How the death of a mega-turbine rattled US offshore wind

Three New York wind projects were dropped after the massive wind tower they were to be based on was cancelled. This report notes that analysts say ‘bigger wind turbines tend to break more’. Planting ever-larger top-heavy objects on long thin poles in zones with potentially stronger winds clearly has its challenges. Even getting them to their site can be a major undertaking.
– – –
The wind industry’s global race to make ever-bigger turbines stumbled to a sudden slowdown last week, jarring U.S. offshore wind projects, says E&E News.

When GE Vernova confirmed that it was canceling one of the largest wind turbines ever designed, it signaled a pause in an arms race that for years had led manufacturers to go higher, longer and wider when building towers, blades and other components.

Now, that decision is reverberating across U.S. efforts to build wind projects in the Atlantic.

How wind turbines are blinding the RAF’s vital North Sea radars

Hornsea Offshore Wind Project, Yorkshire, England
[image credit: nsenergybusiness.com]

Is the Government scoring a major own goal in pursuit of its fantasy climate goals? Hoped-for ‘energy security’ from wind power is looking further away than ever.
– – –
Britain’s race to net zero risks blinding crucial radars protecting the UK from incursions over the North Sea amid fears that Russia will launch a campaign of sabotage.

Offshore wind farms blades interfere with radar signals and there are concerns that plans for a significant expansion of turbines in the North Sea by the end of the decade will cause problems for the Royal Air Force (RAF).

The Ministry of Defence has spent £18m over the past three years trying to stop wind farm blades from scrambling radar readings, the Telegraph can reveal.

However, none of this public spending has, so far, yielded a concrete solution to the problem.

Blow for UK ‘net zero’ plans as zero firms bid for offshore wind contracts

Hornsea wind project

Much hand-wringing by the climate obsession lobby, but there it is – zero interest in bidding for government offshore wind business, as expected. The government seems to have two choices for more part-time offshore wind – give up or pay up. If it pays up, the already dubious claims of cheapness are toast.
– – –
The government’s green energy plans have been dealt a blow after firms snubbed an auction for contracts to run new offshore wind sites, says Sky News.

There were successful bids for onshore wind, solar, tidal and geothermal projects to supply the grid with electricity.

However, there were none for offshore turbines, which provide the backbone of the UK’s renewables system.

Insiders had warned the process had struggled to attract bidders because the government has set the maximum price generators can receive as too low, failing to reflect the rising costs of manufacturing and installing turbines.

Pyrotechnic Pandemonium: Wind Turbines Can’t Help Exploding In Toxic Fireballs

.
.
“There’s a lot of oil up there”. One for deluded anti-oil protesters to ponder.

STOP THESE THINGS

Wind turbines love exploding into toxic fireballs that firefighters don’t even bother putting out. It’s a case of burn, baby burn when these things self-immolate.

The staggering rise in the number of turbine fires and total turbine collapses has caused insurers to ramp up the premiums they require to insure them.

Understandably, neighbours are getting sick and tired of being covered with palls of toxic smoke when these things burst into flames.

This time the pyrotechnic pandemonium takes place in Ontario.

Wind turbine blaze ‘contained’ north of Goderich, Ont.
London CTV
Scott Miller
4 June 2023

Todd Edginton could hardly believe his eyes when he looked out his back door to find a wind turbine on fire. He wasn’t alone, as people stopped just north of Goderich to see the spectacle unfold.

“I was going back to the cottage along Highway 21 from Goderich, and saw this. I said…

View original post 520 more words

Siemens Energy Shares Tumble 31% as Wind Turbine Troubles Exposed

A billion euros worth of trouble – they wouldn’t want that to be renewable. All is not well in wind turbine land.
– – –
Siemens Energy saw $6.3 billion wiped off its market capitalization on Friday after warning that the impact of quality problems at its Siemens Gamesa wind turbine business would be felt for years, says OE Digital.

The group scrapped its 2023 profit outlook late on Thursday after a review of its wind turbine division exposed deeper-than-expected problems that could cost more than 1 billion euros.

“This is a disappointing and severe setback,” Siemens Gamesa CEO Jochen Eickholt told journalists on a call.

Funding appeal: Mike McCulloch needs your help to make interstellar travel possible.

Dr Mike McCulloch has been making truly remarkable discoveries about some of the mysteries of the cosmos over the last two decades. He has answers to fundamental questions such as ‘what causes the force that resists the change in speed and direction of any mass?’, ‘why do observations indicate that the inertial force varies with acceleration in the outer reaches of galaxies?’ and ‘how can we tap into the implicated energy fields to generate propellant-less thrust, and potentially generate electrical energy to power our homes, industries and vehicles?’. His published papers cover the first two of these questions, and touch on the third, although there’s plenty more to be teased out of the implications of his Quantised Inertia theory. The third question is the acid test.

Mike believes science has to have practical, applicable results, and for the last few years, he has been successfully generating those at his lab in Plymouth University, funded by DARPA. He has been getting measurable thrust from purely electrical input. Other collaborating labs have similar results. Exciting times indeed.

But like many scientists who threaten the established and accepted theory in their field, his work has been largely ignored because it falsifies mainstream ‘dark matter’ theory, or dismissed because it ‘must be impossible’. Although he has got measurable results, DARPA funding is ending, and he has no more teaching work to return to at Plymouth University. Mike wants, as far as possible, to keep the ongoing developments of QI publicly accessible, by crowdfunding. He needs our help to fund and equip a new lab, and set up a ‘Horizon Institute’, online initially, to enable the collaboration of academics and citizen scientists. Please read his message below, and then I’ll let you know how you can help.

Russian ‘spy ships’ linked to North Sea wind farms sabotage plan

Hornsea Offshore Wind Project, Yorkshire, England
[image credit: nsenergybusiness.com]

This puts a whole new slant on claims of wind power boosting energy security.
– – –
Russia has a programme to sabotage wind farms and communication cables in the North Sea, according to new allegations, says BBC News.

The details come from a joint investigation by public broadcasters in Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland.

It says Russia has a fleet of vessels disguised as fishing trawlers and research vessels in the North Sea.

They carry underwater surveillance equipment and are mapping key sites for possible sabotage.

Collision risk and habitat loss: wind turbines in forests impair threatened bat species

German forest with wind turbines

The research team ‘concludes that wind power development in forests must be avoided’, if at all possible. Not what climate obsessives want to hear, but hardly surprising news. More scientific evidence of what was already known.
– – –
More than 30,000 turbines have already been installed on the German mainland so far, and the industry is currently scrambling to locate increasingly rare suitable sites.

Thus, forests are coming into focus as potential sites, says Berlin’s FVB research institute.

A scientific team from the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (Leibniz-IZW) now demonstrated in a new paper published in the scientific journal “Current Biology” that wind turbines in forests impair endangered bat species: Common noctules (Nyctalus noctula), a species with a high risk of colliding with rotor blades, are attracted to forest wind turbines if these are located near their roosts.

Far from roosts, common noctules avoid the turbines, essentially resulting in a loss of foraging space and thus habitat for this species.

The Silly Giant Scale Of U.S. Offshore Wind Development

.
.
If the North Atlantic Right Whale is a right-thinking whale, it will leave that area and not come back.

PA Pundits International

By David Wojick, Ph.D. ~

The world’s biggest offshore wind array is Hornsea 2, which is 1,386 MW with a turbine size of 8.4 MW. Operational in 2022 it is the state of the OSW art. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_offshore_wind_farms

But Virginia’s phase 1 array is a whopping 2,600 MW, with huge 15 MW turbines. Clearly it is a giant, far bigger than anything that has ever been built. The cost is estimated as $10 billion to build.

Moreover there are a dozen or more comparable giant arrays proposed to be built at the same time, lining the Atlantic coast. Last I heard the combined proposals topped a gigantic 40,000 MW.

From an engineering point of view this is nuts. No one has ever done anything like this so let’s do a hundred billion dollars worth and see how it goes, right? Work up to it? Start small then scale up, learning…

View original post 504 more words

Global ‘Stilling’: Is Climate Change Slowing Down the Wind?

Windy enough today?

This recent Yale Environment360 article came into focus today when Sky News headlined with: Future of renewable energy in balance as UK suffers wind drought – with ‘global stilling’ to come. Ironically, climate theory has it that warming will happen and will reduce wind speeds over the decades ahead. According to one expert (says Yale), a 10 percent decline in wind speeds would actually result in “a 30 percent drop [in output], and that would be catastrophic.”
– – –
Last year, from summer into fall, much of Europe experienced what’s known as a “wind drought,” says Yale.

Wind speeds in many places slowed about 15 percent below the annual average, and in other places, the drop was even more pronounced.

It was one of the least windy periods in the United Kingdom in the past 60 years, and the effects on power generation were dramatic.

Wind farms produced 18 percent of the U.K.’s power in September of 2020, but in September of 2021, that percentage plummeted to only 2 percent. To make up the energy gap, the U.K. was forced to restart two mothballed coal plants.

How windfarms charge you twice for the same electricity – Net Zero Watch

Moray East windfarm [image credit: offshorewind.biz]

It turns out that ‘when a windfarm is constrained off or constrained down, it doesn’t actually have to switch off or switch down. It is free to divert power via a private wire to anyone who will pay for it.’ Someone with a big battery, for example.
– – –
I recently noted that Moray East, a very large and very new windfarm situated off the Scottish coast, is spending a remarkable amount of time switched off – something like a quarter of the time, in fact, says Andrew Montford @ NZW.

As is widely known, windfarms can receive so-called constraint payments when the transmission grid doesn’t have the capacity to deliver power from windfarms (typically in the north, and often far offshore) to markets (in the south), so Moray East receiving such payments was not a surprise; only the scale of the payments was.

A constraint payment is worth around £60 per megawatt hour, which is around the fixed price at which Moray East contracted to sell power to the grid.

However, as noted elsewhere, Moray East has failed to take up that contract, and it is therefore able to sell its output into the open market at £200, £300 or even £400 per megawatt hour.

A Plague Of Green Elephants Is Stampeding Across Australia

Adelaide desalination plant [image credit: Acciona]

Monuments to green stupidity on the rampage.
– – –
Legend says that if you displeased the King of Siam, he would give you a white elephant, writes Viv Forbes (via Climate Change Dispatch).

These rare and protected elephants were incredibly expensive to keep.

So a “White Elephant” came to mean a possession that is useless, troublesome, expensive to maintain, and difficult to dispose of – like a Sacred Cow, but much bigger.

Today, the deluded rulers of the Western world are gifting us and future generations with plagues of Green Elephants – useless, expensive, protected green rubbish.

Wind Turbine Collapses: ‘Leaking Oil Everywhere!’

Example of product type used by the wind industry

So much for ‘keeping it in the ground’, as climate obsessives like to intone to anyone who will listen to their anti-oil rants.
– – –
On Sunday, puzzled Swedish journalist and political commentator Peter Imanuelsen tweeted the news: “A wind power turbine just collapsed in Sweden”, says CNS News.

“People are being warned to keep their distance because…it is now leaking oil everywhere! “Wait, these “green” wind turbines use oil???”

Texas Heatwave Highlights A Major Problem With Wind Power

Texan wind project [image credit: Newscom]

It’s an obvious problem that politicians ‘would much rather not talk about’, as the article puts it, while noting it may be ‘good news, at least for birds’. Running away from reality isn’t going to work.
– – –
The Texas energy grid has been under severe stress due to a heatwave, and lower than average wind speed means wind energy has been unable to counter demand, says OilPrice.com.

Texas is suffering a major heat wave. Three-digit temperatures are straining the state’s grid and earlier this month prompted ERCOT, the Lone Star State’s grid operator, to ask Texans to conserve energy. It also severely affected wind power generation.

Bloomberg reported this week that wind turbines in Texas are operating at just 8 percent of their capacity because of low wind speeds. This is really unfortunate because demand for electricity is on a strong rise because of the weather.

Brussels takes legal action against UK over use of British parts in wind farms

Offshore wind farm [image credit: Wikipedia]

Will Brexit bitterness ever die? Renewables are now mired in international politics.
– – –
Brussels has launched a legal challenge over the use of British parts in the UK’s offshore wind farms, reports the Telegraph.

The European Commission submitted its complaint to the World Trade Organisation (WTO), the first such move it has made since Brexit.

The UK Government asks offshore wind farm developers to say how many of the parts they are using are from Britain.

Landmark Decision Vindicates Victims: Supreme Court Orders Total Wind Farm Shutdown

.
.
One in the eye for wind farm racketeers.

STOP THESE THINGS

In a world-first, neighbours tormented by wind turbine noise have won a landmark victory, forcing the operator to shut down all of its turbines at night-time.

Yesterday, Justice Melinda Richards of the Victorian Supreme Court slapped an injunction on a wind farm because the noise it generates has been driving neighbours nuts for seven years, and the operator has done absolutely nothing about their suffering.

Her Honour also ordered damages, including aggravated damages for the high-handed way in which the operator has treated its victims. Since March 2015, the community surrounding the Bald Hills wind farm have been tortured by low-frequency noise and infrasound generated by 52, 2 MW Senvion MM92s.

Neighbours started complaining to the operator about noise, straightaway. But, as is their wont, the operator simply rejected the mounting complaints and carried on regardless.

Locals, however, were not perturbed. Instead, they lawyered up. Engaging the tough and tenacious

View original post 10,908 more words

Do Wind Farms Change The Weather?

.
.
More research needed it seems, but it hasn’t been ruled out.

PA Pundits International

By David Wojick, Ph.D. ~

The effect of lots of wind turbines on weather and climate is a small but active research area. Wind power converts wind energy into electricity, thereby removing that energy from the air.

The research issue of how taking a lot of energy out might affect weather or climate seems to have emerged as early as 2004. Studies range from the global climate impact down to the local effects of a single large wind facility.

Here is a nontechnical article on a key global climate scale paper in 2011: “Wind and wave farms could affect Earth’s energy balance“in New Scientist magazine, March 30, 2011. Must register to read here: https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21028063-300-wind-and-wave-farms-could-affect-earths-energy-balance/

Here is the seminal technical paper: “Estimating maximum global land surface wind power extractability and associated climatic consequences” by L. M. Miller, F. Gans, and A. Kleidon; Earth System Dynamics…

View original post 657 more words

Turbines use wind from passing traffic to generate power

ENLIL vertical axis wind turbine

Most of the traffic will be powered by the supposedly dreaded fossil fuels, but never mind. Natural wind can also play a part. It’s the impression of trendy modernity and conformity to prevalent climate theories that counts, presumably, as the amount of electricity produced will be limited, to say the least.
– – –
Istanbul has installed wind turbines that generate electricity using the air turbulence generated by traffic, reports The Independent.

ENLIL is a vertical turbine developed by Istanbul Technical University and tech firm Devecitech have been placed on roadsides in Turkey’s largest city to harness the wind generated by passing vehicles, and to soak up solar energy at the same time.

Wind farms are shrinking golden eagle habitats as blades make them scared

Golden eagle in Scotland [image credit: argyllholidays.com]

Hardly surprising, but the destruction of the countryside will continue regardless.

H/T Windwatch UK
– – –
Wind farms are shrinking golden eagles habitats as they are afraid of the blades, a study has found.

The birds of prey are eight times less likely to fly near turbines when they are rotating compared with when they are switched off, scientists from the ecological company Natural Research Projects have found.

It is thought the birds are avoiding areas where turbines are situated because the noise and movement makes them feel threatened.

Wind energy in crisis as expansion stalls in Germany

Feldheim village near Berlin, Germany.

Subsidies drying up. Public resistance to wind turbines in the neighbourhood. Is the climate steamroller running out of puff in Germany?
– – –
The German wind power industry is suffering setback after setback, says The GWPF.

Hardly any new turbines are being built, and more and more old wind turbines are being phased out. Now wind industry lobbyists are calling for new subsidies and construction rules to be relaxed.

In the Free State of Bavaria there is almost nothing going on when it comes to wind power.