quote:

Multiple turbines that are taller than 750 feet are collapsing across the world, with the tallest—784 feet in stature—falling in Germany in September 2021. To put it in perspective, those turbines are taller than both the Space Needle in Seattle and the Washington Monument in Washington, D.C. Even smaller turbines that recently took a tumble in Oklahoma, Wisconsin, Wales, and Colorado were about the height of the Statue of Liberty.

Popular Science Article

I fukkin' hate these things, and if I found Aladdin's lamp, my first wish would be to disappear all of them.

Businessweek published the first article on these things falling: Bloomberg Businessweek

I agree! They will never produce the energy it took to build them. It's bullshit "green energy". Just a story.

https://epoch.daily.theepochti...5f14453a918aed5032b3

‘Wind Power Fails on Every Count’: Oxford Scientist Explains the Math

Wind power has been historically and scientifically unreliable, claims an Oxford University mathematician and physicist, with his calculations revealing the government to be pursuing a “bluster of windfarm politics” while discarding numerical evidence.

After the decision to cut down on fossil fuels was made at the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris, the “instinctive reaction” around the world was to embrace renewables, Professor Emeritus Wade Allison, who is also a researcher at CERN, said in a 2023 paper (pdf).

Allison noted that because solar power is “extremely weak,” it was inadequate to “sustain even a small global population with an acceptable standard of living” before the Industrial Revolution.

“Today, modern technology is deployed to harvest these weak sources of energy. Vast ‘farms’ that monopolise the natural environment are built, to the detriment of other creatures. Developments are made regardless of the damage wrought. Hydro-electric schemes, enormous turbines and square miles of solar panels are constructed, despite being unreliable and ineffective; even unnecessary,” Allison said in the report, published by the Global Warming Policy Foundation.

“In particular, the generation of electricity by wind tells a disappointing story. The political enthusiasm and the investor hype are not supported by the evidence, even for offshore wind, which can be deployed out of sight of the infamous My Back Yard,” he wrote. “What does such evidence actually say?”

cont...

We get a good chuckle out of the amount of gear oil the o&g industry sells to the wind power industry, and the amount of diesel we sell to transport and install them.

In addition to falling over, don't forget:

acres of out of service wind turbine farms dotting CA, TX, etc.

Siemens Gamesa losing a billion on wind turbines 4Q22 with nearly half of it due to an 8 year backlog due to $472M in faulty components

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Ego is the anesthesia that deadens the pain of stupidity

DISCLAIMER: These are the author's own personal views and do not represent the views of the author's employer.

Don't forget they are virtually unrecycleable.

My first Oceanography calls in college back in 1974 we had a discussion on energy production in the nearshore waters of the US including wave energy converters and wind turbines to name a few.
The prof, who did fairly detailed calculations, showed that it took more energy to produce and run an offshore windmill than it produced in a 25 year lifespan… I don’t think his calculation were wrong even back then.

Why?

There are websites that explain basic stuff.

For example, this explanation of the Principles of Thermodynamics.

But this is helping our plant they say. Governments, as we know better than others, will spend tons of money on any idea that makes them look good without weighing the pros and cons. Obama gave away over $100 billion for solar and wind farms and a good portion of the "businesses/builders", couldn't/didn't make what they said they would.

I despise these things. They're just giant monuments to human stupidity.

I think most of the ‘efficiency’ is the subsidies to put them up. Next in line are Govt mandates that power companies have X percentage of power generated from ‘renewable sources’.

Take this away & you’d likely see few going up.

I am just going to say it. Global Warming, created entirely by the Trump administration, is causing temperature instability in the steel and fiberglass towers, combined with increased winds due to Trump policies, is the chief culprit.

EVERY ONE OF THESE TURBINE DEATHS IS ON TRUMP AND THE NRA!!

There, it had to be said, now they can finally hold the appropriate party to blame.

While driving across this country, we see thousands of these pieces of shit. Is it just me or are most of these things stationary?

I can see 65 of the 200 turbines, from my living room window .

They don't rotate / generate when the grid does not demand electricity.

I've come to the conclusion that in some way, shape or form,
Free government money is involved here.

Nobody can explain to me who is making how much money on these contraptions or where the money comes from.

They shut down regardless of the demand, when it's too windy.
They shut down in ice storms.

They shut down at intervals for maintenance.

And they shut down for repairs, regardless of demand.

400 cubic yards of concrete go in to the ground for a base to mount these towers on.

I’ll add this to my personal hate for these things. We live out east of Cheyenne in the county. When we built our house 7 years ago, we had a pretty view of the lights of Cheyenne, sitting in a notch to the west of us. In the intervening years, wind turbines have been erected west of Cheyenne. Now evenings when we look off in that direction, the horizon is dominated by a line of blinking red lights running N - S, spanning our view of town.

I’m also a lifelong bird lover, having that love instilled by a favorite uncle since I was just a young boy. I understand that while the blades of those damn things appear to turn slowly, that it’s an illusion, and that out at the tips they are turning at over 100 mph (correct me if I’m wrong). The untold number (and that’s by design) of raptors and neotrops killed by the fukkin’ things is obscene and the discussion is prohibited.

Sometimes you just have to ruin the environment to save the environment.

quote:

Originally posted by lastmanstanding:

The guy flying the "kite", wow. So many questions. According to this video he lived!

quote:

Originally posted by bendable:
400 cubic yards of concrete go in to the ground for a base to mount these towers on.

I always knew Solar Panels sucked, but I never thought much about wind turbines.

Good thread.