[Lou L]

I recently drove through one of northwest Indiana's "wind farms," and every single one of the turbine blades stood still. There must've been dozens and dozens of the windmills, none of them turning.

I know the wind wasn't blowing strong, but it was light. Is it common for these mills to not be turning?

What a waste.

[Busko]

Same here in PA windmills without any action. Spain and Russia are ridding their country sides of them. Only the idiots of this country think that they are the way of the future!

[tcrlaf]

“I recently drove through one of northwest Indiana’s “wind farms,” and every single one of the turbine blades stood still.”

I’m VERY familiar with the White County Wind Farm you drove through on I-65.

Obama’s Chinese-made, stimulus paid-for windmills don’t run when the temps get above 90 degrees. They could burn out in the heat...
They don’t run when it’s too COLD...
They don’t run if the wind is gusting over 38MPH...
They don’t run if there is no wind above 8MPH...
They don’t run in icing conditions...
They don’t run during storms...

The BEST Purdue University has been able to get out of the HUGE, federally-subsidized White County Wind Farm is LESS THAN 30% Efficiency..
30 FREAKIN’ PERCENT EFFICIENCY!!!

Your tax dollars at work. Aren’t you so proud?

And let’s not even begin to talk about the effect the bird blenders are having in migratory fowl. That would be politically incorrect.

[EGPWS]

There must've been dozens and dozens of the windmills, none of them turning.

Bring in a political convention THAT will get them turning again.

[Recon Dad]

Just north of West Lafayette, been through there many times and I’ve seen them going also. That whole field wouldn’t make up a small power plant on its best day....I always tell my liberal Brother in Law that he should insist on only getting his power from the wind.

[from occupied ga]

There is a very large wind farm on the south cape of the big island of Hawaii. If anywhere wind power should be successful it is Hawaii. There are steady winds, and the cost of energy is higher than in any other state because ALL of Hawaii’s fossil fuel has to be shipped in by boat. Yet when I was there a couple of years ago not a single wind turbine was functioning. There were a number without blades. There were some with a large black oil stain running down the side of the support. So even with artificial government support it wasn’t cost effective to run wind turbines in the most likely state for wind power, Hawaii.

[MsLady]

This is an out and out lie. We live in the perfect spot for one. Up on a hill, it's clear up here, lots of wind. We thought we would be a head of the game when o'bama decided to cause electricity to skyrocket. Yea well, $15,500 later, boy did we get suckered. We did receive $4,000 back from the gov. So it really cost us $11,500. The thing averages 1kwh a day. Some days it makes all of our electricity, others hardly any. We average about a $40.00 savings a month give or take a few. Now if we had bought the $45,000 one, it probably would have made all of our electricity. It still would have taken 25-30 years give or take to pay for itself.

On top of that it's completely unrealistic, cost wise and room wise. How you going to put enough windmills up to power a city? They are also looking into a windmill farm, can't remember where it was. Anyway the windmills have killed 3 or 4 bald eagles.

[MsLady]

Coal is also a significantly more reliable energy source.

Ya, like I tell everyone who asks me how good does mine work? I saw, well, when the wind is blowing it works just fine. When the wind isn't blowing, not so much.

[momincombatboots]

To be fair, I am a truck driver.... I have seen them turning and not turning. I have problems with them taking up farmland. In Wyoming they are spread for miles across the mtn tops. Eerie things. And it seems they require a minum of six extra long flat bed trucks to move before razing the land and using tons of equipment to place them. They are heavily subsidized to start with and electric companies want to charge a premium for using them. How many times do we have to pay for them. And if they are so great why continue to pay for them as consumers? I would love to see the chemical equation comparing coal to wind. Just the facts please.

[5thGenTexan]

I think wind can work; we are just going about it wrong. Rather than centralized large units, Their mass seems like it would large negative.

I beleive distributed smaller units is a better route. The Helix Wind S322 unit (http://www.helixwind.com/en/index.php) is optimized for low wind speed and responds well to variable wind direction.

Units can be placed at 6 ft. spacing if you stagger the height, giving you 10kW of nominal generation in a 24 ft. line.