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."

Comments

Subsidies are the solution...

[b0s0z0ku]

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.

Re:Subsidies are the solution...

[alvinrod]

Centrally planned economies and government subsidies often go horribly wrong in all kind of unintended ways. Let's stop subsidizing anything instead of thinking ourselves wise and just spending the subsidies elsewhere. It sounds good in theory, but once you legitimize a practice you have to remember that some of the people who will be deciding what to subsidize in the future will not sure your beliefs or may be quite opposed to them.

I don't know whether this is an actual issue as opposed to some anti-wind hit piece, but there's a much easier solution assuming that this is an actual problem. Add the cost of the eventual decommissioning into the tower when it's being constructed. If that makes it completely unviable financially then amortize the cost over the lifetime of the tower and have part of the turbines production be set aside to pay for its decommissioning.

Re:Subsidies are the solution...

[sjames]

It's definitely an anti-wind hit piece. Can you name any structures today that have their tear down cost in escrow anywhere? All those worn out old skyscrapers? And unlike a windmill, if they fall, it's in a populated area where people get hurt. Also, there's little chance of a windmill in the middle of nowhere becoming a crack house.

Re:Subsidies are the solution...

[LynnwoodRooster]

It's definitely an anti-wind hit piece. Can you name any structures today that have their tear down cost in escrow anywhere?

Nuclear power plants. Same industry, even...

Re:Subsidies are the solution...

[ShanghaiBill]

And what about the homeless?

They can live inside the abandoned wind towers. Or we could drape a large canvas over a cluster of towers to create a big tent.

On a more serious note, TFA is silly:
1. Turbines don't "wear out". Only the bearing wear, and they can be replaced.
2. The towers don't "go bad" either. They will stand for centuries.
3. Wind towers do not create a "wasteland". The surrounding land can continue to be used for grazing, crops, whatever.
4. Turbines contain plenty of valuable copper, steel, rare earths, etc. We should worry more about someone stealing them than abandoning them.

Re:Subsidies are the solution...

[alvinrod]

The problem is that neoliberal free market capitalism isn't exactly delivering flowers and unicorns in many situations either.

I'd argue that it's enriching the rest of the world at an alarming rate. Since China and India moved towards market economies, poverty has been eliminated at a staggering rate. I think the problem is that people like to compare the reality of free markets to the utopian promise of collectivism. Free markets don't look appealing because they only promise that total wealth generated will tend towards the maximal, not that everyone will be wealthy. Marxist doctrines always promise a great equity, but when you look at the results it fails utterly. It's not that the idea itself is bad, but it won't work for human beings due to our nature.

If you want to account for negative externalities, you need to make sure that there's someone who actually owns those things which will suffer negative externalities. Having the government do it doesn't work as they're not as good at caring about environmental damages as an individual person is. As bizarre or counter intuitive as it might seem its a better system in practice. A great example is private hunting operations in Africa that do a better job of conserving wildlife and protecting it from poachers. When your livelihood depends on an animal, you'll spend much more of your effort protecting it. A government will continue to exist whether or not the animal lives or dies.

but throwing one's hands in the air and saying we just have to sit around and let the invisible hand slap us repeatedly in the face is just a form of ideological fundamentalism.

People have some kind of view of "the invisible hand" as some kind of sky fairy or omnipotent presence like its the god of capitalism. It's none of those things. It's like the description of how the internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it. We understand that the internet isn't some conscious being making that choice. Rather it's the result of individual people acting in a certain way. In this case, the invisible hand is a whole bunch of individual people all trying to act in their own best interests to get what they want. If you want the market to do something, you need to get the individual people playing in it to all (or in large) want something. Outside intervention to the contrary is treated as damage that people route around in one way (black markets being an easy example) or another.

Re:Subsidies are the solution...

[Anonymous Coward]

They said the same thing about Solar that the efficiency falls quickly, they'd wear out in 10 to 20 years max, and be littered everywhere.
Turns out 30 year old solar cells are still operating at a reduced but very stable and usable capacity.

Re:Subsidies are the solution...

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Sometimes not even at a reduced capacity.

Re:Subsidies are the solution...

[sjames]

No, I assumed that nobody has to escrow cleanup for a structure that contains nothing deadly within it. Nuke plants need the radiation cleaned up (the building can be left to rot just like an office building). Since windmills aren't radioactive, aren't filled with PCBs, and don't contain carcinogenic residue from burning coal, they need a teardown escrow as much as an office building does. Or a single family home for that matter.

Have you set aside the demolition costs for your house?

All this just convinces me conservatives actually do hate clean power with few downsides just because non-conservatives like it. It's the least irrational assumption left.

Re:Subsidies are the solution...

[ShanghaiBill]

Really, the thing to do is require that these companies have an appropriate sum of money set aside for decommissioning

Most of these turbines are on private land. Decommissioning is their problem, not yours. Despite the idiotic alarmism in TFA, it is none of your concern. It does not affect you in any way.

the way that the nuclear reactor industry is required to.

That is a completely different situation. A leaking reactor doesn't respect property boundaries. That makes it a public concern.

Re:Subsidies are the solution...

[MrL0G1C]

$200,000 (per turbine pull-down) is a completely made up figure by someone who clearly hates wind farms - an anti-wind power NGO. All this rubbish about wind farms won't last 20 years, cherry picking, they scour the planet to find a few badly maintained low quality wind turbines to get that figure, 45 years is more realistic for new wind-farms. And considering the cost of larger replacement turbines a new company would likely pull down the old turbines just to get the rights to the area.

And all of this bullshit about wind needing tax subsidies when the fact is this is not true any more, wind is the cheapest form of power and in the future it'll still be the cheapest form of power even with energy storage added in.

I quote "For example, the copper in the wires used to transmit power from the turbine to the grid will have to be stripped of its plastic insulation, a task which would entail serious labor costs." Now tell me that doesn't sound like utter BS disingenuous facts twisting.

Re: Subsidies are the solution...

[bestweasel]

I had a quick look at WindAction, quoted in the piece, and they are largely against wind power.

"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."

"But like every claim involving the wind industry, there's a darker story."

Re:Subsidies are the solution...

[jwhyche]

I quote "For example, the copper in the wires used to transmit power from the turbine to the grid will have to be stripped of its plastic insulation, a task which would entail serious labor costs." Now tell me that doesn't sound like utter BS disingenuous facts twisting.

Considering that copper isn't used to transmit power, to expensive, and it wouldn't be covered with plastic, not needed. Yeah, its bullshit.

But for shits and giggles less assume plastic coated copper would be used for that. It would still have to be stripped of plastic insulation even if was coming from piece of shit coal plant or a state of the art nuclear.

That's some really expensive demolition

[Immerman]

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.

Sowing FUD

[RugRat]

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.

Re:Sowing FUD

[Anonymous Coward]

Disclaimer: I work in manufacturing of wind turbine components.

You are correct.This is pure FUD. We sell hundreds, if not thousands of major components to repower aging turbine installations every year. The article makes it sound like a wind turbine is a one piece thing, and when it dies, you have to decommision it. The truth is there are a few main components that need replacing to repower it, and that cost isn't that much more than their estimate of decomissioning costs. Nobody is decommisioning wind farms. Even if they were, the total cost of decommisioning every turbine in the nation (at TFA's exaggerated cost) is less than decomissioning one nuclear plant.

I'll throw this out as well: Even though I work in the wind industry, I think new modern nuclear should be pushed for.

Just Walk Away

[Compulawyer]

Cell tower companies already abandon obsolete equipment on towers at the end of their lease for tower space because it is cheaper than removing the equipment. They do this regularly despite clauses in the lease that require them to remove old equipment at their cost. The companies know that relatively few landlords will sue them for the cost incurred by the landlord to have the equipment removed themselves.

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?

Re:Free For All

[dgatwood]

The turbine blades weigh as much as a small car and are 50 feet up in the air. Lawsuit waiting to happen.

Yeah, but that also means they have as much metal as a small fleet of cars, once you factor in the support post. That's good recycling. :-)

But seriously, nobody in his/her right mind is going to tear down a wind turbine unless global climate change causes the wind to stop. In the worst likely case, when one of these things fails, the owners will temporarily take down the blades, replace the generator portion, and put the blades back up at a much lower labor cost than dismantling it, and at a far lower cost than building a new one from scratch. In the best case, they'll be able to repair it in place.

In other words, this story is pure FUD.

How is this specific for the wind turbines?

[DrTJ]

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?

Vet your sources

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

I call bullshit

[Dasher42]

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...

REPAIR, not Replace

[gurps_npc]

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.

Re:Look at the reality we already have!!

[crunchygranola]

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?

This is a very real problem.

[pubwvj]

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.

Happens every time with the "renewables"

[Karmashock]

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.

Story is an excellent example of the framing lie

[shanen]

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...

Re: Peanuts compared to nuclear...

[blindseer]

Actually, the big concern is that nobody wants to buy the power from them, as alternatives keep springing up. This gets them antsy as the reactors need to distribute the power, and they are useless without being able to do so. And that means...no funds to retire.

Two things here...

First, you want me to believe that no one is willing to buy electricity from a nuclear power plant? Bullshit. No body cares where the electricity comes from, especially not a business that has work to do. Saying "nobody" is a bit hyperbolic since there's always some hippy that can't stand nuclear power but such people are also the kind that put solar panels on their roof and go off grid, they aren't paying any utility bills anyway.

Second, if they have no funds to retire, because no one is buying, then they will keep going until the do have funds to retire. If you want that nuclear power plant to have money to shut down later then you buy the electricity now. Oh, and there has to be a plan for these people to keep making money after the plant is shut down, such as being able to build a new power plant.

Sorry, but none of those ideas have panned out. They aren't appealing even with the tens of billions of subsidies they've gotten.

They haven't panned out because the government has never issued a license for them. The government is very risk adverse, to the point of being crippled to make any changes to the rules on licensing. We've been making the same reactor with minor variations on a theme for 60 years. People ask for a new license and the government says, "We don't know if this is safe." The response is, "We'd like to prove to you it is safe by building a demonstration reactor." "How can we know that is safe" "We can do that with these plans and simulations." "We'll need to see a working prototype first." "That's what we are asking for, a license to build a working prototype." "We can't issue a license to build anything until you can show it's safe."

Subsidies are worthless no matter how much is spent without a license to build a real world reactor. The simulations are only as good as the data used to create them and to get that data means building a prototype to get that data from.

Nope. Sounds like scare tactics to me, as you try to create a hysteria over an image, without actual robustness to your examinations.

You can live with your delusions of a nuclear free world only so long, then reality bites. Go read a book or something.

They just can't get those gen 3 reactors to deliver on their promises.

And they can't deliver on those promises until the government starts issuing licenses to build those Gen3 reactors.

Sorry, but it turns out we could have literally built homes for Americans that would have reduced energy costs by more than we've gotten from nuclear subsidies.

Sorry, but a growing population and a shrinking number of operating nuclear power reactors means that at some point those lines on the graph crosses and the space in between the lines is the growing energy shortage. If you want to see an ecological disaster then make energy so scarce and expensive that people will be cutting down every tree in sight for firewood to stay warm.

And that isn't even counting the wastefulness of nuclear subs.

Go take a long walk off a short pier.