There are many potential hazards of Net Zero but who’d have thought being decapitated might be one of them? According to the Mail it seems that Storm Gerritt had the same effect as trying to do a crash dive in a Tiger Moth:
Shocking footage showed the energy generator in Ayrshire, Scotland, wracking up speed before the blades suddenly come loose and are flung across a seemingly deserted field in opposite directions.
Loud crashes are heard as the debris lands on the ground, while bare trees surrounding the lone turbine are blown back and forth.
Just for good measure, the decapitated wind turbine then burst into flames:
A spokesperson for the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service said: “We were alerted to reports of a fire within a wind turbine at 10.28am on Wednesday, 27 December near Newhouse Farm, Sorn.
“Operations Control mobilised one appliance to the scene, the fire was extinguished prior to the arrival of firefighters.
“The crew left after ensuring the area was made safe.”
The bad news is that if wind turbines costing £3 million each are going to fall to pieces and turn into burning scrap every time there’s a gale, won’t that affect global warming? But every cloud has a silver lining because even if wind turbines really are that vulnerable to – er – wind, they can still make a nice bonfire and warm the neighbours up. All except those (including the local birdlife) who’ve been scalped by the turbine blades as they whizz across the lonely countryside like boomerangs thrown by a race of giants.
The wind turbines are in good company though. As we all know, electric cars like bursting into flames at the drop of a hat and don’t even need a howling gale to do so. What’s next? Solar panels that slide off roofs and crush people?
Still, let’s be fair folks. It’s all in the spirit of R&D. This is new technology after all. Why would it ever have occurred to anyone in the wind turbine industry that their whirligigs might need to withstand unheard-of winds of 85 mph or more? Now with this experience behind them they’ll be sure to ratchet the spec up to at least 90 mph and perhaps use something stronger than papier-maché to build them out of. Onward! Until the next storm…
Sallust is a pseudonym.
Stop Press: There’s even better video footage of the wind turbine’s blades spinning off on Instagram here.
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There are good reasons why wind power was consigned to the history books and museums two centuries ago. It feels like we are regressing back to pre-industrial times.
The purpose of their ‘Great Reset’ is to take the West back to feudalism.
Chuckles believes that once we “his people” have been immiserated and enslaved he will be able to traverse his kingdom just like days of yore in a carriage and four. His organic farms will have his peasants toiling in the fields with a few opening gates for him while bending the knee and doffing their caps. Oh it will be so jolly. I am not so sure the dinghy warriors have such visions for their future though.
Thankyou My Liege. —–But if I am to be “reset” I prefer going back to the Medieval Warm Period where we all lay in the sun after our back breaking labour. Life was short, we had nothing but at least we were happy in the warm sun, just as the WEF would have it.
Living standards for ordinary people in the 15th century were higher than in the 16th, 17th, 18th and first half of the 19th century.
They had lots of holidays and feasts and a basic “welfare state” provided by the Church.
Yep. Medieval times were prosperous and that is when all the great Cathedrals were built. People do better when it is warm not cold.
That’s the plan.
A quick look at the topic suggests that it’s not strange. Quite a few occurrences of similar failures have happened, sometimes related to quality problems (both in manufacture and operation), not just unexpected weather. In simple terms, the more of them exist, the more faults will occur.
I was involved in an ecological assessment for a new onshore windfarm site in Wales some years ago. It was determined that birds flying toward turbines had a five percent strike rate. There was some disagreement on how many dead birds this would lead to but the general consensus was ‘a lot’.
I noted that the Clocaenog N-power report ( see https://tethys.pnnl.gov/sites/default/files/publications/George_2010.pdf ) ‘modelled’ a ‘precautionary’ 98% avoidance and a realistic 99% avoidance rate for that development in NE Wales. These figures seem to be a random assetion or wishful thinking However if that really were the case then the Osprey chick that was killed by one of the nearby Brenig turbines. See https://www.dailypost.co.uk/news/north-wales-news/grim-discovery-reveals-what-really-19090066 and the Reach group newspaper article attempted to deflect blame from the turbine to a Channel 4 documentary disturbing the bird. The Welsh Water team who had gone to extraordinary lengths to see this chick reared on their lake reach adulthood, were understandably extremely upset and pointed out the documentary was filmed almost 2 weeks afterwards.
Silverbullet12 – I think the 95% avoidance – 5% collision or higher casualty is more realistic. but still lower than what is probably the case in moderate to stronger windspeeds. I’m informed that the casualties ranging from Goshawks and Kestrels to bats found on the ground here are not catastrophic impact injuries but more often injuries consistent with severe air turbulence and wake shear for several hundred metres downstream of the 1.5 acre swept area of the blades. That is what makes them much more lethal.that the adherents would have us believe.
This spectacular incident represents a safety mechanism failure which in turn reveals one of the innumerable weaknesses of what is an essentially medieval technology – trying to grab energy directly from nature windmill stylee.
In fact these ‘hi-tech’ turbines can only cope with wind-speeds up to c 50 mph (minimum c 15 mph) when built in brakes should kick in.
That’s right, mass shutdown has to occur when electrical generation would be maximised during gales and hurricanes.
In doing my research over these figures I also came across another (blackly) hilarious fact about this technologically reggressive comedic gift that keeps giving:
Each massive turbine requires c 300 litres of oil annually for lubrication.
Which means that the two largest onshore and offshore plants in the UK alone go through c 130,000 litres per year of the dreaded fossil fuel that Extinction Rebellion and Just Stop Oil are demanding be completely abandoned in the ground.
You couldn’t make it up!!! :-).
A retired grid engineer told me that, during long periods of little to no wind, the windmills become consumers of electricity to maintain the spin, so as to keep the bearings greased and to prevent the bearings from becoming warped. I have tried to verify this for myself but as yet unable, would be grateful if anyone can help!
Yes, have come across this crazy concept before, would be of no surprise whatsoever.
Very similar to the fact that National Grid now has to maintain an extensive array of diesel generators across the country ready to kick in when the increasingly ‘alternative’ (ie inefficient and unreliable) leaning UK generating capacity fails to meet demand, ie to avoid mass power cuts.
This I know to be absolutely true. My current office place of work is rather in the fields so to speak, and there are two massive diesel generators just around the corner. The farmer happily charges rent. Our “business park” still suffers from a lot of power cuts, however. And whenever I tell my work colleagues that this is what happens when we expect rainbows and unicorn juice to provide for our power requirements, I can feel the “Not the Conspiracy Theorist again” energies coming my way…
Ask them if their continually rising electricity bills are a conspiracy theory.
Correct. Its to avoid ‘Brinnelling’ which is pitting of the main bearing races and step -up gears through wind induced vibration from the blades when stationary
And brinelling will lead to excess vibration, creating more wear. So, if that’s not calibrated right, then whoops off come the blades.
Good point. And with the high torque and unbalanced rotational stress at the slow hub speed of the blades any serious vibration that might cause bearing or hub failure means the blades are feathered oversize disk brake locks on until the bearings can be examined and changed. Which is why you often see one or 2 turbines in a group of 15 stopped and generating nothing for 2 or 3 months at a time.
And pulls electricity from the grid to prevent the blades icing up in cold weather.
I live near a batch of them and on days with no wind they are gently turning.
Ha, 50 mph…the gusts in the north of Scotland can be far greater, on a fairly frequent basis. I guess Caithness will be littered with blade shrapnel alongside the bird carcasses.
The one thing everyone always forgets, is maintenance, and its cost. The greater the complexity, alongside novel technologies, the more expensive maintenance becomes. I’ve seen newbuild schools in Scotland, all fancy atrium, corridors and lighting, all centrally controlled. Instead of a janitor being able to control the heating, lighting and changing of lightbulbs the tasks now require computers, control rooms, cherry pickers, electricians, heating engineers, computer engineers, and the lights are needed all day. Building constantly comsuming power. So how is that more efficient than traditional buildings where one old geezer had all the knowledge required and only needed a step ladder…
You could add marine and aviation to the list. Quite a few helicopters involved in maintaining some of them at sea, no doubt fuelled by kerosene.
Topsails and Headsails Mr Christian. Make way for Cape Horn. A delightful passage, with winds of steel that come at you day and night and men fall to the deck from the icy shrouds, while others curse their mother for having given them birth. —————Yes the same wind we now rely on for our light bulbs. Insanity just as it ever was.
The other related issue is the complexity of control arrangements to comply with frequency variation tolerance and the peak voltage levels with so many small alternators and inverters on line, compared with the old 500 MW alternators in the past. E.g. the old Didcot A coal fired one had 4 of those. To get that from a wind farm there would be many small ones all on the grid.
But nobody liked the cooling towers on the Oxford plain.
And ofcourse wind is diffuse energy that requires huge amounts of land and still cannot provide base load. It requires gas turbines ticking over full time waiting for the wind to stop. (which is often). Using wind is like having to buy 2 cars, because one of them only works 4 days a week but you never know what days.
Yep —-Diffuse energy requiring huge areas of land for part time energy that cannot provide base load is all the rage with the phony planet savers. Only by examining the real reason and politics behind this absurdity can we see why it is occurring all over the western world. ——The Climate is not the reason. The climate is simply the plausible excuse for the masses.
“What’s next? Solar panels that slide off roofs and crush people?”
Maybe not, but there have been quite a few roof fires caused by solar panels!
Safe and effective
It’s a very bold move to make your energy resources reliant on the weather you insist is going to change drastically in the future.
Or madness.
New Olympic Sport: Wind Turbine Blade Sets Giant Javelin Throw Record
stopthesethings.com/2023/12/15/new-olympic-sport-wind-turbine-blade-sets-giant-javelin-throw-record/
stopthesethings.com
“The wind industry (which really only got off the ground in the late 1990s and still generates a trifling amount of electricity) has clocked up around 231 fatalities, – see the helpful collection of wind farm death and injury stats compiled by Scotland Against Spin all available here: https://scotlandagainstspin.org/turbine-accident-statistics/ “
Traditional Scottish dwellings have additional protections against wind so I’m guessing wind is not a new thing in Scotland?
Possible perils of modern technology along similar lines…I was watching footage of the Japanese tsunami in 2011. Of course, amid the horrendous destruction were many thousands of cars bobbing around and crashing into everything else. How much more difficult would it have been if a fair proportion of those vehicles had been electric? Imagine those batteries flooded with seawater and then being subjected to multiple collisions.
I have seen footage of a Tesla burning underwater (having fallen into the sea), so, the next time there is a dangerous flood, perhaps something like Boscastle in Cornwall some years ago, will EV’s be major contributors to the carnage?
This should fun then!!
A wooden wind turbine…..
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-67718719
Possibly glued together with the same glue they use on the compacted pellets they ship across the Atlantic to power Drax…although I think those are supposed to be stuck together with lignite from the wood itself. My ‘O’ level geography told me that lignite was a very poor fuel, coal being far more efficient. Perhaps an engineer could enlighten me.
Lignite has a lower specific energy ( or specific energy ) of 10,000-17,400 kJ/kg. Coals range from sub bituminous coal above this IEA definition to anthracites which are up to 33,000kJ/kg.
To make kiloJoules per kilogram more meaningful, I divide the value by 3,600 ( secs in an hour) to give kWh/kg. So a kilogram lump of lignite might hold 2.7 to 4.8 kWh or units while a kilogram of high quality hard anthracite holds 9kWh. Of course the efficiency of a furnace or stove, if used for domestic water heating or that of power station steam boiler and turbine system plus alternator and transformer sets mean that in the former, about 65% heats the house while in the latter only about 35-36% is exported as electrical energy. …..to charge your Tesla. The rest goes up the chimneys and is wasted in condensing steam.
While we are talking about wind turbines generating electricity this is only possible when the grid is connected to nearly the same generation capability of gas turbines. These burn natural gas which ranges from 55,000 kJ/kg down to 48,600 kJ/kg*. Much cheaper than electricity but the gas turbines when idling burn about 20% of full load consumption with negligible output.
Hope this helps.- these are real world calculated values rather than manufacturer sales claims. But if anyone can provide actual values I’d welcome these.
Not wrong but a combined cycle gas plant efficiency of gas to electricity is about 52-55% at full load. However if this is not at full power the steam cycle efficiency falls considerably, which it must if used to level off the wind generation. A much bigger problem is that the grid stability depends on the mechanical inertia of very large alternators (500 MW or more) whose rotating parts weigh 100 tons or more. Wind turbines are not directly connected to the grid, there is an electronic invertor between and have zero inertia. The next thing we will need is huge stations with motor driven flywheels weighing hundreds of tons to ensure stability of the system, but they don’t tell you that! Who pays for this, well you do! Such is always the ANSWER: make the consumer pay for these daft ideas, which will in the end fail completely. Not far off now, but the weather is not helping failure at the moment, but it will. A good cold snap, with almost no wind. Normal Winter weather.
“Still, let’s be fair folks. It’s all in the spirit of R&D. This is new technology after all”
Sorry Sallust, In my opinion its not. Wind turbines use crude and old technology, they are poorly designed and cheaply manufactured. A few years ago I was invited to a large production unit in Pudong, Shanghai, China where blades were being produced in a yard for a well known N European turbine brand. The technique was simple – manual layup in moulds, of resin over chopped strand fibreglass. The yard was uncovered and open to the elements with it drizzling heavily while the workers slopped the resin on with brushes. Quality control appeared absent.and the wet would have compromised strength by contaminating the catalyst-accelerator as well as water inclusion reducing longitudinal strength and fracturing internally in freezing conditions.
The wind Energy Science journal’s https://wes.copernicus.org/articles/3/427/2018/ Effects of moisture absorption on damage progression and strength of unidirectional and cross-ply fiberglass–epoxy composites, explains this alone can cause a 40% reduction in the ability of blades to resist the combination of centrifugal and bending forces.
The image heading the article shows the fractured fibreglass at the root where the blades are glued or bonded to the steel tubular connection to the hub flange.
Yet all that is required is some very safe modular reactors and some gas fired plants, some hydro, all of which take up very little room and the country will not look like a giant pin cushion “Bob’s Your Uncle”. ——-Plenty of electricity and thousands of birds of prey can relax a bit knowing they need not fear being spliced anymore, plus we might not be paying 300 quid a month for energy. ——Why do politicians always prefer the absurd?
OK my last contribution. Yes I totally agree we need modular reactors and these should have been constructed 10-15 years ago. Plus gas fired plants running on UK produced gas are the ideal. Hydro up to a point but Scotland has more potential for high head hydro than Wales and our 4 pumped storage schemes ( 2 in each of Scotland and Wales ) have a 2.8 GW output capability and a stored capacity if the upper reservoirs are full of 4 GWh. So with the national demand now of 35GW these could run 8% of our demand for a whole 1h 25 min. Thats all.
I think the obsession with wind turbines is
1) that they are generally on private land or on NGO land ( NRW in Wales ) with private funding. Hence they are a substantial transfer of wealth from public to private hands and corporate interests
2) they are absurdly highly visible icons ( a 3 armed cross ) of the dedication to saving the planet. As an island nation, an array of tidal flow turbines around the coast ( water is 880 x denser than air ) would be smaller but invisible and with tidal flow prediction years ahead being well understood would be far more reliable than wind. But the seabed land is supposedly the Crowns so perhaps there are some objections there.too. S Korea, a peninsula not very much smaller than England and Wales uses low head tidal turbines extensively. It manufactures turbines but uses few domestically.
Tidal is still a technology is not “On demand” and like wind it is only useful if the energy can be stored, which it cannot be. There is also the disruption to sea life etc. —Wind sun tidal etc are all part time energy. You cannot run Industrial society on those. They are only being used for ideological reasons regarding the irrational fear of a climate crisis, which in reality is only the excuse for the real reason for renewables. ——The idea that we in the west have used up more than our fair share of the coal gas and oil in the ground and are to fob our citizens off with wind and sun and we can like it or lump it
The SMR is a problem beast, its biggest problem being security. The second is cooling water, you cannot just put one in a Town, unless it on the coast or a large lake. Obviously neither of these is a problem on a military ship. To make the price anything like reasonable, it would be necessary to make many, many, just like cars. To do so needs a vast highly trained workforce. We no longer have such, as we have been de-industrialised too far. All in the name of climate change!
But you will get 40 years of life from an SMR and only 15 years out of a turbine, and for turbines you need to factor in the cost of the 100% backup from gas. So cost comes closer together
At least this won’t cost the energy generating company anything as they’ll pass the additional costs on to the consumer, so that’s a good thing, right? After all, we can’t have these companies going bust, they are the future for cheap, reliable energy!!
When people talk about the sun lit hills, in future it won’t be the sun lighting them up.
A characteristic of diesel engines is that the speed must be governed when they are running. Failure to control their speed will result in them increasing in speed until they destroy themselves. Wind turbines have this same characteristic. Blade pitch and brakes are used to control the speed. Failure of these control mechanisms leads to speed increases until they destroy themselves.
Saw one that looked a bit like that near Grimethorpe a few months back. I reckon a sort like the one in 1987 would flatten the lot.