I once spoke to an engineer who worked on wind turbines.
He said that the general public does not understand the enormous stresses that are placed on the gearbox by those massive turning blades. Keeping them working requires regular, intensive maintenance.
Unfortunately he said the typical owner just blows off the maintenance and milks what he has until his government subsidies run out.
So yes, your landfill comment is spot-on.
I've studied IWTs extensively (including commenting on failures in judicial hearings) and can tell you that the issue of gearbox maintenance is just one aspect in a plethora of important issues related to this equipment. The one issue that the public is only mildly aware of is the scam nature of them since from a big picture perspective, they don’t actually contribute to a net increase in power. I can’t explain this without going into deep weeds but let me offer this at a very high level.... the scam nature occurs because of the random nature of IWT (and solar for that matter) and the fact that this means that full backup is required. It logically follows then that if IWTs and solar are given priority to the grid, this means that some other generator(s) has to back off when the sun is shining and/or wind blowing. If that generator that has backed off is gas or coal fired, it means that it will be operating at a less efficient operating point. If you are talking about hydraulic power, it’s called ‘spilling the water’ which means that the equipment built to generate power is idled. It gets more complicated than this of course (and far worse) but this should be enough to get the picture....
The President mentioned birds but the other issues dwarf the bird issue....
Here by the way for your interest is some news the other day from Iowa.... as always, it’s got the mandatory ‘extremely rare event’ wording in it. Hilarious....
https://www.kcrg.com/2020/10/20/another-wind-turbine-blade-breaks-off-in-central-iowa/
https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2020/09/18/18000-pound-wind-turbine-blade-breaks-in-adair-county/