Retiring Worn-Out Wind Turbines Could Cost Billions That Nobody Has (energycentral.com) 574
schwit1 shared this article from Energy Central News:
Estimates put the tear-down cost of a single modern wind turbine, which can rise from 250 to 500 feet above the ground, at $200,000... Which means landowners and counties in Texas could be on the hook for tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars if officials determine non-functional wind turbines need to be removed. Or if that proves to be too costly, as seems likely, some areas of the state could become post-apocalyptic wastelands steepled with teetering and fallen wind turbines, locked in a rigor mortis of obsolescence.
Companies will of course have the option of upgrading those aging wind turbines with new models, a resurrection of sorts. Yet the financial wherewithal to do so may depend on the continuation of federal wind subsidies, which is by no means assured. Wind farm owners say the recycling value of turbines is significant and recovering valuable material like copper and steel will cover most of the cost of decommissioning... Yet extracting valuable materials from the turbines is not as easy as it sounds... "The blades are composite, those are not recyclable, those can't be sold," said Lisa Linowes, executive director of WindAction Group, a nonprofit which studies landowner rights and the impact of the wind energy industry. "The landfills are going to be filled with blades in a matter of no time...."
Unlike Duke Energy, some of the smaller wind farm companies operating in Texas, with fewer financial resources, may be tempted to just walk away when aging turbines no longer spin a profit. Linowes believes such moves may begin occurring even before wind turbines outlive their useful life as manufacturing warranties on the big turbines expire. "At what point does the cost of maintenance tip over to the point it's not worth maintaining a turbine?" she said. "We're in something of an unknown or uncertain territory... It could be a very ugly situation in the next five years when we see turbines need work, and are no longer under warranty and not generating enough electricity to keep running them."
Companies will of course have the option of upgrading those aging wind turbines with new models, a resurrection of sorts. Yet the financial wherewithal to do so may depend on the continuation of federal wind subsidies, which is by no means assured. Wind farm owners say the recycling value of turbines is significant and recovering valuable material like copper and steel will cover most of the cost of decommissioning... Yet extracting valuable materials from the turbines is not as easy as it sounds... "The blades are composite, those are not recyclable, those can't be sold," said Lisa Linowes, executive director of WindAction Group, a nonprofit which studies landowner rights and the impact of the wind energy industry. "The landfills are going to be filled with blades in a matter of no time...."
Unlike Duke Energy, some of the smaller wind farm companies operating in Texas, with fewer financial resources, may be tempted to just walk away when aging turbines no longer spin a profit. Linowes believes such moves may begin occurring even before wind turbines outlive their useful life as manufacturing warranties on the big turbines expire. "At what point does the cost of maintenance tip over to the point it's not worth maintaining a turbine?" she said. "We're in something of an unknown or uncertain territory... It could be a very ugly situation in the next five years when we see turbines need work, and are no longer under warranty and not generating enough electricity to keep running them."
Subsidies are the solution... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Subsidies are the solution... (Score:3, Interesting)
Greedy bastards expect a 1time investment to make infinite profit. Is Comcast running these windturbines?
You have to spend money to make money
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And I can't imagine many of them will be completely scrapped, to the point of removing the foundations as this non-article suggests.
Nope. This is just more fake news sponsored by the oil industry.
(expect to see all the deniers repeating it ad-nauseum starting about a week from now).
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If Duke decides to shutter a power plant, including its wind farms, the company is committed to restoring the site to its previous state, she said.
So at least some of the companies are promising to remove foundations. But as the article points out, Texas did not regulate this industry very tightly, so those promises may just be promises, not contractual obligations. And the land is almost all leased. So it the companies disappear, it's the property owner who will have to deal with a 500 foot tall structure. An escrow account for decommissioning might be a bit much, but a prepaid insurance policy that would cover the decommissioning in case of abandon
Re:Subsidies are the solution... (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't know whether this is an actual issue as opposed to some anti-wind hit piece, but there's a much easier solution assuming that this is an actual problem. Add the cost of the eventual decommissioning into the tower when it's being constructed. If that makes it completely unviable financially then amortize the cost over the lifetime of the tower and have part of the turbines production be set aside to pay for its decommissioning.
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Centrally planned economies and government subsidies often go horribly wrong in all kind of unintended ways.
The problem is that neoliberal free market capitalism isn't exactly delivering flowers and unicorns in many situations either. The expensive wars in small countries that we wouldn't care about if it wasn't for their oil is just one example of free market capitalism's failure to value externalities properly.
Markets are great ways to allocate resources efficiently, but they must be designed correctly to ensure they cannot be captured by the players, and account for negative externalities properly. This might
Re:Subsidies are the solution... (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem is that neoliberal free market capitalism isn't exactly delivering flowers and unicorns in many situations either.
I'd argue that it's enriching the rest of the world at an alarming rate. Since China and India moved towards market economies, poverty has been eliminated at a staggering rate. I think the problem is that people like to compare the reality of free markets to the utopian promise of collectivism. Free markets don't look appealing because they only promise that total wealth generated will tend towards the maximal, not that everyone will be wealthy. Marxist doctrines always promise a great equity, but when you look at the results it fails utterly. It's not that the idea itself is bad, but it won't work for human beings due to our nature.
If you want to account for negative externalities, you need to make sure that there's someone who actually owns those things which will suffer negative externalities. Having the government do it doesn't work as they're not as good at caring about environmental damages as an individual person is. As bizarre or counter intuitive as it might seem its a better system in practice. A great example is private hunting operations in Africa that do a better job of conserving wildlife and protecting it from poachers. When your livelihood depends on an animal, you'll spend much more of your effort protecting it. A government will continue to exist whether or not the animal lives or dies.
but throwing one's hands in the air and saying we just have to sit around and let the invisible hand slap us repeatedly in the face is just a form of ideological fundamentalism.
People have some kind of view of "the invisible hand" as some kind of sky fairy or omnipotent presence like its the god of capitalism. It's none of those things. It's like the description of how the internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it. We understand that the internet isn't some conscious being making that choice. Rather it's the result of individual people acting in a certain way. In this case, the invisible hand is a whole bunch of individual people all trying to act in their own best interests to get what they want. If you want the market to do something, you need to get the individual people playing in it to all (or in large) want something. Outside intervention to the contrary is treated as damage that people route around in one way (black markets being an easy example) or another.
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I'm pretty sure it's called the tragedy of communism.
I'm pretty sure its called the tragedy of the commons, but I like your term better. I believe that communism is more accurate and I'm going to copy that from you in the future.
Actually it is. What kind of delivery do you want? (Score:3)
> The problem is that neoliberal free market capitalism isn't exactly delivering flowers and unicorns
Point of fact: It is delivering flowers and unicorns
https://smile.amazon.com/gp/aw... [amazon.com]
Would you like next-day delivery, or free three-day delivery?
Re:Subsidies are the solution... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's definitely an anti-wind hit piece. Can you name any structures today that have their tear down cost in escrow anywhere? All those worn out old skyscrapers? And unlike a windmill, if they fall, it's in a populated area where people get hurt. Also, there's little chance of a windmill in the middle of nowhere becoming a crack house.
Re:Subsidies are the solution... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's definitely an anti-wind hit piece. Can you name any structures today that have their tear down cost in escrow anywhere?
Nuclear power plants. Same industry, even...
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Smarter plant management rotates the maintenance over time to spread out costs. The same probably could be done with wind.
Can, and is
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Can you name any structures today that have their tear down cost in escrow anywhere?
Nuclear power plants.
Re:Subsidies are the solution... (Score:5, Informative)
$200,000 (per turbine pull-down) is a completely made up figure by someone who clearly hates wind farms - an anti-wind power NGO. All this rubbish about wind farms won't last 20 years, cherry picking, they scour the planet to find a few badly maintained low quality wind turbines to get that figure, 45 years is more realistic for new wind-farms. And considering the cost of larger replacement turbines a new company would likely pull down the old turbines just to get the rights to the area.
And all of this bullshit about wind needing tax subsidies when the fact is this is not true any more, wind is the cheapest form of power and in the future it'll still be the cheapest form of power even with energy storage added in.
I quote "For example, the copper in the wires used to transmit power from the turbine to the grid will have to be stripped of its plastic insulation, a task which would entail serious labor costs." Now tell me that doesn't sound like utter BS disingenuous facts twisting.
Re:Subsidies are the solution... (Score:5, Insightful)
I quote "For example, the copper in the wires used to transmit power from the turbine to the grid will have to be stripped of its plastic insulation, a task which would entail serious labor costs." Now tell me that doesn't sound like utter BS disingenuous facts twisting.
Considering that copper isn't used to transmit power, to expensive, and it wouldn't be covered with plastic, not needed. Yeah, its bullshit.
But for shits and giggles less assume plastic coated copper would be used for that. It would still have to be stripped of plastic insulation even if was coming from piece of shit coal plant or a state of the art nuclear.
Re:Subsidies are the solution... (Score:4)
It's definitely an anti-wind hit piece.
That is what I'm waking away with. The turbine blades are defiantly recyclable. We just have to figure out a good way to do it. They are huge ass pieces of composite, I imagine they could be sliced into strips and used as building material for other projects. Then I gain I don't know much about wind turbines.
What I do know is some things about engineering. Seems to me the only things that will really wear out are the bearings, blades, and electronics. All the costs of these will be take account of in maintenance cost.
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I was actually thinking of shredding them and using them as fillers in other materials. Like they sometimes do with old car tires. Everything is recyclable. Sometimes you just have be creative.
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turbines litter the landscape where they were neither wanted nor economic.
Actually, wind turbines got primarily sited at the most advantageous locations, which is why the following ones will most likely get sited at the same places.
Re:Subsidies are the solution... (Score:5, Interesting)
No, I assumed that nobody has to escrow cleanup for a structure that contains nothing deadly within it. Nuke plants need the radiation cleaned up (the building can be left to rot just like an office building). Since windmills aren't radioactive, aren't filled with PCBs, and don't contain carcinogenic residue from burning coal, they need a teardown escrow as much as an office building does. Or a single family home for that matter.
Have you set aside the demolition costs for your house?
All this just convinces me conservatives actually do hate clean power with few downsides just because non-conservatives like it. It's the least irrational assumption left.
Re: Subsidies are the solution... (Score:4, Informative)
I had a quick look at WindAction, quoted in the piece, and they are largely against wind power.
"Industrial Wind Action Group Corp ("The WindAction Group") was formed to counteract the misleading information promulgated by the wind energy industry and various environmental groups."
"But like every claim involving the wind industry, there's a darker story."
What do they do about old high tension powerlines (Score:2)
Surely this is not different that the high tension power lines or old dams or old skyscrapers. I don't see anyone panicing.
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While is is true that central planning can be disasterous, the alternative isn't necessarily better.
The reason coal power is so cheap (actually not that cheap any more) is that nobody budgets the cost of removing the CO2 from the atmosphere. When there weren't so many of us and we each used so
Make it a sporting game (Score:2)
have teams compete to topple them as fast as they can, any way they can. Like a reality TV show. Do you want the 20 pounds of C4 or the blow torch. Maybe use the monster trucks from Idiocracy's Rehabilitation night. You'd make money.
ROFL Subsidies created the problem (Score:3)
Subsidies for uneconomic power technologies that were put in to make people feel good about saving the planet and not to generate electric power.
I have never met a green that could either see past their nose, or wasn't flat out lying about the problems of their religion.
Always blindsided by what anyone with a braincell can see
http://reason.com/blog/2017/09... [reason.com]
wow switch to renewables your power availability goes down and your prices become the highest in the world
or closer to home
https://www.pge.com/en/about [pge.com]
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Story is an excellent example of the framing lie (Score:5, Insightful)
One of the things that would improve Facebook would be some kind of quality-based selector for the first visible comment after each story. That "first post" tends to direct the conversation, but more often than not, it directs the conversation in some nonproductive direction, amplified by the brokenness of the moderation system that quite often gives the FP an insightful moderation. (Many discussion systems attempt (halfheartedly) to implement a solution with sort-order selectors.) Yet another example of the kind of feature I would be interested in helping to fund if only Slashdot had such a funding alternative--and if you disagree, then you could fund other features or none at all.
Anyway, returning form meta to my primary reaction to the article, this story is obviously a framing lie (Level 3). You can approach the reality ("machines wear out") from the perspective of a problem that needs to be solved, for example by making wind turbines that last longer and are easier to repair, or from the perspective of a new business opportunity, but this story quite deliberately frames the situation in apocalyptic terms.
Now I'm going to look at the rest of the discussion. Of course I'm seeking "funny", but with the slimmest of hopes these years. I'm also going to look for insights such as the real motivations of whoever published this story. Were I a gambling man, I'd bet on Exxon right out of the gate, but that particular corporate cancer has become rather clever about hiding the money trail...
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(Hint: Infinity is quite a long time).
OTOH, if the turbine produces $1k worth of electricity a month, spending $200 to send somebody with a 50c replacement part up it to keep it working for another year or two is a no-brainer....
Oh, wait, so is the president!
Re: Story is an excellent example of the framing l (Score:3)
It's not quite that simple. In order to be cost efficient, wind turbines are practically a one-piece black box. To do extensive repairs you practically have to take it down or replace large parts of it.
Wind turbines, like solar panels are a unit that's only somewhat cost effective if you don't ever have to maintain, recycle or replace them.
Re:Subsidies are the solution... (Score:5, Interesting)
And what about the homeless?
They can live inside the abandoned wind towers. Or we could drape a large canvas over a cluster of towers to create a big tent.
On a more serious note, TFA is silly:
1. Turbines don't "wear out". Only the bearing wear, and they can be replaced.
2. The towers don't "go bad" either. They will stand for centuries.
3. Wind towers do not create a "wasteland". The surrounding land can continue to be used for grazing, crops, whatever.
4. Turbines contain plenty of valuable copper, steel, rare earths, etc. We should worry more about someone stealing them than abandoning them.
Re:Subsidies are the solution... (Score:4, Interesting)
They said the same thing about Solar that the efficiency falls quickly, they'd wear out in 10 to 20 years max, and be littered everywhere.
Turns out 30 year old solar cells are still operating at a reduced but very stable and usable capacity.
Re:Subsidies are the solution... (Score:5, Informative)
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Indeed some of them lose less than 0.5% of their output per year, so they could still be supplying power 100 years from now. The worlds oldest solar cell is 60 years old and it still supplies power albeit very old technology so not supplying much.
Re:Subsidies are the solution... (Score:5, Informative)
Really, the thing to do is require that these companies have an appropriate sum of money set aside for decommissioning
Most of these turbines are on private land. Decommissioning is their problem, not yours. Despite the idiotic alarmism in TFA, it is none of your concern. It does not affect you in any way.
the way that the nuclear reactor industry is required to.
That is a completely different situation. A leaking reactor doesn't respect property boundaries. That makes it a public concern.
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So TFA is fake news with absolutely no information of value and we all just saved 5 billion dollars.
Whew!
Re:Subsidies are the solution... (Score:4, Informative)
1. Turbines don't "wear out". Only the bearing wear, and they can be replaced.
Right, because you know more about windmill maintenance than the people that have been managing them for decades.
2. The towers don't "go bad" either. They will stand for centuries.
No, they don't, material fatigue is a thing. I don't have data on windmill towers in front of me but I'm quite certain that the metal supports for power lines have a design lifespan of 80 to 90 years. Maybe a windmill tower is quite different in some way but I'd like to see some data on that before I believe you.
3. Wind towers do not create a "wasteland". The surrounding land can continue to be used for grazing, crops, whatever.
Right, surrounding land with rusting towers scattered about. Towers that make good lightning rods and can electrocute cattle or set a crop on fire. Towers that can topple in the wind, which create a hazard to animals, plants, and humans. Towers that will rust and introduce iron into the soil, which can poison the crop, and poison the animals that are too stupid to not lick the metal.
4. Turbines contain plenty of valuable copper, steel, rare earths, etc. We should worry more about someone stealing them than abandoning them.
If you read the article (yep, I know) then you'd know that it takes heavy equipment to cut the thick metal and haul away the pieces. Cutting the pieces smaller on site takes more time and labor and therefore becomes not profitable. I'm guessing that someone could go out with a not much more than a cutting torch and some rope, climb the tower, cut away chunks, and be able to sell that for scrap. The thing is that the fuel for the torch to cut the metal, and for the truck to haul the pieces, costs money. Steel is not all that valuable and so it would take economies of scale to have a chance to make it profitable. People might be able to make a profit on the copper and such with small scale work but that still leaves the steel towers.
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Animals will pick rusting metal? Iron will poison the soil? Yea, because old metal can't already be found all over farms.
As someone that grew up on a dairy farm I can say these are real things. Cattle are known to eat metal and if it doesn't tear their insides apart and kill them from internal bleeding then they can get real stupid and lethargic from heavy metal poisoning. Old metal can't be found all over working farms because that would be considered a hazard to the animals and would get a farmer fined or shut down by state inspectors.
Also, in one breath you say it takes heavy equipment to cut them down and in the next you say they will topple so easily as to be a hazard.
I didn't say cut them down, I said cut them apart.
You're a fucking retard.
That's quite possible.
Re: Subsidies are the solution... (Score:3)
...or West Texas any time of the year.
The farther west you get in Texas, the better it gets: elevation rises dramatically, humidity plummets, the roaches and mosquitoes get replaced by coyotes and tumbleweeds... and the landscape becomes downright majestic. There are forests at the higher elevations (the highest point in West Texas is ~9,000' above sea level) and the Southeastern-most range of the Rockies (the Cloudcroft & Ruidoso area of New Mexico - with 11,000' peaks if I recall correctly) is only a couple hours away. It's empty and r
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Check youtube for videos of wind turbines on fire and/or exploding.
Sure, there may not be many, and it may be a tiny percentage of those deployed. I'd suggest it's a little more than 'virtually never'.
But mainly it's always interesting watching something that expensive catch fire.
Re:Subsidies are the solution... (Score:4, Insightful)
WWII hadn't ended when Japan got nuked. Germany had been defeated, America was getting tired of war yet there was an undefeated enemy that was just as nasty as Germany. Failure to defeat Japan would have meant their military would re-arm and they'd be plenty pissed, ready to start the next war.
You are the President. Your advisors tell you it will take from 250,000 (MacArthur) to 1,000,000 (Nimitz) men to take down Japan's home islands. Your people want it over, they've lost several hundred thousand country men. You hear about a fantastic new weapon that could obviate the need to slaughter at least another 250,000 of your own people and at least that many in Japan, but probably a lot, lot more. What do you? You don't have time to string it out. Japan was also known to have a nuclear program.
Truman chose. You would have chosen differently, but don't act like your choice wouldn't have severe costs.
Re: Subsidies are the solution... (Score:3)
but we could have told Japan that they could keep all their shit and promise not to attack our interests in the South Pacific again to end the war and they probably would have gone for it
Agreed. We really need more of this in the world. We could get rid of jails completely if we just told criminals to cut that shot out and not do it any more.
If you run for president you've totally got my vote!
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"We didn't need unconditional surrender from Japan."
We sure did! Look where the World War 1 November Armistice got us...
By 1923 Act 2 of the Great European War was already rehearsing.
If the Allies had insisted on unconditional surrender there'd have been no WW2
Lots of other interesting things, but no WW2.
Mac
ConservativeBS (Score:3, Insightful)
Smells like BS
That's some really expensive demolition (Score:5, Insightful)
Agreed. Pretty much every wind farm I've seen has nothing else around it for hundreds of feet, so just put some explosives at the base of the tower and down it comes. Then chop it up and send it off for recycling - seems very unlikely that you couldn't turn a profit that way. Gets a little more expensive if you need to avoid hitting other windmills, but odds are that all the windmills in a given farm are going to be decommissioned at about the same time.
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Then chop it up and send it off for recycling - seems very unlikely that you couldn't turn a profit that way.
Yes, you could do that and make a profit . . .
. . . and then you could whine that you need government subsidies to do that . . . and make even more profit!
. . . it's subsidies . . . all the way down . . .
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Yeah, you can topple it with explosives and cut it up, but are you still in profit territory when you factor in the manpower to cut up the towers into small enough chunks to haul away (very far away?) and the materials involved in cutting them up plus the transportation costs?
It also seems like the nacelles have some equipment that's probably more valuable or even re-usable intact, not smashed by falling a few hundred feet from demolition which would complicate some kind of simple explode-and-topple strateg
Re:That's some really expensive demolition (Score:4, Insightful)
If the old equipment presents MORE value and then leaves a perfectly good tower to refit for further power generation, that can only improve on the worst case of blow up and cut up.
This is a very real problem. (Score:5, Interesting)
I had a big wind company who spent years courting me. They wanted to put 24MW of 400' tall wind towers on our farm's mountain ridge lines. We're in an ideal location at the end of a funnel of mountains. But, in the end I said no.
1. Their business model was based on the energy credits, not based on generating power. I only would get paid for power generated. Their presentation was grandiose but I'm good at math and the reality was I was going to see very little income from the project.
2. The turbine blades would throw ice 1,000' in an arc down wind covering extensive portions of my farm and forest. This ice would damage the trees I raise and endanger the lives of myself, my livestock dogs and my livestock as well as damaging my buildings and fences. They accepted no responsibility for this risk.
3. I asked them about end-of-life provisions and insisted that they setup a fund for decommissioning the system at the end of the 25 year lease or if they went out of business. They refused. They claimed that at the end of that time I would have very valuable equipment. I disagree.
I declined to work with them for these three reasons. I'm very pro green energy and all that good stuff. I farm organically. But the wind towers have too may problems, at least with how they were proposing.
Re:Look at the reality we already have!! (Score:5, Informative)
How can you possible say this is B.S.?
We already have huge fields of dead rusting wind turbines in California, and the south of Hawaii. Too expensive to remove so they just sit there, aging....
Given this is ALREADY A PROBLEM...
BECAUSE IT IS B.S.
Those huge fields of dead rusting wind turbines in California, and the south of Hawaii [aweablog.org] don't exist - or rather they only exist in the propaganda of the more unhinged climate deniers/fossil fuel shills who don't just distort the facts, they simply make stuff up.
I notice that when you repeat this B.S. you never provide links to your "alternative facts".
Note here is a lengthy in-depth discussion of the origins of this lie [stackexchange.com]. It started with a climate denier doing the old distorted facts game - pointing out initially a large number of turbines were installed at the fields in California and Hawaii - but that there many fewer now. But omitting the correct explanation that it was because they were replaced by fewer, much larger, more efficient turbines. And no, the old ones are not just left there, they are removed over time. The actual percentage of non-operating turbines at any given time is about 2%. The fantasy version where there are dead fields (to say nothing of huge dead fields) is the result of climate deniers taking the original BS claim, and extrapolating from it in their imaginations, then posting it as if it was a fact.
I drive through two of the three California fields frequently, watched them go up and evolve, and they are impressive with the huge new towers spinning slowly, but producing far more power than the old ones - which have disappeared. Fields of abandoned turbines are nowhere to be seen. But who should I believe, citation-free climate denier rants or my own lyin' eyes?
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But who should I believe, citation-free climate denier rants or my own lyin' eyes?
The answer is obvious - your eyes have been hacked.
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It is simply that he made a false claim - that there were huge abandoned fields of turbines left to rust - which he is now trying to walk back without admitting the attempted deception.
Older turbines are being replace by newer ones that are more efficient (and profitable), the fields are not abandoned, their output is actually increasing with the new turbines, and the older turbines are not being "left to rust", they are being removed.
There were two small wind farms on Hawaii, that were built in the late 19
The game (Score:2)
Seems like a high estimate (Score:4, Insightful)
Most of the decommissioning costs I've seen are a fraction of that. They also seem to be planning to take the tower and foundations away, which makes no sense. Surely you are going to want to put another turbine in its place.
Re: Seems like a high estimate (Score:2)
Most of the decommissioning costs I've seen are a fraction of that.
Yeah, no shit; what's a hundred pounds of Tannerite cost?? "When in Texas..."
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What was "allowed" in the past. What is needed now. What is now a standard. What was done in the past as a unique design to ensure a full subsidy got provided.
New standard parts may not fit as they expect new standard foundations and new standard towers...
Re "another turbine in its place"
That "another" could be from a new company with a new ways of getting a full subsidy that the old design could not work with...
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If the cost was really this high you would expect there to be a big market for upgrades that fit in the existing structures.
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Who would pay for that "big market for upgrades"?
New products would sell a whole new design of turbine. That only worked with a new tower. The full set for a new project.
Who wants to produce "upgrades" when entire new full cost towers and turbines could get full new subsidy payments?
Why spend profits doing work
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Assuming you can't just extend the life of the tower somehow, like they do with nuclear plants that suffer from fatigue.
The original basis for a 40 year license for nuclear plants was based on neutron embrittlement of the reactor core, the most expensive and difficult part of the plant to replace. If the metal becomes brittle, it'll stop expanding as it's heated and pressurized, and crack a leak instead.
We only had so much metallurgical data when that rule was made. Since then, core metal samples (removal test coupons) have shown that the reactor vessels are holding up better than expected; especially since core loading has
Sowing FUD (Score:5, Insightful)
Unless we get electricity too cheap to meter, the old wind turbines will be replaced with new wind turbines. These old turbines are located in the best wind resource (and already paid the fixed infrastructure cost to connect to the grid), so the most desirable to repower.
There are many examples in California where turbines were first installed in the 1980s which have already, or are in the process now, of repowering.
Re:Sowing FUD (Score:5, Interesting)
Disclaimer: I work in manufacturing of wind turbine components.
You are correct.This is pure FUD. We sell hundreds, if not thousands of major components to repower aging turbine installations every year. The article makes it sound like a wind turbine is a one piece thing, and when it dies, you have to decommision it. The truth is there are a few main components that need replacing to repower it, and that cost isn't that much more than their estimate of decomissioning costs. Nobody is decommisioning wind farms. Even if they were, the total cost of decommisioning every turbine in the nation (at TFA's exaggerated cost) is less than decomissioning one nuclear plant.
I'll throw this out as well: Even though I work in the wind industry, I think new modern nuclear should be pushed for.
Just Walk Away (Score:5, Interesting)
If the cost of removing old wind turbines is so high, why wouldn't the operators adopt the same business model the cell companies have used successfully for decades?
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U.S. LEOs have urban assault vehicles, fully automatic assault rifles, grenade launchers, and maybe even a battlefield tactical nuke.
How else would you handle the average wrong-house raid these days? Dude might be hiding an overdue library book in there.
How is this specific for the wind turbines? (Score:5, Insightful)
What is so special about this specific type of power generating infrastructure?
Isn't a water or nuclear power plants just as expensive to retire?
Who sits on those billions?
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The total decommissioning funds set aside for United States Nuclear Power plants is somewhere around $64,000,000,000. This money is generally invested to grow long-term in order to meet the commitments. I don't believe any other type of power plant is required to have funds set aside in advance to safely tear them down.
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A lot of hydro plants exist because there was a water control need for the dam in the first place and the dam was built for extremely long endurance and won't be "retired". They're easier to get at than most wind farm locations and can be upgraded with turbine and generator improvements fairly easily.
Nuclear has its own decommissioning problems, but these plants seem to have effective operating lives of 60 years and the same basic power generation improvement advantages as hydro plants. When you do finall
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What is so special about this specific type of power generating infrastructure?
Isn't a water or nuclear power plants just as expensive to retire?
Who sits on those billions?
The difference is that those plants eat up shoreline, which is usually expensive, and there's an economic reason to tear them down and re-purpose them for other uses that can generate revenue. Wind farms are in big fields that are often already used for other things, or on hills that can't be used for much else.
Make sure you get your comparisons correct.... (Score:4, Informative)
HHAHHAHHAHHHAHHHHAHHAHAHHAHAAHA. Thanks, i needed a good laugh.
https://www.eia.gov/todayinene... [eia.gov]
More recently, the 556 MW Kewaunee Nuclear Power Plant in eastern Wisconsin was shut down in 2013. Kewaunee’s operator, Dominion Power, anticipates nearly $1 billion in total costs using the SAFSTOR method and estimates that work will not be complete until 2073.
That $200,000 is looking pretty good put up against that $1 BILLION plus....and 60 years to complete.
The capacity factor of a wind turbine is about a 1/3rd. The biggest wind turbines are about 2 megawatts. Kewaunee had a lifetime capacity factor of 84% for it's 39 years of service.
To replace Kewaunee's output with wind turbines, you would need 631 of the largest wind turbines available, for a cost of about 2 billion dollars. Since wind turbines last perhaps half as long as nuclear plants, figure $4 billion. That also doesn't count added costs with spreading them out geographically far enough to get reliable generation from them; nor have we touched the tremendous amount of land they need.
At a $200,000 per unit decomissioning cost for wind turbines, the total cost would for scrapping two generations of a 631 unit 'wind farm' would be $250,000,000, less than Kewaunee's billion..... but now you're starting to compare apples to apples.
New nuclear plants are double the output of Kewaunee- while they're admittedly expensive, they have the tremendous benefit of power-on-demand- something that's vital for a stable electrical grid.
Solution: stop being greedy (Score:2)
These wind farms turn a tidy profit, yes? Where is all that profit going? If they stop laundering those profits and bank some of it for future repairs or replacement, rather than holding out a poor beggar's hands and whining for another bailout, the problem is solved.
Vet your sources (Score:5, Informative)
Does anyone do even a tiny bit of quality assurance on submissions? The person being quoted as saying we're in for an apocalyptic landscape littered with turbine blades is from the WindAction Group. That organization's website claims "Industrial Wind Action Group Corp ("The WindAction Group") was formed to counteract the misleading information promulgated by the wind energy industry and various environmental groups."
In other words, it's probably a fossil fuel front group.
Great job, whoever thought this was a good submission.
I call bullshit (Score:5, Informative)
Wind power in Texas is often some of the cheapest electricity you can get. It's picking up momentum, and the incentive to keep it going is pretty high. I smell a slant in this article, likely from someone with money to lose from this trend. Say, coal industries.
https://www.chron.com/business... [chron.com]
Dont offer cash (Score:2)
Other People's Money to select a site, design and build.
To keep production working and ensure a profit so future projects can be provided for.
Then to cover most of the cost of decommissioning.
At some time the projects run out of that free money.
The cost of energy has to allow for all the costs of past and new turbines and set a market price for the full cost.
A gov cant just step in and virtue signals about energy p
Never let them install on your land without an uni (Score:2)
Yes and No and where (Score:2)
Blades
The "huge" blades weight is actually a very small amount of the whole weight.
But it's true that composites cannot be "recycled" they
can be broken appart and cut and later shreded and then can be
a.) burned for example in the cement industry the residue being created that cannot burn is normal to this process what so ever.
b.) used as a supplement for tarmac and even concrete
So yes blades are a bit of a hassle. And like anything else nothing is 100% green, what is important is the overall sum.
How can you
Stop the subsidy BS. (Score:2)
Puhlease (Score:2)
I can't make out whether this is some SJW bemoaning "something" or some alt-right wanting to somehow make a $$$.
I can say this, it is frigging Texas! And trust me if there is a dollah to be made by recycling those things the meth-heads will find a way to bring it down.
Sure, along the way a few meth-heads will get killed, but hey that's a double bonus right there!
Wow - non-nuclear decommissioning (Score:2)
So you thought that decommissioning costs applied to only the one industry you don’t like?
I’m not that concerned about decommissioning wind turbines, because each tower contains a trove of industrial metals, including such goodies as a big hunk of neodymium, that can be recycled. The problem I see is maintenance. Intricate mechanical gearing and electronics, high off the ground, in many cases lashed by that salt spray that has a history of ruining everything. The good news is that maintenance w
It's nothing compared to old coal plants (Score:3)
They seem oddly unconcerned about tering down old coal plants [psmag.com] full of asbestoes, PCBs, and radioactive ash and slag.
Talk about a hazardous and expensive clean-up.
REPAIR, not Replace (Score:5, Insightful)
We replace cars because they cost $50 to tow to a dump.
But we do not tear down and replace a building or a hydroelectric dam merely because it is old.
Yes, repairs are costly, But the tear down cost is $200,000, then guess what, repair becomes a better option.
I think most wind turbines will end up being repaired multiple times, probably once every 10 years or so. But their lifespan, including repairs will probably be in excess of 50 years.
Note, the repair business will also mean that when we tear down the ones that really can't be repaired, those expensive composite blades will be checked, and if in good condition, used to cheaply repair other turbines whose blades failed. They will end up stockpiled, just like airplane parts, not dumped.
Happens every time with the "renewables" (Score:5, Insightful)
the maintenance costs are not properly calculated... which is why despite being told repeatedly that this tech is economically competitive, no private money wants to invest in it absent heavy public support as an investment. Sure, companies might build solar or wind as a publicity or good will campaign move... but to make money?
To be very clear, I want renewable energy to be competitive and efficient and for it to replace most of our grid power.
Appreciate what I just said there.
I want that.
But... if we are to do things responsibly and sustainable then it is very important to not lie on the funding proposal sheet. It may get us to build more things in the short term but it will reduce trust in future proposals and will incline programs that could have been successful to fail because problems could not be addressed early.
In effect, the people pushing this stuff past its legitimate place are sabotaging future more ambitious projects. If the maintenance costs are 50 percent higher than we were initially told, then we need to know that so that we can alter the plan to avoid that problem.
Maybe some wind turbines are better for that then others. It depends. Its something we have to do... put it all in an excel spread sheet and go through a few different scenarios.
What bothers me about these projects is that people believe so much in the "the cause" that they feel they have to lie about the numbers.
You're not helping when you do that. Please stop lying. We can afford to build these things at a loss. And we often go into these projects with our eyes open that it isn't the most economical option. That's okay. But if you lie about the numbers on top of that then it makes everyone very suspicious, nervous, and generally avoidant regarding these projects.
You'd have bigger buy in if the reports were more reliable. Consider that.
Totally bogus (Score:3)
I realize I'm replying very late, but for the record:
> schwit1 shared this article from Energy Central News:
No, it's not from Energy Central News. Energy Central News is a news scraper. If you actually look at the link, the very first line clearly states its from the "Valley Morning Star". If you Google that, you'll find its a very small regional paper in Texas.
> said Lisa Linowes, executive director of WindAction Group, a nonprofit which
> studies landowner rights and the impact of the wind energy industry
Ummm, no. As the article points out;
"Its funding, according to its website, comes from environmentalists, energy experts and public donations and not the fossil fuel industry."
Which is funny. This statement is what they say, you can go to the web site and find it. But when you do, you will find that this same page also states that the entire purpose of the group is...
"to counteract the misleading information promulgated by the wind energy industry and various environmental groups."
Ah. And when you poke about a bit more, you'll learn that the Group was formed "by Jonathan S. Linowes, a self-proclaimed Tea Party activist and climate change denier."
Linowes, as in the husband of the person writing the article, as in the founder and co-founders.
So yeah, once again total BS gets onto the front page of /. Thanks fact checkers!
https://checksandbalancesproject.org/lisa-linowes-and-the-disinformation-of-industrial-wind-action-group/
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So what? A little altitude is nothing some explosives at the base of the windmill wouldn't fix. Or a one-time lowering of the turbine to the ground in a more controlled fashion if you want to avoid damaging still-viable components with the impact. You already have a strong enough tower right there, just need a thousand feet of cable and a winch-truck on the ground that's heavier than, and strong enough to support the weight of, the combined turbine and blades assembly.
Re:Free For All (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah, but that also means they have as much metal as a small fleet of cars, once you factor in the support post. That's good recycling. :-)
But seriously, nobody in his/her right mind is going to tear down a wind turbine unless global climate change causes the wind to stop. In the worst likely case, when one of these things fails, the owners will temporarily take down the blades, replace the generator portion, and put the blades back up at a much lower labor cost than dismantling it, and at a far lower cost than building a new one from scratch. In the best case, they'll be able to repair it in place.
In other words, this story is pure FUD.
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+1 Informative.
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But people in their right minds are in very limited supply in the former american republics.
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In the worst likely case, when one of these things fails, the owners will temporarily take down the blades, replace the generator portion, and put the blades back up at a much lower labor cost than dismantling it, and at a far lower cost than building a new one from scratch.
Just like every other energy generating plant.
Oh, wait.....
Re:Free For All (Score:4, Informative)
"50 feet in the air" and "small car" is at least half and order of magnitude too low. Try 80-100 meters, and 10-15 tons. each.
However most wind farms are designed so that each individual turbine could be replaced with a somewhat bigger turbine without interfering with other turbines. If you're rebuilding a farm at EOL, you already have the cranes and expertise on-site, so the per-tower decom cost will go down.
Additionally in the contract phase of the project landowners should and often do demand decommissioning funds to be placed in escrow before any construction begins.
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one blade of a wind turbine weighs about 25-30 tonnes.
That's about the same as a small car in America, yes.
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Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
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Just because my car is out of warranty doesn't mean I have to stop driving it. Unless maintenance costs exceed the revenue generated by letting a turbine run, why wouldn't you just let it run.
Indeed. Many people keep driving their old cars until the wheel bearings seize, or the transmission stops shifting, or it puts a rod through the block.
I think that was the point.......
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it's going to cost (lose) $50K
No. You walk away. It'll cost the bank $50K. You aren't an entity that can be touched by creditors. More likely a Texas company set up to pass subsidies through. And can evaporate as quickly as a puddle in El Paso.
Re:Peanuts compared to nuclear... (Score:4, Insightful)
All nuclear power plant projects are required to have a fund to decommission the plant. No funds to decommission means no license to build the plant.
One reason the utilities run these nuclear power plants for so long is because each plant is potentially billions of dollars in sunk costs, after running for 40 years it's been paid for. Another reason is that each reactor produces somewhere around one gigawatt of electricity, 24 hours per day, 7 days per week, with short shutdowns every few months (maybe years) for inspections, refuel, and repairs. Shutting a nuclear reactor down and not having another to replace it means they have to keep running it or they run short on electricity generating capacity by one gigawatt.
In the USA there are about 100 nuclear reactors producing power. Nuclear energy produces about 20% of the electricity we use. Losing a single reactor might not be a big deal because that's only 0.2% of the nation's electrical generation capacity. But what happens if we shut down 10 reactors? That's 2%. Perhaps not a big problem but it's starting to get in the territory of a concern.
You think that can be replaced by wind power? Wind takes 10 times the concrete and steel per generating capacity over nuclear. Does that sound like too much to you? Consider that for every tower sticking up in the air there is a very large block of reinforced concrete buried in the ground to hold it up against the wind. Also consider that those big concrete domes you see over a nuclear reactor is mostly hollow.
If the problem of getting rid of those old nuclear power plants concerns you then there's a really easy way to speed up the process of shutting them down. All the government would have to do is allow for replacement reactors at those sites.
We now know how to build reactors that can burn the spent fuel from those old reactors. These fuel rods still have plenty of fuel in them, it's only that the old light water designs we've been using are not efficient enough to use up what is left. Have the replacement reactors be heavy water designs, molten salt designs, or whatever else we have now, and they can dispose of the spent fuel on site by burning it more completely. We'd be getting energy without having to make any new fuel.
Re: Peanuts compared to nuclear... (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, the big concern is that nobody wants to buy the power from them, as alternatives keep springing up. This gets them antsy as the reactors need to distribute the power, and they are useless without being able to do so. And that means...no funds to retire.
Two things here...
First, you want me to believe that no one is willing to buy electricity from a nuclear power plant? Bullshit. No body cares where the electricity comes from, especially not a business that has work to do. Saying "nobody" is a bit hyperbolic since there's always some hippy that can't stand nuclear power but such people are also the kind that put solar panels on their roof and go off grid, they aren't paying any utility bills anyway.
Second, if they have no funds to retire, because no one is buying, then they will keep going until the do have funds to retire. If you want that nuclear power plant to have money to shut down later then you buy the electricity now. Oh, and there has to be a plan for these people to keep making money after the plant is shut down, such as being able to build a new power plant.
Sorry, but none of those ideas have panned out. They aren't appealing even with the tens of billions of subsidies they've gotten.
They haven't panned out because the government has never issued a license for them. The government is very risk adverse, to the point of being crippled to make any changes to the rules on licensing. We've been making the same reactor with minor variations on a theme for 60 years. People ask for a new license and the government says, "We don't know if this is safe." The response is, "We'd like to prove to you it is safe by building a demonstration reactor." "How can we know that is safe" "We can do that with these plans and simulations." "We'll need to see a working prototype first." "That's what we are asking for, a license to build a working prototype." "We can't issue a license to build anything until you can show it's safe."
Subsidies are worthless no matter how much is spent without a license to build a real world reactor. The simulations are only as good as the data used to create them and to get that data means building a prototype to get that data from.
Nope. Sounds like scare tactics to me, as you try to create a hysteria over an image, without actual robustness to your examinations.
You can live with your delusions of a nuclear free world only so long, then reality bites. Go read a book or something.
They just can't get those gen 3 reactors to deliver on their promises.
And they can't deliver on those promises until the government starts issuing licenses to build those Gen3 reactors.
Sorry, but it turns out we could have literally built homes for Americans that would have reduced energy costs by more than we've gotten from nuclear subsidies.
Sorry, but a growing population and a shrinking number of operating nuclear power reactors means that at some point those lines on the graph crosses and the space in between the lines is the growing energy shortage. If you want to see an ecological disaster then make energy so scarce and expensive that people will be cutting down every tree in sight for firewood to stay warm.
And that isn't even counting the wastefulness of nuclear subs.
Go take a long walk off a short pier.
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So you agree that there is a fund to decommission nuclear power plants? Good. I'll take that over not having anything at all like wind power.
The claims have been that the nuclear power plants are not being cleaned up. This can be shown to be false. It may be taking a long time, it may be running over budget, but the mess is being cleaned up. The problem with windmills now is that they've been leaving the mess for others to clean up, and walking away with the profits.
The nuclear power mess would be clea
Re: (Score:3)
Does wire and steel age in a large generator?
Yes, metal fatigue is a real thing.
Do the bearings give out?
Sure, but they can be repaired. They can be repaired only so many times though because the metal fatigue in the tower and other parts set a limit on the profitability of repairs over replacement.
Does it cost too much to clean the blades periodically and filth accumulation on the blades makes them less efficient?
All those bird guts do accumulate to a point. The rain washes a lot of it off. If it gets thick enough it cracks in the sun and wind and falls off. That's not the real problem though, the blades are under considerable stress in the wind and bird impacts stress it more. The str
Re:Wow. That's cheap. (Score:3)
But in TX,itâ(TM)s much cheaper to use wind over nuclear.
Let's just pretend that less than 1% of the world population live in Texas. Let's also pretend that there are lots of people that live on islands, where land is expensive, and the neighbors to this island don't like them very much so they can't just buy their electricity from them. Let's also pretend that this describes many hundreds of millions of people in the world. What then?
We are not going to live in a world powered by wind. We are going to have to figure out how to make nuclear power work. This