Freakin ridiculous monstrosities. I drive through Massachusetts all the time and see these things and they are NEVER EVER moving! For YEARS, so just what the hell are they doing? They don’t do anything! And i can just imagine what they cost the taxpayers.
Last March, my son and I drove through Oregon to the Columbia River Gorge separating Oregon and Washington and turned east in I-84. There must be 10,000 of the monstrosities installed there. I think we saw maybe ten lazily, barely turning. What a HUGE waste of capital that would otherwise be put to productive uses. Capitalism is incredibly efficient at allocating capital to its most productive uses. This is CRONY capitalism which is akin to communism in that central planners are making horrible capital deployment decisions.
The only reasons these “work” (i.e., make money for the owners and manufacturers) are 1) tax subsidies and 2) they don’t produce much of the nation’s power. The rest of the conventional power system is available to cover for these infernal machines when the wind doesn’t blow. You also need large rotating masses to regulate the grid to 60 Hz. The generators on wind machines are too small to do that.
I hate them. They always seem to be build in the most scenic places possible. No wonder anytime you see leftists promoting them, it is always a cheap artist rendition, usually all in green, of a wind mill on some hill.
They never show how much they ruin some scenic mountain view. However, don’t you dare consider building a low-profile 100ft cell tower, you run the beauty of said mountain. Just build a 500ft tall tower with three massive blades.
It don’t matter to the greenies if they don’t work. All they care is green power is SUBSIDIZED with tax payer money.
While 40% of world’s population in China & India are building 100+ new coal fired power plants for cheap energy.
This green power push is punishing US manufacturing by making it more difficult to compete with low wage countries. Abundant cheap power was the strong base for American manufacturing. It is now gone. But greenies don’t care.
The idiot government dealmakers who stole taxpayer money to give to these companies to build them, forgot to include taxpayer money to dismantle them when they became worthless.
Who will pay for the removal of these enormous structures when they reach the end of their useful lives (pretending that they were ever useful)? That looks like a very exoensive, specialized job to me and I think the owners will simply declare bankruptcy or maybe just refuse to do it. Same thing for the massive acreage now covered by already outdated solar farms.