from the ASOS at the Tehachapi airport during the time I drove through:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/03/19/the-reality-of-wind-turbines-in-california-video/ 1/59
The wind data displayed above are measured at 1000′ lower elevation than the wind turbines on the top of the ridge, where the wind velocity will be
higher.
And here is what I saw of the wind turbines along the ridge top, there were quite a few inoperable on this windy day. This video was taken right
about 11AM PST:
Idle Wind Turbines - Tehachapi Pass, CA 3-15-2011
There were many more inoperable turbines, but could not be lmed from a safe vantage point along the highway. This video was take from the
semi-truck staging area near the agricultural inspection station.
My best guess from the video and others I saw that I could not lm is that about one in four turbines were not operating.
The problem is maintenance. The location, while perfect for wind, is treacherous for work and support equipment. Even on a at terrain, like in
Texas (shown below) where I photographed these turbines, doing maintenance on gearboxes and generators high up on a post isn’t easy.
Imagine the complications on a mountain ridge for maintenance.
On the wind-works.org website “tour” section, they lament the condition of the Zond (Enron) wind power sites:
Wind Plant Maintenance Items to Note


Throughout the Tehachapi-Mojave area look for turbines without nose cones, turbines without nacelles (blown off and not replaced), oil leaking from
blade-pitch seals, oil leaking from gearboxes, road cuts in steep terrain, erosion gullies, non-operating turbines, and “bone piles” of junk parts. One Zond
bone pile of abandoned berglass blades is visible on the east side of Tehachapi-Willow Springs Rd. near Oak Creek Pass. (Kern County doesn’t permit
on-ground disposal of berglass.) While touring wind farm sites look for blowing trash and litter (plastic bags, soft-drink cups, bottles, electrical
connectors, scrap bits of metal, and so on). These all re ect management’s attention to maintenance and general housekeeping. At the better sites, you
won’t see any of this.
Even on the valley oor, the smaller four turbines just west of the Tehachapi airport that greet visitors who drive in from Bakers eld had a problem,
and these are on at ground and accessible:
Wind Turbines in the town of Tehachapi, CA 3-15-2011
In Palm Springs, CA, another windy place, they have similar problems:

=============================================================
Florida’s broken windmills: A California problem
Broken
Blades
The permit allowing windmills to go in didn’t say they could sit there broken. Palm Springs is getting tough. If windmills are going to exist in the city
they must be operational. A city that has welcomed windmills since it was rst approached about them in the early 1980’s is nding that many of
those windmills are no longer working and it wants them xed. The question is who’s responsible for xing them? Florida Power and Light (FPL),
the owner of the inoperable windmills, was allowed to install and operate local windmill farms under a conditional use permit (CUP) stipulating if
the windmill does not run for six months, it’s declared a public nuisance and without a hearing, must be abated.
================================================================
Here’s a video showing the inside operations of a wind power facility in Washington State
Wind Turbine Tour
And, the lack of maintenance problem is not just in California. In 2001, I visited Kamoa wind farm near Southpoint in the big island of Hawaii. The
wind is so strong there, trees grow horizontal like this one:
As much as I was surprised by the horizontal trees, I was equally surprised to see dead wind turbines there. It was my rst experience with a wind

farm.
From this American Thinker article “Wind energy’s ghosts”:
=========================================================
Kamaoa Windmills 006 crop.jpg

Kamaoa Wind Farm, Hawaii. (image)
Built in 1985, at the end of the boom, Kamaoa soon suffered from lack of maintenance. In 1994, the site lease was purchased by Redwood City, CA-
 based Apollo Energy.
Cannibalizing parts from the original 37 turbines, Apollo personnel kept the declining facility going with outdated equipment. But even in a place where
wind-shaped trees grow sideways, maintenance issues were overwhelming. By 2004 Kamaoa accounts began to show up on a Hawaii State Department
of Finance list of unclaimed properties. In 2006, transmission was nally cut off by Hawaii Electric Company.
===========================================================
Image from Waymarking.com
Again, like in California, Hawaii’s turbine problem is lack of maintenance.
But isn’t that the way it always has been with windmills?
It seems the more things change, the more they stay the same:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
UPDATE: It appears Idaho is getting set for putting a wind power moratorium in place:
KIFI logo

State Lawmakers Look At Wind Energy Moratorium
story image
Mar 18, 2011 6:16 p.m.
BONNEVILLE COUNTY, Idaho — Construction of wind turbines may be coming to a halt in Idaho.
State lawmakers are considering a bill that would prevent the construction of any new wind farm for the next two years.
Over the last year, dozens of new wind turbines have gone up on east bench just outside Idaho Falls, but many of the neighbors and their legislators
want to put a temporary end to new construction.
When the legislature adopted the 2007 energy plan, it did not envision so many energy companies wanting to build wind farms in Idaho.
Bill sponsor Erik Simpson said he and both his Republican and Democratic colleagues agree they need to take a look at the long-term
consequences.
“Local governments need some direction as to what should be included in some of their ordinances, recognizing some of the impacts that are out
there on wind, and we need to nd out what those impacts might be,” said State Affairs Committee member Tom Loertcher.
To conduct the study, the bill proposes a two-year moratorium on wind farm construction.
“It may be a problem mostly in eastern Idaho now, but it’s likely to be a problem in (other legislators’) communities as well unless we take this two
year pause and study this a little more in depth,” Simpson said.
Wind power is not the cheapest way to produce energy, and lawmakers want to make sure their constituents don’t have to pay top rate.
“Utility rate payers are paying more for this unreliable intermittent energy source,” Simpson said.
Many are also concerned about the environment.
“A lot of these projects are going up in pristine wildlife areas,” Simpson said.
But not everyone agrees. Some local people like Bonneville County farmer Tory Talbot want to continue to see more turbines.
“The moratorium will basically limit businesses wanting to come into Idaho. Southeastern Idaho and southern Idaho has a huge wind energy
potential,” Talbot said.
The State Affairs Committee plans to continue the debate on Monday when they hear from utility companies and energy companies.
They will then vote on whether they should move the bill to the House oor.
If the bill passes, any project already approved would be allowed to move forward.
==================================================================
UPDATE2: The maintenance problem also extends to Germany:
From: jcwinnie.biz
HAWT Destruction from Gearbox Failure
“Gearboxes have been failing in wind turbines since the early 1990s. Barely a turbine make has escaped. The problem reached epidemic proportions
with a massive series failure of gearboxes in NEG Micon machines. At the time, the NEG Micon brand was the most sold wind turbine in the world.
The disaster brought the company to its knees ; It was taken over by Vestas, the world’s largest wind turbine manufacturer, which still is challenged by
gearbox and rotor failures.
As previously noted, a large number of gearboxes have had to be replaced “in large numbers.” Der Spiegel reports that the German Insurance
Association is none too happy…
“In addition to generators and gearboxes, rotor blades also often display defects,” a report on the technical shortcomings of wind turbines claims. The
 insurance companies are complaining of problems ranging from those caused by improper storage to dangerous cracks and fractures… The frail
turbines coming off the assembly lines at some manufacturers threaten to damage an industry that for years has been hailed as a wild success.
At Spiegel Online, Simone Kaiser and Michael relay a concern about installed wind turbines:
After the industry’s recent boom years, wind power providers and experts are now concerned. The facilities may not be as reliable and durable as

 producers claim. Indeed, with thousands of mishaps, breakdowns and accidents having been reported in recent years, the di culties seem to be
mounting. Gearboxes hiding inside the casings perched on top of the towering masts have short shelf lives, often crapping out before even ve years is
up. In some cases, fractures form along the rotors, or even in the foundation, after only limited operation. Short circuits or overheated propellers have
been known to cause res. All this despite manufacturers’ promises that the turbines would last at least 20 years.
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Tags: california, Energy, Wind turbine
202 COMMENTS   Oldest 
Lance
 March 19, 2011 9:17 pm
Isn’t that where all the ‘green’ jobs are? Fixing them? I guess the cost wasn’t worth it…..go gure…
JRR Canada
 March 19, 2011 9:20 pm
And the subsidy or tax credit ran out. Govt expertise at work again
DJ
 March 19, 2011 9:23 pm
 I’ve spent time in both Tehachapi and Palm Springs over the last 20 years, as well as driving through
Mojave on Highway 14, so I too have observed the windmills and wondered the same thing.
Why are so many not operating?
On a trip to Palm Springs one summer back around 2005 or ’06, it was 118deg F, and I really didn’t
understand why there was a signi cant percentage of windmills not operating along the highway and
on the adjacent hills going into town. As I recall the number was roughly 1 in 6? I could be wrong
there, but it was so many that it got my attention. At a peak demand time of day, temperatures in the
deadly range, and windmills sitting idle.
In both winter and summer you’ll see similar percentages in the hills surrounding Tehachapi/Mojave.
As Anthony claims, in the pass on 58 the hills are thick with windmills, and many aren’t moving.
So the simple question is: If they’re so good, why aren’t they working?
Dave Wendt
 March 19, 2011 9:31 pm
And just think, we only have to build 10 to 15 times more of these wonderful devices to approach the
20% of generating capacity which is the supposed goal of all these various kickback and subsidy
programs. On the plus side it would turn out to be quite a green jobs program if we did it. It would
likely take between a quarter and a third of the entire national workforce working overtime to keep
them all well maintained and operational.
Stephen Rasey
 March 19, 2011 9:32 pm
turbines without nose cones, turbines without nacelles (blown off and not replaced), oil leaking from
blade-pitch seals, oil leaking from gearboxes, road cuts in steep terrain, erosion gullies, non-operating
turbines, and “bone piles” of junk parts.
Immediately what comes to mind are images of gold mine tailings littering the mountain valley walls
in Colorado. I guess today we are looking at the aftermath of a public subsidy gold rush in wind
farms.
kramer
 March 19, 2011 9:32 pm
Those things are a blight on the countryside…
CRS, Dr.P.H.
 March 19, 2011 9:34 pm
Anthony, I once drove north from Fresno to San Francisco, about 1988 or so, and saw an immense
pass lled with these things. As you also noticed, I was stunned by how many were inoperable.
These things are a blight and should be outlawed.
King of Cool
 March 19, 2011 9:41 pm
Notwithstanding the maintenance problems what about that visual pollution!

What a way to destroy a beautiful landscape. And how many dead birds were there?
Or does the noise frighten them all away?
0
 PaulC
 March 19, 2011 9:44 pm
You are dead right Anthony maintinance is an issue!

http://www.caithnesswindfarms.co.uk/fullaccidents.pdf
GBees
 March 19, 2011 9:44 pm
“oil leaking from blade-pitch seals, oil leaking from gearboxes,”

hmmmm… aren’t the Greens wanting to shutdown our use of oil as well?
Bill Garote
 March 19, 2011 9:47 pm
I always gured the turbines near Palm Springs were just business write offs for the super rich. Fly
out and “Inspect your equipment” and then spend the rest of the time drinking and playing golf with
the other super rich.
Rascal
 March 19, 2011 9:51 pm
Noisy contraptions!
John F. Hultquist
 March 19, 2011 9:55 pm
Do you know the story for the last photo?

Locally our wind turbines are anchored to buried concrete masses. These are all relatively new. They
could not tip like this one. That one that is tipped over looks as though it is attached to a slab not
thicker than a driveway. Does it have a smaller deep-root that does not show in the photo? I’ve seen
shallow rooted trees tipped out of the ground when the ground is saturated and there is strong wind.
There is something wrong about the structure in that photo!
mike g
 March 19, 2011 10:00 pm
I imagine it’ll take subsidies to do maintenance on them. It’ll probably cost more money to maintain
them than they’ll earn in revenue.
Dave Wendt
 March 19, 2011 10:09 pm
And in the video, besides the ones that aren’t moving, I thought I spotted at least a couple that were
counter rotating, indicating that they were actually drawing power off the grid. From what I’ve seen
this type of failure is also fairly common.
Geoff Sherrington
g
  March 19, 2011 10:19 pm
Am I missing something? Is this before or after the windmills were hit by an earthquake/tsunami
sequence?
Before you answer smugly that windmills are on hills above tsunami levels, remember that the
transmission lines and access roads are often unprotected. Then there’s the off-shore wind farms ……
How many would have survived a Richter scale 9.0 plus a 7 metre high tsunami as in Japan last
week? My guess is, none.
Baa Humbug
 March 19, 2011 10:20 pm
The visual pollution is depressing.

Where are the good environmentalists when you need ’em?
p.s. Those huge concrete blocks? They will be there for ever, never to be dug up.
Charlie Foxtrot
 March 19, 2011 10:40 pm
High maintenance and the high employment that results is one of the “advantages” of wind power
(remember the promise of ve million green jobs, but then they never de ned what quali es as a
green job). One documentary I happened to see said that a crew of three was required for every 6
windmills. I suspect they will not age well, too many high stress moving parts. Changing an oil seal
on a blade must be a real trick. Has anyone seen an estimated useful life? I wonder if they pay off
their initial cost before they start slinging blades around the countryside. Also very hazardous for the
mechanics, I would think, given the heights and size of the parts.
On a trip from Boise to Portland, following I84 through the Columbia Gorge, one passes numerous
wind farms. I never counted, but there are perhaps a thousand mills within view from the highway.
Normally, the gorge is one of the windiest places on earth. Forty MPH continuous winds can be
encountered, and I have. But on a day last fall, there was no wind, and virtually none of the windmills
were (or is it was) turning. The trip through the gorge takes several hours, and the situation did not
change during that time. This might not be normal, but it does happen. Hot standby power will always
be needed, which negates much of the supposed advantages of the windmills. They also have issues
in ice storms and ice fog, or extreme wind, all requiring shutdown.
jorgekafkazar
 March 19, 2011 11:23 pm
Baa Humbug says: “p.s. Those huge concrete blocks? They will be there for ever, never to be dug up.”
What basis do you have for saying that? Windfarm leases call for removal of all equipment and
foundations and restoration to approximate original grade. But even if they’re not removed, this land
isn’t likely to be needed for much. It’s mostly desert, not suitable for farming, except sheep,
sagebrush, juniper bushes, rattlesnakes.
Here’s a wind map of California. The relevant location is slightly west of halfway between B-town and
Barstow, not far from my brother-in-law’s place. As you can see, that area was chosen wisely.
Unfortunately, the wind doesn’t always blow, and, when it does, the utilities don’t always need the
electricity!
Claude Harvey
 March 19, 2011 11:35 pm
 The best of them in the best locations seldom exceed 30% capacity factor. That means to get an
average of 30Kw (at best) out of the windmills you must install 100Kw machines. Then it gets worse:
IEEE gures on industry reported O&M costs show wind machines running horrendous expenses that
total approximately half of the average wholesale rate of electric power at the trading hubs. Those
transmissions and blade feathering mechanisms will really eat your lunch. Add it all up and you’ll nd
they’re economic dogs that live off taxpayer subsidies in the form of investment tax credits,
accelerated depreciation and depletion allowances (how can you deplete the wind?)
martin brumby
 March 19, 2011 11:43 pm
Di cult to maintain?
Unreliable?
Hazardous work?
Hmmmmmm
So how are we going to manage in the UK with the tens of thousands of turbines planned ‘offshore’,
up to 50 miles away from land, in the middle of the North Sea? At a knock down price of at least €150
Billion over the next 10 years.
That should present some interesting maintenance and repair challenges.
Meanwhile the 3000 turbines we already have produce less than 2% of our electricity averaged over
2010.
The people who promote BigWind (not least Buff Huhne and his predecessor Eddie Millipede) are
either breathtakingly incompetent (the greenies and politicians) or blatantly dishonest (the
companies who build the wretched things).
Mike McMillan
 March 19, 2011 11:44 pm
I ew over Altamont pass many times out of SFO back in the 90’s, and seldom saw more than a
fraction of the turbines turning.
dave Harrison
 March 19, 2011 11:47 pm
You don’t see that this all panned by the greens – to save birds of prey – that is one in four hawks
that are not killed!
John Q Public
 March 19, 2011 11:47 pm
If they made economic sense, you would think the maintenance work would be done. When the return
is < 0% they rust apart once the grant money stops.
P. Solar
 March 19, 2011 11:57 pm
Geoff Sherrington says:

>>
Then there’s the off-shore wind farms …… How many would have survived a Richter scale 9.0 plus a 7
metre high tsunami as in Japan last week? My guess is, none.
>>
There again probably no one would be stupid enough to build an off-shore wind farm in fault line

susceptible to have a mag 9 event. They save those sites for clusters of nuclear reactors. The other
difference worth if you want to make stupid comments is that if you have an oil leak on the gear box
of wind turbine , you don’t need to evacuate half a million people. Neither are “bone yards” of old
turbine blades going to be a major danger to all life-forms for the next few hundred , thousand years.
No Yucca mountains needed.
Neither is the pollution of broken turbines likely to cause problems like BP created in the Gulf of
Mexico.
More seriously though , this random, perhaps non representative report is not encouraging. Clearly
this is picking out worst cases to make the point. Pictures of well maintained sites would be boring.
Maybe a survey like surfacestations project would be interesting.
It’s noteworthy that one of the sites is run by Enron. What is their interest is wind? What’s their reason
for investing? Maybe a few photo ops to put on their PR literature, tax-credits, hopes of carbon
trading offsetting oil pollution. Whatever their nancial motives it is quite likely that producing
electricity was not their aim so maintenance at the site is not important.
This case alone seems to suggest badly structured subsidies are letting corporations cream of a nice
pro t without the need to actually produce any power.
But nuclear power is not pro table without subsidies either , it just makes a bigger mess when site
maintenance isn’t done or a generator gets ooded.
P. Solar
 March 20, 2011 12:04 am
There’s some turbines not far from here. I’ll pop out later and see how many are moving.
Brian Johnson uk
 March 20, 2011 12:06 am
Slightly off thread but did the Japanese Earthquake ‘kill’ any wind turbines [ I am assuming the
Japanese would have such devices?]
Jeremy
 March 20, 2011 12:18 am
The I-10 pass out of Southern California holds the rst large scale wind-farm project in the U.S. On
the east side you have Palm Springs, on the West, the 909 and greater Southern California. They’ve
*always* had maintenance problems. The maintenance issues are far worse there, since this entire
area houses something like 5-10 different windmill designs. It was a testing bed for windmill design.
This pass is windy 95% of the time, and the direction is nearly always West-to-East. However, you’ll
never see all of the blades spinning at once. If you’re lucky you’ll nd a bank on the eastern edges
that has a lot of them spinning.
This farm has been in operation since the early 90s, we knew then this idea was absurd. The greens
pushed it anyway.
Phillip Bratby
 March 20, 2011 12:23 am
John F. Hultquist says:

March 19, 2011 at 9:55 pm
The concrete foundations are just reinforced concrete blocks; they are not anchored to bedrock. They
cannot be inspected. They can rock due to prolonged stresses in all directions and the whole edi ce
can eventually topple over (see the Caithness information refernced by PaulC).

In the UK, part of the planning permission is that above-ground work must be removed after the life is
over, but the concrete is left in the ground.
kwik
 March 20, 2011 12:26 am
Why can’t we send in Greenpeace to x them ?

Haha!!
Oh, now I remember. They study soft sciences, like sociology and such things.
Cannot be used to x real problems in the real world.
MarkoL
 March 20, 2011 12:34 am
Every time I see any footage of any windfarm anywhere in the world, I can always count at least 10-15
windturbines standing still (roughly at least about 15%), so this does not surprise me one bit.
The greenies are very happy to report that the earthquake in Japan did not damage any of the
windturbines in Japan. Just Duckduckgo “windturbines earthquake japan”. The other story would be
how much energy those windturbines are actually generating compared to the “promised” levels.
David
 March 20, 2011 12:40 am
jorgekafkazar says:
March 19, 2011 at 11:23 pm
foundations and restoration to approximate original grade.
jorgekafkazar, I guess someone forgot to tell some of these places. At any rate, if the owners go
broke, so what. Law is not wealth, and one who is broke cannot fund removal.
Alberta Slim
 March 20, 2011 1:06 am
martin brumby says………

“The people who promote BigWind (not least Buff Huhne and his predecessor Eddie Millipede) are
companies who build the wretched things).”
So true. I nd it di cult to believe that the UK has a population that keeps voting in these people.
It appears that the new Gov’t is a CINO gov’t [conservative in name only]
Is there any hope for the UK?
Australia seems to be not too far behind.
David L
 March 20, 2011 1:08 am
GBees says:
March 19, 2011 at 9:44 pm
“oil leaking from blade-pitch seals, oil leaking from gearboxes,”
hmmmm… aren’t the Greens wanting to shutdown our use of oil as well?”

Don’t worry: it’s natural carbon neutral whale oil.
Perry
 March 20, 2011 1:14 am
Er, thanks for the video, perhaps? I now have to go and lie down until the ground stops spinning.
Having 20 security lines would not have been enough for me to climb out there as what guarantee do
I have that the railings would not pull out?
It’s too Tarpeian Rock for me.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarpeian_rock
P. Solar
 March 20, 2011 1:15 am
Does anyone know where there is some production data from Tehachapi or Horse Hallow wind
farms. All I can nd are “installed” power gures.
It would be interesting to see how much that plant was generating on the day Anthony passed
through.
John Kehr
 March 20, 2011 1:15 am
If the greenies manage to kill nuclear, fossil fuel and hydro (trust me, they are trying because of the
impact to sh reproduction) and we have to depend on wind and solar, then we will soon be back to a
pre-industrial society.
It makes me wonder if that is what they really want anyway.
Tregonsee
 March 20, 2011 1:19 am
I am a retired airline pilot. One of the things I found interesting was to look down at the places with
windmills and see how many were operating. The Palm Springs area, which is under one of the
normal arrival routes to LAX, was a good example where on a typical day, only a small percentage
would be moving even slowly. I visited a friend there, a retired EE, so the tour included the wind farms.
Sure enough, many of them were being repaired, or “feathered” awaiting repairs.
Bart
 March 20, 2011 1:24 am
Yep. Wind and solar both would require thousands upon thousands of units to have any hope of
making a signi cant dent in our energy appetite. It’d be a maintenance nightmare. Yet, the topic
seems never to be considered in all the pie-in-the-sky projections.
wayne Job
 March 20, 2011 1:27 am
 Small scale wind generators are ne, the American pioneer and inventor truely made excellent units.
Mr Jacobs I believe was the manufacturer, one was left unattended in Antarctica for some twenty
years with no problems. Perhaps these wind generators are made to a price and not a quality for all
the scam merchants looking for a government hand out. I do believe that I could design one that
would be mechanically reliable for a hundred years. To many ngers in pies I think.
AusieDan
 March 20, 2011 1:34 am
Hi there jorgekafkazar,
Do you understand the concept of return on investment?
Would you like to invest your superannuation money in a wind farm?
It probably is.
Brownedoff
 March 20, 2011 1:46 am
martin brumby says:

March 19, 2011 at 11:43 pm
“So how are we going to manage in the UK ………..”
Here is an interesting read:
http://www.londonarray.com/wp-content/uploads/First-foundation-installed-at-London-Array.pdf
The application for a permit was lodged on 3 June 2005, consent was given on 18 December 2006
and the rst foundation monopole and transition piece was installed at position C18 on Monday 7
March 2011.
Progress can be monitored weekly at:
http://www.londonarray.com/environment/shipping-navigation- shing/
They only way this can succeed is out of the wallet of the poor electricity bill payer.
So, 635MW installed by the end of 2012 and then the juice from this folly will cost £80/MWh
compared to about £12/MWh from a proper coal- red power station. (IIRC – can anybody give a link
to support these gures?)
Off-shore wind is obviously a very lucrative scam for lucky promotors as “Firms jump on UK offshore
wind bandwagon”, see:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/09/23/us-britain-offshorewind-idUSTRE68M10Z20100923
Trebles all round.
oldseadog
 March 20, 2011 1:55 am
GBees;
They’ll be using vegetable oil……….. .
Bryan A
 March 20, 2011 1:58 am
Many of the Non-spinning turbines aren’t necessarily non-operable. Like so many generation sites
throughout California, some of the capacity is held in reserve. Some of the Hydroelectric turbines at
Dam Powerhouses also sit idle during portions of the day. This is often the case because demand
levels don’t support 100% utilization of every source of generation. This also serves to prolong the
useful life of generators. The time to worry about unused generation capacity is on days that peak
demand warrants the possibility of rolling blackouts and generation capacity is only operating at 70%.
This would be a problem. But 60 or 70% or even 50% operating isn’t unheard of for most days.
0

Jack Hughes
 March 20, 2011 2:03 am
The UK prime minister’s father-in-law owns 8 windmills near Scunthorpe. Very rare to see all 8
turning.
Oatley
 March 20, 2011 2:05 am
I, too have driven through the pass above Palm Springs and have seen the numbers of idled blades.
From an electric industry perspective, here’s the other inconvenient truth. Capacity from a wind
turbine is heavily discounted by the local RTO, because the engineers KNOW that wind…well, it’s
poetically ckle. Also, that wind blows mostly at night….when electricity demand is at its lowest. And
what about the hottest peak day of the year? Yep, you got it, usually the wind ain’t blowing. There are
some very smart people in utility dispatch centers pulling their hair out these days trying to integrate
wind into the grid and are having a devil of a time. Cheers.
Smoking Frog
 March 20, 2011 2:38 am
Lots of people, including me, have seen non-operating wind turbines, and I’ll bet lots of them, like me,
foolishly thought they just happened to be seeing an unusual situation.
Gareth Phillips
 March 20, 2011 2:40 am
To be fair you would have to compare the percentage of wind turbines not working at any time, with
the amount of downtime or non-functioning of other energy resources. I suspect any energy
generating system is not operating at 100% at all times. Any one have any useful stats?
Jimbo
 March 20, 2011 2:50 am
Is the UK government also nally dealing with reality? Are we slowly seeing a return to sanity?
BBC – 18 March 2011


“UK solar panel subsidies slashed”
“The UK government has proposed cuts of up to 70% to the feed in tariff for large scale solar energy production.
The proposal would be implemented on the 1 August, reducing payments to farmers or owners of large
commercial buildings.
The industry has reacted with anger to the proposal.
And investors have warned that cutting the scheme just a year after it was created will deter further investment
in renewable energy.”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-12790613
Zorro
 March 20, 2011 2:58 am
 What many are not aware of is that to function modern turbines must have live current going to them,
making them useless in a blackout. Last year I drove through a huge wind farm in Southern Spain.
Approximately half the turbines were dead, even though there was a very useful breeze blowing. They
are next to useless as a power source. Lots of info here
http://palmerstonnorth.blogspot.com/2009_06_01_archive.html
EternalOptimist
 March 20, 2011 3:02 am
We did a road trip last september.

we ew into San diego from the UK then drove to alaska via yellowstone , so I was impressed by your
700 mile in one day stint Anthony.
We saw the beauty of your country, and some breathtaking panoramas. The one sight we will never
forget, with horror, was driving into SF past the total eyesore that you have shown above
it made my eyes bleed
EO
M White
 March 20, 2011 3:07 am
Irony – maintenance too dangerous when wind is blowing???
M White
 March 20, 2011 3:35 am
And if you think wind turbines are di cult and expensive to maintain.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy/8387558/Worlds-largest-tidal-turbine-project-in-Sound-of-
Islay.html
“World’s largest tidal turbine project in Sound of Islay”
Natsman
 March 20, 2011 3:38 am
And so the stumps of defunct windmills slowly disintegrate, are assimilated in the soil, buried, rotting,
and miliions of years later…
…we have COAL!!
Hurrah, dig it up, burn it, generate real electricity! Way to go!
SandyInDerby
 March 20, 2011 3:39 am
martin brumby says:

March 19, 2011 at 11:43 pm
Agree 100%
BuckeyeBob
 March 20, 2011 3:46 am
 Another unmentioned unintended consequence of wind mills is the slaughter of birds ying into the
blades. In Palm Springs I read once that 100 golden eagles are killed yearly. And the windmill farms in
northern Germany on the Baltic kill 100’s of thousands of migrating birds every year. Northern Indiana
is another area that has a blight of these monstrosities. It all comes back to what happens when the
wind doesn’t blow and the Sun doesn’t shine. Alternative energy sources have a very limited use but
cannot be used to power a modern tecnological society.
fenbeagle
 March 20, 2011 3:49 am
Well I’m sure we’ll all learn to love them anyway, given time. We all have to do our bit, to save the
planet, after all. (Think of the the children.)
http://fenbeagleblog.wordpress.com/
Scottish Sceptic
 March 20, 2011 3:56 am
Anthony, you hit the nail on the head when you mentioned the cost of maintaining these windmills. Its
a simple fact that the Us & UK failed to get an early lead in this “industry” because they totally
misunderstood the criticality of reliability and maintenance … or perhaps more apt, the way
“development” in the UK and US got funded took no account of reliability seeing these as
“technology” not engineering.
In contrast the successful countries adopted (sometimes by mistake) funding regimes that
concentrated on reliability … mainly by having real customers and not idiots in governments handing
out grants for photo opportunities for government ministers.
The real dividing line between success and failure in this market was the terminiology.
Successful countries call them “windmill”, “vindmolle”
Pathetic failures like the US and UK call them “wind turbines”.
I think the difference is that those that call them windmills see them as part of a long development of
utilising the wind for mundane tasks. Those that call them “windturbines” see them as some new
wonder miracle technology to “save the planet” much in the same way nuclear was sold to the same
gullible electorates.
Lex
 March 20, 2011 4:03 am
I am glad I am living in the Netherlands. We tear une cient windmill parks down (Irene Vorrink
Windmill park, near Lelystad, built 1997) even when the amortisation period is 20 years.
Then we erect new windmills, hoping these will be more e cient.
Dave Springer
 March 20, 2011 4:05 am
The problem is mostly a lack of quali ed maintenance technicians and scheduling of cranes required
for service.
You don’t keep these things spinning when a maintenance interval elapses. You stop it and wait until
the maintenance can be performed because repair is hideously expensive especially the gearbox
which is about 20% of the cost of the whole enchilada. So you don’t keep them spinning when they’re
due for periodic maintenance.
I don’t know about California but in Texas (which has 3x more wind power than any other state) wind
power is not heavily subsidized and power from them is sold on the open market by bid/ask. Wind
power is considerably more expensive than natural gas and is on a par with conventional coal
(without subsidy) and somewhat less expensive than nuclear. However because wind is ckle there’s

often not a good match between supply & demand. No more than 30% of potential capacity is
actually sold. So having 20% of the turbines down for periodic maintenance at any one time is not
much of a problem and isn’t out-of-line compared with other types of electrical generation – less than
20% downtime is excellent for a nuclear reactor.
kcrucible
 March 20, 2011 4:10 am
foundations and restoration to approximate original grade
Probably the idea that these windfarm companies aren’t going to be around long enough for the
windfarms to merely expire their leases. The companies are likely to be long gone and bankrupt.
Bankrupt companies don’t tend to spend money on these obligations… creditors rst.
etudiant
 March 20, 2011 4:24 am
The only reliable permanently spinning machinery are the turbines in hydro generators.
They can work because they run at near constant speed and are very robustly built.
Wind turbines have to be built very light and the load uctuates constantly, always stressing the
machinery. Time to failure is correspondingly low. That should have been factored into the cost
estimates, but may have been neglected.
The gap in performance has to be made up by subsidy. When that declines, the economics suffer.
This is a common problem with “green” power, it is not close to viable at prevailing prices. What is
disappointing is that the gap does not seem to be narrowing very much.
fenbeagle
 March 20, 2011 4:25 am
Scottish Sceptic
I think those that call them Wind Mills, are hopelessly confused about what a mill does. And those
that call them wind turbines, are hopeless optimists.
fenbeagle
 March 20, 2011 4:29 am
….and those that call them wind ‘farms’ don’t live in the countryside and know what a farm is, or are
deliberately trying to ‘sell’ the idea, that it’s ok to industrialize all our countryside.
Bill Gannon
 March 20, 2011 4:30 am
John Kehr says, If the greenies manage to kill nuclear, fossil fuel and hydro (trust me, they are trying
because of the impact to sh reproduction) and we have to depend on wind and solar, then we will
soon be back to a pre-industrial society. BINGO. Give the man a cigar, that’s what the green religion
fruit cakes want, including their current dictator Obama.
Claude Harvey
 March 20, 2011 4:40 am


Re: Gareth Phillips says:
March 20, 2011 at 2:40 am
To be fair you would have to compare the percentage of wind turbines not working at any time, with
the amount of downtime or non-functioning of other energy resources. I suspect any energy
generating system is not operating at 100% at all times. Any one have any useful stats?
You are correct. All utilities must “chase the load” in a synchronous electric power system. Typically
in the U.S., the “base load” is maintained by the most thermally e cient coal- red steamers, nukes
and large scale combined-cycle-natural-gas-turbines running at out 24/7. Then the increases or
decreases in demand are “chased” up and down with easily throttled hydro, some pumped storage,
less e cient gas peaking turbines, some oil red units and scheduled power exchanges with
neighboring utilities that have different demand pro les.
Unfortunately for the utilities and rate payers in the U.S., utilities are required to accept whatever
output wind and solar can generate whenever they can generate it (except during system
emergencies). That randomness of renewable power output, especially with wind, actually
compounds problems with the delicate dance utilities must perform each day to match generation
with load. Since wind and solar are effectively “base loaded” from a utility perspective, their capacity
factors should appropriately be compared with other base load plants for purposes of establishing
economic value. That yields less than 30% for for the best wind farms compared with north of 85%
(all in, including refueling and other maintenance downtime) for coal and nuclear. Base loaded
combined-cycle-gas-turbine plants typically run well north of 90% capacity factors (all in).
John Droz, jr.
 March 20, 2011 4:40 am
The real concern about wind energy is its Capacity Value (not Capacity Factor).
The CV of wind is well less than 10%. The CV of nuclear (for comparson) is about 99%.
The soundbite: “Wind energy is a high-cost low-bene t solution.”
See EnergyPresentation.Info for details.
kuhnkat
 March 20, 2011 5:08 am
Dave Springer,
rst, Texas wind is considered to be good for only about 9% of its rated output meaning that in 2007
it only produced 1% of Texas peak power needs.
http://www.masterresource.org/2009/08/texas-wind-power-the-numbers-versus-the-hype-despite-
mandates-1-2-share-by-2014/
As far as your statement that Texas wind does not get substantial subsidy, I must assume that you
have been indulging in some type of product that produces non-rational cognition:
http://www.masterresource.org/2009/08/texas-wind-power-the-numbers-versus-the-hype-despite-
mandates-1-2-share-by-2014/
More on Federal subsidies/credits/handouts:
http://www.dsireusa.org/incentives/incentive.cfm?Incentive_Code=US13F
Basically wind, even in Texas, is heavily subsidized, almost useless and is probably having the exact
effect the envirowhackjobs desire.
BlondieBC
 March 20, 2011 5:09 am
Twenty-Five percent of the turbines being down at any given times seems to be on the low-end of the
expected range. What percentage of nuclear plants, ghter aircraft, or merchant ships are at sea at
any given time?
The expectation that wind turbines would work almost all the time is more a result of marketing

campaign and lobbyist, than what any rational engineer or mechanic would tell you.
richard verney
 March 20, 2011 5:17 am
Anthony,
I am glad that you posted pictures of the derelict and decaying windmills since this is the future of
wind energy. Unfortunately, in 2o to 30 years much of the most beautiful landscape will be blighted by
these ugly scrap yards.
Windmills are not being erected to reduce CO2 emissions. To date, not a single conventional power
station has been closed as a result of all the windfarm built. Windfarms are not being set up because
they produce dependable and reliable energy. We know that they cannot produce reliable energy due
to the intermitent nature of wind.
Windmills are not being erected because they produce cheap energy. The cost of energy production
is many tomes that of coal, gas or nuclear.
Windfarms only exist because of subsidies. Once these run out, windfarms will fall into decay and no
one will have the money to de-commission them.
Gradually, due to the energy policy being adopted by western developed nations, their energy prices
are soaring in comparison to the developing nations such as china, india and latin america. The
effect of this is to make western industry increasing uncompetitive and this will mean losing market
share and increasing de cits on the balance of trade (imports/exports). Gradually western countries
will become poorer.
The effect of this is that when it becomes apparent that either (i) CO2 does not drive
temperatures/climate so there is no need to drastically reduce/restrict CO2 emissions, or (ii) that
these windfarms have no practical effect on reducing CO2 emissions, or (iii) that renewable energy is
so unreliable that it leads to rolling blackouts and needs to be replaced with something more reliable,
Governments will inevitable cut back on the subsidies. Energy rms will no longer have spare cash to
decommision these beasts and since they do not provide chaep energy and maintenance costs are
high, there will be no commercial interest in keeping them in good repair. Accordingly, unless the
Government actually pays for the decommissiing (by which I mean raises tax from its citizens to pay
this cost), the country side will be littered with decaying windmills.
I anticipate that it may be somewhat ironic that the citizen will have been taxed to erect these
unnecessary and wasteful structures, and then they will be taxed again to remove them once the
Government can no longer cover up what a folly this venture has become.
the_Butcher
 March 20, 2011 5:26 am
All that metal & plastic being wasted…
old44
 March 20, 2011 5:33 am
AusieDan says:
March 20, 2011 at 1:34 am
Hi there jorgekafkazar,
Do you understand the concept of return on investment?
Would you like to invest your superannuation money in a wind farm?
It probably is.
The Australian Union run superannuation funds have sizeable investments in “renewable energy”
Juliar is looking after them.
 Marion
 March 20, 2011 5:48 am
martin brumby says:

March 19, 2011 at 11:43 pm
“The people who promote BigWind (not least Buff Huhne and his predecessor Eddie Millipede) are
companies who build the wretched things)”.
Absolutely agree but I’d include politicians in the latter description as well as the former.
First Minister Alex Salmond has increased Scotland’s target from 50% (because “urgent action is
needed to cut emissions which cause climate change”) to 80% of energy from renewables by 2020
(Something I reckon he can only achieve by wrecking our economy). Yet Alex Salmond was also the
guy who commented when his Minister for Transport and Climate Change resigned
“At the end of the day, you know, no man can tether time nor tide, and certainly you can’t control the
elements. I am very sad that a decent man, a competent minister has been forced to resignation
because of the extremities of the climate”!
http://omniclimate.wordpress.com/2010/12/13/climate-change-minister-resigns-because-of-the-
extremities-of-the-climate/
The target for renewables was increased no doubt on the basis of the many thousands of wind
turbines that are planned for ‘offshore’ as well as onshore development although it seems that
‘offshore’ can be as close as 4km from the coastline. (Apparently ‘offshore’ doesn’t operate under the
same planning restrictions as onshore.)
The Scottish Environmental Assessment of the Draft Plan for Offshore Wind Farms has concluded
“the Draft Plan would have major bene cial impacts on climatic factors as a result of the role of
operational wind farms in the long term in reducing greenhouse gas emissions” .
http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2011/03/17170331/7
(Page 9)
Needless to say they don’t inform us as to how they arrive at this conclusion other than to use such
meaningless terms as “maximising the contribution” and “expected to generate a signi cant
amount”. There is a total lack of any real analysis.
Nor do I recognise their estimate of negative responses to the proposals as over third to a half – of
the many responses I viewed on line my estimate would be closer to 95%.
With the enthusiasm for turbines declining somewhat elsewhere in Europe it seems that Salmond is
desperately trying to almost singlehandedly achieve the EU target for them of 20% energy from
Renewables by 2020.
I can only assume that by wrecking our economy, countryside and coastline in such a manner for no
real gain our senior politicians are simply pursuing ambitions to secure a place on the EU/UN political
gravy train.
John S
 March 20, 2011 6:06 am
One day windmill designers will wise up and put the gearbox, generator, and voltage step-up
equipment on the ground, and use a 200′ drive shaft from the windmill to the ground.
I know the di culties of delivering that much torque through 200′ of drive shaft, but in the long run it
may be much cheaper when maintenance is taken into consideration.
DirkH
 March 20, 2011 6:06 am
P. Solar says:
March 19, 2011 at 11:57 pm
“There again probably no one would be stupid enough to build an off-shore wind farm in fault line
susceptible to have a mag 9 event. They save those sites for clusters of nuclear reactors. The other
difference worth if you want to make stupid comments is that if you have an oil leak on the gear box
of wind turbine , you don’t need to evacuate half a million people. ”
Well, how many people do you have to evacuate because of wind farms. Let’s say we want to produce

the output of Fukushima, all operational, that’s 5GW, with an onshore wind farm made of wind
turbines rated at 2 MW peak capacity, running at 20% load factor. Remember that most of the time
they’ll be far below that average and some of the time up to 5 times higher than that average. So, if
the average would do we would get along with 12,500 of these wind turbines, but it won’t; so we’ll
double that number to 25,000 and hope we don’t get a long lull.
We can place about 200 of these on 80 km^2
( http://www.thebioenergysite.com/news/5151/capacity-expanded-at-whitelee-wind-farm ).
25,000 of them will thus take 10,000 km^2. Considering an average population density of 200/km^2
(That’s a typical European, or US East coast density), we will have to evacuate – or relocate – only 2
million people.
And we’ll get an energy supply that still doesn’t work all of the time.
DirkH
 March 20, 2011 6:11 am
Claude Harvey says:

March 20, 2011 at 4:40 am
“You are correct. All utilities must “chase the load” in a synchronous electric power system. ”
In the EUSSR, the load chases you!
Dr. Coyote
 March 20, 2011 6:12 am
Ask any civil engineer: politicians love to cut ribbons in front of new bridges, but are loathe to allocate
money for long-term maintenance. Same principle applies here.
Another Qlder
 March 20, 2011 6:15 am
An interesting story here about REE’s from China that is used in parts of wind turbines.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-1350811/In-China-true-cost-Britains-clean-green-
wind-power-experiment-Pollution-disastrous-scale.html
John K. Sutherland
 March 20, 2011 6:18 am
One should collect all of the dead bodies of birds from around these sites and send them to
Greenpeace, or just leave them inside the doors of their o ces, in their front yards, or drop them off
on their protest vessels. Almost as good as sh left on the engine block of a car for a few days!
red432
 March 20, 2011 6:33 am
You miss the signi cance of the structures as religious symbols. They should make them of more
durable materials, like concrete, so they will endure like the pyramids of
Egypt or the great cruci xes of South America.
Clive
 March 20, 2011 6:36 am


There are a few folks from Alberta here where turbines are a growing cancerous blight. If you want to
check the output of our system you can do so at the AESO site. The output is updated every one or
two minutes. http://ets.aeso.ca/
On the upper left side, select “Current” and then select “Current Supply & Demand” and “Go”. As I
write, wind projects are producing 10 MW out of a total wind capacity of 777 MW. The highest I have
seen is ~600MW…but that is rare.
AESO claims the wind projects work at 30 to 35 percent of capacity. Bah!
PuterMan
 March 20, 2011 6:44 am
P.Solar said:>>There again probably no one would be stupid enough to build an off-shore wind farm in
fault line susceptible to have a mag 9 event. They save those sites for clusters of nuclear reactors.<<
I would just like to observe that whilst I agree that building a bunch of nukes right by a subduction
zone is somewhat crazy the "men in white coats that make guesses" considered that the particular
area was not likely to have an earthquake of that magnitude due to the known length of the fault.
On the assumption that the owners of the plants took advice form these scientists then I believe that
like with so many other trouble we have the blame lies at the feet of the advice given. (Along probably
with greed over subsidies – if there were any)
Pamela Gray
 March 20, 2011 6:58 am
Publicly funded jobs are never worth an investment of my taxes, short term or long term. Green jobs
are a prime example of government sponsored boondoggles. So why do we continue, liberals and
conservatives alike, vote folks in who promise us a better future? Bush started the bailout crap.
Obama extended it into subsidies and stimulus funds.
I will vote for whoever has the guts to tell me, “If you want a better future, it is up to you.” I would love
that ticket. Can you imagine a campaign around these planks, “I promise to go to Washington to NOT
make a better future. I promise to NOT change one damn thing just so you can pocket stimulus
dollars. I promise to put a mirror in your face whenever you come complaining about a lack of a job.
And just to show you I mean business, I promise to remove all federal government “programs”,
guaranteed loans, restrictions and subsidies related to you developing an industry that creates jobs.
And I promise you I will not fund one damned government job, including my own, unless it is with your
referendum approval.”
In this era of budget woes and a tanked economy, I think it appropriate to declare a national
emergency in reverse. Not one with additional restrictions (as is the usual case of national
emergencies) but one where the normal restrictions of creating jobs are lifted.
fenbeagle
 March 20, 2011 6:59 am
red432
…..’They should endure, like the pyramids’……….It’s ok red, the foundations probably will. Particularly
when they are built on 30 meter deep piles, 8 to a turbine, as proposed here on the Lincolnshire Fens.
mrpkw
 March 20, 2011 7:18 am
Does it matter which direction these spin? I thought I saw one spinning “backwards”.
0
 jrwakefield
 March 20, 2011 7:18 am
Yet in Ontario we push ahead with thousands of wind turbines. This is what we will look like in 10-15
years. Total waste of money, energy and materials for no gain.
Hans Kelp
 March 20, 2011 7:24 am
After seeing such horrible things going on with the windmills, how can anyone recommend bying and
running such miserable crap?! You just hit it big again Anthony Watts. Thank you, I´ll send this to my
friends and foes and maybe there will be some hope og changing some thoughts about windparks…
sunsettommy
 March 20, 2011 7:36 am
I have seen the Wildhorse wind farm several times a year when I visit my parents in Ellensburg.I drive
right by them on the way up the long hill from Vantage Wa.
There is also another wind farm just east of Ellensburg as well.I was there just 3 months ago.It is very
new looking and big!
There is also another wind farm in the hills,to the south of Ellensburg.
This region is just down slope from the cascade range,therefore gets a reliable regular wind
rose,most of the year.
But the maintenance is going to be a lot of work,due to sheer number they have standing.
There is also a wind farm just south of town of Kennewick.They move all the time since the wind rose
there is very reliable.
I have no choice but see these landscape blights everyday.
All these mill farms combined still does not produce the amount of power production of the single N2
reactor at Hanford Wa. It produces enough power to power a city the size of Seattle.In a small area of
land.
Doug S
 March 20, 2011 7:40 am
Bryan A says:
March 20, 2011 at 1:58 am
“Many of the Non-spinning turbines aren’t necessarily non-operable. Like so many generation sites
throughout California, some of the capacity is held in reserve.”
Interesting point Brian but this seems like a problem in coordination between the different generation
plants on the grid. For example, I would think that if wind could contribute more power to the grid
then it should be utilized and Nat gas red, hydro and other generating facilities should be scaled
back. Since wind is currently a “use it or loose it” capacity I would think that wind should be operated
at 100% output at all times. I bet the e ciency gures that wind advocates use to “sell” wind power
don’t re ect the real world realities of grid management and I bet the down time for maintenance on
turbines is grossly understated.
John Brookes
 March 20, 2011 7:44 am
Hmmm. All those dead birds. What a shame that there aren’t any pictures of piles of dead birds in
this post….
We had piles of dead birds near Esperance in Western Australia recently – thousands of them. Turns
out that they died because of lead dust, coming from trainloads of lead headed for Esperance to be

shipped overseas.
But its not as sexy to be killed by lead dust as it is to be killed by a wind turbine, is it?
Craig Loehle
 March 20, 2011 7:46 am
I am betting there is a subsidy for buying/installing them, but no such subsidy for xing them.
Priceless.
Chris D.
 March 20, 2011 7:48 am
Wow. There is a whole numbered series of vids on YouTube titled “Life With Industrial Wind Turbines
in Wisconsin” that is a fascinating watch. The noise is an obvious issue, but I had never considered
that the light icker would be.
This is the rst one:
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7lEwOyyaURs&w=640&h=390%5D
Olen
 March 20, 2011 8:03 am
Given enough time a monkey at a typewriter will write the great novel and environmentalists will
come up with a good idea.
Kevin
 March 20, 2011 8:09 am
Eh. Normally I’m in complete agreement with WUWT. But that video showed a surprising amount of
windmills spinning, imo. I would have expected ~20% to be o ine at any given time. It was much less
than that.
REPLY: Look carefully at the last couple of seconds in the video. – Anthony
John Norris
 March 20, 2011 8:26 am
Fun footage of a wind turbine failure:

http://www.youtube.com/user/dborup#p/u/8/CqEccgR0q-o
juanslayton
 March 20, 2011 8:44 am
jorgekafkazar: Unfortunately, the wind doesn’t always blow, and, when it does, the utilities don’t always
need the electricity!
Wind generation is supplemental power, intended to displace conventional sources. The only
circumstances under which the utilities don’t need the electricity is when all conventional power has
already been displaced. Has this ever happened?
 John F. Hultquist
 March 20, 2011 8:55 am
Phillip Bratby says:

March 20, 2011 at 12:23 am
~~~~~ John F. Hultquist says:
~~~~~ March 19, 2011 at 9:55 pm
Here is the project (about 12 miles east of me) and from the link provided are the characteristics of
the foundations.
“The Wild Horse Wind and Solar Facility, located in Central Washington, is Puget Sound Energy’s
second wind-powered electric generation facility. It is also the utility’s largest wind farm with 149
turbines.
Wholly owned by PSE, Wild Horse has the capacity to generate up to 273 megawatts (MW) of
electricity. Construction began in October 2005, and was completed in December 2006, with a 22-
turbine, 44 MW expansion completed in 2009.”
http://www.pse.com/energyEnvironment/energysupply/pages/EnergySupply_ElectricityWind.aspx?
tab=3&chapter=5
Each tower foundation reaches a minimum depth of 25 ft and a maximum of 32 ft depending on
bedrock depth and takes an average of 100 to 260 cubic yards of concrete.
Each foundation requires 120 anchor bolts that span from the surface of the ground to the bottom of
the foundation. A single 28 ft anchor bolt weighs approximately 150 lbs.
kellys_eye
 March 20, 2011 9:12 am
I suspect a worldwide survey of all wind farms would produce some interesting statistics –
especially regarding ine ciency – but it beggars belief that anyone repsonsible for the creation of
such farms would knowingly proceed with historical and technical facts at hand.
The results of such a survey should be made compulsory reading material for anyone (especially
politicians) who have any responsibility to the public.
Zero subsidy is the only way forward – any workable system should be self- nancing else shown to
be the folly that it really is.
DirkH
 March 20, 2011 9:13 am
juanslayton says:
March 20, 2011 at 8:44 am
“Wind generation is supplemental power, intended to displace conventional sources. The only
circumstances under which the utilities don’t need the electricity is when all conventional power has
already been displaced. Has this ever happened?”
Sort of. In Germany, during times of low demand and high wind power production, the prize at the
energy exchange goes negative, and owners of pumped storage are in that situation paid for taking
the energy. This does happen. Conventional power plants will in that situation try to feed in as little as
they can, as they will get a negative prize for their energy. Wind power producers are guaranteed to
get the feed in tariff no matter what the current bulk prize for electricity at the exchange is so they
don’t have to care. They are Alinsky Machines (in that they create and exploit a crisis).
DirkH
 March 20, 2011 9:19 am
Furthermore, under the German system, the more the wind power producers can increase the power
crisis, the more they pro t relative to the conventional power sources – the more often they manage
to push prizes into negative territory, the worse the economics of conventional power sources must
get; and thus, wind turbines function as a parasite of the system. At a certain point, the parasitic load
will destroy the system; we will see that in a nation-wide blackout.


The grid managers try to prevent this by e-mailing and faxing the wind power producers when such a
crisis arrives; and for now, enough of them voluntarily throttle their production to prevent a grid
failure. So the parasites are sane enough not to kill their host for now.
Jim K
 March 20, 2011 9:22 am
No one commented on the oil in the dead fans. Each one has about 250 gallons of gear oil, hydraulic
oil, brake oil and grease. Even small one have 90 gallon in just the gear box. Some farms have 10-
15,000 gallons for maintainance.
Roguewave
 March 20, 2011 9:36 am
It could be worse than mere inoperable Wind Turbines –
Stephen Rasey
 March 20, 2011 9:52 am
On August 16, 2010, between 3pm and 4pm, Texas had record electrical usage.
Texas has the largest collection of wind power installed of any state.
Yet Wind Power contributed only 1% of total supply.
For the third time this month, Texas’ main grid operator says the state hit a power usage record as high
temperatures led to 64,805 megawatts of power usage between 3 p.m. and 4 p.m.
….
Wind output averaged approximately 680 MW during the peak hour – or 1 percent of the total load.
ERCOT currently has 9,317 MW of installed wind capacity, the highest of any state in the country.
From: http://www.ercot.com/news/press_releases/2010/nr-08-16-10
http://energyandenvironmentblog.dallasnews.com/archives/2010/08/texas-broke-electricity-
demand.html
Part of that wind farm is visible in the 40 mi stretch on I-20 between Sweetwater and Abiline, TX.
Miles and Miles of them. Thousands. They Yielding only 7% of installed wind capacity. Only 1 % of
total load.
http://www.panoramio.com/photo/394389
Jason Bair
 March 20, 2011 9:53 am
Why maintain them when you can just build more with gov’t subsidies?
0
 ron from Texas

 March 20, 2011 9:57 am
Believe it or not, I am an electrician. I have operated a bucket truck to x pole lights up to 60 feet. And
I have had to free-climb a 90 foot stadium pole light (without the proper equipment) to work on those
lights. But at least I didn’t have to worry about a feather brake failing. It takes a special bucket truck
to maintain the highlines around here averaging about 100 feet to 120 feet. And it takes a special
breed of daredevil to handle that kind of height. I’ev known guys who are shaky on anything taller than
an 8 foot ladder. The point is, there are a few guys that can work that high. And they don’t work for
free. The safety considerations are different, too. Climbing a stadium pole light with pegs no wider
than your shoes (that’s not an exaggeration) requires a mountain climbing rig on a zip-line with an
ascender clip made for metal cable. (one way clip.)
It’s not for everyone. When I was on top of the stadium light, my helper tried to climb up there to help
me. Well. those poles sway (they have to.) He got up about halfway and I could hear him. “Oh, hell
no!” I knew what was happening, as I have been there, myself. I told him to immediately climb back
down while he still could. It was July in Texas, at about 100 F. Sweating profusely, he could slip and
fall. Or, lock up entirely and not be able to let go. And we would have had to call the re department to
rescue him. And then get me off the pole.
In addition, is the logistical problem of getting materials up, and then down, such structures. Have
you ever been in even a 60′ bucket truck as a storm system is approaching and the gust front kicks
up? How do you get down from a wind turbine that is twice the height. Who’s going to pay for the
increased insurance for this line of work?
Our problem, too, is that we have inadquate storage of electricity. A superbattery would solve the
problem. But that would involve harvesting other items from the environment, which the greenies
wouldn’t like, even though it would result in decreased power generation as we get better at storing
power.
So, even though I am an electrician and have worked some of the lower heights adequately, I would
look at those turbines and ask, “What part of “Hell, no” do you not understand?” It’s one thing to
create that “green” job. It’s another thing to nd someone who can mentally handle it. I’ve been in a
bucket truck when one of the outriggers, re-settled, sending me bouncing a few feet up and down. At
120 feet, that would be disastrous and more than likely, fatal.
climatebeagle
 March 20, 2011 10:06 am
When I rst moved to the SF Bay Area in 87/88 the Altamont Pass Wind Farm was an impressive site.
Now, it has a run down abandoned look with many of the windmills not turning. I nd it a depressing
sight.
PaulH
 March 20, 2011 10:08 am
The good folks over at The Resilient Earth blog had an article about similar wind turbine maintenance
issues (and other cost overruns):
http://theresilientearth.com/?q=content/dying-breeze
Paul C
 March 20, 2011 10:11 am
From within the previously posted document

http://www.caithnesswindfarms.co.uk/fullaccidents.pdf
This is a large document,but mcst of your questions are answered within.
In regards to delivering carcass’s to Green Peace……I’m in…when should we start.
There are many more examples.
Moderator shorten as you see t.
“Canadian wind turbine kills 10 birds and


bats a day”. The rst study of the 86 wind
turbines found they killed 45 birds and 45
bats over a two-month period (May-June
2009). A second report (covering July-
December 2009) documented 602 bird and
1,270 bat fatalities, or about three bird kills
and seven bat kills a day. A third study (of
the farm’s rst eight months of operation)
uncovered 1,962 bird and bat deaths, for a
daily average of eight a day. Thirty-three
different bird species were included in the
fatality report.
A recent study in Klickitat County
Waindicates 6,500 birds and 3,000 bats are
killed annually in the two states – although
the number of actual deaths may be much
higher as reported gures are based on
number of carcases found and reported.
“Portland school turns off wind turbine to
halt seabird slaughter”. A £20,000 6kW
wind turbine has been turned off after taking
the lives of at least 14 birds in six months.
The manufacturer stated one fatality per
year. Pupils reported to be upset when the
birds were killed at lunchtimes and
playtimes.
“Wind farm kills Taiwanese goats”. BBC
article reports over 400 goats have died
since 8 wind turbines were installed close to
their grazings. The report suggests that
they died of exhaustion from sleep
deprivation caused by turbine noise.
Wind Turbines to blame for bat deaths :
study” Sudden air pressure changes around
wind turbines is likely behind the large
numbers of migratory bats found dead in
southern Alberta, according to a new
University of Calgary study. The two-year
study found 90 per cent of the studied bats
found dead below turbines near Pincher
Creek suffered severe injuries to their
respiratory systems consistent with a
sudden drop in air pressure that occurs near
the turbine blades.
“Judith Gap Wind Farm taking toll on bats,
birds” An estimated 1,200 bats, most of
them probably just passing through
Montana, were killed after striking wind
turbines at the Judith Gap Wind Farm
between July 2006 and May 2007,
according to a post-construction bird and
bat survey. The number surprised
Invenergy, which owns the farm, as well as
government and private wildlife experts. “It’s
killing 1,200 bats a year and that’s a lot
more than anybody anticipated,” said Janet
Ellis of Montana Audubon, a bird
conservation group. …The study estimates
that 406 birds, or 4.52 birds per turbine,
were killed during the study period.


“Windmills increase raptor deaths; Eagles,
owls, migratory songbirds caught in blades”
Long before wind turbines sprouted on
Altamont Pass, it was home to the highest
density of golden eagles in the world and
their major breeding area in the United
States. Almost as soon as the rst turbine
started rotating, the bird carcasses started
piling up: Golden eagles, burrowing owls,
red-tailed hawks, other raptors, western
meadowlarks and migrating songbirds. …On
Feb. 12, an interim report on raptor mortality
during 2005-2007 was released. Instead of
a reduction in raptor mortality, the study
found deaths had risen except for that
among golden eagles, which had fallen to
the sustainable level of 49 deaths per year.
Burrowing owl mortality suffered the
greatest increase – more than 300 percent –
and the overall raptor deaths almost
doubled.
“Green Power Is Black Hole For Rare
Eagles”. Australia’s biggest wind farm in
north-west Tasmania has become a “black
hole” for endangered wedge-tailed eagles.
The 62-tower Woolnorth farm has killed up
to 18 of the island’s endangered subspecies
of the wedge-tail in its giant rotor blades.
Despite their acute vision, the eagles are
failing to pick out turbine blades with tips
that can rotate at 300 kmh, according to Eric
Woehler, chairman of Birds Tasmania.
“Eagles evolved in a landscape without wind
farms,” Dr Woehler said. “They just don’t
see the blades. The researchers there are
nding that they are dying not only in the
downsweep, but in the upsweep of the
blades
A study of wind farms in West Virginia and
Pennsylvania estimates as many as 2,600
bats were killed by the whirling blades
during a six-week period during 2004.
Researchers estimate that between 13-
hundred and nearly two-thousand bats were
actually killed in that period at the
Mountaineer Wind Energy site in Tucker
County. The study estimates another 400 to
600 were killed at the Meyersdale Wind
Energy Center in Pennsylvania. The site has
20 wind towers. Between August First and
September 13th, 2004, researchers with the
Bats and Wind Energy Cooperative found
765 dead bats on the ground at the
Mountaineer site, which has 44 wind towers.
P Gosselin
 March 20, 2011 10:12 am
 I’d imaginr that maintenance personnel don’t work for cheap, nor should they. It’s dangerous hard
work. I often wonder about the operating lifetime. A conventional nuclear or coal power plant can
easily have a lifetime of 40+ years. I think wind generators will have to be replaced probably 2 or 3
times in that period = $$$$$ and no cents (sense).
P Gosselin
 March 20, 2011 10:17 am
Ron from Tex

And they are getting even bigger. In Europe the offshore ones are up to 500 feet tall. And the North
Sea is no friendly place either.
Gherkin
 March 20, 2011 10:31 am
I’ve personally seen that windfarm in Hawaii that you have pictured. It was my rst exposure to an
actual windfarm (I live in Southeastern US, not many around here). I was shocked to see it almost
completely inoperable in the face of those tradewinds. I gure if they can’t make it pro table there,
where the wind is powerful and constant, and on an island where -everything- is more expensive than
the mainland, it won’t work anywhere.
RockyRoad
 March 20, 2011 10:36 am
I predict within 5 years, there will be a world-wide effort to remove all those noisy, bird-killing
monstrosities they call wind turbines. Cold fusion will have made them obsolete for the next million
years–or more.
I love progress, especially when it cleans up the environment.
John from CA
 March 20, 2011 10:43 am
Great video Anthony,

I counted 14 stalled windmills from your video. 14 may not seem like a lot from the ugly and noisy
landscape killer but it begs a few questions.
• what is the perceived ROEI for each installation
• what is the true cost of each installation
• what is the expected lifespan
• were the stalled windmills in an intended mode and if so how frequently are they taken o ine
• given 7+ years of operation, how does the ROEI compare to other “green” approaches like
geothermal in CA
I ran across a really sad statement on CNBC last Friday. Apparently, there isn’t any Sillicon (chips)
being produced from Sillicon Valley because State of California politics are so foolish that they’ve
driven every company to other States and other countries.
The tragic windmill farms appear to be yet another obvious example of the tragedy in Sacramento.
Just how bad do you think it’ll get before California taxpayers wake up?
Robert M. Marshall
 March 20, 2011 11:00 am
 I live in Washington and frequently, purposely drive the Columbia Gorge just to have my breath taken
away with the magni cent views in every direction. Now, the most beautiful basalt cliffs and hilly
elds with lava jutting through the grasses are strewn with hidious new bright white windmills by the
hundreds if not thousands. Evening drives that once showed off the night sky now glitters with the
ashing “enviro-wacko” red light district. The pastures, hillsides and ridges are scarred with access
roads and new distribution towers.
at this rate of development, we’ll soon see Mt. Hood, Mt. Rainier, Mt. Adams and what’sleft of Mt.St.
Helens draped in these eyesores. Nothing is sacred.
Environmentalists decry the dams that have, in some cases, provided reliable, cheap power for
decades and more while making the Columbia navigable and safe from treacherous ooding. I was
recently advised that my electric bill would increase (I believe it was 6.8%) due to the necessity to buy
“back-up power” an premium rates to make up for the unreliability of the wind. When that power is
not used to suppliment wind farm output, cheaper resources (conventional power plants) need to be
idled to make room for the “backup power”.
Did I meantion the raptors who choose the same wind blown ridges for their updrafts that keep them
majestically soaring until they are whacked to the ground like so many ies?
Here’s hoping these eyesores reach “dinosaur” status quickly.
nofreewind
 March 20, 2011 11:01 am
The biggest problem is how many you need.

A medium sized nat gas or coal plant creates 1,000 MW, almost continuously with very little
downtime.
You would need 2,700 1.5MW turbines which produce about 25% of of that 1.5Mw annually to equal
the output of a 1,000 MW gas plant. And of course they create little or no energy, so you still need the
gas plant.
A 2 turbine nuclear plant near me ran 24/7 for over 365 day to produce 2400 MW all year. So you
would need about 6,500 turbines to equal that output, and of course you would still need the nuclear
plant.
What is super ridiculous is the theory that there will be this enormous smart grid connecting many
tens of thousands of turbines in different regions with different wind conditions and this energy will
be shu ed around, complete absurdity if you understand how great the energy needs of our society
are.
And as stated above, the worst fact about the turbines is not the money or subsidies but the
disgraceful environmental legacy they will leave us with in 30 years.
Robertvdl
 March 20, 2011 11:15 am
And when there is no wind it looks like this

Parque eólico La Muela 1 de 4
Parque eólico La Muela 2 de 4
CRS, Dr.P.H.
 March 20, 2011 11:23 am
This is what I drove through in 1988 (Altamont Pass), most of ’em were broken.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altamont_Pass_Wind_Farm
“The small turbines used at Altamont are dangerous to various raptors that hunt California Ground
Squirrels in the area. 1300 raptors are killed annually, among them 70 golden eagles, which are
federally protected; in total, 4700 birds are killed annually.[3]”
Robertvdl
 March 20, 2011 11:34 am
If you understand Spanish this is a very good video to watch. It’s about the energy use in Spain.
http://videos.libertaddigital.tv/2011-03-06/velocidad-petroleo-y-energia-socialista-en-debates-en-
libertad-nPnuVtWQnh4.html
Mike Hebb
 March 20, 2011 11:44 am
These companies must keep a log for each wind mill where output,down time and maintenance work
is recorded. We just need a wiki leaks person to make it public. Then Willis or someone to run some
statistics to see the real economic picture.
StuS
 March 20, 2011 11:45 am
In 2006 at a cost of £100, 000 my local council erected two 6Kw wind turbines on top of a council
o ce building “to raise awareness of renewable energy”.
One of the turbines broke down last March and has not been repaired, the reason it seems is that the
turbines produce £2078 worth of power per annum but cost £6431 in maintenance per annum.
Marion
 March 20, 2011 11:46 am
Hmmmm….. interesting to compare the UK installed wind power capacity with our actual output
View the graphs
Capacity
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_the_United_Kingdom
Output
http://www.ref.org.uk/publications/217-low-wind-power-output-2010

“Variability over short time scales has been much discussed, and it is now well known that low wind
conditions can prevail at times of peak load over very large areas. For example, at 17.30 on the 7th of
December 2010, when the 4th highest United Kingdom load of 60,050 MW was recorded, the UK wind
eet of approximately 5,200 MW was producing about 300 MW (i.e. it had a Load Factor of 5.8%).
One of the largest wind farms in the United Kingdom, the 322 MW Whitelee Wind Farm was
producing approximately 5 MW (i.e. Load Factor 1.6%).
Load factor in other European countries at exactly this time was also low. The Irish wind eet was
recording a load factor of approximately 18% (261 MW/1,425 MW), Germany 3% (830MW/25,777
MW), and Denmark 4% (142 MW / 3,500 MW).4
Such gures con rm theoretical arguments that regardless of the size of the wind eet the United
Kingdom will never be able to reduce its conventional generation eet below peak load plus a margin
of approximately 10%.”
Nature yet again proving that she has the upper hand despite our politicians claims!
Dr. Dave
 March 20, 2011 11:58 am
A few random thoughts:

I imagine performing maintenance on a wind turbine would be very di cult on a hot summer day. If
you’re in Texas and it’s 100 deg F outside, imagine what the temperature would be inside one of
those turbine towers…hot enough to fry a dog’s brain.
A future growth industry might be taking these eyesores down, performing site remediation and
recycling the raw materials.
Isn’t it ironic that “green” wind power has already killed more birds than DDT ever did?
Good ideas and economically viable technologies do not require government subsidies. The CO2-
AGW fraud provided the necessary incentive (i.e. “excuse”) for generous government subsidies to
build these outlandish whirligigs. At the core of this wind power scam lays crony capitalism. NO ONE
would invest in this exorbitantly expensive, grossly ine cient means to generate electricity if there
hadn’t been boatloads of “free money from the government” (i.e. taxpayers) available to fund it. Aside
from a few previous comments to the contrary, wind power is MUCH more expensive than power
from almost any other source (other than solar). In a free market economy the technology would
wither and die. This is a sure indication that is neither a “good idea” nor an economically viable
technology.
Who makes money off of wind power? Certainly the manufacturers of wind turbines do. The
developers reap huge rewards in the form of tax credits, start-up subsidies and production
subsidies…all paid for by the taxpayer. The landowners who lease their land make a tidy fortune. The
consumer takes in the shorts by being forced to pay for arti cially expensive electricity plus higher
taxes to pay for the subsidies.
Consider just the state of Texas. They have over 7,000 wind turbines. That’s a $7 billion dollar
investment! The vested interests have every reason to protect their investment and their taxpayer
subsidies. They are powerful enough to pressure (i.e. “buy off”) politicians to keep this scam a oat.
Politicians, in exchange for campaign support, then dutifully vote to maintain the subsidies and now
they’re pulling the same trick they did with ethanol. They want to mandate demand for an
economically non-viable source of electricity by legislative at. That is, they force the consumers to
buy something that’s unnecessarily expensive and then pay the taxes to subsidize it. Worse yet,
there’s no good reason for wind power to even exist (i.e. the AGW issue is moot). Certain special
interests make a LOT of money and the consumers and taxpayers foot the bill.
In many respects wind power functions almost exactly like ethanol. It’s an expensive solution to a
non-problem. It distorts the market. It’s ine cient. It bene ts a relatively (politically in uential) few. It
provides absolutely no ecological or environmental bene t. It arti cially in ates costs. Taxpayers and
consumers are forced (by legislation) to pay for it and subsidize it. Without government imposed
mandates and subsidies both industries would collapse.
One nal note. Just as ethanol production is ultimately limited by our need for food and a nite
amount of arable land, wind power my ultimately be limited by the availability of neodymium (for
generator magnets) and the availability of “airy” land.
 Staffan Lindström
 March 20, 2011 1:17 pm
We need Don Quichote back… Coincidentally SWR2 runs Saverio Mercadente’s opera “Don Chisciotte
alle nozze de Gamaccio” … right now… And don’t let Sancho Pansa tell DQ the windmills of our time
are not giants….
Ted
 March 20, 2011 1:28 pm
Robert M. Marshall says:

March 20, 2011 at 11:00 am
Hi Robert.
I live in Vancouver, Canada.
My rst trip to the Columbia Gorge was on a fun summer ski trip to Mt Hood in 1975. I was in awe of
the beautiful gorge and ridges. In 1980 I discovered small board windsur ng and over the years spent
countless times windsur ng ,hiking and mountain biking the whole area. If there was ever a more
beautiful place that gives peacefulness or high end adventure I haven’t found it yet. My memory’s of
sailing big down winders deep into the desert, jumping and sur ng the rolling waves and endlessly
admiring the high cliffs and rolling ridges or mountain biking the ridges for 6 or 7 hours at a time
always seeing new vistas of the wilderness, mount Hood or mnt Adam are the stuff of dreams. Now
the blight of those windmills give me acid stomach every time. your right they took paradise and put
up hells windmills. It’s a Eco crime that should have never passed the Gouge Commission,s mandate
to preserve it!
****************************************************************************
Robert M. Marshall says:
March 20, 2011 at 11:00 am
I live in Washington and frequently, purposely drive the Columbia Gorge just to have my breath taken
away with the magni cent views in every direction. Now, the most beautiful basalt cliffs and hilly
elds with lava jutting through the grasses are strewn with hidious new bright white windmills by the
hundreds if not thousands. Evening drives that once showed off the night sky now glitters with the
ashing “enviro-wacko” red light district. The pastures, hillsides and ridges are scarred with access
roads and new distribution towers.
Billy Liar
 March 20, 2011 1:39 pm
Dave Springer says:

March 20, 2011 at 4:05 am
…No more than 30% of potential capacity is actually sold. So having 20% of the turbines down for
periodic maintenance at any one time is not much of a problem and isn’t out-of-line compared with
other types of electrical generation – less than 20% downtime is excellent for a nuclear reactor.
Dave, you sometimes spout the most incredible rubbish. A 1GW nuclear reactor does what it says on
the tin, produces 1GW, less the 20% for downtime, that is 800MW. Windmills, with a 1GW nameplate
capacity, do what windmills do, that is produce about 300MW, less the 20% for periodic maintenance,
that is 240MW.
So according to you, 240MW from wind ‘isn’t out of line with’ 800MW from nuclear.
I have a bridge you might be interested in.
Bob(Sceptical Redcoat)
 March 20, 2011 1:42 pm
I live in Southport, on the generally windy NW coast of England. My home is 1/4 mile from the
shoreline, near a Eco learning centre. Naturally, they have a windmill; about 100 foot high. I walk my
dogs close to this facility on a daily basis and have often noticed that, despite good winds, the rotors
are stationary. For almost a year, from 2009 through 2010, the rotors and head were removed.

Presumably, this was for repair/maintenance, although the machine was only installed in 2004/5.
Hardly cost-effective.
TonyK
 March 20, 2011 2:14 pm
red432 says:
‘……the signi cance of the structures as religious symbols.’
Quite true – check out this quite long-winded (sorry, that wasn’t meant to be a pun) article in today’s
Mail:-
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1367949/What-Mayans-teach-wind-turbines.html
I can’t understand why greenies who claim to want to save the environment also want to cover
beautiful landscapes (and seascapes) with these ghastly things. Sure, a nuclear power station isn’t
exactly pretty, but at least it’s just one big building. These monstrosities despoil miles of lovely
countryside. Save the planet? Who for? Not for people who will have their views ruined, and not for
birds and bats (the latter being a protected species in the UK:-
http://www.bats.org.uk/pages/bats_and_the_law.html
Greenies actively supporting a technology that ruins the landscape and kills protected species!
Don Shaw
 March 20, 2011 2:50 pm
http://www.pse.com/energyEnvironment/energysupply/pages/EnergySupply_ElectricityWind.aspx?
tab=3&chapter=5
Each tower foundation reaches a minimum depth of 25 ft and a maximum of 32 ft depending on
bedrock depth and takes an average of 100 to 260 cubic yards of concrete.
Each foundation requires 120 anchor bolts that span from the surface of the ground to the bottom of
the foundation. A single 28 ft anchor bolt weighs approximately 150 lbs.
I am of the impression that concrete manufacture creates a lot of CO2 emissions.
I wonder where the break even point is given the massive concrete foundations?
Dan in California
 March 20, 2011 2:52 pm
Dave Wendt says: March 19, 2011 at 10:09 pm

And in the video, besides the ones that aren’t moving, I thought I spotted at least a couple that were
counter rotating, indicating that they were actually drawing power off the grid.
——————————————–
No, Dave. If you drive up Oak Creek Road in the middle of the Tehachapi windfarms, you see
windmills made by Mitsubishi, Vestas, NEC Micron, GE/Zond, and others. Some of them turn right-
handed and others turn left-handed.
I drive that road weekly, and I live and work where I can see several hundred. The wind here is not like
the wind around offshore windfarms or on the plains of Texas. The wind here varies considerably as
it ows around and over the mountains. While it is common to see 30% or 50% of the mills not
turning, that is because the wind is below minimum speed to generate power. I actually do sit in my
living room and take count of the number of mills not turning (nerd!), and I have never seen more than
about 10% shut down in a good wind speed.
As for subsidies, they take several forms. There are loan guarantees, there are State requirementsfor
the utilities to buy a minimum of “renewable” power regardless of cost, and there is the Federal
Production tax credit (PTC). The latter amounts to $.015 per KWH, or roughly half the cost to
generate with coal or neutrons.
Finally, I nd it instructive to understand that “windmills do not generate power, they generate energy”
Meaning that over the course of a year, they displace coal and gas fuels, but do not reduce the
requirement for other generating capacity. The Tehachapi windfarm has a new high tension power
line to the nearby Castaic Lake / Pyramid Lake pumped storage reservoir, which can run at up to 1500

MW. This means that the grid is not unduly affected by the windfarm output.
http://www.industcards.com/ps-usa.htm
Nick Fleming
 March 20, 2011 3:20 pm
I was sent to work in the US in the early 90’s and often ew over California (roughly Barstow area) at
low level.
I was struck by the number of derelict wind farms.
Near my parents home in northern England the wind turbines are now derelict.
polistra
 March 20, 2011 5:29 pm
Here in Washington, Avista is having problems with too much wind power at times when it’s not
needed. There’s no spare grid capacity to carry the power away from the area.
Makes sense from the overall weather pattern. The coldest AND hottest parts of the year have rm
high pressure and no wind. Wind is strong during transitional periods when temp is moderate and
power usage is lower.
Justa Joe
 March 20, 2011 5:49 pm
BlondieBC says:
March 20, 2011 at 5:09 am
expected range. What percentage of nuclear plants, ghter aircraft, or merchant ships are at sea at
any given time?
————————————————————–
You cannot be serious.
Ships and nuclear plants go down typically for scheduled maintenance, and still they have a reliability
factor that so-called wind power couldn’t dream of. Moreover they meet or exceed the performance
requirements, which have made them PROVEN technologies. Fighter aircraft are a very high
performance type of equipment and their high maintenance is accounted for kinda like a top fuel
dragster. They’re hardly an apt comparison.
Only an ignorant green can look at a wind ‘turbine’s’ huge mechanical rotating mass and at times
severe thrust loads and not see a very high maintenance piece of equipment.
Dave Springer
 March 20, 2011 6:10 pm
Dan in California says:

March 20, 2011 at 2:52 pm
As for subsidies, they take several forms. There are loan guarantees, there are State requirementsfor the utilities

to buy a minimum of “renewable” power regardless of cost, and there is the Federal Production tax credit (PTC).
The latter amounts to $.015 per KWH, or roughly half the cost to generate with coal or neutrons.
My emphasis.
This is misleading. The delivered average cost of electricity in the U.S. is close to $0.15/kwh so the
wind subsidy is only 10% of the delivered cost.
Also according to the DoE the levelized unsubsidized cost of nuclear generation is about 33% more
than conventional coal. Coal with carbon capture is about equal in cost to nuclear power.
Unsubsidized levelized cost of wind generation is about equal to conventional coal. By far the

cleanest most cost effective method is combined cycle natural gas. All it produces as combustion
byproducts, without any ltering or other means of removing pollutants, are water and CO2 neither of
which is a pollutant if we discount the EPA’s brain-dead nding that CO2 is a pollutant. The cost of
generation for combined cycle natural gas is half the cost of nuclear power. No other generation
method even comes close to it. As far as that goes you can burn biomass (sawdust, cardboard, lawn
clippings, etc) to re your boiler and that’s equal in cost to nuclear power. I have no idea what data
the nuclear power cheerleaders are using to justify the wonders of nuclear power but it clearly isn’t
based in reality.
Dave Springer
 March 20, 2011 6:19 pm
Justa Joe says:

March 20, 2011 at 5:49 pm
“Ships and nuclear plants go down typically for scheduled maintenance”
Probably more than you know too. 11% downtime for maintanance for a nuclear power plant is
considered excellent and only the best and newest are that good. Older plants like the one that just
destroyed itself are down about 20% of the time for regular maintenance.
“Only an ignorant green can look at a wind ‘turbine’s’ huge mechanical rotating mass and at times
severe thrust loads and not see a very high maintenance piece of equipment.”
Only an ignorant anti-green can be unaware of the fact that high neutron ux causes even the best
steel to go brittle and become a very high maintenance piece of equipment. So there.
Dave Wendt
 March 20, 2011 6:45 pm
The saddest part of the multi-billion dollar effort to spread these pernicious eyesores across every
plot of open land in the country is that, if you add hydro into the calculations, we are actually
acquiring less of our electricity from renewable sources now than we were in the mid 90s when
hydro’s contribution peaked. In ’97 when hydro peaked at 356 millionMWhrs other renewables
including wind were at 77 milMWhrs, making a total of 433 MMWhrs. In 2010 other renewables rose
to 168MMWhrs, the difference provided almost entirely by wind, but hydro provided only 257
MMWhrs for a total renewables contribution of 425 MMWhrs. Meanwhile total usage went from 3942
MMWhrs to 4120 MMWhrs indicating an even larger decline in the percentage of renewable
electricity provided than the absolute numbers suggest.
In other words all we have accomplished after investing hundreds of billions and almost a decade
and a half is to trade 100MMWhrs of the cheapest, cleanest, most easily modulated electrical supply
for a slightly smaller quantity from the most expensive, most erratic, and most troublesome source
available. A little more of this kind of wonderful energy policy and the leftists may achieve their goal
of having all the rest of enjoy a “Little House on the Praire” lifestyle.
The numbers I quoted are from here
http://www.eia.doe.gov/electricity/data.cfm#generation
Dave Wendt
 March 20, 2011 6:51 pm
Whoops! should have been 3492 to 4120 for the change in total demand from 1997 to 2010, not
3942.
Dave Springer
 March 20, 2011 7:04 pm
 There seems to be a general vast underestimation of what it takes to inspect a nuclear reactor vs. a
windmill.
Granted the height of the windmill and size/weight of the parts and mechanical forces on gears and
bearings makes it a challenge but that’s nothing compared to a nuclear reactor.
First of all one must be aware that the high neutron ux in a reactor causes the nest steel to go
brittle and fail prematurely. Every microscopic aw in every weld over time becomes a potentially
disastrous failure point. So you have to shut down the reactor and it takes a week for it to cool down
enough to get anywhere near it. Even then you can’t just walk up to it and eyeball the welds because
it’s still a deadly radioactive environment. The inspection has to be done robotically with equipment
that can detect subsurface defects in the steel. The reactor after a week of shutdown is just barely
friendly enough so not fry robotic inspection gear. There’s whole cottage industry built just around the
inspection equipment and improvments to same because every day you can shave off the time it
takes to perform the inspection is a large pro t incentive. So reactor designs over the years have not
changed substantially in terms of underlying technology they have changed substantially to make
maintenance easier to perform.
None of these problems go away with the ballyhooed LFTR reactors. They only get worse because
LFTR reactors are more complex. The only real improvements you get with LFTR are safety issues.
The cost of the fuel, whether thorium or uranium, is so small to begin with that doesn’t make any
difference. Neutron ux remains the same as that’s the primary energy source in all reactors so your
reactor chamber, steel pipes, valves, etcetera all must still be laboriously inspected and because
there’s more to inspect in the LFTR there’s more maintenance overhead. The advantages of LFTR are
twofold – they don’t produce weapons grade ssionable byproducts and they don’t go into meltdown
upon castastrophic failure. Economically the rst advantage is a disadvantage as weapons grade
ssionable byproducts are a secondary source of income – that’s some extremely valuable material.
Pound for pound plutonium is more valuable than perfect gem quality diamonds. The second thing,
that they don’t go into meltdown, is reassuring for the nervous nellie nattering nabobs of negativity in
the ecoloon community but there are so few nuclear accidents among thousands of reactors
operating for many decades now that meltdown is almost a non-concern when considered
objectively. So what does LFTR get for you? Nothing that I can determine except even more
expensive electricity which handily explains why a technology that’s been known for 50 years
(Livermore built and operated an LFTR research reactor for ve years in the 1960’s) was the only
reactor of this type ever built – there are no real advantages to it!
This also handily explains why nuclear energy didn’t turn out to be the virtually cost-free unlimited
source of energy that people once thought it could be. It wasn’t then, it isn’t now, and it won’t be in the
future. Get used to it.
And while I’m on the topic fusion generators are even more destructive of the materials which
contain the reaction. No material known or anticipated can withstand the fusion environment long
enough to make them economically feasible.
The future of energy (and a whole world of other useful things) lies within the scienti c realm of
synthetic biology. This is the only technology anywhere near ready and able to harvest the energy
provided by the sun. There is enough solar energy falling on the Texas panhandle to supply all the
energy needs of the entire U.S. many times over if only it could be economically collected. Synthetic
biology is the key to economic collection. Sunlight, nutrient-rich wastewater, non-arable land, and
atmospheric CO2, and genetically engineered microorganisms are the only ingredients required to
produce natural gas and direct replacements for all hydrocarbon liquid fuels currently derived from
fossil sources. Genetic engineering is advancing on a par with Moore’s Law right now.
Rascal
 March 20, 2011 8:06 pm
Bryan A says:
March 20, 2011 at 1:58 am
I hink the article mentions tthat the conditions at the time of observation were approximately those
requiring peak generating capacity.
kuhnkat
 March 20, 2011 8:21 pm


Dave Springer,
please stop shooting off the top of you own head and include links to these wonderful reports that
CLAIM that wind is equivalent to coal. I would love to show you what you are obviously too ignorant
to understand about those documents!!
Dan in California,
sit down and compute how much wind power and volume of pumped storage you would need to
actually make wind somewhat comeptitive and useful. It is outrageous.
Rascal
 March 20, 2011 8:36 pm
Bryan A says:
March 20, 2011 at 1:58 am
I think the article mentions that the conditions at the time of observation were approximately those
requiring peak generating capacity.
_Jim
 March 20, 2011 8:46 pm
Bryan A says:

March 20, 2011 at 1:58 am
Many of the Non-spinning turbines aren’t necessarily non-operable. …
Economic dispatch by a power producer calls for utilizing as much of the cheapest available
generation as possible – for obvious reasons … are you saying that wind may_not_ t the pro le of
the cheapest available generation for ‘economic dispatch’?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_dispatch
http://www.ferc.gov/eventcalendar/Files/20051110172953-FERC%20Staff%20Presentation.pdf
_Jim
 March 20, 2011 8:51 pm
P Gosselin, March 20, 2011 at 10:12 am :


I’d imagin[e] that maintenance personnel don’t work for cheap, nor should they.
IBEW should be seeing to that …

.
_Jim
 March 20, 2011 9:07 pm

jorgekafkazar, March 19, 2011 at 11:23 pm :
What basis do you have for saying that? Windfarm leases call for removal of all equipment and foundations and
restoration to approximate original grade.
So far, blood has not successfully been extracted from turnips; so, too, it is with companies that have
gone insolvent regardless of what lease agreements may contain …
.
Feet2theFire
 March 20, 2011 9:15 pm


If we are going to have these at all, I think the current design is awed and should be replaced by a
better design. As a mechanical engineer, I don’t like those really long propeller blades. They make me
cringe. A LOT. I have seen the videos of them self-destructing, and looking at ANY of them scares me.
To self-destruct like that, the design simply is not robust enough. That should be obvious. I think a
good deal of it is the cantilevered (known as an “overhung”) design. A center-hung design or
balanced gravity load design would be better, IMHO. Center-hung mans the blades would be between
the support bearings; having two blades both overhung at both ends would balance the forces on the
shafts and bearings. Both of these are inherently more stable, although overhung is also okay, if the
design is strong enough.
But mainly I think shorter blades would be more e cient in the long term. I’d put 2 perhaps 4) on the
same pivoting base, with a large rudder to keep it turned into the wind. I think a fore-and-aft design
with smaller blades would withstand the forces better and more reliably. By “fore-and-aft” I mean the
propeller shaft would line up with the wind as now, but one set of blades would be on the windward
side and one on the lee side.
It cannot be the wind turbine idea itself that is bad; it has to be ignorant mechanical design. I chose
that word – “ignorant” – carefully, BTW, because rotating shafts that deal with forces are designed all
the time, by engineers all over the world. There are MILLIONS of rotating shafts out there in industry
that don’t self-destruct. Some of that comes from preventive maintenance (PM). Most of it comes
from proper understanding of the forces being dealt with. Bearings if sized properly simply do not
seize up and rotors simply don’t fall apart.
People need to know that there is nothing at all mystical or magical or inherently vicious about wind.
Wind is just one of many applied forces that rotating shafts are designed to deal with. Force is force,
after all.
I suspect strongly that the companies making the darned things simply are cutting corners and
putting out de cient designs. For one thing, I know that these designs are not capable of handling
high winds – and that, to me, is simply ridiculous. The things aught to be designed primarily for high
winds. After all, that is when the most energy is available! If they were designed for those high winds,
with su cient SF (safety factor or service factor), then they would be even more safe in “normal
winds.”
To me, this is an utterly unacceptable failure rate and life span. Who is designing these things,
anyway? If they were surgeons, they would have their patients dying right and left.
I can think of many ways I would look at these designs and try to improve them. I won’t go into them
all, but the three I would deal with rst are 1.) how to shorten the blades so that their operating tip
speeds are not so close their stress limits, 2.) the overhung design, and 3.) automatic lubrication or
(preferred) manual lubrication from the ground level, which of course has inherent di culties, but not
impossible.
All of this is basic design, folks. Shame on them for having failures. And shame on them for
designing ones that have to shut down in high winds. (I’d design them for 120-mph, as a minimum,
with a SF of 1.5.)
_Jim
 March 20, 2011 9:26 pm
Dave Springer, March 20, 2011 at 4:05 am :


…
I don’t know about California but in Texas (which has 3x more wind power than any other state) wind power is
not heavily subsidized and power from them is sold on the open market by bid/ask.
Dave, since you’re in Texas, would it be too much to ask of you to point that part of the ERCOT
website where/how *settle-ups are accomplished on this open bid/ask deal?
*Settle – To agree, to approve, to arrange, to ascertain, to liquidate, or to reach an agreement. Parties
are said to settle an account when they examine its items and ascertain and agree upon the balance
due from one to the other.
The term “settle up” is a colloquial rather than legal phrase that is applied to the nal collection,
adjustment, and distribution of the estate … It includes the processes of collecting the property,
paying the debts and charges, and remitting the balance to those entitled to receive it.
.
0

Dave Wendt
 March 20, 2011 9:27 pm
Dave Springer says:

March 20, 2011 at 6:19 pm
“Probably more than you know too. 11% downtime for maintanance for a nuclear power plant is
considered excellent and only the best and newest are that good. Older plants like the one that just
destroyed itself are down about 20% of the time for regular maintenance.”
The Average Capacity Factor for the entire U.S. nuclear industry, old and and new alike, hasn’t been
below 90% since ’06 when it hit 89.6%. From ’07 to ’09 it averaged over 91%. That’s as a percentage
of its theoretical maximum running 24/7/365 at Net Summer Capacity which is about 5% off
nameplate capacity
Dave Wendt
 March 20, 2011 9:30 pm
Forgot the link, Alsheimer’s may be setting in.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epa/epat5p2.html
_Jim
 March 20, 2011 9:35 pm
Dr. Dave, March 20, 2011 at 11:58 am :


…
A future growth industry might be taking these eyesores down …
I think CDI has that market cornered; they did the demolition work on the Big Rock Nuclear Plant that
existed on the shores of northern Lake Michigan (that site has been ‘returned to nature’ as the greens
say) … they ‘softened up’ the reactor containment concrete structures so the wrecking ball would
have a ghting chance …
http://www.controlled-demolition.com/
.
Brian H
 March 20, 2011 10:29 pm
Google “WTS”, Wind Turbine Syndrome. The goats aren’t the only ones who can’t sleep!
Anthony, Edit Note: As previously noted, a large number of gearboxes have had to be replaced “in large
numbers.”
Only one large number(s) needed, I think!
REPLY: posted as written on the other site, translated by third party. -A
Larry in Texas
 March 20, 2011 11:38 pm
Another good example, Anthony, of the failed government energy/environmental policy. We should
end these stupid subsidies.
Another observation: I suspect that it isn’t just maintenance that keeps one in four of these turbines
quiet. It isn’t just how hard the wind blows, it is the direction of the wind, too. Winds in those
mountainous areas like what you drove through and videoed can swirl, suddenly change directions,
you name it. And of course, if the winds are too vigorous, their gear boxes break down, like the ones
shown in Germany.
 0
Jessie
 March 21, 2011 1:14 am
Thank you Anthony, your article was most instructive and interesting.
The article ‘Downstream of a Green’ links to the Daily Mail story on the mining of rare earth minerals
in inner Mongolia and the manufacture of magnets for wind-turbines. The ensuing horri c damage to
local people and the agricultural area from the waste-products is described.
http://pajamasmedia.com/richardfernandez/2011/03/20/downstream-of-green/
Ryan
 March 21, 2011 3:30 am
I think you need to educate yourself a bit about how wind turbines work. You may not realise this but
wind turbines actually work BETTER in low winds. They can’t actually cope with very high winds –
these cause the blades of the turbine to be furled so they don’t blow over. That’s probably why you
saw so few working on a very windy day – many of them were self-protecting. Of course the rest
were probably outputting a relatively high level of energy so the fact that some were self-protecting
didn’t result in a below average output of electrical power.
WillR
 March 21, 2011 3:58 am
Jessie says:
March 21, 2011 at 1:14 am
…mining of rare earth minerals in inner Mongolia and the manufacture of magnets for wind-turbines.
Less than three percent of the rare earths mined are for “super magnets”. The Chinese REE mining
story is not about wind turbines.
This was discussed at some length on the Wind Concerns Ontario Site. References are there.
http://windconcernsontario.wordpress.com/2011/02/26/wind-energy%E2%80%99s-dirty-secret/
It is a story about bad mining practice. Period.
WillR
 March 21, 2011 4:06 am
kellys_eye says:
March 20, 2011 at 9:12 am
I suspect a worldwide survey of all wind farms would produce some interesting statistics – especially
regarding ine ciency – but it beggars belief that anyone responsible for the creation of such farms
would knowingly proceed with historical and technical facts at hand.
Well — here is some information from Ontario Canada — o cial numbers even.
http://ontariowindperformance.wordpress.com/2010/09/24/chapter-3-1-powering-ontario/
The link to the original paper that examined Ontario Production is at the end of the article — along
with links to the source data.
Are the turbines ine cient? Maybe useless is the right word.
Austin
 March 21, 2011 4:08 am
 Anyone with with real world experience can tell you that maintenance costs are 90% of the cost of
most things.
It takes people and a technology base to keep things running.
And the older the systems get the more expensive it is to maintain them as people and the
technology base get older and start to be retired.
In addition, most systems need a complete replacement every so often.
Maintenance also requires motivated management to keep the teams focused, staffed, trained,
supplied, and responsive.
This kind of management is very hard to nd and to keep as they get it from all different directions
and must be intrinsically motivated. Few have what it takes to be successful.
Wind power is not immune to the principles of engineering management.
And with thousands of complex structures scattered around the landscape with each just producing
a small fraction of the energy a gas turbine or nuke plant, wind requires a much larger amount of
commitment per unit of energy produced.
Joe Lalonde
 March 21, 2011 5:40 am
Anthony,
Science still has not gured out that there is a HUGE difference from harnessing energy from the
radius of a circle to the circumference of one. Also missed how centrifugal force interacts to
generate friction and drag.
Justa Joe
 March 21, 2011 6:09 am
Dave Springer says:

March 20, 2011 at 6:19 pm Only an ignorant anti-green can be unaware of the fact that high neutron
ux causes even the best steel to go brittle and become a very high maintenance piece of equipment.
So there.
——————————————————————————-
I’m not sure how credible your claims are. I’ve never heard of nuclear power being knocked on the
basis of poor reliability. The fact that nuclear power powers our stategic submarine and air craft
carrier eet suggests to me that the maintenance intervals are long and the reliability is quite high.
Most of all nuclear actually creates the power needed on demand. So-called wind turbines are often
down due to lack of wind or too much wind even when they’re not down due to mechanical failure. On
top of that it requires huge numbers of wind turbines arrayed over huge expanses of land to even
theoretically approach what a single nuclear plant produces.
BTW the Fukushima plant didn’t exaclty destroy itself. The Tsunami and mega quake factored in a
tad.
FerdinandAkin
 March 21, 2011 6:37 am
BlondieBC says:
March 20, 2011 at 5:09 am
expected range. What percentage of nuclear plants, ghter aircraft, or merchant ships are at sea at any
given time?
Blondie,
Do you have a point in your comparison of primary power producing nuclear plants to other machines
whose function is power consumption? The requirements for each are quite different. The purpose
for the existence of each is quite different.
The ghter aircraft are constructed with the tradeoff of sacri cing components of the machine to
achieve high performance. The high attrition level of components makes it necessary to for

substantial portion of the machine’s lifetime be dedicated to maintenance.
Merchant ships are designed for economics. A good portion of a merchant ships lifetime is spent
waiting to be loaded and unloaded. Time spent not being used is not equivalent to time being
unavailable.
You want to look at capacity utilization of nuclear power plant? Investigate the time available for the
reactors on Ballistic Missile Submarines while on patrol. The number 99.9% comes to mind.
George E. Smith
 March 21, 2011 10:33 am
Actually Anthony; if you check out that photo again you will see quite clearly that NOT ALL of those
fans are turning.
The photographer deliberately took a long enough exposure so you can clearly see the blade rotation
in the foreground propellors.
Now look up at the top again and you can see that a great many of the fans are stone cold dead. If
they all were rotating, they also all would be phase locked; some clearly are not.
I drive that route to SoCal regularly, and there are always dozens of stopped fans even when the wind
is howling through there. They also used to have a lot of vertical turbines up there, which don’t care
about wind direction. They also suck because of vertical wind shear; which every sailor is familiar
with.. There’s very little wind at ground level. So no more verticals.
George E. Smith
 March 21, 2011 10:50 am
“”””” Ryan says:

March 21, 2011 at 3:30 am
I think you need to educate yourself a bit about how wind turbines work. You may not realise this but
wind turbines actually work BETTER in low winds. They can’t actually cope with very high winds –
these cause the blades of the turbine to be furled so they don’t blow over. “”””””
Good advice you should follow too.
So you design your windmill for best e ciency at some wind speed; say 10 mph just to have a
number. If the wind speed drops to ve mph, you just lost 87.5% of your entire plant capacity. So
clearly 12.5% of desing working capacity is not a useful condition. You are better off to shut them all
down to save wear and tear on the gear boxes.
And if the wind speed went up by ve to 15mph, the loads on the fan and tower would be 2.25 times
higher. So just to handle a 3:1 wind speed range, you have to design for peak stresses that are more
than double the design operating conditions. You will get more than three times the power at the 15
mph wind.
And when you shut them down in high winds, you better turn them perpendicular to the wind;
because the wind thrust which puts an axial load on the bearings, will go up much faster with the
blade not turning. So even with the prop feathered, you can’t leave the fan face on to the wind.
And it is sails that get furled in high winds; not propellors.
George E. Smith
 March 21, 2011 11:14 am
“”””” Feet2theFire says:

March 20, 2011 at 9:15 pm
If we are going to have these at all, I think the current design is awed and should be replaced by a
better design. As a mechanical engineer, I don’t like those really long propeller blades. “””””
Well not being a mechanical engineer, I had this totally idiotic notion that somehow the maximum
power you could extract from the wind, with a propellor was somehow related to the area of the air
column that was intercepted. As if force was pressure times area or something like that.
One observation; following your long blade abhorence, would be that when you look at say a three
blade propellor, you can immediately see that most of the wind just goew right on by the propellor, in

the gaps that ll most of the space. I doubt that even 5% of the area is occupied by propellor blades.
So why not make (much) shorter blades, and then connect the blade tips with a pair of concentric
(short) cylinders; and then ll those cylinders with a whole raft of blades, so that the entire perimeter
area was occupied by blades (maybe half of it anyhow) like a real axial ow turbine.
The blade tip cyclinders wouldn’t need to have much weight or strength; they are simply a rotating
duct. You could ditch the outer (or inner ) cyclinder to save weight, but a fully ducted turbine blade is
probably more e cient by enough to just y a fully ducted design.
The radial “struts” would now be just supports for the annular ducted fan; but you might as well put a
( xed) air foil on them anyway.
Yes I know they would look ugly as sin; but they do that now anyway.
Dan in California
 March 21, 2011 11:19 am
kuhnkat says: March 20, 2011 at 8:21 pm

Dan in California,
sit down and compute how much wind power and volume of pumped storage you would need to
actually make wind somewhat comeptitive and useful. It is outrageous.
—————————————————————-
I have done those calculations and I agree. It is outrageous. Wind power is far from competitive when
storage is included. My point is that most windfarms can overload the grid, but the Tehachapi wind
farm is connected to a large capacitor. Therefore, it’s not quite so stupid as most. I freely admit that
during the time of greatest need, afternoons in the summer, the wind turbines are frequently just
sitting there.
Here’s my reference for local grid activity: http://www2.caiso.com/ In the summer it runs at about
twice the rate as in the winter. Therefore, thermal plants (coal, nuke, gas) schedule their maintenance
downtime at off peak times, whereas wind power is completely unpredictable.
George E. Smith
 March 21, 2011 11:31 am
“”””” Dave Springer says:

March 20, 2011 at 6:10 pm
Dan in California says:
March 20, 2011 at 2:52 pm
As for subsidies, they take several forms. There are loan guarantees, there are State requirementsfor
the utilities to buy a minimum of “renewable” power regardless of cost, and there is the Federal
Production tax credit (PTC). The latter amounts to $.015 per KWH, or roughly half the cost to
generate with coal or neutrons.
My emphasis.
This is misleading. The delivered average cost of electricity in the U.S. is close to $0.15/kwh so the
wind subsidy is only 10% of the delivered cost. “””””
“Subsidies” by de nition are costs that are borne by persons or businesses or corporations, who are
not owners or shareholders of the subsidized eneterprise; and most often are not even customers of
the subsidized “venture” so the payers of those subsidies (in compulsory taxes) are not bene ciaries
of the subsized enterprise in any way (mostly).
And for every dollar that the subsidizee puts up (in taxes); he (it) has to generate 2-5 dollars in
taxable pro ts (State and Federal). The long term average pro tability of all coporations in the USA
(for example) is about 4% after taxes, or 6% pretax, so the subsidizee needs to do about $16-$17
dollars in pro table enterprise for each dollar of pro t, or32 to 85 dollars for each dollar in subsidy.
And that 32 to 85 dollars of private enterprise capitalism probably does so using fossil fuels that are
readily available for their energy source; all to boost the miserable public picture of a failed idea; that
can’t stand on its own two feet.
 Dan in California
 March 21, 2011 11:33 am
George E. Smith says: March 21, 2011 at 10:33 am

Now look up at the top again and you can see that a great many of the fans are stone cold dead. If
they all were rotating, they also all would be phase locked; some clearly are not.
I drive that route to SoCal regularly, and there are always dozens of stopped fans even when the wind
is howling through there.
———————————————————
George, a dirty little secret of the Tehachapi wind farm is that there’s not enough transmission line to
get the power out. When you drive through and see stopped mills, it’s likely that the wind companies
are being paid to produce no power. really. That reason and not maintenance need is why you see a
high fraction of the mills not turning when the wind is up. That problem has been xed in the past few
months as a new transmission line is being installed. There is another 740 MW of mills being
installed now, and they’re marching downhill toward the town of Mojave. Also, the older 30 KW units
are phase locked to the grid (that’s why they all turn the same speed) but the big new 1.5 MW mills
have hydrostatic drive to optimize the RPM and blade pitch.
Physics Major
 March 21, 2011 12:05 pm
It sounds like a job for the Monkey Wrench Gang.
drjohn
 March 21, 2011 12:33 pm
Anthony
I drove through Palm Springs a few years ago and what struck me also was the sheer number of
windmills that were non-functioning. I thought it was around 1 in 8.
kuhnkat
 March 21, 2011 12:41 pm
Dan in California,
and how could not including the pumped storage make it better?? Then you need the full backup all
the time!! Wind is NOT useful for major generation. It is a nice gizmo, if they ever get the price down,
for people who do not want to run the lines to their remote property or don’t want full dependence on
the system. Of course, there is the co$t.
How do you schedule maintenance for the backup systems when the wind might stop tomorrow for a
week?? You must have backup for your wind backup. Something not mentioned so far.
The companies jumping into wind are scraping the dollars from the various subsidies, loan
guarantees, feed in tariffs… and apparently, from this article, would appear to realize that it will not
last so are not putting any of the money back into the farms. Smart if all you care about is the
money!!!
Shows what the Politicians and Al Gore are really doing!! Taking advantage of the latest scare to
enrich themselves and friends. The enviro whackjobs are taking advantage of building a collapsing
system in the hopes that we will not be able to dig our technology and energy based society out.
RockyRoad
 March 21, 2011 1:01 pm
RockyRoad says:
March 20, 2011 at 10:36 am
I predict within 5 years, there will be a world-wide effort to remove all those noisy, bird-killing monstrosities they
 
call wind turbines. Cold fusion will have made them obsolete for the next million years–or more.
I love progress, especially when it cleans up the environment.
Just found out that a report of Rossi’s E-Cat made a mainstream media outlet here in the states:
http://www.freeenergytimes.com/2011/03/19/frank-perley-of-the-washington-times-writes-op-ed-
piece-about-rossi-focardi-cold-fusion-technology/
And here’s what one commenter says about it:
http://www.freeenergytimes.com/2011/03/19/frank-perley-of-the-washington-times-writes-op-ed-
piece-about-rossi-focardi-cold-fusion-technology/
fenbeagle
 March 21, 2011 1:04 pm
George E Smith…..’Yes I know they would look ugly as sin; but they do that now anyway.’
Oh thank’s George…… That’s a great idea then. The one’s I can see from my home, are often not
turning because of low winds, not for any other reason. Don’t suggest having them sit there doing
nothing, with attachments added to make them look uglier.
Now…..If you were to suggest adding rocket motors to the end of each blade, and have them whizz
round like Catherine wheels, that would be something.
George E. Smith
 March 21, 2011 2:29 pm
So I found the Cook’s tour of the Wind Turban; izzat any way related to a Ter-byne ? very informative. I
learned for example that it was a zoom turban anywhere from 5 KW to 5 MW peak generating
capability. Well maybe the real number is classi ed; a military secret; which explains why they never
even mentioned the single most important fact you would want to know about a wind turban; like
how much airspeed does it take to blow the turban off your head for example.
Well obfuscation is the prime art of the NEWS business.
George E. Smith
 March 21, 2011 2:42 pm
“”””” Dan in California says:

March 21, 2011 at 11:33 am
George E. Smith says: March 21, 2011 at 10:33 am “””””
Dan, thanks for the details. I always wondered what those little tichy things were; 30 kW you say. And
the big dudes are 1.5 MW. I always thought that the whole idea was to run the tip speed up to as high
a mach number as you could for maximum prop e ciency; which is why I read all about the big long
carbon composite blades they are building in Europe, that are too damn big to even move along the
Autobahn(s).
I have mentioned that these things have a built in shake themselves to pieces vibration mode due to
the vertical wind shear. The blade going over the top sees a drag and lift that increase as the square
of the wind speed; but going over the near ground point the wind speed is a lot lower so you get both
an axial blade bending, and thrust bearing load oscillation as well as a torsional blade bending and
circumferential acceleration mode all at the constant rotation frequency. Well if as you say, those big
buggers are no longer phase locked (good idea); then at least it is a variable frequency vibration
mode; which of course likely complicates the design of the blades for fatigue life.
I wonder if they feather the blade continuously to equalize the loads ? But it seems to me, you can
fether so as to minimise the axial thrust variation with blade rotation, or you can feather it to maintain
constant angular lift. I don’t think you can level out both drag and lift at the same time by prop
feathering.
 Jason Bair
 March 21, 2011 3:52 pm
I took some closer pictures today of those same turbines. The farm farther south than the 58 has an
even worse percentage of working units. Today (a fairly windy and cold day) there were only 10 or so
working out of +100 in my immediate area.
The worst part; across the street they’re installing brand new giant units. Why x the old ones when
you can just install more?
Closeup pic I have shows how dirty these things really are with oil dripping down it. LKM if you want a
copy.
Doug
 March 21, 2011 5:00 pm
But as long as the brainwashing in schools continues, people will still demand them, my daughter is
in 5th grade and the chapter they are going over energy this week is on energy. Of course fosil fuels
are portrayed as bad, wind , solar etc good.
Of course to counter act this, I discuss what I learn on this site. We just reviewed this post. Thanks to
all of you.
Jessie
 March 21, 2011 5:25 pm
WillR says: March 21, 2011 at 3:58 am

Thanks WillR, much appreciated, the links and commentary were informative.
I read the last blogger quotes Willis E and stating the article should be posted on the Wall of Shame.
Good luck with the $2 billion,the request proposed by blogger D Robinson in response to improving
the manufacturing (+?mining) processes.
The recently reported China Development Forum 2011 may be an impetus for improvements in
industry practices?
W. Falicoff
 March 21, 2011 5:40 pm
Pamela Gray says:

March 20, 2011 at 6:58 am
“Publicly funded jobs are never worth an investment of my taxes, short term or long term. ”
Do you have a problem with publicly funded private jobs (Northrup Grumman, etc) or public insurance
for nuclear power plants (no private insurance companies will insure them)?
The Consensus
 March 21, 2011 5:50 pm
I’d love to see an analysis of maintenance costs vs. contribution to actual energy that is free and
clear of the debt TO those costs.
I always tell everyone, somewhat tongue-in-cheekily: that it costs more–in barrels of 3-in-one oil–to
keep them babies spinning, than they could ever produce in energy.
Frank
 March 21, 2011 7:45 pm
 Just a note to say that Andrea Rossi will be a guest on the US radio show Coast to Coast AM on
Wednesday March 23.
Brian H
 March 22, 2011 4:37 am
I’ve got it! A new design to make maintenance easier and cheaper.
Make the towers telescoping. To do maintenance, rst the blade and rotor are rotated upwards, then
the tower is collapsed down to about 1/10 its full height, and then re-extended etc. when the work is
done.
Simples!
J.Hansford
 March 22, 2011 8:24 am
10 and 20 ton pieces of equipment!!!….. So not only do they need windy spots away from people…..
They need heavy truck and crane access….. No wonder it all costs a fortune with the damn things
falling into disrepair and disuse!
Dave Springer
 March 22, 2011 8:54 am
George E. Smith says:

March 21, 2011 at 2:42 pm
“I have mentioned that these things have a built in shake themselves to pieces vibration mode due to
the vertical wind shear.”
Like a helicopter. One of my xed wing ight instructors was also a rotary wing instructor. He told me
helicopters are basically buckets of bolts trying to rattle themselves apart. Very high maintenance
and for the same reasons as wind turbines – the wing loading changes rapidly in a non-linear manner
from wing to wing at the same time upsetting the balanced rotation. That combined with the need for
lowest practical mass of the wing and it’s a recipe for stress fractures in the wing components and
high wear rate on bearings and gear trains.
Dave Springer
 March 22, 2011 9:06 am

March 21, 2011 at 2:42 pm
Nuclear reactors have a different but no less nightmarish maintenance problem. High neutrino ux
embrittles steel which in turn makes every microscopic defect in the steel a potential catastrophic
failure point. Adding insult to injury is that you have to cool the reactor down for a week before even
robots can get close enough to it to inspect the steel and it practically never cools down enough for
humans to get close enough to it to perform the inspections. I think I’d prefer being a windmill
technician in the U.S. versus a Nigerian uranium miner too. No one ever seems to talk about the fuel
mining and re ning health hazards of nuclear power generation – those fuel rods don’t grow on trees
like bananas. Radiation exposure risks mostly happen at the mines and uranium re neries not in the
generating plants.
Justa Joe
  March 22, 2011 9:25 am
At least with Nuclear you actually get some electrical generation out of it.
Dave Springer
 March 22, 2011 9:31 am

March 21, 2011 at 10:50 am
Good advice you should follow too.


So you design your windmill for best e ciency at some wind speed; say 10 mph just to have a number. If the
wind speed drops to ve mph, you just lost 87.5% of your entire plant capacity. So clearly 12.5% of desing
working capacity is not a useful condition. You are better off to shut them all down to save wear and tear on the
gear boxes.
And if the wind speed went up by ve to 15mph, the loads on the fan and tower would be 2.25 times higher. So
just to handle a 3:1 wind speed range, you have to design for peak stresses that are more than double the
design operating conditions. You will get more than three times the power at the 15 mph wind.
And when you shut them down in high winds, you better turn them perpendicular to the wind; because the wind
thrust which puts an axial load on the bearings, will go up much faster with the blade not turning. So even with
the prop feathered, you can’t leave the fan face on to the wind.
And it is sails that get furled in high winds; not propellors.
Good advice for you to follow is to read up on something before bloviating.

Here’s a good place to start on this particular topic:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_turbine_design#Pitch_control
Sustained wind speed isn’t a problem for either e ciency or stress loading with variable pitch blades.
Higher performance and/or higher e ciency aircraft have been using variable pitch props like unto
forever. The problem is gusting winds where the pitch control can’t react fast enough. And of course
variable pitch adds cost, complexity, additional failure points, and additional maintenance concerns.
So like most things in life and engineering there are tradeoffs involved.
Dave Springer
 March 22, 2011 10:03 am
@George Smith
By the way, a feathered prop isn’t one that has stopped rotating. A feathered prop is one that is
pitched such that the blade’s edge is directly into the wind reducing drag to a minimum. Feathering
and unfeathering is also called furling and the term is used with wings as well as with sails. An
unfurled stopped blade facing into the wind has incredibly high drag. In twin engine aircraft with
widely separated wing-mounted engines they become un yable due to the difference in drag if one
prop is stopped and unfurled. The vertical stabilizer and rudder become inadequate to keep the tail
aligned with the nose and an unrecoverable at spin develops rather quickly.
Absent variable pitch so the prop can be furled possible alternatives are compression releases for
the engine and transmission releases that allow the prop to spin free. I’ve never heard of those
alternative mechanisms actually used on any modern aircraft but I’m sure some enterprising
individual looking for a cheaper solution in the long storied saga of aviation thought to employ those
instead of furlable blades.
A furled wind turbine is pointed directly into the wind. It’s only wind turbines without variable pitch
blades that must be turned perpendicular to the wind to minimize drag when wind speed exceeds
design threshold.
Ralph
 March 22, 2011 10:28 am
 Here are some more dangerous windelecs…

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_blnN-QHR9C4/TJw65jcXDvI/AAAAAAAAApE/MSNEU4-
OPM0/s1600/434004b66ee8ae81a169af47f6d24dc9-jpg400x400.jpg
http://www.abd.org.uk/images/photos/fallen_wind_turbine.jpg
http://i.ytimg.com/vi/u14tBwO5QVQ/0.jpg
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2009/12/02/article-1232540-076E050E000005DC-775_634x427.jpg
http://www.noturbinesin.saddleworth.net/Pictures/FallenTurbine1.jpg
http://ruralgrubby. les.wordpress.com/2009/09/windmill-collapse.jpg
http://www.windbyte.co.uk/ims/safety/noble_turbine.jpg
http://windconcernsontario. les.wordpress.com/2008/11/searsburg-vt-sept-2008-collapse.jpg
http://wattsupwiththat. les.wordpress.com/2011/02/167877_10150383324780214_518940213_171
20736_1293224_n1.jpg?w=640&h=480
http://images.icnetwork.co.uk/upl/nejournal/jan2008/7/2/6D6EE720-EAC5-DA69-
46CDFD94DC123460.jpg
http://www.windcows.com/ les/100_0355_op_399x600.jpg
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_4ify7vDXrDs/THE6GVeA81I/AAAAAAAAGcU/XxZ1qgqQVxE/s1600/wind-
shock-2.jpg
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_r78OS9t_bOY/SdPw4HJfGYI/AAAAAAAAALY/a-
S4TBN5d6s/s400/5d81cf0b86232ee22722444f0d7d12c9-jpg400x400++wind+ re.jpg
http://i.ytimg.com/vi/u14tBwO5QVQ/0.jpg
http://www.theresilientearth.com/ les/images/german_turbine_ re-der_spiegel.jpg
http://www.changecollege.org.uk/img/Cape_Wind_Turbine_Burning.jpg
http://www.backcountryagainstdumps.org/images/007.png
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_3D5RYqYRgLY/TF29LZLGo3I/AAAAAAAAAFQ/80ryKqbuMcM/s400/wind
mill-failure-02-400.jpg
P.S. Windmills grind corn. Windelecs generate electricity.
.
George E. Smith
 March 22, 2011 10:31 am
“”””” Dave Springer says:

March 22, 2011 at 9:06 am
March 21, 2011 at 2:42 pm
Nuclear reactors have a different but no less nightmarish maintenance problem. High neutrino ux
embrittles steel which in turn makes every microscopic defect in the steel a potential catastrophic
failure point. “””””
Dave, MY post was of relevence ONLY to the problems of existing generations of installed Wind
Turbines. I made; and intended, no comparison whatsoever with the problems of Nuclear, coal, hydro-
electric, tidal, PEV solar, fossil fuel, bio-fuel, cow dung fuel, or wood burning; or any other energy
technology, currently in use or contemplated.
I don’t have any problem with your posting information regarding such problems that you are
knowledgeable about; but what is your point in linking it to a wind turbine problem that I mentioned; is
there some coupling that I am not aware of between nuclear and wind turbines ?
And you mentioned the high neutrino ux degradation of steel, leasding to embrittlement.
This is the rst time I have ever heard of such a mechanism. Usually one thinks of neutrinos, passing
completley through the earth without hitting anything, so I was not aware that neutrinos were
particularly damaging to steels.
I’m quite familar with the degradation of materials in reactors by the high Neutron ux that is an
essential ingredient of nuclear ssion energy. In fact the very rst Transistor circuit that I ever
designed and built over 50 years ago, was for the detection of Neutron uxes; and in particular for the
monitoring of the neutron damage to living tissue; as in human being exposure to neutron ux. I also
built a very high sensitivity Scintillation detector for Neutrons, that was capable of completely
isolating Neutrons from gamma rays, or alpha and beta charged particle uxes. So I know something

about Neutron damage; but this is the rst time I have heard of neutrino damage to materials.
Can you tell us more about the speci c neutrino capture events in steel, that lead to this damage.
Ralph
 March 22, 2011 11:42 am
Off shore windelecs are even worse – once all that sea-spray gets to work. One set of Danish
windelecs needed all their gearboxes replacing after just 18 months.
.
Ralph
 March 22, 2011 12:07 pm
If you really want to know how useless wind power is, take a look at these two graphs. These are the
wind charts for Liverpool Bay for January / February 2010 (where there are lots of windelecs).
http://coastobs.pol.ac.uk/cobs/met/hilbre/sadata_met_month.php?code=5&span=jan2010
http://coastobs.pol.ac.uk/cobs/met/hilbre/sadata_met_month.php?code=5&span=feb2010
The blue line is the sustained wind speed, and anything less than 7kts not supplying any worthwhile
electrical power. Here we see more than a month – a full 40 days – without any signi cant wind, and
so without any signi cant wind-inspired electrical power. This is the duration of outage that we need
to store up electrical energy for, to prevent rolling blackouts across the country, and this makes a
mockery of any arguments that we can store wind power for windless days.
Energy storage on this scale ‘aint going to happen. What will happen is rolling power cuts across the
nation, and the entire economy grinding to a halt.
.
Jockdownsouth
 March 22, 2011 12:53 pm
The lovely Subrosa has a post showing the disruption in rural Scotland as they press ahead with wind
farms despite much local oppposition.
http://subrosa-blonde.blogspot.com/2011/03/wind-turbine-installations-what-few-see.html
Dave Springer
 March 25, 2011 5:39 am
Ralph says:
March 22, 2011 at 12:07 pm
If you really want to know how useless wind power is, take a look at these two graphs. These are the wind

charts for Liverpool Bay for January / February 2010 (where there are lots of windelecs).
http://coastobs.pol.ac.uk/cobs/met/hilbre/sadata_met_month.php?code=5&span=jan2010
http://coastobs.pol.ac.uk/cobs/met/hilbre/sadata_met_month.php?code=5&span=feb2010
The blue line is the sustained wind speed, and anything less than 7kts not supplying any worthwhile electrical
power. Here we see more than a month – a full 40 days – without any signi cant wind, and so without any
signi cant wind-inspired electrical power. This is the duration of outage that we need to store up electrical
energy for, to prevent rolling blackouts across the country, and this makes a mockery of any arguments that we
can store wind power for windless days.
Energy storage on this scale ‘aint going to happen. What will happen is rolling power cuts across the nation, and
the entire economy grinding to a halt.
If you look at the other 10 months of 2010 there’s hardly a day where the wind is under 7kts. In fact
the wind is SO reliable there I suspect that in January and February the met station’s anemometer
wasn’t working right – probably frozen.
However you are certainly right about storage being a problem for electricity generated by wind/solar.

The answer today is large grids with many generators of different kinds in different places feeding it. I
believe all these “alternatives” to fossil fuels including nuclear are stopgap measures and
furthermore that none of them even come close to being economically competitive and will never be
less expensive. However, I also believe that within the few decades all current alternatives and fossil
fuel itself will be made obsolete by hydrocarbon fuels manufactured by way of biosynthetic
organisms that turn sunlight, CO2, and wastewater directly into methane (natural gas), diesel,
ethanol, and others as needed in one easy step. No natural organisms do this because generating
these hydrocarbons bestows no survival advantage but are rather unneeded metabolic byproducts
but a genetically engineered organism in an arti cial environment which doesn’t have to compete
with other organisms in the wild can easily do it. The salient point is it can be done so inexpensively
that it will drive other sources of energy out of business. Even better is that abundant inexpensive
energy is just the tip of the iceberg with regard to what synthetic organisms can produce for us. The
age of nanotechnology is upon us. Synthetic organisms are the workers that build things to
speci cation for us atom by atom and molecule by molecule. Hydrocarbon fuels just happen to be
one of the easiest things to make because they are simple molecules that nature already produces in
small quantities and require no complex macroscopic arrangement.
Dave Springer
 March 25, 2011 5:44 am

March 22, 2011 at 10:31 am
re; high neutrino ux embrittling steel
Typo on my part. I meant neutron ux.
WHISKEY TANGO FOXTROT

 March 27, 2011 12:56 pm
Could it be that GE, the back room dealer in most of this wasting of our tax money might be full of
lies about how we need smart grids and wind machines? After all they’ve proven they have a real
economic incentive to lie before this. Just look at Japan’s mess and think GE when you see the
design of those nuclear plants. Now they say we need wind? Who can believe them. Their PR rm
Edelman is a well paid liar for Jeff Immelt and so far the public is still believing these lies.
Duncan MacLeod
 March 27, 2011 1:24 pm
This blog, and most of the comments, are typical of laypersons, or those who see things at a glance,
don’t know what they are seeing or what they are talking about.
MOST of the wind Turbines that are visible from Highway 58 in the Tehachapi area are older designs
that are being phased out. In fact, because it has been found that some of these “wind farms” along
Highway 58, in the Tehachapi pass per se, were not situated in the best locations, some are being
phased out and dismantled entirely.
These were older (some MUCH older), smaller, units with higher rotational speeds and greater
maintenance issues. They did (do) not have the computerized blade pitch control mechanisms of
newer units and thus were more prone to having their blades deployed (feathered) and brake failures.
This would be particularly prevalent after a period of high winds during a storm. It was, and still is, not
uncommon to see many of these older units inoperative after a weekend storm and before
maintenance crews have been unable to come in, make repairs, and bring them back online. Also, as
old turbines are being removed and new ones erected in their place, some of those that currently
appear to be “inoperative” simply have not yet been completed and brought into service.
The newer, larger, and more modern turbines are located along Tehachapi Willow Springs Road and
desert areas to the east of there. You will nd that these larger units, which turn much more slowly,
are in service for a much greater percentage of time. Right now, and with new construction of
turbines occurring at a record pace, many of those that you don’t see operating, once again, simply

have not yet been brought online.
I have lived in the Tehachapi area since 1986 and was a frequent visitor before that. I have seen the
evolution of the wind industry in the area and have seen the technology and reliability of the systems
increase exponentially in that time. Though there have been periods where the industry has suffered,
and companies have gone out of business leaving inoperative and degrading equipment in their
wake, but right now most of those are being removed, the properties being cleaned up, and MANY are
being replaced with the latest, most modern, units. Some of the companies mentioned in this blog
and comments, including Zond and Enron, in fact no longer exist.
Merely “passing through” does not give a true picture of the health or state of the industry. We who
observe it everyday know that it is thriving and expanding. Tehachapi is proud to have reclaimed the
title of “World Wind Energy Leader”
Brian H
 March 27, 2011 10:28 pm
Well, Dunc, got your nose deep in the subsidy trough, I see! Don’t get too used to it …
Dodgy Geezer
 April 7, 2011 2:00 am
@PSolar
“….More seriously though , this random, perhaps non representative report is not encouraging. Clearly
this is picking out worst cases to make the point. Pictures of well maintained sites would be boring.
Maybe a survey like surfacestations project would be interesting. ….This case alone seems to
suggest badly structured subsidies are letting corporations cream of a nice pro t without the need to
actually produce any power.”
PSolar is quite right. This piece is a political one, NOT a scienti c one. While I am opposed to wind
and solar installations (and I assume PSolar supports them) I cannot take any data from this piece to
advance my argument – it is all innuendo. What both sides of the argument really need is proper data
– independently gathered. Data on electricity generation should be easy enough to get, but I suspect
that costs for this will be much harder to pin down if wind power is funded by complicated subsidy
structures. Companies like Enron have shown themselves to be very skilled at hiding nancial data,
so I suspect that the unit cost of any kind of electricity could be anything you want it to be.
I second PSolar’s call for a survey, though I am not sure what it might measure…
Ashley Marie
 April 12, 2011 10:30 am
Does anyone know how I can get in touch with Mr. Watts? Perhaps someone knows an available
email address?
Just Tex
 April 12, 2011 7:05 pm
Back in the 1960’s and early 70’s, before government funded rural electri cation projects had strung
wires to just about every part of the country, I saw many ranches that had jury-rigged cheap vehicle
alternators strapped onto the turning shafts of common water windmills. The alternators charged a
bank of batteries, most often kept in a simple small shed somewhere below the tower.
Those homemade contraptions would provide enough electricity around the ranch house to run a
radio telephone, a few lights, and the bigger systems even ran washing machines, a small “cracker
box” welder, and a few hand held power tools too!
With careful planning for use, those ranch houses had enough electricity to do absolutely everything
they needed to do, almost entirely for free.


Ranch house refrigerators, freezers, room and hot water heaters, ran off of free waste natural gas
called “casing gas”, piped in from a nearby (sometimes a mile or more away) oil well. Or, they paid for
propane, that was trucked in as the supply was needed.
Most ranchers used tough (bulletproof) Aermotor windmills, sturdy long lasting 12v or 24v American
made vehicle alternators, and each had spare parts and their own way of hooking up the batteries
and the wiring.
The “fans” of that type of windmill appear almost solid to a bird or bat, so few to no animals are ever
lost in the blades. The average height of the tower rarely exceed 60′, and most are at or below 30′, so
annual maintenance is relatively safe and easy, rather than a death defying act of pure courage. And
most important, they last for years, and years, and years, with almost NO maintenance at all!
My point is, perhaps we need to look to the more simple things of the past, instead of blighting the
landscape with giant techno-behemoths that suffer enormous line loss of the power they
occasionally do manage to sputter and generate.
Those giants are extremely expensive to build. And, are very hard to keep operational without an
entire well paid circus act, plus a huge crane or even two, just waiting in a constant state of
mechanical standby.
So why not go “Back to the future”?
That’s just some food for thought…
Ashley Marie
 April 13, 2011 3:30 pm
I am giving a speech for a speech class playing the devils advocate of being against wind energy. So
many thing because it’s GREEN, it is a great alternative.
What I am having trouble nding is how much one costs to build? I am sure it varies at the largest
level possible, but does anyone have any gures?
Mel
 April 14, 2011 1:11 pm
Hmmm, what a mess! I agree this is a daunting problem but did we forget how many vehicles we’ve
piled up in junk yards, back and front yards of homes or just left abandoned? How many houses or
commercial/industrial buildings are abandon? All are eyes sores. The list could go on and on. It
seems most of you are picking on an industry just for the sake of nagging and not looking at the
whole picture.
Do you see opportunity? Any entrepreneurs out there?
Duncan MacLeod
 April 17, 2011 8:18 pm
Brian H says: “Well, Dunc, got your nose deep in the subsidy trough, I see! Don’t get too used to it ”
Well Brian H., typical of anyone with limited knowledge of the FACTS (other than what they “read on
the web”, and lacking the cerebral capacity to post an intelligent rebuttal, you resort to personal
attacks and insults.
I’m a cop , and have absolutely no personal or professional ties to the wind industry.
Brian H
 April 18, 2011 2:31 am
Dunc;
The local economy seems to be battening on the subsidy-fed wind industry, by your own statement.
“Public servants” are the rst in line in such “captive” micro-economies.
The deadly effects of legislated “renewables” fantasies are just starting to generate push-back. It’s

going to be brutal when it really gets under way.
Jay Curtis
 May 2, 2011 5:18 pm
Ashley Marie says:

“I am giving a speech for a speech class playing the devils advocate of being against wind energy. So
many thing because it’s GREEN, it is a great alternative.”
Ashley, you’ve been sold a bill a goods about wind farms being “green.” They are most certainly NOT
green. Have you ever visited one of these gigantic boondogles? They only exist to serve the needs of
special interests like General Electric.
The only way wind and solar are e cient is in small, local installations, not farms. It is all about
milking the taxpayer, not about providing e cient power in low impact ways.
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The Reality of Wind Turbines

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The Reality of Wind Turbines

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2/12/2021 The reality of wind turbines in California – video – Watts Up With That?

 Friday, February 12, 2021

Watts Up With That?

Home / 2011 / March / 19 / The reality of wind turbines in California – video

The reality of wind turbines in California – video

Idle Wind Turbines - Tehachapi Pass, CA 3-15-2011

Imagine the complications on a mountain ridge for maintenance.

Wind Plant Maintenance Items to Note

Wind Turbines in the town of Tehachapi, CA 3-15-2011

Florida’s broken windmills: A California problem

Wind Turbine Tour

From this American Thinker article “Wind energy’s ghosts”:

Kamaoa Windmills 006 crop.jpg

Image from Waymarking.com

Again, like in California, Hawaii’s turbine problem is lack of maintenance.

Mar 18, 2011 6:16 p.m.

Many are also concerned about the environment.

UPDATE2: The maintenance problem also extends to Germany:

HAWT Destruction from Gearbox Failure

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Tags: california, Energy, Wind turbine

202 COMMENTS   Oldest 

 March 19, 2011 9:17 pm

 March 19, 2011 9:20 pm

 March 19, 2011 9:23 pm

 March 19, 2011 9:32 pm

Those things are a blight on the countryside…

Notwithstanding the maintenance problems what about that visual pollution!

 March 19, 2011 9:44 pm

You are dead right Anthony maintinance is an issue!

“oil leaking from blade-pitch seals, oil leaking from gearboxes,”

Do you know the story for the last photo?

 March 19, 2011 10:00 pm

  March 19, 2011 10:19 pm

The visual pollution is depressing.

 March 19, 2011 11:23 pm

 March 19, 2011 11:47 pm

Geoff Sherrington says:

 March 20, 2011 12:18 am

John F. Hultquist says:

Why can’t we send in Greenpeace to x them ?

 March 20, 2011 12:40 am

 March 20, 2011 1:06 am

martin brumby says………

 March 20, 2011 1:15 am

 March 20, 2011 1:15 am

 March 20, 2011 1:19 am

 March 20, 2011 1:27 am

 March 20, 2011 1:34 am

 March 20, 2011 1:46 am

martin brumby says:

 March 20, 2011 1:55 am

 March 20, 2011 1:58 am

 March 20, 2011 2:38 am

 March 20, 2011 2:40 am

 March 20, 2011 2:50 am

BBC – 18 March 2011

 March 20, 2011 2:58 am

 March 20, 2011 3:02 am

We did a road trip last september.

Irony – maintenance too dangerous when wind is blowing???

 March 20, 2011 3:35 am

 March 20, 2011 3:38 am