Free Republic

A 30-foot humpback whale was found dead on the shores of Fire Island on Friday morning — at least the 18th doomed humpback discovered on the East Coast this year. The tragic majestic mammal was found belly-up on the eastern side of Smith Point County Park in Shirley, Long Island, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said. The animal’s body has been collected for a necropsy, NOAA told Patch in a statement. The cause of death is unknown.

Fiberglass particles drifted downwind during the Rexville fire.. The scenes were amazing from the recent fire on the Steuben-Allegany county line. A massive wind turbine was on fire, hundreds of feet in the air, black smoke billowing out of the blaze. It was obvious that the turbine was destroyed and the fire burned out after being on fire for hours. What wasn’t obvious was what the fire was burning into the wind … fiberglass. The family downwind and nearby the fire say they have been impacted. According to multiple sources, several family members have been exposed to airborne fiberglass: Livestock...

11-story tall blades flew the full length of a football field and plowed a 4-feet deep furrow in a wheat field. The heavy-duty bolts that kept the blade attached to the tower scattered like shrapnel. A new report has revealed the unreliability of a major Oregon wind farm, discovered after a blade from a windmill detached and flew across the field. According to The Oregonian, in January, a delivery driver found some broken, industrial-size bolts on the ground near one of Portland General Electric’s towering wind turbines but did not know who to tell and used it as a paperweight.

A 400-foot-tall wind turbine in Gloucester suffered a mechanical failure Sunday morning causing one of the turbine’s blades to fall to the ground. The wind turbine is at Applied Materials on Dory Road in Blackburn Industrial Park. Gloucester Fire Department received a report of the incident at approximately 7 a.m. Sunday, according to a news release. The fire department and the city are working with Applied Materials to establish an appropriate isolation area around the turbine to ensure the safety of the structure and people around it.

California .. the bill is coming due. ... no comprehensive plan to dispose of them. Now, panels purchased under those programs are nearing the end of their typical 25-to-30-year life cycle. Many are already winding up in .. contaminate groundwater with toxic heavy metals such as lead, selenium and cadmium. Sam Vanderhoof, a solar industry expert and chief executive of Recycle PV Solar, says that only 1 in 10 panels are actually recycled ... The looming challenge over how to handle truckloads of waste... “The industry is supposed to be green,” Vanderhoof said. “But in reality, it’s all about the...

“We’re gonna have windmills, you’re gonna see that have 100-yard wingspans, each, each propeller on that on that windmill, 100 yards long. So there’s so much that’s going to be able to be done.”

California's Independent System Operator has issued a statewide flex alert for Thursday June 17 from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. Cal ISO issued the voluntary call to conserve energy Wednesday afternoon as temperatures in the Bay Area soared in the first heat wave of the season and record breaking heat blankets the West Coast this week. By Wednesday, Fairfield reached triple digits. Many other spots in the East Bay, including Fremont, Walnut Creek and Concord are already getting close. The heat is expected to peak on Thursday, with an excessive heat warning in effect through Friday night for many areas...

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), the regulatory agency that manages Texas’ power grid, said tight grid conditions are expected this week due to high number of forced generation outages, and urged Texans to conserve energy. The announcement came one month after it published its latest seasonal assessment projecting a less than a 1% chance of blackouts occurring this summer. It also came just four months after the state’s historic power grid failure left millions of Texans in the cold and dark. Without heat and water during sub-zero temperatures in mid-February, 111 Texans died. On Monday, ERCOT asked Texans...

An energy company says it's trying to determine why a 113-foot-long blade fell off a windmill in central New York. [...] Town official say they believe a bolt may have failed on the 187-ton windmill, one of 20 located at the Fenner Wind Farm, which was built in 2001 on a hill 15 miles east of Syracuse. ...

Orono, MN – For more than a year, we have been following the story of a Minnesota man, Jay Nygard, who is routinely risking jail time because he refuses to remove a wind turbine from his property. Nygard has been in and out of court over the years, and despite a short-lived victory in October, he was recently back in front of a judge facing a contempt of court charge for refusing a court order to remove the turbines from his property. He did eventually remove the turbines, leaving only the cement bases because removing them would cause structural damage...

wind energy is highly inefficient and requires additional transmission lines and back-up gas generators when the wind doesn't blow. Yet, windmills keep getting built, thanks to government subsidies. But it is very hard to trace these subsidies. Vague statements about "tax credits" and "mandates" give no hint of the magnitude of returns that these subsidies provide to crony windmillers. Indeed, in the Carnahan Special Report, we had to burrow into financial statements of a foreign company and its subsidiary to understand where all the money was going. The principal information was buried in an arcane note to these financial statements....

"William and the Windmill tells the story of how William Kamkwamba built a power-generating windmill from junk parts to rescue his family from famine, as well as the subsequent changes in his life and village as a result of his invention."...This 14 year old in a third world country was tired of going to bed when the sun went down every night because his family had no electricity. Digging thru junk piles he assembled a windmill that turned a bike generator to power lights and radios for his house.... Invited to T.E.D. convention in Tanzania, wealthy donors asked what he...

Former climate change alarmist Dr James Lovelock, famous for popularising the "Gaia" metaphor, continues his journey back to rationality. Lovelock is objecting to a "medium sized" (240ft high) erection planned for his neighbourhood in North Devon by infamous windfarm operator Ecotricity. The UK currently has 3,000 onshore turbines and 6,000 are planned: this is the main reason why electricity bills are soaring out of control in order to pay for the inefficient, highly expensive windmills. Lovelock calls the runaway windmill building "industrial vandalism". In an objection to the planning application made to Tiverton council, Lovelock points out that one nuclear...

IF; As AGW Proponents Say "It's AGW", How are the Wind Mills going to Fair? If these people are so smart (OBAMA) in promoting wind power, what are going to happen to all these wind mills when the storms hit?

A panel of experts who were appointed to work toward noise level guidelines for wind turbines in Michigan had their work discarded when state bureaucrats didn't like what the panel was coming up with and made up their own rules instead. As a result, there is now no specific state recommended decibel level limit for wind turbines. This means wind turbines can operate at 55 dBA (decibels adjusted to reflect the ear's response to sound), which is the standard Michigan had followed for at least two years. The panel was promoting reducing that level to 40 dBA...

LONGVIEW, Wash. – Ken Spring of Longview says he does everything by the book. He said all the buildings on his neatly tended property in Cowlitz County are permitted and he always tries to abide by the law. But he also said he is willing to fight to keep a newly built, 30-foot tall windmill on his land. “You'll find this hard to believe, but I'll die for that,” he said as the windmill spun around overhead. “I am fed up.”

The Bloomberg administration asks private companies to design, build and operate a renewable energy plant on 75 acres of the former Fresh Kills Landfill in Staten Island. --- Earlier this month, the city proposed turning garbage into energy. Now it wants to turn a former garbage heap on Staten Island into an energy farm. The city is asking private companies to design, build and operate a wind and solar farm on 75 acres of the former Fresh Kills Landfill, Deputy Mayor for Operations Caswell Holloway announced at a Crain's forum Tuesday morning. It would be the first commercial-grade operation of...

The story behind a story is often more interesting, but too often, we forget to ask questions needed to learn it.An example: The Keller school district is rightfully proud of its energy-efficient Timberview Middle School off Old Denton Road in Fort Worth. With its fruit and vegetable garden, geothermal heating and air conditioning, rooftop solar panels, white roof to absorb less heat, and waterless urinals, the year-old structure is billed as a school of the future .... Another component of the campus is its lone wind turbine, next to the athletic field by the concession building. Paid for with voter-approved...

Windmills to shut at night following demise of rare batKathy Mellott - The Tribune-Democrat October 17, 2011 LILLY — Night operation of the windmills in the North Allegheny Windpower Project has been halted following discovery of a dead Indiana bat under one of the turbines, an official with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said Monday. The finding marks only the second location where an Indiana bat has been found dead under a wind turbine. Two Indiana bats were found under turbines in the Mid-west, said Clint Riley, supervisor for Fish and Wildlife’s Pennsylvania field office. “While finding the dead...

A Pipestone wind-turbine blade manufacturing plant has been hit with a $490,000 civil penalty for a series of air quality, hazardous waste and stormwater violations. In a court settlement with the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency last month, Suzlon Rotor Corp. agreed to settle the violations by paying the penalty and by completing corrective actions at its southwestern Minnesota plant. The consent decree was entered July 7 in Pipestone County District Court. The problems stem from a 2009 MPCA inspection, which found that sandblasting operations there far exceeded emissions standards for airborne particles. In addition, the agency determined the company failed...