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Boris Johnson has declared that wind power is the future of Britain's energy .. But an investigation has revealed turbine owners are being paid over the odds .. Civil servants set subsidy rate so high it's been branded ‘licence to print money’.. A botched green scheme is paying wind turbine owners seven times the value of the electricity they generate – and it is set to cost UK consumers an estimated £1.4billion. The Daily Mail can reveal the eyewatering fiasco in the week Boris Johnson declared that wind power was the future for the nation’s energy generation. The scheme was...

Michigan’s electric utilities gamble that the reliability of service won’t collapse. Consumers Energy would have to double the number of wind turbines currently operating in this state to replace the electricity produced by just one of the coal- and gas-fired power plants it intends to close as part of its plans to rely more on renewable sources. The problem, however, is that those additional turbines only spin about one-third of the time, leaving a big energy gap for the households and businesses that rely on the company for their electricity. .. regulated utilities and their vendors operate 1,107 industrial wind...

From grasslands to seashores to forests and backyards, birds are disappearing at an alarming rate in the United States and Canada, with a 29% population drop since 1970 and a net loss of about 2.9 billion birds, scientists said on Thursday.

President Trump on Tuesday stepped up his attacks against wind power, claiming that the structures decrease property values and that the noise they emit causes cancer. “If you have a windmill anywhere near your house, congratulations, your house just went down 75 percent in value. And they say the noise causes cancer,” the president said while delivering remarks at the National Republican Congressional Committee's annual spring dinner. He offered no evidence to support the claim...

In Wisconsin, a wind turbine farm is being decommissioned and disassembled after only 20 years of operation. It turns out that this is typical. My colleague Isaac Orr explains at Center of the American Experiment’s web site: What’s really surprising about these wind turbines being decommissioned after 20 years is the fact that people were surprised by it. You’d be astonished at how many people I talk to have no idea that wind turbines only last for 20 years, maybe 25. In fact, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory says the useful life of a wind turbine is only 20 years....

On November 6, Virginia’s State Corporation Commission (SCC) regulatory agency approved a project to construct wind turbines near Virginia Beach. The plan calls for construction of turbines 27 miles off the coast, to begin operation by the end of 2020. Virginia electricity rate-payers will pay the exorbitant costs of this project. .... According to the Wind Technologies Market Report, US wind turbine market prices in 2016 were just under $1,000 per kilowatt, or about $6 million for a 6-megawatt turbine. Virginia will pay 25 times the US market price for the CVOW turbines. The wholesale price for electricity in Virginia...

Take, for instance, a wind farm in the Western Ghats region of India, where a group of researchers from the Indian Institute of Science performed their study. In the area of the wind farm, raptors were around four times less common than in other areas. They kept dying to the turbines, which is not great for the raptors but good news for fan-throated lizards, the raptors’ prey. In and around the wind farm, lizard populations exploded, completely unchecked by predation. So few of them were being eaten that they even lost almost all fear of danger. The researchers found they...

The Boston-based company discovered an "oxidation issue" that could cause distress on blade components of the HA gas turbine. GE launched the HA turbine in 2016 and has received orders for more than 80 turbines, more than half of which have already shipped to customers in the U.S., Europe and Asia. "Obviously, this was a frustrating development, for us, as well as for our customers," GE Power CEO Russell Stokes wrote in a LinkedIn post. "But we have identified a fix and have been working proactively with HA operators to address impacted turbines." "A few weeks ago, there was an...

Windmills use an enormous amount of copper. For example, a single wind turbine can contain 335 tons of steel, 4.7 tons of copper, 3 tons of aluminum and 700-plus pounds of rare earth minerals. ... In fact, wind and solar energy use more copper than conventional forms of energy, such as coal, natural gas, and nuclear power plants. Conventional power plants require about one ton of copper to produced one megawatt of electricity, whereas wind and solar can require between three to five tons per megawatt. ... Make no mistake, switching from reliable sources of electricity like coal, natural gas,...

AL-TABQA- The Euphrates Dam Administration announced that a new advance has been achieved after placing the 8th turbine at the pilot stage of rotation after a month and a half of completing the 3rd turbine repair, and after the dam has been damaged by IS mercenaries. The turbine is expected to produce an electric power of 100 megawatts per hour which is considered an achievement with very limited potential.The engineer administrative in the Euphrates Dam Ali al-Rawy stated that this turbine has been repaired by the efforts of 250 workers in the dam, and by the support of the...

Wind power may not be the cheapest, most efficient, or even most common form of renewable energy, but it is surely one of the most visually impressive methods of power generation. Anyone who has driven from Detroit to Toronto for instance can attest to the awe that comes from seeing dozens of windmills rising hundreds of feet into the air all turning in slow arcs with the wind. A new wind turbine design will put older smaller designs to shame though – if it can every get past the objections of environmentalists. Canada, with lots of land, is an ideal...

Gina McCarthy, President Obama’s choice to replace Lisa Jackson at the Environmental Protection Agency, has been chastised for having lied to Congress, in claiming that EPA did not use “dangerous manmade climate change” to justify new 54.5 mpg standards for cars and light trucks. She’s also been implicated in the agency’s practice of using fake emails to hide questionable dealings and activities. These issues highlight attitudes toward ethics, law and public policy that prevail at EPA and too many other government agencies. However, that attention should not distract from other important matters. Ms. McCarthy may be the worst of the...

Germany’s flagship Bard 1 offshore wind farm has been described as “a faulty total system” as technical problems continue to plague the project, casting major doubts on the feasibility of large scale offshore projects. The wind farm was officially turned on in August last year but was shut down again almost immediately due to technical difficulties that have still not been resolved – and now lawyers are getting involved. The wind farm comprises 80 5MW turbines situated 100 km off the north German coastline. The difficulty facing engineers is how to get the electricity generated back to shore. So far,...

A sophisticated network of metal thieves has targeted some 20 French wind turbines in a new looting trend, scaling the near 40-metre-high structures and stealing up to one tonne of metal from a single engine, Le Figaro reported Wednesday. Citing an anonymous police source, the daily newspaper said the ring stole metal from wind farms in sparsely populated areas, where they had less chance of being caught. “They cut the power to turn off the engine propeller motor,” the officer said, noting the thieves broke through the doors at the bottom of the turbines, before using the stairs to reach...

Hard facts often trump breezy liberal logic supporting renewable energy. Parade Magazine columnist Marilyn Vos Savant, once considered the smartest person in the world, wrote on May 11 that wind power may actually disrupt local weather. While this information contradicts climate alarmist attempts to reduce extreme weather to a consequence of global warming, it adds to the list of environmental problems with wind turbines. Vos Savant claimed that wind turbines “will have an impact on the weather,” in addition to causing “ground warming and drying.” She pointed out that wind turbines “remove energy from the wind” which logically has an...

The UK’s renewable energy plans have been set back after the companies building the world’s biggest offshore wind farm, London Array, ditched a second phase of the huge project, largely because of uncertainties about its impact on birds. **SNIP** Basking sharks and a rocky seabed helped kill off plans to build ScottishPower Renewables’ Argyll Array wind farm off the western coast of Scotland in December. That move came just weeks after RWE, a German power company, pulled the plug on its £4bn Atlantic Array offshore wind farm after saying the cost of overcoming technical challenges were “prohibitive” in the current...

**SNIP** Cappiello reported in May 2013 that “companies operating industrial-sized turbines … that are killing eagles and other protected birds have yet to be fined or prosecuted — even though every death is a criminal violation” — and even though the “Obama administration has charged oil companies for drowning birds in their waste pits and power companies for electrocuting birds on power lines.” The way the Obama White House plays favorites, in short, birds killed by politically correct green companies are swept under the rug while bird killings by politically incorrect fossil fuel companies are judged to be prosecutable. In...

BOULDER, Colo., Nov. 8 (UPI) -- Wind turbines killed at least 600,000 -- and possibly as many as 900,000 -- bats in the United States in 2012, researchers say. Writing in the journal BioScience, the researchers said they used sophisticated statistical techniques to infer the probable number of bat deaths at wind energy facilities from the number of dead bats found at 21 locations. Bats, which play an important role in the ecosystem as insect-eaters, are killed at wind turbines not only by collisions with moving turbine blades but also by the trauma resulting from sudden changes in air pressure...

German Chancellor Angela Merkel announced on 30 May that Germany, the world's fourth-largest economy and Europe's biggest, would shutter all of its 17 nuclear power plants between 2015 and 2022, an extraordinary commitment, given that they currently produce about 28 percent of the country's electricity. Underlining the government’s seriousness in changing the country’s energy matrix, Germany's Kreditanstalt fur Wiederaufbau (German Development Bank) is to underwrite renewable energy and energy efficiency investments in Germany with $137.3 billion over the next five years, Germany Trade and Invest reported. Overall, the German government's 6th Energy Research Program has made an extraordinary $274.6 billion...

A research company in New Hampshire recently announced the patent of their bladeless wind turbine, which is based on a patent issued to Nikola Tesla in 1913. The Fuller Wind Turbine developed by Solar Aero has only one rotating part, the turbine-driveshaft. The entire assembly is contained inside a housing, so that this turbine offers several advantages versus blade-style (primarily horizontal-axis type) turbines. With a screened inlet and outlet, this turbine does not present a danger to wildlife such as bats and birds. To an outside observer, the only movement visible is the entire turbine housing as it adjusts to...