The best laid plans of the all-knowing algorbots continue to go up in smoke. That's what happens when you turn government over to Cheech and Change. (:^o)
Posted on 02/01/2010 7:46:20 PM PST by SeekAndFind
Minnesota invested itself in alternative energy sources years ago, and so the revelation that the state spent $3.3 million on eleven wind turbines hardly qualifies as news. However, the fact that they don’t work in cold weather does. KSTP reports that none of the wind turbines work, prompting the Twin Cities ABC affiliate to dub them “no-spin zones.”
Special hydraulic fluid designed for colder temperatures was used in the turbines, but it’s not working, so neither are the turbines.
There is a plan to heat the fluid, but officials must find a contractor to do the work.
How will the heaters work? They’ll have to use either electricity or natural gas at each turbine to keep the mechanism lubricated. That will drastically reduce the net energy gain from each turbine, depending on how much heating the turbine fluid needs to stop congealing in the winter. Since cold weather here lasts anywhere from 4-6 months, that makes it mighty inefficient as an energy resource.
In this case, though, the state may not be entirely at fault. The manufacturer certified these turbines to work during the harsh winters of Minnesota, and the state took them at their word. KSTP reports that the state may sue the manufacturer for either failure to perform or perhaps misrepresentation, so we could get at least some of our money back. However, the state also could have mitigated the issue by purchasing just one or two and monitoring their performance through a winter before buying the rest.
Wind power makes a lot of sense as a secondary or tertiary power source, a way to harness extra power without necessarily relying on it as a consistent source. I have no problem with its deployment under that kind of strategy, but as this shows, it’s simply not reliable enough as a primary energy resource replacing coal- or natural gas-generated electricity.
send the mother earth-worshipping greenies out there to hand crank em. they wouldnt mind.
The solution is simple, just burn coal at their base to heat them up!
Nothing works here in February......
;-)
That whole windmill fiasco relies on a lot of hot air.
Good idea. Also someone has to remove the frozen spotted owls near the turbines as well...
hey thats right.
Just think of the "millions" of jobs saved, installing electric or natural gas heaters on wind turbines so they'll work. The irony of this problem is so very laughable, were it NOT for the FACT that the net energy gain (which is already hugely expensive) is greatly diminished.
Keep it up Obamantion and your useful idiots who support this fallacy will freeze in the dark.
Someone also pointed out that in the UK the site of the proposed offshore wind turbines had no wind during the big cold snap. So they would need gas turbines to replace them during those conditions.
Wind only works if you can store the energy to use when needed and no one has come up with an enviromentally acceptable way to do that.
Let’s not discuss de-icing.
The best laid plans of the all-knowing algorbots continue to go up in smoke. That's what happens when you turn government over to Cheech and Change. (:^o)
“There is a plan to heat the fluid, but officials must find a contractor to do the work.”
There must be some OTHER way to manufacture energy and heat.
How about solar panels? Won’t that de-thaw near-frozen hydraulic fluid? What? It doesn’t get hot enough?
OK then, let’s try some common sense.
How about a kerosene heater?
Or a gas-powered generator running electric heat?
Or just tear the damn things down and go nuke/clean coal.
SAVE THE WINDMILLS! PROMOTE GLOBAL WARMING!
“The manufacturer certified these turbines to work during the harsh winters of Minnesota, and the state took them at their word.”
Just like EEEEEVVVIIILLLL Big Oil, Big Green LIES for profit!!!
We used to use smudge pots here in Florida to save the Oranges til the EPA stopped it.
Moments of truth.
Hippy-dippy days (70’s). Cheap hotel downtown Minn: Big man from LA: “Yeah, go on up to Minneapolis [they say]. They got white chicks there by the bucketful...” [pause] “... yeah, fat broad working at the Burger King.”
I never saw a city so filled with middle-class people so anxious to prove they weren’t racists “like southerners.”
I worked at the half-way houses and went to “poetry readings” at the prison and pot-luck dinners at professors’ houses where we were to rehabilitate felons by bringing them into the community. What can I say, I’d just got out of University where the brainwashing was just beginning.
Build a coal fired generating plant next to the wind farm, and use the electricity from that to heat the wind generators so that people can had pollution free renewable energy. Sort of like those plug in electric cars that don’t use any fossil fuels.
Maybe we could use tredmills powered by welfare recipients.
Me have big Haha!
I like the “enviro mentally disturbed”.
I vote for using the turbines to power the parking lot lights for a nice nuclear energy plant.
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