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Retiring Worn-Out Wind Turbines Could Cost Billions That Nobody Has (energycentral.com)
schwit1 shared this article from Energy Central News:
Estimates put the tear-down cost of a single modern wind turbine, which can rise from 250 to 500 feet above the ground, at $200,000... Which means landowners and counties in Texas could be on the hook for tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars if officials determine non-functional wind turbines need to be removed. Or if that proves to be too costly, as seems likely, some areas of the state could become post-apocalyptic wastelands steepled with teetering and fallen wind turbines, locked in a rigor mortis of obsolescence.
Companies will of course have the option of upgrading those aging wind turbines with new models, a resurrection of sorts. Yet the financial wherewithal to do so may depend on the continuation of federal wind subsidies, which is by no means assured. Wind farm owners say the recycling value of turbines is significant and recovering valuable material like copper and steel will cover most of the cost of decommissioning... Yet extracting valuable materials from the turbines is not as easy as it sounds... "The blades are composite, those are not recyclable, those can't be sold," said Lisa Linowes, executive director of WindAction Group, a nonprofit which studies landowner rights and the impact of the wind energy industry. "The landfills are going to be filled with blades in a matter of no time...."
Unlike Duke Energy, some of the smaller wind farm companies operating in Texas, with fewer financial resources, may be tempted to just walk away when aging turbines no longer spin a profit. Linowes believes such moves may begin occurring even before wind turbines outlive their useful life as manufacturing warranties on the big turbines expire. "At what point does the cost of maintenance tip over to the point it's not worth maintaining a turbine?" she said. "We're in something of an unknown or uncertain territory... It could be a very ugly situation in the next five years when we see turbines need work, and are no longer under warranty and not generating enough electricity to keep running them."
Companies will of course have the option of upgrading those aging wind turbines with new models, a resurrection of sorts. Yet the financial wherewithal to do so may depend on the continuation of federal wind subsidies, which is by no means assured. Wind farm owners say the recycling value of turbines is significant and recovering valuable material like copper and steel will cover most of the cost of decommissioning... Yet extracting valuable materials from the turbines is not as easy as it sounds... "The blades are composite, those are not recyclable, those can't be sold," said Lisa Linowes, executive director of WindAction Group, a nonprofit which studies landowner rights and the impact of the wind energy industry. "The landfills are going to be filled with blades in a matter of no time...."
Unlike Duke Energy, some of the smaller wind farm companies operating in Texas, with fewer financial resources, may be tempted to just walk away when aging turbines no longer spin a profit. Linowes believes such moves may begin occurring even before wind turbines outlive their useful life as manufacturing warranties on the big turbines expire. "At what point does the cost of maintenance tip over to the point it's not worth maintaining a turbine?" she said. "We're in something of an unknown or uncertain territory... It could be a very ugly situation in the next five years when we see turbines need work, and are no longer under warranty and not generating enough electricity to keep running them."
End the endless wars (military homicide sprees) which we've been involved in since 9/11/2001. Spend part of the money saved on subsidizing clean energy, whether it be wind, solar, or (yes!) nuclear. Put all the out-of-work coalies to work building and repairing clean-energy infrastructure.
Smells like BS
Then why not just let people come in and take what bits they want? Who couldn't use a few spare turbine blades?
This is the game that Musk taught us. Gambled on 'clean' energy and lost? Wait for a handout!
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Most of the decommissioning costs I've seen are a fraction of that. They also seem to be planning to take the tower and foundations away, which makes no sense. Surely you are going to want to put another turbine in its place.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
It might have some toxic oils in the transformers, as well as those used to lubricate the generator bearings. But still less toxic than coal slag and mercury belched into the air by dirty-coal power plants.
Unlike Duke Energy, some of the smaller wind farm companies operating in Texas, with fewer financial resources, may be tempted to just walk away when aging turbines no longer spin a profit.
Toto, I've a feeling we're not in Europe anymore. Maybe you could perform a "99" so I could remember the future of THX 1138. No, seriously, just attach giant kites on those poles to bring them down on a windy day. It will be ironic.
"Clean coal".
You keep using that word. I don't think it means what you think it means.
Go kill your self, not others
Agreed. Pretty much every wind farm I've seen has nothing else around it for hundreds of feet, so just put some explosives at the base of the tower and down it comes. Then chop it up and send it off for recycling - seems very unlikely that you couldn't turn a profit that way. Gets a little more expensive if you need to avoid hitting other windmills, but odds are that all the windmills in a given farm are going to be decommissioned at about the same time.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
It'd be easy to keep those blades out of the landfill if anybody could come up with a use case for giant gyrocopters, helicopters (or even quadcopters!). The few blades I've seen going down the highway seem to be of monolithic fiber/resin construction, so they are likely very heavy. But hey, free is good, and maybe somebody will be willing to haul them away. Maybe this is how we get cities floating through the clouds, when radically cheaper energy via fusion or orbital solar makes wind noncompetitive.
Donald Trump knows what it means.
No sig today...
Clean coal feeds the mean troll.
Unless we get electricity too cheap to meter, the old wind turbines will be replaced with new wind turbines. These old turbines are located in the best wind resource (and already paid the fixed infrastructure cost to connect to the grid), so the most desirable to repower.
There are many examples in California where turbines were first installed in the 1980s which have already, or are in the process now, of repowering.
If the cost of removing old wind turbines is so high, why wouldn't the operators adopt the same business model the cell companies have used successfully for decades?
Laws affecting technology will always be bad until enough techies become lawyers.
It could be a very ugly situation in the next five years when we see turbines need work, and are no longer under warranty and not generating enough electricity to keep running them
Just because my car is out of warranty doesn't mean I have to stop driving it. Unless maintenance costs exceed the revenue generated by letting a turbine run, why wouldn't you just let it run. And what actually wears out?
I don't know how this story made it out of Firehose, it's so obviously propaganda from butthurt coal and oil interests.
What is so special about this specific type of power generating infrastructure?
Isn't a water or nuclear power plants just as expensive to retire?
Who sits on those billions?
These wind farms turn a tidy profit, yes? Where is all that profit going? If they stop laundering those profits and bank some of it for future repairs or replacement, rather than holding out a poor beggar's hands and whining for another bailout, the problem is solved.
Seriously. One of the reasons why they all try to run their nuclear power stations as long as possible (despite the increasing risks) is that they know the decommissioning will bankrupt them.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Scalping also permitted.
Does anyone do even a tiny bit of quality assurance on submissions? The person being quoted as saying we're in for an apocalyptic landscape littered with turbine blades is from the WindAction Group. That organization's website claims "Industrial Wind Action Group Corp ("The WindAction Group") was formed to counteract the misleading information promulgated by the wind energy industry and various environmental groups."
In other words, it's probably a fossil fuel front group.
Great job, whoever thought this was a good submission.
Wind power in Texas is often some of the cheapest electricity you can get. It's picking up momentum, and the incentive to keep it going is pretty high. I smell a slant in this article, likely from someone with money to lose from this trend. Say, coal industries.
https://www.chron.com/business...
The Wind Action Group is nothing but a front for fossil fuel companies. It's corporate disinformation.
When that happens everyone wants "Other People's Money" to design new energy projects.
Other People's Money to select a site, design and build.
To keep production working and ensure a profit so future projects can be provided for.
Then to cover most of the cost of decommissioning.
At some time the projects run out of that free money.
The cost of energy has to allow for all the costs of past and new turbines and set a market price for the full cost.
A gov cant just step in and virtue signals about energy production and offer another generation of "Other People's Money".
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
It was submitted almost a week ago, and the pull quote by the submitter was much less inflammatory. If you read the article, it’s a lot more balanced than this pull quote suggests. Imcall bullshit on the /. editors. This is just clickbait.
Landowners in Ok and Tx should have learned this lesson in the 1950s... 60s... 70s... etc... with oil drilling rigs. Iâ(TM)ve advised several family members on wind farm craze. And the big rule is âoenever let them install without an ageeement for handling uninstall, preferably money in escrow, plus the wind company is liable for any cost overruns.â That has to be separate from the profits you are paid. If you canâ(TM)t get such an agreement, you will be screwed, basically guaranteed. Itâ(TM)s the nature of companies to not clean up â" thereâ(TM)s no profit in it â" so you have to make it an up-front cost.
I live in Alberta and the rural landscapes are dotted with abandoned oil/gas pumps in farmland or open fields. The cost of removing / clean up and capping is not worth the various companies time or money and they just walk away and let them rot. It seems that the government just says oh well.
It's called an asset retirement obligation. I did the accounting for a dozen windfarms, and they require you to take into account decommissioning. So this cost is baked into the profit and cash flow numbers. It has been planned for, and the companies are required to tear down the turbines, the foundations, and restore the land to its original condition. Meaning they can't just leave a giant hole. As many have said above me, this is FUD and propaganda.
Blades
The "huge" blades weight is actually a very small amount of the whole weight.
But it's true that composites cannot be "recycled" they
can be broken appart and cut and later shreded and then can be
a.) burned for example in the cement industry the residue being created that cannot burn is normal to this process what so ever.
b.) used as a supplement for tarmac and even concrete
So yes blades are a bit of a hassle. And like anything else nothing is 100% green, what is important is the overall sum.
How can you get rid of a turbine:
Set a charge to the tower foot to cut or buckle it and blow it up
10s later the visible part of the wind turbine is gone.
You should however drain the gear oil beforehand otherwise you have an oil spill.
And well that waste that's now laying on the ground is the most of it is steel and cast iron(easy to recycle), the nacelle cover is mostly composite and can be treated like the blades, you can recycle the transformer(copper). Converters are electric waste.
What really is of a hassle and what's expensive to remove is the foundation made from reinforced concrete, for example in germany just the top of the foundation is grinded off.
The foundation however has a sealing effect on the ground so it would be better to remove it. But to put it into perspective the amount of sealing a turbine foundation does is realatively small compared to for example roads and highways.
In germany its regulartory that you as the owner/operator of a turbine need to create an escrow fund to have the turbine removed when the lifetime has ended.
The only meaningful subsidy is to get a market started. Once really going, it needs to survive on it's own. Wind is already established. At this time, ALL wind companies should be setting money aside to take them down. And what is missed here is that most towers are fine. As such, bring down the old wind plant and put up a new , more efficient, and cheaper plant. As to the old, recycling works wonder.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I can't make out whether this is some SJW bemoaning "something" or some alt-right wanting to somehow make a $$$.
I can say this, it is frigging Texas! And trust me if there is a dollah to be made by recycling those things the meth-heads will find a way to bring it down.
Sure, along the way a few meth-heads will get killed, but hey that's a double bonus right there!
Caution: Contents under pressure
So you thought that decommissioning costs applied to only the one industry you don’t like?
I’m not that concerned about decommissioning wind turbines, because each tower contains a trove of industrial metals, including such goodies as a big hunk of neodymium, that can be recycled. The problem I see is maintenance. Intricate mechanical gearing and electronics, high off the ground, in many cases lashed by that salt spray that has a history of ruining everything. The good news is that maintenance will mean lifetime employment for a lot of Germans.
The bad news is that metal thieves have already become a problem for European wind farms.
have teams compete to topple them as fast as they can, any way they can. Like a reality TV show. Do you want the 20 pounds of C4 or the blow torch. Maybe use the monster trucks from Idiocracy's Rehabilitation night. You'd make money.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
These things are mostly in BFE...no point in such costly disassembly. Just blow it the fuck up and be done.
Surely this is not different that the high tension power lines or old dams or old skyscrapers. I don't see anyone panicing.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Does wire and steel age in a large generator? Do the bearings give out? Does it cost too much to clean the blades periodically and filth accumulation on the blades makes them less efficient?
They seem oddly unconcerned about tering down old coal plants full of asbestoes, PCBs, and radioactive ash and slag.
Talk about a hazardous and expensive clean-up.
Vortex Bladeless is an emerging alternative (to turbines) technology for generating electric power from wind:
https://vortexbladeless.com/
In Germany wind tubine owners have to deposit money for the decommissioning. Not sure how this is handled in other countries.
Of course there are still open questions regarding the recycling of components.
This looks like a market that is ripe for some serious innovation. This seems to be mainly about the turbines and the blades because there's no apparent reason why the towers would need removal. (The article also seems a bit anti-wind. Its not the most reliable or convenient source and I can agree with being anti subsidy but they are in place and should be used and maintained.) In any event this presents an opportunity for someone to come up with better turbines, better blades, automated maintenance, whatever. I would think that there would be plenty of $ out there for someone who can seriously lower the operational costs associated with wind.
Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of congress. But then I repeat myself. -- Mark Twain
Itâ(TM)s not always economic to replace them, especially for the early ones built with heavy subsidies. There are many that are too small, or the wind didnâ(TM)t turn out to be as good as expected, or the site works for a small turbine but not a large one, or the supporting infrastructure has failed and is too costly to replace, etc.
I donâ(TM)t think this is an insurmountable challenge, but it does need to be addressed as part of the overall cost. Perhaps this could be resolved by the land owners requiring it as part of the contract - imagine getting paid $8,000 a year as rent and after 20 years not getting paid anymore and also having a $200,000 liability to deal with. I would think they would want some assurance that the towers would be fully removed if it didnâ(TM)t work out.
There was an architect in New Zealand a few years back that basically had a large wind turbine only with the top blade and motor removed and replaced with a hollow sphere shape (and a nice big window on one side). It was about as big as a medium sized hotel room. Looked awesome with a nice view. I could see people paying $300+ a night in peak times there.
There is a limited market for tall monuments. Anaconda Copper Mining Company Smoke Stack overall height of the stack is 585 feet 1 12 inches (178.35 m) ( 585 feet), on top of a 5690 ft hill. Puts the height similar to some of the larger wind turbines going up,
For big companies, have them set aside money in an external fund or buy insurance to cover the cost of removal if the company goes bankrupt, and require that the company have a decommissioning plan in place prior to building.
For smaller companies, either do the same or decide, as a local government, that the community is willing to take on the risk of paying for abandoned equipment if the company goes under.
Either way, don't leave the land-owner with the legal responsibility to pay for removal.
Do the same for any other privately-funded infrastructure that is likely to require removal at the end of its life.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
How much does it cost to decommission an offshore oil rig? How much to clean up contaminated ground water near a fracking site? How much to decomission an old nuclear plant? How much to restore the land around a coal mine?
You are welcome on my lawn.
I would assume it's the generator motor that wears out. . So how come we can't reuse the blades and tower?
Are you telling me these things are designed to be scrapped as a whole regardless of what could be reused if manufacturers had to design with interchangeable components?
Freaken morons....
Everyone is an expert at everything on Slashdot. It's getting to be like watching Facebook posts.
I use to live near “The Boobs” (San Onofre) and that plant’s decommissioning is going to take 30 years and billions of dollars. $250k is like a low end Lamborghini. It would take decommissioning 4,000 wind turbines to equal $1 billion.
We replace cars because they cost $50 to tow to a dump.
But we do not tear down and replace a building or a hydroelectric dam merely because it is old.
Yes, repairs are costly, But the tear down cost is $200,000, then guess what, repair becomes a better option.
I think most wind turbines will end up being repaired multiple times, probably once every 10 years or so. But their lifespan, including repairs will probably be in excess of 50 years.
Note, the repair business will also mean that when we tear down the ones that really can't be repaired, those expensive composite blades will be checked, and if in good condition, used to cheaply repair other turbines whose blades failed. They will end up stockpiled, just like airplane parts, not dumped.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Some of those have decommissioning bonds too, if they're owned by private entities.
Compared to cleaning up the brownfields left behind from a few coal and/or nuke plants, a $1BB total price tag is a drop in the bucket. /I used to trade electricity.
I just checked what I could find about wind turbine recycling in Germany. First, as I had expected, the cost of removing the turbine after its end of life is factored into the costs from day one. So when the time comes, the owners have to have reserves set aside to pay for the destruction and removal of the turbine. Second, many turbines can still be re-sold and get a second life in another wind park. Third, even today there is a complete recycling chain in place for everything from the concrete or steel of the towers to the blades. The blades are shredded and are used as fuel for cement manufacturing. No landfills involved, except for the ashes. The metals that can be recycled are covering a lot of the actual recycling cost, so most operators donâ(TM)t even spend all the money set aside for removal. Improvements in recycling will further increase the overall profitability.
I am not saying that this is not a problem in the U.S., but it is a problem others have solved with the right accounting principles and technologies.
How can you possible say this is B.S.?
We already have huge fields of dead rusting wind turbines in California, and the south of Hawaii. Too expensive to remove so they just sit there, aging....
Given this is ALREADY A PROBLEM...
BECAUSE IT IS B.S.
Those huge fields of dead rusting wind turbines in California, and the south of Hawaii don't exist - or rather they only exist in the propaganda of the more unhinged climate deniers/fossil fuel shills who don't just distort the facts, they simply make stuff up.
I notice that when you repeat this B.S. you never provide links to your "alternative facts".
Note here is a lengthy in-depth discussion of the origins of this lie. It started with a climate denier doing the old distorted facts game - pointing out initially a large number of turbines were installed at the fields in California and Hawaii - but that there many fewer now. But omitting the correct explanation that it was because they were replaced by fewer, much larger, more efficient turbines. And no, the old ones are not just left there, they are removed over time. The actual percentage of non-operating turbines at any given time is about 2%. The fantasy version where there are dead fields (to say nothing of huge dead fields) is the result of climate deniers taking the original BS claim, and extrapolating from it in their imaginations, then posting it as if it was a fact.
I drive through two of the three California fields frequently, watched them go up and evolve, and they are impressive with the huge new towers spinning slowly, but producing far more power than the old ones - which have disappeared. Fields of abandoned turbines are nowhere to be seen. But who should I believe, citation-free climate denier rants or my own lyin' eyes?
Second class citizen of the New Gilded Age
Shit, those composite blades are hollow, slice those bitches laterally in half and make vertical wind turbines from them!
This organization seems to be staffed with ignorant and short-sighted people.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Wind should be free , right?
You charge for both putting up and taking down when it is put up escrow company.
Yes, it's a real issue, but it's way easier to deal this issue with than nuclear waste or climate change. And it won't result in war, like with oil.
In Alberta, there is a huge problem with abandoned oil wells, run by shell companies that go bankrupt when the oil drys up. Coming up are the abandoned bitumen mines that are really ecologically horrible.
Down the road from me, there's hundreds of millions being put into a small dam that was built a hundred years back, cheaper to refurbish it then tear it down.
Getting away from energy, there are a lot of mines that were abandoned and need to be cleaned up. Some of which left some really toxic shit around.
It's the story of capitalism, it's more profitable to abandon things then to clean them up after their useful life.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
... plants that you and your buddies can decommission in two weekends and a little gear your pick up at the next rent-a-tool.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
That these long-lived energy projects (including nuclear plants) should have to keep a decommissioning fund in an escrowed trust. Whether that's part of the construction price or it's taken out amortized during the production lifetime, or a combination of the two doesn't matter, so long as it's funded by the time they get to the "oh shit, we gotta turn this off but can't afford to even do that!" point.
Crony capitalist big business is not capitalism.
Capitalism means a truly free market (read: no subsidies for anyone).
The left (and neocon right) love bailouts for their favorite crony industries: banking, environmental fascism, and the military industrial-complex.
Solyndra 2.0
How can you possible say this is B.S.?
Your endorsement alone is enough, you lie and deceive so extensively that you are a hallmark for fraudulence.
I had a big wind company who spent years courting me. They wanted to put 24MW of 400' tall wind towers on our farm's mountain ridge lines. We're in an ideal location at the end of a funnel of mountains. But, in the end I said no.
1. Their business model was based on the energy credits, not based on generating power. I only would get paid for power generated. Their presentation was grandiose but I'm good at math and the reality was I was going to see very little income from the project.
2. The turbine blades would throw ice 1,000' in an arc down wind covering extensive portions of my farm and forest. This ice would damage the trees I raise and endanger the lives of myself, my livestock dogs and my livestock as well as damaging my buildings and fences. They accepted no responsibility for this risk.
3. I asked them about end-of-life provisions and insisted that they setup a fund for decommissioning the system at the end of the 25 year lease or if they went out of business. They refused. They claimed that at the end of that time I would have very valuable equipment. I disagree.
I declined to work with them for these three reasons. I'm very pro green energy and all that good stuff. I farm organically. But the wind towers have too may problems, at least with how they were proposing.
Clear a forest and build a whole new solar/wind farm. /s
Ah the old "i dont think it means what you think it means" cliche....never gets old.... /sarcasm
Decommissioning costs? Just farm the decommissioning out to scrappers and they'll all be gone in a decade. In some years around my area they'll literally begin ripping the wiring out of vacant homes and snatching up old tractors/irrigation equipment. Just leave the pedestals and buried electrical for any future projects.
the maintenance costs are not properly calculated... which is why despite being told repeatedly that this tech is economically competitive, no private money wants to invest in it absent heavy public support as an investment. Sure, companies might build solar or wind as a publicity or good will campaign move... but to make money?
To be very clear, I want renewable energy to be competitive and efficient and for it to replace most of our grid power.
Appreciate what I just said there.
I want that.
But... if we are to do things responsibly and sustainable then it is very important to not lie on the funding proposal sheet. It may get us to build more things in the short term but it will reduce trust in future proposals and will incline programs that could have been successful to fail because problems could not be addressed early.
In effect, the people pushing this stuff past its legitimate place are sabotaging future more ambitious projects. If the maintenance costs are 50 percent higher than we were initially told, then we need to know that so that we can alter the plan to avoid that problem.
Maybe some wind turbines are better for that then others. It depends. Its something we have to do... put it all in an excel spread sheet and go through a few different scenarios.
What bothers me about these projects is that people believe so much in the "the cause" that they feel they have to lie about the numbers.
You're not helping when you do that. Please stop lying. We can afford to build these things at a loss. And we often go into these projects with our eyes open that it isn't the most economical option. That's okay. But if you lie about the numbers on top of that then it makes everyone very suspicious, nervous, and generally avoidant regarding these projects.
You'd have bigger buy in if the reports were more reliable. Consider that.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
But who should I believe, citation-free climate denier rants or my own lyin' eyes?
The answer is obvious - your eyes have been hacked.
#DeleteChrome
Those huge fields of dead rusting wind turbines in California, and the south of Hawaii don't exist
I have been to them personally, both in Hawaii (drive to the southernmost point of the U.S.on the Big Island and they are all around you) and in California (though as that article notes, there are probably less than a 100 derelict windmills left, there used to be many more).
Even the article you linked to just argues about the NUMBER of them, not the existence.
But who should I believe, citation-free climate denier rants or my own lyin' eyes?
I would ask you the same question since I have travelled the world, past many more windmill fields in multiple countries than you have. California may be finally removing a fixing a lot of what they have but just like most Californians who think CA is representative of the world, what you see in CA is not the same as what the rest of the world sees. In did, your CA based eyes are indeed lyin'.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
All this means is the creation of two new fields of endeavor, at least. One, the recycling of wind turbine towers nondestructively, up cycling rather than recycling, and the other, studying how to make new wind turbines that are more readily upcycled or fixed without becoming obsolete. Basically, a modular wind turbine, for example. It begs the question why wind turbines arenâ(TM)t mounted the way some signal towers are, on a gimbal or hinge and held in place with guy-wires, so that they can be raised and lowered as needed... or maybe just build the turbine tower over a silo, into which the tower can be lowered when needed to facilitate head replacement. These are just a couple ideas. Just spitballing here.
how much did right-wing / "big oil" interests pay for this submission?
____
of course there's costs associated with decommissioning a wind turbine.. you idiot..
but the thing is. . the thing you choose to ignore, is...
coal, gas and other fossil-fuel plants and nuclear reactors cost more to decommission, pollute more when decommissioning, leave more pollution behind, and are less reclaimable/recyclable than wind farms of comparable power output...
that's on top of fossil fuel's higher pollution above and below ground, and nuclear's extreme start up costs and even more extreme environmental costs after.
the mean troll triggers the lib prole.
We do not retire other powerplants when parts wear out either. We just fix them and are done with it.
> The problem is that neoliberal free market capitalism isn't exactly delivering flowers and unicorns
Point of fact: It is delivering flowers and unicorns
https://smile.amazon.com/gp/aw...
Would you like next-day delivery, or free three-day delivery?
We are all the crumbs of Toast. Spread the word about Toast.
One of the things that would improve Facebook would be some kind of quality-based selector for the first visible comment after each story. That "first post" tends to direct the conversation, but more often than not, it directs the conversation in some nonproductive direction, amplified by the brokenness of the moderation system that quite often gives the FP an insightful moderation. (Many discussion systems attempt (halfheartedly) to implement a solution with sort-order selectors.) Yet another example of the kind of feature I would be interested in helping to fund if only Slashdot had such a funding alternative--and if you disagree, then you could fund other features or none at all.
Anyway, returning form meta to my primary reaction to the article, this story is obviously a framing lie (Level 3). You can approach the reality ("machines wear out") from the perspective of a problem that needs to be solved, for example by making wind turbines that last longer and are easier to repair, or from the perspective of a new business opportunity, but this story quite deliberately frames the situation in apocalyptic terms.
Now I'm going to look at the rest of the discussion. Of course I'm seeking "funny", but with the slimmest of hopes these years. I'm also going to look for insights such as the real motivations of whoever published this story. Were I a gambling man, I'd bet on Exxon right out of the gate, but that particular corporate cancer has become rather clever about hiding the money trail...
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
HHAHHAHHAHHHAHHHHAHHAHAHHAHAAHA. Thanks, i needed a good laugh.
https://www.eia.gov/todayinene...
More recently, the 556 MW Kewaunee Nuclear Power Plant in eastern Wisconsin was shut down in 2013. Kewaunee’s operator, Dominion Power, anticipates nearly $1 billion in total costs using the SAFSTOR method and estimates that work will not be complete until 2073.
That $200,000 is looking pretty good put up against that $1 BILLION plus....and 60 years to complete.
The capacity factor of a wind turbine is about a 1/3rd. The biggest wind turbines are about 2 megawatts. Kewaunee had a lifetime capacity factor of 84% for it's 39 years of service.
To replace Kewaunee's output with wind turbines, you would need 631 of the largest wind turbines available, for a cost of about 2 billion dollars. Since wind turbines last perhaps half as long as nuclear plants, figure $4 billion. That also doesn't count added costs with spreading them out geographically far enough to get reliable generation from them; nor have we touched the tremendous amount of land they need.
At a $200,000 per unit decomissioning cost for wind turbines, the total cost would for scrapping two generations of a 631 unit 'wind farm' would be $250,000,000, less than Kewaunee's billion..... but now you're starting to compare apples to apples.
New nuclear plants are double the output of Kewaunee- while they're admittedly expensive, they have the tremendous benefit of power-on-demand- something that's vital for a stable electrical grid.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
They should be required to put money in a government-managed escrow fund to pay the costs of the removals/cleanups. Walking away is too easy (same can be said for owners of abandoned malls, mines, fracking sites, etc).
to take apart the turbines?
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
https://www.glassdoor.com/Revi...
It's just people publishing garbage to make some money and make their own names. It's not serious journalism.
It's FUD from the fossil fuels industry. Can't even be bothered to find out which PR/lobby group did this. We're gonna hear shit like this from them all the time now
Subsidies for uneconomic power technologies that were put in to make people feel good about saving the planet and not to generate electric power.
I have never met a green that could either see past their nose, or wasn't flat out lying about the problems of their religion.
Always blindsided by what anyone with a braincell can see
http://reason.com/blog/2017/09...
wow switch to renewables your power availability goes down and your prices become the highest in the world
or closer to home
https://www.pge.com/en/about/n...
and oddly enough your rates in the golden state are going way up
https://abcnews.go.com/US/stor...
Really if you live in CA and you run into someone advocating renewables do yourself a favor and knock out a few of their teeth.
One says to the the other "what kind of music do you like?"
The other replies "Well I like all sorts but I'm a big metal fan"
Or we'll fuck your cuntry just like we fucked Venezuela.
Such freedumbs! WOW.
As if we needed more proof of it here you are with more lies and bullshit. Go fucking hang.
Decommission them with a bid system. I don't see how a scrapper could not make money on it, even the ones on the sea, almost everything about it is easily recyclable. Oh the blades aren't ... big whoop, grind them down, forget about them. What the fuck planet is this girl on when she thinks decommissioned windmill blades are going to fill our landfills? Drop in the pond.
The same thing is going to happen in Solar, eventually too.
Sure! Years and years of "free" power.
Then megatons of trash nobody has the money to haul away or the landfill to occupy.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Wow. So tearing down 1000 1-GW windmills costs $200million (most parts recycleable). Compare to cost of decommissioning, tear-down and cleanup of a 1-GW nuke. Cheap!
"You must try to forget all you have learned. You must begin to dream." -- Sherwood Anderson
... syndrome.
I've been arguing the 2nd law of thermodynamics for years regarding wind turbines.
We don't get something for nothing.
TFA makes the point of end-of-life where the cost of tear down and recycle is a bitch.
Advocates ignore the other end, as well where we inject fossil fuels into the processes of extraction, transportation, refinement, transportation, manufacturing, more transportation to assembly plants powered by fossil fuels ... we can all follow the fossil fuel path to a wind turbine standing tall as the Sun glints off it in full glory.
We ignore its dirty genesis.
During its productive life, it needs inspection, maintenance, and repairs -- all done using fossil fuel.
In total, we shit in our mess kit producing a shiny object.
[I don't object to the manufacture of wind turbines, but I do object to the unrealistic worship of the shiny object to the point of ignoring science.]
The lesson of the shiny object is that it's dirty.
While the ENERGY is renewable, the goddam shiny object isn't. ~ CaptainDork
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
What about externalities from fossil fuels, that isn't fully coated either.
Donald Trump knows what it means.
Yes, clean indestructible coal.
How do you use a fuel that's indestructible?
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
Owners of commercial buildings, commercial aircraft, your condo association, and other things figured out long ago that a portion of the operating budget needs to be set aside from the beginning as maintenance/replacement. The building I'm currently in set up from the beginning that certain items, carpet, for instance, would be worn out in a number of years. I think they projected (planned on) 10 years. The owners just completed its 10-year refurbishment.
If only there were some accounting mechanism, a "depreciation mechanism" if you will, to accounting for the used-up life of a capital asset, and to allow the business to save up the money needed over time. Then the end-of-life windmill could be repaired or replaced by a sum of money, saved up over the years. That way the surprise cost of needing a large expenditure never happens.
If only, but then we know that this cannot happen, and that no such "depreciation mechanism" exists. Not now, not in the past, and not in the future either. Oh, woe unto the wind power industry!
If government wants to stop subsiding, it is not very difficult to mandate that the last batch of subsiding funds must do to decommissioning.
Two guys, cutting torches, two trucks with claws and some C4. It isn't that complicated.
I think he's talking about these Hawaïan wind turbines. No idea how many there are and the photos date back to 2011 so things may have changed since then.
I did not see any rusty wind turbine in California but it's too big a place to search thoroughly on Google Maps. If someone knows where they are, provide a link, photos, etc.
Energy companies makes billions of dollars per quarter. They have plenty of money.
But in TX,itâ(TM)s much cheaper to use wind over nuclear.
Let's just pretend that less than 1% of the world population live in Texas. Let's also pretend that there are lots of people that live on islands, where land is expensive, and the neighbors to this island don't like them very much so they can't just buy their electricity from them. Let's also pretend that this describes many hundreds of millions of people in the world. What then?
We are not going to live in a world powered by wind. We are going to have to figure out how to make nuclear power work. This is going to take a lot of time, a lot of money, and a lot of effort. We got solar and wind to be far cheaper and therefore more viable as energy sources with lots of time, money, and effort so it's not like this has not been done before.
Mostly what nuclear power needs is practice. The USA has built only a handful of new nuclear power plants in the last 40 years, after building over 100 in 20 or 30 years. These 40, 50, and 60+ year old reactors will have to be shut down soon for safety reasons. We're going to get a lot of practice decommissioning those plants, that should bring down the costs. Something will have to replace them and it will be nuclear power, except for maybe those that live in Texas.
The US used to see a new nuclear power plant come online every 2 months. Estimates are that with growth in demand since then and the retiring of old coal and nuclear we will have to bring one new nuclear power plant online every month. Assuming they last for 50 years then that means we will have to keep bringing one new nuclear power plant online every month because after 50 years of building nuclear power plants we'll have to start replacing those we are building now. That's assuming zero growth in energy demand. Those new nuclear reactors would be replacing only existing capacity.
Maybe Texas can go with wind instead, and Arizona use solar, but for the rest of the USA the only thing cheap enough to replace the aging coal and nuclear plants is new nuclear.
You want to claim that wind and solar will get cheaper? Then I'll just say that nuclear will get cheaper too. Today nuclear is cheaper than solar. Except for Texas we find that today nuclear is cheaper than wind. What will the prices of these energy sources be in 50 years? I don't know, but we know that right now if we want cheap energy then it's going to include nuclear power.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
....is the first post in this list "Insightful"? It's anything but...it's not even addressing the issue about old wind turbines.
Ferret
Sic gorgiamus allos subjectatos nunc
Just blow up their bases, yell "Timber!", and go at them with implements of destruction.
I bet they are loaded with copper and other valuable metals, and are waiting to be harvested.
My apologies. The first line of my comment (the one to which I am replying now) says "Facebook" where I obviously intended "Slashdot". I hope my mistake was obvious from the context, but still, there's no excuse. However, the comment does apply with some modification to Facebook, though I think it is much less possible that Facebook could adopt, even partially for any aspect of their website, such a non-profit cost-recovery feature-funding model as I am advocating.
The Subject: is based on a kind of joke, but I can't share it on Slashdot without a perversion of the original language. Yet another feature I wish I could help fund, though I doubt that there would be a large enough group on Slashdot such that the feature would ever get the commitment needed for implementation. (In such cases, I'd just have to pick other features or costs that I'd like to help fund.)
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
This just in: "Retiring" things that we build someday may have unspecified costs associated. I guess we shouldn't build anything. Oh, wait, unless maybe it gives us free energy literally from the wind for generations... maybe that reason.
You can approach the reality ("machines wear out") from the perspective of a problem that needs to be solved
It helps when you remember that big machines can be treated as logical groupings of smaller machines. "machines wear out" becomes "one of the small machines that collectively make up the big machine wears out.. leading to cascading failures in the other smaller machines.".
Example: A large diesel engine (2500+ hp) linked to an industrial transmisson (7+ gears) linked to a gear-reduced power-end that is connected to a positive-displacement (piston-style) pump. With regular oil changes on the engine and transmission, the next most common failure becomes the power-end. If you run it until it implodes, the rest of the components soon follow, leading to hundred of thousands of dollars in repairs and replacements. Except if you look at it statistically and break it down, one (several hundred dollar) bearing in the power-end tends to go first. Catch that in time and replace it... and the rest keeps on turning, no problems.
A multi-million dollar wind turbine 'wearing out'? Give me a fucking break. Fix what's failing and the rest will last forever.
need all of that. So-called "renewables" were sold to the public as far superior to the old-and-dirty sources of energy. We were treated to an endless array of propaganda that [falsely] claimed that "big oil" was subsidized and "big coal" was subsidiized, and nuclear was too expensive, and that if all the supposed subsidies to the old energy sources were removed, it would become obvious to everybody that wind and solar and tidal were superior in every way including cost.
It was a very dishonest campaign; oil and coal were generally not subsidized - they got the same sorts of business tax breaks most other industries got and generally no subsidies. The renewables people, on the other hand, all lined-up at the government trough to get their noses in there for free feed (taxpayer dollars).
Nuclear is not so expensive because to the costs of manufacturing or operating; the costs are driven by the decades of legal fights necessary for any plant (due to lawsuits from anti-nuke people) and immense uncertainties and costs during the life of any plant which are also primarily due to anti-nuke activists. A good example ifs the San Onofre plant in California. San Onofre was long-opposed by anti-nuke locals on the political left, and when it had to replace some equipment and the vendor screwed up (leading to an extended period with no generation and a need for both a new set of expensive replacement parts new approvals to re-start) the Democrats in CA appeased their base by stalling the approvals. The approvals were not denied, the government simply refused to say when they would even be considered. US Senators Boxer and Feinstein made sure the Obama admin dragged its feet so the plant would be killed by this underhanded maneuver. After a very long time of trying to get approvals while not earning any revenue from energy from the plant yet still having to pay all of the overhead costs, and being unable to get answers from the feds about when they would even be able to get answers, the plant owners gave up on their efforts and the plant is being dismantled. The radioactive waste will be stored on-site forever because the Democrats also killed the national nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain to make Democrat Senator Harry Reid happy. The local idiot leftist anti-nuke folks now get all the downsides of the nuke waste PLUS higher electricity bills from having to buy wind and solar [facepalm].
to create a large pile of non-recyclable carbon fiber composite shards?
First, it would NOT work like a building implosion - a bunch of charges at the base of a tower would just knock it over, doing major damage to everything but not creating rubble. Building implosions create a progressive collapse by destroying a low level of a building and causing all the mass above that level to begin moving down. The rest of the destruction is accomplished by the kinetic energy of all of the mass of the upper levels of the building. A windmill is not structurally the same and certainly the blades are not part of the vertical stack of mass (so would not contribute to a progressive collapse); those blades would either each need their own (expensive) linear charges or would hit the ground mostly intact and then need to be chopped up at great expense (they're engineered to be durable).
Demolition will be more like the take-down of a high-tension power line tower or a large water tower: knock it over and chop up the remains on the ground. Unfortunately for the greenies, those windmills could not have been made to even appear to be cost-effective even while subsidized with taxpayer dollars if they had been made primarily with recyclable materials like steel. Those windmills are largely made of non-recyclables. Like solar panels, they are going to be exposed as incredibly dirty for the environment over their entire (short and expensive) life cycle.
Of course, carbon composites can be BURNED, but then that would have quite a "carbon footprint"...
How would you prefer to define "quality?"
If that problem even exists it is not a problem with wind turbines but with people failing to make proper plans for big projects. It's not specific to wind turbines.
(Hint: Infinity is quite a long time).
OTOH, if the turbine produces $1k worth of electricity a month, spending $200 to send somebody with a 50c replacement part up it to keep it working for another year or two is a no-brainer....
Oh, wait, so is the president!
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
IF you deniers hadn't bleated on about how AGW wasn't real and started actually trying to put your ideas in to combat it instead, maybe 30 years ago we could have started looking into nukes (already massively subsidised) but now it is decades too late to wait for that.
What the USA wanted was to do it alone so they and they alone would get to own Japan.
So your 631 turbines is down to 366 now. And being load following you don't need to back it up, you can reduce average load requirements if you swap to baseload by another 40%, so that figure is now 200. Meanwhile 90% of that land is unused. So you can use it for solar. Half and half. 100 now.
You know, one that, especially in texas, wants you to use fossil fuels.
No, you had to blame some "sjw" or alt-right. Can't blame capitalists or the wealthy!!!
Good question. In this context it would be difficult to assess and automate. One approach would be based on a good EPR (Earned Public Reputation) system, sort of karma on steroids. From that perspective, the server might pool all of the early submissions and give first-post position not to the chronologically first comment, but to the early comment from the person with the highest reputation in the dimensions related to insight. Perhaps hourly re-rankings for the first 2 or 3 hours?
However I realize that description reflects my personal bias in favor of insightful comments, even if they seem kind of scarce these days. In response to your question, I now think it should also be related to the reactions to the story. For example, if the story has received a number of "funny" mods, then the featured comments should also be biased in favor of that dimension. (Yes, I know the stories aren't rated at that level, but that's another problem with an obvious solution.)
Unless you've been following my older comments and mumbles, I better clarify that I think EPR (or whatever it's called) should have a dimensional symmetry with the reactions to comments. The dimensions themselves should also be considered more carefully to isolate orthogonal concepts with positive and negative aspects. There should be a simple rating, too, for positive or negative, but that should just affect the magnitude of the direction vector defined by people who were willing to put a bit more effort into clarifying what aspects they regarded as positive or negative. I also think it should be biased in favor of positive reactions over negative, in that you should have to make a bit of extra effort to substantiate a negative reaction...
And all of this should be paid for by the users, but only as enough users agree that a particular feature is worth creating. Not sure why, but you've gotten me to start thinking about the credit for features that get retired...
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
It's not quite that simple. In order to be cost efficient, wind turbines are practically a one-piece black box. To do extensive repairs you practically have to take it down or replace large parts of it.
Wind turbines, like solar panels are a unit that's only somewhat cost effective if you don't ever have to maintain, recycle or replace them.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
We should be able to mod articles.
Waterfox - a Firefox fork with legacy extension support, security updates and better privacy by default.
There will be new tech in the future to do it economically. See all fixed with a little optimism.
https://www.valleymorningstar.com/news/local_news/retiring-worn-out-wind-turbines-could-cost-billions-that-nobody/article_3a81176e-f65d-11e6-b1bb-b70957ccb19f.html
I just wanted to point out that the original article is from 18.02.2017
For any such project, make sure to secure the funds to repair, replace, or remove. In these cases, whoever failed to do this originally ought to pay up out of their own pocket.
OK, so something like (previous_reputation * pr_multiplier) * (current_comment_ranking * ccr_multiplier) * (1 / age * a_multiplier)?
If pr_multiplier was adjusted 1, and there were some kind of ceiling on it, then you'd be able to avoid using previous reputation to dominate. As long as the age term had some kind of a floor to 1, you'd prevent bots from commenting less than a second and blowing up that term. The middle term is probably already what's in play, but I don't think that's quite what you suggested. I think for the middle term to be as you stated, you'd need to enumerate the different categories of comments, and line it up with an evaluation of how much the story corresponds to that category, and then adjust that multiplier per category to line up with that story. Is something like (current_comment_rank_funny * article_funny_percentage) for each category what you mean here? I'm also not super familiar with the comment ranking, so I'm not sure how the different categories of comment ranks exist.
The only thing I would suggest is changing the way you describe this idea. I wouldn't use the term "first" and instead I'd use the term "top." I don't like how you are eliminating the temporal constraints on "first" even though I think this is a good idea, and I can see your point about how the "top" comment oftentimes does dominate the thread.
Ideally, with enough money, I'd have my software company implement both views - your proposed ranked view, and then a chronological view. I'd set your view to the default, and see what happens, while allowing people to still switch back to the classic view (and set the default view as a user configurable option, on log-in so they don't get annoyed always having to switch it back if they hate your idea.) Then I'd measure how many people switched back to the old view, and left it there, as a percentage of the total.
Just like solar energy. Maybe more people will realize that there's no free lunch.
Here's the "impartial" source of this article:
https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Industrial_Wind_Action_Group
Anti-wind power hit piece, no more. The numbers and predictions in it are pure bullshit. This line should have raised a bunch of red flags:
"The blades are composite, those are not recyclable, those can't be sold. The landfills are going to be filled with blades in a matter of no time...."
Why exactly can't the blades be sold or reused? Is there some legislation that bans their resale? Some mysterious physics that make the airfoils not work? Using your worst case estimate for blade life, when comparing the volume of the inert composite blades needing disposal compared to the volume of hazardous chemicals needing disposal it takes to process the raw material and produce the same amount of electricity from coal, oil, or nuclear sources on a percentage basis, how many places after the decimal point is it before we get to a digit that's not zero?
Retiring worn-out wind turbines could cost billions says front for the OIL industry.
OTOH, if the turbine produces $1k worth of electricity a month, spending $200 to send somebody with a 50c replacement part up it to keep it working for another year or two is a no-brainer....
Your ignorance of the matter you comment on is stupefying...
A turbine that generates $1K of electricity a month? That's an exceedingly small turbine.
What worker will go out to, up and down a wind turbine, then back home for $200?
How will the technician know the 50Â part needs replacing?
You seem to think wind turbine repairs are as simple and inexpensive as a dishwasher repair, ignoring the fact that the "dishwasher" is located on a remote ride, we'll outside of town, about 250-300 feet in the air.
Ken
Having worked on wind turbines for a huge company that is selling itself off piece by piece, their wind turbines have a very expensive yearly service. It is the main shaft bearings for the blade shaft. The blade assy must be removed, bearings pressed out, new ones pressed in and the blade assembly reinstalled. That is a $250,000 in 2010 money. Makes it rather hard to justify the "free" energy.
Life is in a state of dynamic equilibrium, it both blows and sucks
Not a huge issue
Not because they'll take up a huge amount of space (they won't, they're hollow and shred easily), but because unless there are environmental cleanup rules they'll be dumped where they lay and that will be the end of it.
What worker will go out to, up and down a wind turbine, then back home for $200?
I hear it's one of the most dangerous jobs out there, so I'd say that we can start with "It's either a very short tower, or a very underpaid (respective of risk) worker."
I'd guess that all the numbers in the post above--$1K worth of electricity a month, $200 labor by one person, $0.50 part--are at least a couple orders of magnitude too small, including the number of people required to do the job safely.
Though, if you can only afford to build and maintain the things via subsidies, it's not actually sustainable. Sustainable should be economically sustainable as well once it's had around a decade to get itself off the ground.
I like reDirecting funding from .mil to eg .MSR (ie, New Liquid-Fuel Nuclear Reactors, eg, IMSR, LFTR, SSR, , Thorcon's & the like)
Instead of demanding NATO boost their .mil spending to 2% we could do Lots More of US dropped their spending to that same 2%.
(Article title reminds me of the Rebuttal - by a pair of critics of Mark Z Jacobson's crazy, IMO, [100% WWS] = Wind Water Sunlight plans:
+ http://RoadmapToNowhere.com
which concluded we'd all need to be (if Not in the pants business, as an old Jewish joke ended with, then) in the PV panel & wind generator Repair business, as Renewable generators wore out.
Look, with Liquid-Fuel Nuclear (ie, Molten Salt Reactors) due~2025, the "Nu Clear" path long-laating MSRs, located near places where power is needed or now used.
MSRs offer Sealed, Factory-made Cores (that later become "secure caskets" for their modest amounts of shorter lived waste: eg, ~300 years vs Today's nukes' ~300,000 years) run 7 years before needing to be replaced.
How much down-time do Today's Fuel-Rod based dinosaurs lose, due to lengthy ReFueling (every ~18 months...
It won't be so different, even "newer" SMR designs, like (over-funded, IMO) NuScale - each of whose modules includes, eg, a 50 MW power-generator, & who's waste needs long-term secure storage.
Do the Math, people.
It gets even better after Thorium replaces Uranium as MSR Fuel (that Th becomes U-233).
See the 2016 Springer book:
+ "Thorium- Energy for the World"
The Abstract to its intro - by physicist Carlo Rubbia - makes a clear case for "2nd Gen" (ie, Th fueled) MSRs:
As if an IQ test:
3,000,000 tonnes toxic Coal; ...in that Each of the above quantities of Fuel can be used to make the SAME amount of Electricity.
= 200 tonnes Raw Uranium [in Fuel-Rod NPP];
= just 1 tonne Thorium (in an MSR),
(Note: You don't need to buy that co$tly book. Get the free Sample of its Kindle edition, from Amazon.com for Rubbia's eye-opening intro.)
Proposal: THAT we Postpone all Fusion R+D, & redirect it's funding to MSR R+D Until MSRs are producing all the Energy needed for Fusion R+D
Prediction: If we embrace & propagate MSRs, they will Preclude the need for Fracking (past, present & future), & enable us keep more of Earth natural for future generations, not to mention: greatly reducing the need for (& cost of) secure storage for Nuclear Waste, as well as the period over which it needs to be stored.
The rest is Commentary... So, go out there & do what you can to Bring MSRs Sooner. ;~)
PS For NuScale's down-sides, hear the interview of its (CTO?) in Oregon the Dept of Energy's podcast series (eg, on SoundCloud; No need to sign-up to play it. Or on ODoE's website)
Windpower is free! It shouldn't cost anything to decommission those turbines!
There's no time like the present. Well, the past used to be.
I've long wondered why slashdot doesn't have a way to get rid of the frosty piss, first post, etc and other crap. Sometimes I've pulled up articles that are years old, frosty piss is still there. I don't think that's censorship, that's just getting rid of the trash. Could probably set up a tensor to find that and automatically remove it.
Keep the GNAA posts though. They're entertaining. Could also put a SCAA (Stupid Cracker Assoc of America). Equal opportunity offender. If I somehow miss your special group and you feel left out, just let me know and I'll make fun of it.
So anyhow, Is there some reason that these wind turbines cannot be maintained? Last time I checked, they had parts like most other things have parts.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
One wonders whether the 'billions no-one has' cost is any different from the health and environmental costs that we face due to non-renewable energy consumption.
If the people who seem to know what they are talking about are correct, the cost of mitigating sea level rise alone could be significant.
Yes, I'd reDirect funding from .mil to complete R & D to bring Molten Salt Reactors (MSR) to approval & to market sooner...
Safe Small Liquid-Fuel Nuclear Reactors, eg, IMSR, LFTR, SSR, Thorcon, WAMSR's & the like)
In place of Trump's demand that NATO boost their .mil spending to 2% - we could all do Lots Morefor ourselves & the planet. IF we DROPPED our (USA's) 3.5% .mil spending to that same 2%, that Trump thought appropriate.
Renewables don't work; cf: RoadmapToNowhere.com (which rebuts Stanford Prof Mark Z Jacobson's [100% WWS] plan (a job-creation program? ;-)
Look, with Liquid-Fuel Nuclear (ie, Molten Salt Reactors = MSR) due~2025, the "Nu Clear" path becomes: "Build long-lasting MSRs, located near places where power is needed or is now used"
MSRs offer Sealed, Factory-made Cores (that later become "secure caskets" for their modest amounts of shorter-lived waste: eg, ~300 years vs Today's nukes' ~300,000 years); they need No Refueling across 7 years of operation.
How much down-time do Today's Fuel-Rod based dinosaurs lose, due to lengthy ReFueling stoppages (every ~18 months...)?
It won't be so different, even "newer" SMR designs, like (over-funded, IMO) NuScale - each of whose modules includes, eg, a 50 MW power-generator, & who's greater quantity of waste needs much longer-term secure storage.
I say to Greens who love Renewables: Do the Math.
Even with "Fukushima-era" (ie, Fuel-Rod based) NPP's, Renewables don't stand a chance of providing all the Energy we need, in the space, time & $$ we have to offer.
It gets even better when Thorium (which becomes U-233) replaces Uranium as MSR Fuel:
As if from an IQ test, ask: Which of these is preferable, eg, based on expected worker-injuries & -deaths?
3,000,000 tonnes toxic Coal; ...in that Each of the above quantities of Fuel can be used to make the SAME amount of Electricity.
= 200 tonnes Raw Uranium [in Fuel-Rod NPP];
= just 1 tonne Thorium (in an MSR),
(Source: "Thorium- Energy for the World" (2016, Springer)
It's in the Abstract of the intro by physicist Carlo Rubbia)
(Note: You don't need to buy that co$tly book to get the article; get Rubbia's eye-opening intro. free, eg, in the Amazon's Sample of its Kindle edition.
Concluding:
I Propose: THAT we Postpone all Fusion R+D, & redirect it's funding to MSR R+D Until MSRs are producing all the Energy needed for Fusion R+D
Easy to Predict: If we embrace & propagate MSRs, they will Preclude the need for Fracking (past, present & future), & enable us keep more of Earth natural for future generations, not to mention: greatly reducing the need for (& cost of) secure storage for Nuclear Waste, as well as the period over which it needs to be stored.
And - with the resulting huge reductions in CO2 + other GHG's - we can expect to see a healed Climate sooner, rather than later.
The rest is Commentary... So, go out there & do what you can to Bring MSRs Sooner. ;~)
PS 1: For NuScale's down-sides, hear the ~1 hour-long interview of its (CTO?) in Episode 14: "NuScale's New Scale for Nuclear" by Oregon Dept of Energy here: https://energyinfo.oregon.gov/...
From your response I can't tell if you're an actual mathematician (and I am definitely not) attempting to reply using non-mathematical language or something else. I "felt" a need for some matrix algebra in your reply. There is a difference in the way you write compared to the way most mathematicians of my acquaintance write, but it could be my fault because I lack the ability to express things as precisely as a real mathematician would. However I think I can address two parts of your reply.
The top-post versus first-post thing is largely historical, and you should be aware of that based on your relatively low user ID. However it's possible that you are a sporadic user of Slashdot? Based on my current filtering, I may also have a biased perspective, and mostly I don't even see the actual first posts these years. What I often see at the top of a discussion is a later post, often one that has been modded up, but which seems to be following a direction established by the invisible first post. Sometimes I do back up the thread to see where it started. That research usually feels like a waste of time.
My second reaction was to your comment about running the two interfaces against each other in a giant system-level test. I don't think that is how you can test largely different approaches. I think you have to do things in a more incremental, evolutionary way, and it's even better if you can let some people stay with the old ways they like to do things while letting them be aware of the alternative approaches. However mostly I think you've assumed an injection of large amounts of money. The only way I can imagine that might be as a Kickstarter project that has run amok (as in the case of Diaspora), and I know of no examples where that has worked out well. Rather I think the funding should also be guided by the users' preferences.
Let me try to suggest a possible implementation path. There might be two initial project proposals: (1) A project to make karma more symmetric with the reactions to comments. That project description should make it clear how the new data structure would work alongside the existing structures, essentially as an extension of user identities. (2) A project to restructure the dimensions of rating posts. That project description should describe how the orthogonal and symmetric dimensions will work, including examples that can be compared to the existing dimensions. I think "funny" is a relatively easy example because "unfunny" is relatively easy to understand, but I actually think the dimension should be generalized to something like "made me happy" versus "made me unhappy" on the negative side. Such proposals would then be subject to funding by the members (the users of Slashdot in this case), and after enough members had agreed to chip in, the project would commit. After each project is completed, it would be assessed against its success criteria. Among other aspects, this would help the donors decide if they liked the approach or wanted to try another direction.
The most confusing part of your response was your new terminology. For example, you introduced the term pr_multiplier, which from context would appear to be personal-reputation-multiplier. I would prefer to consider it a weighting factor, but you seemed to be taking age (of the identity) for granted as one of the dimensions of EPR. I have mentioned the importance of that dimension at times, but I usually describe that particular dimension in terms of a "maturity filter", and it is unclear to me if you might be referring to those comments.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
Sure. I am sure you are including the "Allowed to emit CO2" as a subsidy.
My Transformation Website
Kindle Books http://www.catprog.org/rev
Interactive CYOA http://www.catprog.org/st
I think the sat pics are more up to date.
My Transformation Website
Kindle Books http://www.catprog.org/rev
Interactive CYOA http://www.catprog.org/st
When you put a wind turbine up, you factor in the cost of maintenance and eventual replacement. That's what depreciation is: allowing the accrual of replacement costs. This story is the usual bullshit FUD from the fossil fuel industry. To fall for it, you'd have to know NOTHING about how to run a business. I suppose that means Republicans will be particularly susceptible.
Only boring people are ever bored.
One more thing (as Steve Jobs used to say?): I think the deeper "it" is mostly about the financial models and how they interact and align with the interests of the various stakeholders, even though many of the stakeholders may not be holding financial stakes.
As it applies to the original story attacking wind turbines, the missing information is about the financial model driving that source of those much-too-obvious lies.
As it applies to Facebook, the financial model is more visible to the public, even though the public prefers to ignore most of it: The financial model of Facebook is to generate maximum profit by raping the personal information of the users. In many ways quite similar to the malformed (IMO) financial models of other corporate cancers like the google and Amazon and Apple. [Yes, I think "the google" has special status.]
As it applies to Slashdot, the financial model is again missing or invisible or even nonexistent. Some evidence suggests that Slashdot is more like the charity you described in your "with enough money" paragraph. On one hand, I think charity is a good thing and admirable, but on the other hand I think most charities are fundamentally misguided and unfair in that they are attempting to supply private solutions for public problems. However, that's an entirely different can of worms...
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
Good point. The sat pics show the wind turbines have all been dismantled, although not much seems to have been done with them. It's not clear how old the images are.
Excellent, my first lol of the day. A little paper gold star for you!
His ignorance covered the whole earth like a blanket, and there was hardly a hole in it anywhere. - Mark Twain
Looking forward to seeing the costs of disposing of an end-of-life Hoover Dam here on /.
Apples with apples, right?
Gravel. We want it in gravel size.
I have absolutely no doubt that it would cost the government billions to retire these windmills. As for land owners, they are just huge piles of scape worth many 10s of thousands of dollars.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
>
You seem to think wind turbine repairs are as simple and inexpensive as a dishwasher repair, ignoring the fact that the "dishwasher" is located on a remote ride, we'll outside of town, about 250-300 feet in the air.
You didn't really drill into why this is a problem. Even if it costs $10000 to repair, and that fix keeps it generating $10001 dollars, then it's worth doing.
So unless you got some numbers, I'm going to assume it is exactly lie a dishwasher, car, or coal power plant....
We've already had this argument, way back in 14th Century Europe...
If you are thinking about alternative energy sources, it is a good idea to be sure to include long term plans. Getting your money back isn't a bad thing, but a good engineer knows that every solution is the hotbed for new problems.
Wind power (and water) is the most clean form of power there has been since the start of humanity.
Why would you want to tear down those wind turbines? They are simple machines, which require some maintenance, but can basically keep running for eternity.
I mean, there are still functional windmills from centuries ago, working fine.
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
I realize I'm replying very late, but for the record:
> schwit1 shared this article from Energy Central News:
No, it's not from Energy Central News. Energy Central News is a news scraper. If you actually look at the link, the very first line clearly states its from the "Valley Morning Star". If you Google that, you'll find its a very small regional paper in Texas.
> said Lisa Linowes, executive director of WindAction Group, a nonprofit which
> studies landowner rights and the impact of the wind energy industry
Ummm, no. As the article points out;
"Its funding, according to its website, comes from environmentalists, energy experts and public donations and not the fossil fuel industry."
Which is funny. This statement is what they say, you can go to the web site and find it. But when you do, you will find that this same page also states that the entire purpose of the group is...
"to counteract the misleading information promulgated by the wind energy industry and various environmental groups."
Ah. And when you poke about a bit more, you'll learn that the Group was formed "by Jonathan S. Linowes, a self-proclaimed Tea Party activist and climate change denier."
Linowes, as in the husband of the person writing the article, as in the founder and co-founders.
So yeah, once again total BS gets onto the front page of /. Thanks fact checkers!
https://checksandbalancesproject.org/lisa-linowes-and-the-disinformation-of-industrial-wind-action-group/
OK. I say that is not true. I have shown as much evidence as you: none.
Oh wait I do have it.
And no, a windmill is not a pole with a box on top of it. The stuff that is in that box is maintainable, just like any engine.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
THis is but one more example of how our "green" fads are pushed and touted with woefully inadequate calculation of the total costs. Its called "systems analysis", or just Follow the politics as usual".unto oblivion (with a few getting rich, though).
I agree that the "first post" tends to malign the conversation everywhere on the interwebs. Which is why I believe that website forums should be split into camps for debate: for, against, neutral & undecided. This would tend to healthier discussions without the need to hush anyone and allow for free speech to take a truer path. Decide for yourself based on how well the parties construct their arguments and by how well they conduct themselves within. This system would be a breeze to administer/moderate and will also allow for better statistical collections to be displayed upfront to the question/topic as the discussion progresses forward.
A hypothetical example:
[Article]
The Marvel universe has overstepped its bounds to produce any content these days without rewriting on or completely destroying integral canon components that wrought the successful iron into shape upon creation.
[Statement/Question]
Disney has headlined many times now destroying canon franchises with poor decisions affecting the gaming community as well as movie goers. Should producers developing new stories for respective industries closely follow the original content, or should they diverge to a new path entirely?
[insert random number generator to shuffle order of For, Against, Neutral & Undecided presentation]
Neutral10%
Against45%
For41%
Undecided4%
executive director of WindAction Group, a nonprofit which studies landowner rights and the impact of the wind energy industr
See https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Industrial_Wind_Action_Group.
It's a front for Jonathan S. Linowes, a self-proclaimed Tea Party activist and climate change denier,
and is supported by the coalmine barons of the Koch family.
Wind farms keep salaried employees to perform maintenance and inspection, and have a shop/office in the nearest town of reasonable size (5,000+ population), which in most parts of this country is within a 1/2 hour drive of anywhere.
As there's likely to be an increasing amount of turbine maintenance work, it may become cost effective to replace large parts like rotor blades and generators via heavy-lift dirigible.
// DevsVult: The Machines Will It