I'm seeing more and more evidence of a nascent anti-wind movement. And, naturally enough, an anti-anti-wind backlash.
There was a fire in a wind turbine in Iowa last week that totally destroyed the business end of the thing; if you look around on the net you can find some photos of charred wreckage.
And there is the amazing sight of a turbine (part of the Biglow wind farm) in Wasco County, Ore., in wreckage (a worker was killed in that mishap). Likewise you can probably find photos of it -- it's just sitting there right now, apparently at the family's request. If wind folks don't get their act together and get their QA programs up to a much higher standard they are going to find it increasingly difficult to get these things sited.
A friend in the industry said that rich guys (hedge fund managers, he said) were going across the country optioning up good wind sites, betting that they can make a pile by exercising the option. I can imagine that turning into a real PR problem for wind: sure, the farmers don't mind taking the option money now, but when the turbines go in, if those farmers are only making a little and rich hedge-fund investors are making a pile on the site lease, it won't look good.
Wind: still enough to save the world
Dirty energy interests have spent $79 million this year lobbying Congress
Policy chatter is on everyone’s lips at Fortune’s green-business conference
Comments View as Flat
Sam Wells Posted 7:24 am
11 Oct 2007
Wow check this out JMG
Apparently it's not all about the birds and views after all. Check out Clowd / Caithness Windfarm accident data over here
I had no idea that there were over 30 accidents a year worldwide, including fatalities (mostly falls). The number is growing. But the accident categoriesare pretty wild:
Onward through the fog
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odograph Posted 8:00 am
11 Oct 2007
roughnecks
and this compares to deaths per drilling rig how?
(may be a net plus for publicity, if it takes tough guys to harness the wind.)
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Sam Wells Posted 9:45 am
11 Oct 2007
Expected danger
The only thing I can say is that people do NOT think that wind turbines can cause deaths, because they are "safe," but everybody KNOWS that working a drill rig is like a controlled explosion, very dangerous.
Windmills and wind turbines were supposed to be clean and safe technologies, since unlike drilling were were no dangerous gases such as methane, hydrogen sulfide, or other inflammable, explosive, or toxic sources.You didn't have to swing miles of pipe or subject it to thousands of pounds of pressure and risk blowing up everything within a thousand feet.
Yes, I'll give you the notion that "we jumped the monkey" because rotary wind technology was supposed to be so benign ... and it was NOT. I guess that's about as silly as marketing a "safe" car like the Volvo, which can kill just about as good as anything on the road today.
Onward through the fog
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Pangolin Posted 1:19 pm
11 Oct 2007
Astroturf funded by?
The first time I noticed any opposition to wind power was when certain foul-mouthed nuclear advocates would cast aspersions on any power generation technology that didn't involve the production of radioactive waste.
Later it became clear the opposition to wind power was organized with consistent talking points shared word for word around the net. What is interesting is that the talking points will use a local wind and a turbine fire halfway around the planet to paint a picture of wind farms as both noisy and nonoperating (at the same time yet) with occasional patches of flaming turbines.
The visual threat of wind turbines is much exageratted as there is are several wind farms that exist in Solano County with larger turbines that I haven't been able to find despite several tries. Even the famously crowded Altamont pass wind farm is mostly noticable because the freeway drives right through it.
The actual fact is that wind conditions are usually predictable to a large degree and provide a balanced power stream when managed regionally. Windmills are no more deadly to birds than power lines or any other vertical surface. The power lines from the wind turbine are more likely to be a fire risk than the turbine itself.
Wind is a safe, cheap, reliable power source compared to coal, nuclear or natural gas. The opposition seems to be professional in nature or at least full-time cranks with nuclear dreams straight from Tom Swift. The fact that gigawatts of wind power has been installed in the US during a time period when not a single nuclear plant has been comissioned is huge thorn in their side.
Put the Carbon Back
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JMG Posted 3:57 pm
11 Oct 2007
Heavy industry
Sammie, I have been researching that data recently [in order to HELP get some sited, Pangolin], and it's basically just as Paul Gipe (former president of the Am. Wind Energy Assn.) says -- wind isn't particularly dangerous, but big heavy rotating things up high can be.
I just wanted to make the point that wind folks had better get smart fast, and figure out how to not have turbines fall over (one in KS and one in Oregon now that I'm aware of in the US alone) and certainly how to not have them burn up. The reason anti-wind folks seize on these incidents is because they're powerful, and they go right to what should be wind's main strength (benign, fail-safe power).
There's a county in Washington State suing the Gov for overriding their siting conditions on a wind farm -- in other words, a rural county that actually welcomes wind is having the urban side of the state and the non-elected siting commission overrule their local electeds in order to get the number of turbines sited that the developer wants. This is not going to be helpful in the long run. I predict that this will be one of the more costly Pyrrhic victories for wind.
Save the world: Reduce greenhouse gas emissions 5% annually.
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Biodiversivist Posted 1:46 am
12 Oct 2007
I'm with Odo
although, I have to admit, I would not want my house to be in the plane of rotation.
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
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ericr Posted 3:18 am
13 Oct 2007
Hardly "nascent"
I have been involved with the issue for 4 years, and benefited back then from many groups and individuals, especially in Europe, who had already looked a bit more skeptically at the claims and not denied the adverse impacts of industrial wind power.
In the U.S., National Wind Watch is 2-1/2 years old and the Industrial Wind Action Group was formed a year later by a couple of NWW's founding members, following (duplicating, actually) our successful model. IWAG's director works full time in the cause, whereas NWW is strictly a collaborative volunteer nonpolitical effort done in our spare time.
Whether one concludes that big wind is worth it or is not, the debate must include the full picture of its own adverse impacts and the actual effect it can have on reducing the use -- or even growth -- of other sources.
The press and the public, and even some public servants, are beginning to realize that there is indeed another side to the issue than what is presented in the sales brochure.
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trock Posted 6:29 am
13 Oct 2007
It's when its multiple deaths
It's when alot of people get killed that gets in the news.
Since 9/11 2001 over 250 000 people have died in vehicle crashes and 100 000 people have been murdered in the United States, but we'll still see national news talk about the over 3000 who died on that day.
It's good though to make wind power safe, for the workers and the industry.
I wonder if anybody has been hurt with Concentrated Solar Power. I realize there aren't enough up but I wonder if anybody has gotten burned by the focusing mirrors.
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GRLCowan Posted 7:35 am
13 Oct 2007
If you have played with a big Fresnel lens ...
you'll know that the focus it brings the sun to is very small, not likely to burn your hand because you won't hold it still enough, but able to bleach spots in your retinas if you don't master the trick of looking a little off to the side. And not always off in the same lateral direction, or the image will still make a blind spot -- a temporary one, as far as I know, although presumably that's a function of how old the retinas are -- at the unvarying non-central place on the retina.
It is very unlikely that anyone has been burned by the focused sun at a place like the Kramer Junction plant, but possible that when the mirrors are made, and their glass is hot, someone was. (When focusing the sun, they are not in the focus. They don't get hot.)
--- G. R. L. Cowan, boron internal combustion fan
Internal combustion power without exhaust --
http://www.eagle.ca/~gcowan/boron_blast.html
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Nucbuddy Posted 5:49 am
22 Oct 2007
Wind-mining accident data
Sam Wells wrote: Check out Clowd / Caithness Windfarm accident data over here
More wind-mining accident data is here:
stopillwind.org/downloads/WindTurbineAccidentComp.pdf
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