Your Economy (No Politics)

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44,000-lb. wind turbine blade busts loose while in operation and careens to the earth—media wonders if the industry has a ‘quality’ problem

By Olivia Murray

the “green” schemes are about enough to test the limits of a person’s sanity and patience with bureaucrats.

This doesn’t seem cosmic, but if a 44,000-pound chunk of fiberglass/epoxy resin that’s as big as a 747 airliner breaks off the tower of a wind turbine and comes hurtling down to earth while in operation, something is very wrong.

Apparently though, that wasn’t as obvious to the journalists in the mainstream media as it was to me.

From a report by Mari Novik and Rachel Millard and just published at the Financial Times:

A turbine blade fell off in Norway. Does the wind industry have a quality problem?

Kim Jonny Karlsen was at home last month when a 20-tonne turbine blade the length of a Boeing 747 broke off its tower at the nearby Odal wind farm and crashed into the fir trees below.

…

No one was harmed. But the 163-megawatt development in remote eastern Norway, whose turbines are made by German group Siemens Gamesa, has remained offline since the incident, its second major technical fault this year.

Component failures have occurred at wind farms all over the world as the sector grapples with quality challenges following rapid growth of both the global fleet and turbine sizes amid a drive to cut use of fossil fuels to meet net zero emissions targets.

The Odal wind “farm” has 34 turbines total, which if I’m understanding correctly, are apparently all out of commission, indefinitely, due to the issues with one—Novik and Millard didn’t say the turbine was “offline” but the development. Is this common? One breaks, and nothing else works? That’s not rhetorical, I genuinely don’t know.

And, this is just the “second major technical fault” so far this year? We’re only half-way through May! What’s worse, is that judging by reports from other news sources, this catastrophic break occurred in mid-April; four-and-half months shouldn’t see two major crises at a power plant.

But, did you catch the why?

There have been “failures” at wind power plants all over the world because “rapid growth” is causing “quality challenges” in the product. So what’s driving this rapid growth? Market demand? Hardly—it’s the leftist climate change agenda backed up by government handouts of taxpayer money. When billions and billions of dollars are up for grabs, whether the technology is there or not (obviously, it’s not), it becomes a rat race, and quality certainly isn’t the priority. Also from Novik and Millard:

While many of the problems affect the inner workings of the turbines, the Odal accident is not unique, with blade losses reported this year at another wind farm in Norway as well as sites in the US and Scotland.

And, get this:

The industry does not publish precise failure rates, making it hard to ascertain how widespread defects are. However, high provisions for payouts on warranties — guarantees a manufacturer offers to repair or replace faulty products — have helped push turbine makers to steep losses in recent years.

Gee, I wonder why the industry, only propped up by gargantuan subsidies, wouldn’t want to publish “precise failure rates” of its products?

So let me get all this straight….

We as the taxpayers fund this product, one that probably almost all of us don’t actually want to invest in, or at least we wouldn’t personally invest in if a free market were really at play, and then when the product fails in the marketplace, we also cover those steep losses? With the billions in handouts, it’s safe to assume that some of that is earmarked for warranty costs.

Oh, and we’re supposed to be “transitioning” away from the reliability of natural coal, gas, and oil energy for this?

And we can’t say anything about the millions of dead birds and bats, many of which are endangered species, or the lurking problem that these blades can’t be recycled and they’re piling up as landfill trash in dystopic “dumping grounds,” and we certainly can’t mention the razing of 1,000-year-old forests with priceless cultural significance, because this is progress and sustainability.

I don’t know about you, but the “green” schemes are about enough to test the limits of a person’s sanity and patience with bureaucrats.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2024/05/44_000_lb_wind_turbine_blade_busts_loose_while_in_operation_and_careens_to_the_earth_media_wonders_if_the_industry_has_a_quality_problem.html