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There's a good reason for this. Windmills are very heavily maintenance intensive. They are exposed to the elements and the blades are relatively fragile. They eat ball-bearings. Sometimes the cost of maintaining them is greater than what they can sell the electricity for. This is why so many of them are not repaired when they break. The windmill owners cannot afford to keep them running. It's too expensive.

Engineers have know this for a very long time. Politicians are much dumber and they listen to environmentalists over good electrical engineers. These politicians simply are not that bright. If windmills really worked the government would not have to subsidize them and the power companies would have been using them all along. As I said they are much smarter than the politicians.

If you really want to know about windmills and how they don't work, research the experiences of the Danes. They have invested a huge amount in off shore wind mills and the cost of maintaining them are killing them. It's the salt air and such. Anyone with a boat with a diesel engine could have told them about the maintenance required to keep sea faring vessels going.

I hadn’t delved into the specifics, but that makes all kinds of sense to me. I have a couple of ME degrees, was a PE for a lot of years.

If we have the economic crash I often think we will have, it will be largely because of the triumph of “feelgood” over reality.