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Retiring Worn-Out Wind Turbines Could Cost Billions That Nobody Has (energycentral.com)

Posted by EditorDavid on from the scrapping-metal dept.

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."

11 of 574 comments (clear)

  1. Subsidies are the solution... by b0s0z0ku · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Subsidies are the solution... by sjames · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

    2. Re:Subsidies are the solution... by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.

    3. Re:Subsidies are the solution... by sjames · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.

    4. Re:Subsidies are the solution... by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 5, Informative

      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.

  2. Sowing FUD by RugRat · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Sowing FUD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.

  3. Re:Free For All by dgatwood · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

    --

    Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.

  4. Vet your sources by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  5. Re:Look at the reality we already have!! by crunchygranola · · Score: 5, Informative

    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
  6. This is a very real problem. by pubwvj · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.