Wind may be renewable but the resources to replace turbines every 20-25 years are finite. So is the land space that's needed.
ACTUALLY the replacement schedule for wind turbine blades IS CLOSER TO TWELVE YEARS than TWENTY!
Just another LIE-beral LIE!
Here is an article that LIE-berals generally and nut bar environmentalists specifically WILL NOT want to read! With some comments of my own in brackets):
Limited Lifespans of Wind Turbines Result in Higher Costs of Energy
Written by Mitchell Rolling From Americanexperiment.org
in Energy, Environment. Published June 26, 2018
Have you ever read that wind energy “is the cheapest energy source available?”
These claims are based on cost-estimates that assume the lifespan of wind turbines to be 30 years. However, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), the lifespan of wind turbines is about 20 to 25 years.
(Oh dear who would have thought LIE-berals would MISS-REPRESENT the value of a favorite gravy grabbing policy?)
In Iowa, wind turbines are reaching the end of their lives even faster as MidAmerican Energy plans to repower turbines constructed in 2004, merely 14 years after they were installed.
(In summer 2019 a wind tower located in the snowbelt area near Pontypool Ont. Actually caught fire and disintegrated - a TOTAL LOSS! LIE-berals DO NOT tell us that wind towers need to be DE-ICED by a helicopter spraying fluid in on them and one wonders if too much ice build up would weaken the blades? Nobody has said why the Pontypool tower disintegrated! Nor apparently has anybody counted the fuel cost of helicopter de-icing runs!)
To make matters worse, these cost-estimates attribute 30-year lifespans to every power plant – not just wind turbines – even though coal, nuclear, natural gas, and hydroelectric plants can generate electricity for more than 50 years.
(OH? MORE FUDGED LIE-beral numbers? And we already KNOW that LIE-berals fudge the service life and range of their electric TOY cars! LIE-berals tout their “fast chargers” as a quick way to refuel their TOYS - BUT THEY DO NOT MENTION that frequent use of fast charges generates heat that SHORTENS BATTERY LIFE even further!)
(In the case of one real estate agent who used fast chargers for his electric TOY 2-3 times PER DAY - his battery BURNED OUT WITHIN 30 months of purchase!)
(Imagine the LAWSUIT if a gas powered car burned out in a couple of years and the maker just shrugged! And the cost of a new battery is HUGE! Electric TOYS offer low maintenance - BUT THERE ARE OTHER HIDDEN COSTS! As is USUAL with any LIE-beral deal - THERE ARE ALWAYS STRINGS ATTACHED!)
Because these reports only look at a 30-year window, they fail to account for the additional spending necessary to repower a wind turbine and extend its life. According to a report conducted last year, investments in repowering these turbines will exceed $25 billion by 2030 in the United States.
(And WE KNOW who will be on the hook for those charges!)
By not factoring in this additional spending, these reports not only underestimate the true cost of wind energy, but overestimate the cost of power plants capable of generating electricity for more than 30 years.
(There are other articles discussing the potential cost of govt being forced to pay for dismantling worn out wind towers after the owners walk away from the gizmos that no longer generate any revenue! The cost of dismantling a typical tower runs about $200,000 dollars U.S. and tower owners are balking at putting up cash in advance to ensure their towers will be safely dismantled later!)
In other words, these cost-estimates tell us is that wind energy would be the cheapest source of energy if all power sources produced electricity for a similar period of time… but they don’t.
Additionally, because wind turbines can only produce energy when the wind is blowing, they generate electricity less frequently than other generation sources. In Minnesota, wind farms produced electricity only 34.67 percent of the time in 2016.
(The TRULY WORST aspect of wind power is that in Ontari-owe - green power is SO UNRELIABLE that LIE-berals set up natural gas fueled generators - fully powered up and fully manned and SITTING IDLE- just WAITING to take over from the mouldy green power when the wind stops blowing or the sun don’t shine! Yes - for every kilowatt hour of green energy there MUST BE a corresponding kilowatt hour of FOSSIL FUELED BACK UP POWER!)
This is far lower than coal at 56.9 percent, hydro power at 64 percent, and nuclear at 84.6 percent. Natural gas plants are utilized at a lower rate of 17.6 percent in Minnesota, but this is because natural gas is used often used as a “backup” source of electricity when the wind isn’t blowing.
(Oh - Minnesota has the same issue of mouldy green UNRELIABILITY AS ONTARI-OWE! And should we ask if LIE-berals think it is a GOOD THING for LIE-berals to create all those good paying HOG JOBS - for future LIE-beral supporters at fossil fueled back up generators? The answer appears to be HELL YES! In Thunder Bay - LIE-berals converted a coal fired generator to burn “bio mass” which is pellets made of waste wood and paper products and other flammable garbage!)
(TOO BAD there is NO North American supplier of Bio Mass so LIE-berals have it SHIPPED IN from Europe - creating a HUGE carbon footprint and resulting in the plant now producing “green” electricity at a rate TWENTY FIVE TIMES ABOVE the usual generating costs! But LIE-berals DID SAVE SIXTY HOG JOBS AND BOUGHT THOSE VOTERS - at the plant!)
As wind turbines grow older, their utilization rates become even worse, dropping at a rate of 1.6 percent each year – which eventually requires the turbine to be repowered.
This means that we get less bang for our buck from wind turbines as time goes on. Although other power plants become less efficient over time as well, upgrades to improve the efficiencies of these facilities happen much later in their lives. Repowering wind turbines increases efficiency, but only for another 20 to 25 years until they need to be repowered once again.
(In other words - not only have we been LIED to about how long wind towers will last - we have also been LIED to about HOW MUCH POWER they will produce during their suddenly quite IFFY service life!)
Minnesota has invested more than $15 billion on wind energy, and the limited lifespan of wind turbines means the state will soon have to spend even more money just to update the wind turbines we already have.
(We KNOW that Germany and Spain - who both have VERY WINDY Atlantic coast lines - invested heavily in wind power and then as the towers aged and real time information on costs became available - they SWITCHED BACK to natural gas generators! Spanish numbers tell us that for every “Green Job” that govt subsidies create - 2.5 old style jobs DIE!)
(The LIE-beral vision of a Green Future HIDES MAJOR unemployment and poverty and HUGE HIDDEN COSTS!)
This is exactly what Xcel Energy has planned to do, recently requesting for another Power Purchase Agreement that will cover repowering wind farms in northwest Minnesota. This is part of Xcel Energy’s plan to spend an additional $7 billion by 2022 implementing renewable energy sources in the state.
(A new agreement for Xcel Energy? Do they ALSO NEED HIGHER PRICES to PAY for that COSTLY wind tower rebuilding? It seems LIKELY THEY DO!)
The short lifespan of wind turbines is rarely discussed, yet it has a massive impact on the cost of electricity for Minnesota families and businesses. Worse yet, wind energy investments were and still are completely unnecessary to meet our energy needs because energy consumption in Minnesota has been essentially flat since 2006, and existing energy sources were capable of meeting the entirety of those demands.
(Oh - but think HOW HAPPY civil service union HOGS in Minnesota and other places are to have those Green Energy companies to invest in! LIE-berals are borrowing HUGE SUMS with which to buy HOG VOTES - and HOGS NEED some place to invest their gravy and grow it because THEY DESERVE EVER MORE - so LIE-berals have created this opportunity for HOGS to own wind farms so the public can BE PRICE GOUGED for electricity and generate GRAVY FOR HOGS! And then we get to pay back the debts created when LIE-berals borrowed the gravy to give to HOGS to create those wind farms in the first place! We ARE DOUBLY SCREWED by LIE-beral mouldy green!)
Wind energy is indeed very costly; even without fuel expenses. This is because wind facilities require more frequent upgrades than other power plants and produce energy at far lower rates.
(In cold climates like Minnesota - wind towers also NEED visits from fuel guzzling helicopters - spraying de-icing fluid onto the blades to avoid them getting iced up and unbalanced and weakened or even broken and that is yet another cost that LIE-berals DO NOT speak of!)
If cost-estimates are going to be calculated correctly, accurate lifespans and capacity factors of different power plants need to be accounted for.
(How sad that LIE-berals DO NOT want to provide an HONEST breakdown of the carbon foot print produced to create and erect even a single tower with 2 or 3 HUNDRED TONNES of concrete and steel, not to mention the copper wire for the actual generator and assorted electrical software to operate the machine, plus the aluminum wire and MORE Concrete and steel to connect the generator to the power grid; AND THEN ADD IN the carbon footprint for the BACK UP natural gas generators that are ABSOLUTELY REQUIRED to ensure a STEADY supply of electricity when mouldy green FAILS!)
(LIE-berals HAVE NO INTENTION of using FAIR ACCOUNTING practices to judge the value of ANY OF THEIR POLICIES! LIE-berals think we should be content to TRUST our LIE-beral overlords WITHOUT QUESTION!)
Mitchell Rolling is an intern for Center of the American Experiment.
