Nope, you can just stand back and let these towers fall down all by themselves:
Posted on 04/13/2018 6:34:43 PM PDT by george76
Windmills use an enormous amount of copper. For example, a single wind turbine can contain 335 tons of steel, 4.7 tons of copper, 3 tons of aluminum and 700-plus pounds of rare earth minerals.
...
In fact, wind and solar energy use more copper than conventional forms of energy, such as coal, natural gas, and nuclear power plants. Conventional power plants require about one ton of copper to produced one megawatt of electricity, whereas wind and solar can require between three to five tons per megawatt.
...
Make no mistake, switching from reliable sources of electricity like coal, natural gas, hydroelectric, and nuclear power plants to intermittent sources like wind and solar is an exceedingly bad idea, but the people who champion renewable energy, but oppose copper mining in Minnesota should have to reconcile the inherent contradictions in their positions.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanexperiment.org ...
They want to build them out of, umm, nope, can’t use that, or that, or that, or that, or ......
Not to worry, we’ll be ‘mining’ the windmills for their metals before too long.
It all makes sense if you are a snowflake and have lived the majority of your life stoned, lol...
Let’s not forget the composite blades that cannot be disposed of in an environmentally safe way when they break or the turbine is de-commissioned.
The ones near me have a 20 year lifespan.
I hope to live to see the day the leaseholders get stuck with them when the developers and wind companies have long left town.
It’s not like you can just drop a 500 foot tall Monument to Gaia like you would a cottonwood tree
Well, the story ignores the thousands of TONS of concrete needed for the foundation, And the tons of steel for the tower. But, also ignored are the tons of fuel needed for refining the material, shipping and fabrication, And for construction. The little wind turbines all need MORE CABLES for each turbine =More energy and steel and copper.@
They think the materials for wind turbines comes from rainbows and unicorn farts.
I am a photographer. In the last 10 years, once pristine wide open spaces have been ruined by acres of these eye sores.
In my state (WA), wheat farmers have had land taken by eminent domain for these sites.
And the energy output is not what was anticipated so more wind farms are planned.
There is a large windfarm up north of us. My son the engineer says it’s actually a “battery farm.” They are batteries, slowly releasing back into the grid the energy it took to make them.
So who says we wanted wind turbines? I didn’t realize the situation with the extra copper needed,so it looks like a worse deal all the time.
"...Meet 25% of the remaining energy need from renewable sources by 2025, 40% by 2035, and 90% by 2050. Three end-use sector goals for 2025: 10% renewable transportation, 30% renewable buildings, and 67% renewable electric power..."
I stayed at a farm up there, and the woman who ran it had a good sized bank of solar panels. I was curious, because an option to be self sufficient with power storage is very appealing to me, but when I asked she said no, they were just to sell power back to the grid and wouldn't be of use to her in a power outage.
But she took the opportunity to tell me all about the state energy policy, and with a grin (she was a pretty conservative woman) she said: "They're going crazy up here-with these stupid unattainable goals and they have already bungled things bad enough now that they have to purchase power from Canada. (she laughs) Canada! A portion of the power they get is from Nuclear power...so they have to support the Nuclear industry with their money, so some of them are going completely berserk!"
Nope, you can just stand back and let these towers fall down all by themselves:
California’s Altamont Pass and the entire Diablo Range inland from the Coastal Range WAS some of the prettiest country you could imagine. Spectacular long rolling hills / low mountains as green as Ireland in the springtime and covered with gorgeous golden waves of grasses in the summer. All long gone...TOTALLY RUINED by windmills.
Amazing photos.
Any chance that you could provide some backstory on what causes the collapse of these towers?
Earthquakes, tornadoes, high winds, poor construction, etc?
Thanks.
They figure the wind is free and everything else should be.
Thanks george76. No problem -- everyone will be made to switch to low-amp DC products in the home, oh, and getting by on two hours per day of electricity makes all of us stronger.
My guesses (as an ME): poor engineering, inability to account for dynamic loads and vibrations, poor welds, materials defects, poor quality materials, improper inspections, insufficient safety margins, blades failing causing huge imbalances on the rotor which are transferred to the tower, blades striking the tower after blade failure. I’m no expert, but those are somewhat informed educated guesses.
Interesting tidbit. My dad was the program manager at GE for the very first multimegawatt wind turbines they developed. He had a team of dynamicists working for him. I was in ME school at the time. I remember him telling me how extremely difficult the dynamic analysis was and how the problems his team faced were almost intractable. This was back in ‘75 or so — over 40 years ago (I’ve got a great pic I took of Dad in front of the assembled test turbine on the shop floor).
It’s interesting how big of a problem tower collapse still is today. It’s really the dirty secret of the industry, IMO. The first power generation company I worked for out of school (Babcock & Wilcox) go at into wind energy and recently had a huge collapse of a tower in the UK. It’s all very hush-hush and not much has leaked out about it.
I grew up in Vermont. I was back there last summer to visit my parents. The windmills are as ugly as the billboards that are banned from the state. Solar power is being pushed like crazy. My folks did check into it but by the time it would become practical, they would likely not be around. Their town is full of leftists now who are trying to prevent natural gas to be brought in. But, co-housing, solar power, poetry readings, other weird stuff I cannot remember, those are important to the community.
And yet, we can’t build oil rigs above the Arctic Circle because of the eyesoreness of them.
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