Friday 9 December 2011

So Much For The Wind Farms


Proves just how useful they are.


Like a chocolate teapot.

The Penguin

8 comments:

microdave said...

I'm just waiting for one of the turbines near a populated area to disintegrate, or collapse. Whilst it will be very unfortunate if someone gets injured or worse, it needs a major incident to drive home to the masses what an utter waste of money these eyesores are...

The publicity surrounding this story should provide extra ammo for campaigners against new developments. Councils are paranoid about H&S issues - I wonder how they would feel if this aspect was raised at a planning meeting?

Oldrightie said...

Anyone told that cunt Huhne?

microdave said...

OR - cunts are useful (or so I am led to believe), and it's unfair on them to describe Huhne like that.

In any case you can't get through to anybody (or thing?) that thick...

Captain Haddock said...

"In any case you can't get through to anybody (or thing?) that thick" ..

Or that arrogant ..

nobby said...

So we can assume that because some planes crash, some ships sink, trains can't jump over landslides and trees can fall on houses and cars in windy weather they're all useless as well?

microdave said...

@ nobby - that's a particularly pointless analogy. Planes, Trains & Ships generally do what it says on the tin. Wind Turbines, on the other hand, are a complete waste of space, materials and effort. They will never recoup the energy used in their manufacture, and can and do cause grid operators massive problems trying to balance supply and demand, due to the highly variable and unpredictable nature of their output.

nobbu said...

@microdave,
that's utter bollocks. While there is a problem in keeping fossil/nuclear stations on standby to ensure a consistent supply of electricity to the network if output drops from the wind turbines they easily produce more substantially more energy over their lifetime than it takes to manufacture them. You don't do any positive points in your argument against them any favours by coming out with such claims.

microdave said...

There is indeed a "problem" with running conventional back up. It produces more CO2 than if they were operating normally for a start. Download and read the following document: (PDF)

It shows very clearly how dismal the real production of windfarms is. Then consider that virtually NO turbines have reached their designed 20 year life - there are numerous instances of abandoned sites slowly falling to bits, or requiring yet more taxpayers money to dismantle. Indeed, plenty of recently installed turbines are already requiring gearbox and control system repairs.

Also consider that conventional power stations normally last in excess of 40 years, so your lovely turbines would need completely replacing twice before any comparison was valid.

You might also look here: for a picture and some details of the enormous concrete & steel base each of these machines are built on. Other posts will document the wholesale destruction of habitat that accompanies this.

They also need new power lines to connect to the grid, which further adds to the "carbon footprint".

Now if they are so good, tell me why we didn't see them springing up in large quantities before Feed In Tarriffs came along?

Answer: because they are not cost effective without taxpayers subsidies.

Oh, and an offshore farm near me always has at least one turbine not functioning - today in a stiff breeze 2 were stationary. This is not unusual, and further reduces their cost effectiveness.