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Wind Turbines A failed alternative energy source

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  Wind Turbines A failed alternative energy source gilber34 <fafa@invalid.com> - 2015-12-14 13:32 -0600
    Re: Wind Turbines A failed alternative energy source jimp@specsol.spam.sux.com - 2015-12-14 19:57 +0000

#539140 — Wind Turbines A failed alternative energy source

While Hawaii has six abandoned wind farms, most of California’s derelict 
turbines are only now being removed — decades late — after disgusted 
local authorities threatened to sue.

In Palm Springs, those who campaigned against the turbines included the 
late singer Sonny Bono, former husband of Cher.

But if a turbine’s owner had walked away from his investment or gone 
bankrupt, it was sometimes the hapless farmer or rancher who owned the 
land who had to foot the $1,000-a-tower clean-up bill.

So how many windmills have been abandoned across the U.S.? It is an 
intensely sensitive subject for wind enthusiasts, who will quibble that 
it depends on how you define ‘abandoned’.

They wouldn’t, for instance, count ones that are working again today, 
even if they were switched off for years. They also argue that many of 
those that were left to rust were technologically outdated and set for 
the scrapheap anyway.

Wind power sceptics estimate 14,000 turbines across the U.S. have become 
derelict since the Eighties, while there are around 38,000 in operation 
across the country.

Paul Gipe claims the number abandoned in his state of California is 
around 4,500, of which 500 are still standing.

In Hawaii, which is soon to get a new subsidised wind farm, Andrew 
Walden argues that whatever turbine makers boast about their machines’ 
impressive kilowatt per hour output, there remains an intractable 
problem with any industry that can survive only with government help.

‘The key lesson from history is that when the subsidies go, the wind 
farms go,’ he told me. ‘It costs too much to maintain them and they just 
get abandoned.’

http://www.hawaiifreepress.com/ArticlesMain/tabid/56/ID/6350/Broken-promises-The-rusting-wind-turbines-of-Hawaii.aspx

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#539151

gilber34 <fafa@invalid.com> wrote:
> While Hawaii has six abandoned wind farms, most of California’s derelict 
> turbines are only now being removed — decades late — after disgusted 
> local authorities threatened to sue.
> 
> In Palm Springs, those who campaigned against the turbines included the 
> late singer Sonny Bono, former husband of Cher.
> 
> But if a turbines owner had walked away from his investment or gone 
> bankrupt, it was sometimes the hapless farmer or rancher who owned the 
> land who had to foot the $1,000-a-tower clean-up bill.
 
Oh yes, the rusting, never turning hulks in the Banning Pass.

A true monument to stupidity.

-- 
Jim Pennino

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