Posted on 08/28/2016 8:49:29 AM PDT by Sean_Anthony
A dream born by the environmental watermelon religion, green on the outside, red on the inside
I saw the once verdant wheat fields of Eastern Europe covered with ugly wind turbines, slowly spinning their huge blades into the wind. A few funnel dust swirls were blowing the topsoil into the air. They did not appear to be connected to any storage station that would distribute the electrical power generated. I searched and found out that they were really not connected to any network, were not generating usable electricity, they were all for show to placate the “green growth” European bureaucrats who gave them money to install the eyesores instead of growing crops.
Turbines kill birds on a large scale around the world and disturb humans and wildlife. According to Save the Eagles International, “contrary to what we are told, wind farms will cause the extinction of many bird and bat species” because birds are naturally attracted to tall structures.
Great idea! Sometimes, however, the Google earth close-ups are somewhat out of date, but I’ll go see! ;-)
Around here, it was German owned power companies "harvesting the subsidies", and absentee landowners collecting the cash while urinating on their neighbors.
Fortunately, we were able to stop any more of these in our county by forcing them to provide a "Property Value Guarantee" and offsets from non-leaseholders homes to 2500', instead of the 1000' the industry claims is safe.
And that, too !!! Nothing gets my blood pressure higher than to drive north on US-127 in Michigan through the center of the state and see fields and fields of these horrible turbines. They stand there idle for the most part. The electricity is sold to Toledo, I hear, but who knows for sure. Michiganders fund it, but aren’t even benefiting — except for the farmers that got bought off to put these monstrosities on their property. I was told that Ontario farmers got paid $10,000 per turbine. That seems impossible. No one can get to the bottom of the whole truth on this Globalist/Watermelon deceipt.
Those are absolutely gigantic, has one tangled with a tornado yet? That could get interesting.
They survived some pretty heavy storms last week. Dammit.
But in 3 years of operation, out of 145 units, they have replaced 5 blades and one entire nacelle.
Of the 3 commissioners that approved the first farm, 2 were primaried out and the third didn’t run for re-election but at least had the grace to publicly admit her vote was wrong and now advises other communities around the nearby counties and state to keep them the hell out unless you want to destroy families, friends and communities.
Yup...
That’s only half of the concrete it takes.
And equal sized bowl is underneath that.
I’d imagine the noise from them would be maddening, in addition to interference with various signals, radio in particular.
There are forests of these things in flyover country, and seeing their blades turning from ~30,000 feet definitely gives one a sense of how huge they really are.
Poor birds.
In the right circumstances, you can actually see the wind disturbance in the vicinity of the large turbine installations on weather radar. It creates a weird image in the shape of the outline of the wind farm.
That’s been the biggest complaints from those who didn’t up and move out of their homes, after selling them at a loss.
People claimed they went out and sat under one and didn’t hear a thing.
They are friggin’ LIARS!!! I have worked around them enough to know that is absolute bullsquat.
Not only the “whoosh whoosh” of the blades, but they have a low pitched grinding noise that I can feel as well as hear.
I’m not aware of any wind turbine farms here in NC. The only places with reliable wind would be mountain tops and barrier islands on the coast, both of which would cause a huge uproar since they’re tourist areas and much is national or state park land.
What I forgot to add, and started out meaning to:
That whole chain is initiated seems initiated with the understanding that someone is going to get stuck with an un-sellable investment - especially when some of them start to self destruct near the end of their lifespan, leaving a huge burned out husk of a machine dangling at the top of a 200-foot post that will cost more to disassemble than its scrap & land resale value.
The de-commissioning escrow that Big Blow wrote up here is but a tiny fraction of what the actual cost will be.
And what to do with those composite blades?
Can’t recycle ‘em.
Can’t put ‘em in a regular landfill.
Incinerating them is very costly.
The ones near me are 495’ to the tip of the blade.
295’ to the 60 ton nacelle.
Even after the Monuments to Gaia die, someone (most likely landowner) will still have to keep that aircraft beacon blinking.
I hope the leaseholders who are cashing those checks take it right back square in the shorts.
No, just do a keyword google search and you will find, among others, the wiki page, and on the wiki page you will find the same photo that is posted in reply 11.
Those were installed in the 1980s and were the small ones. Same as in Texas and California.
All those windmills were replaced with the larger ones and yes the smaller ones were removed.
This story about the abandoned windmills began with Tony Ardvark in Australia and supposedly there were 14,000 in Hawaii and California that were abandoned when the subsidies ran out.
That story was shot down long ago but some people talk like it is fact.
Common sense tells you that the steel gets recycled. The shafts and gears are really high dollar steel. Even the blades get recycled.
OTOH, the oil and gas industry uses a huge amount of steel that never gets recycle. Every well drilled has steel casing that is cemented in. Even the dry holes have steel casing. Oil and gas pipelines don't get recycled either.
The modern windmill business in Texas really began in 1997 when Enron bought the California wind company Zond Corporation, which they owned until they went out of business when it was sold to GE.
Enron got the Texas lege to implement the first renewable standards in 1999. Then the first natural gas shortages hit the US in 2000-2001 and that set off the first wave windmill building in Texas. Katrina in 2005 set off the second wave
In 2008 the decision was made to build all the new windlines in Texas which were completed in 2014($7 billion). That set off the third wave.
...and they contribute real beauty to the countryside.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.