So much for that beach front property

I really had to laugh about wind turbines placed off the coast of Great Britain as depicted on the science channel. First a show hyping engineering marvels shows them putting the turbines up in the ocean and how much electricity they made and how it was so ingenious. The very next show was engineering disasters and they did a piece on what an economic failure it is turning out to be. Not only do the pedestals need frequent maintenance for salt water deterioration to the concrete, but they are sinking into the seabed and have to be raised and re-leveled.
A couple of years ago we went up to Michigan to see a cousin that I had never met, and as I tooled up through the thumb of Michigan I started noticing more and more turbines and many more under construction. It seems the county voted for a SLOST that would put up turbines wherever a farmer would donate the land, and in return the farmer got free electricity. A fund in the SPLOST is set aside to remove the turbine after 30 years, which is the useful life of a turbine. An interesting caveat is that they cannot put up a turbine within 2 miles of the lakes edge for fear they will impact waterfowl flyways.
Here is the simple math, installed wind turbine is $2 million. Annual power output is around $40 thousand, which puts any ROI at 50 years,,, not counting maintenance and insurance, (comprehensive and liability and the cost of birds, PG&E pays $1500 for every Red Tailed hawk killed). The life span of a turbine is apparently only 30 years. I figure they will have to quadruple the cost of electricity before they are viable. Until then we will have to rely on tax dollars to provide Ca with clean energy,,, such a deal.
 
During our trip to Hawaii for our 25th Anniversary a few ago the Queen and I were shocked to see a long line of wind turbines on one of the islands. It really took away from the natural beauty of the the land and obviously looked out of place. In Denmark I would expect to see them, not in Hawaii.
 
J-man said:
During our trip to Hawaii for our 25th Anniversary a few ago the Queen and I were shocked to see a long line of wind turbines on one of the islands. It really took away from the natural beauty of the the land and obviously looked out of place. In Denmark I would expect to see them, not in Hawaii.
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I bet you really made them spin!
 
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Guard Dad said:
I would almost bet there were government subsidies involved in these.

Sometimes the government sets new records for stupid
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In the thumb of Michigan, SPLOST money put up the generators with enough money set aside to take them done in 35 years, the estimated life of a unit. The powers that be have since spent the money on other things they wanted and now they are incurring failures. It seems like the gear reduction boxes came with faulty seals that allow lube to leak out. If the box runs dry long enough before someone notices the oil tracks coming down the tower, the gearbox catches fire and burns up because,,, wait for it, the local fire departments can't get high enough to fight it, so they just let them burn. Now I suppose they will have to add a $100,000 fire suppression system to the new designs.

Stupid is, as stupid does.
 
J-man said:
During our trip to Hawaii for our 25th Anniversary a few ago the Queen and I were shocked to see a long line of wind turbines on one of the islands. It really took away from the natural beauty of the the land and obviously looked out of place. In Denmark I would expect to see them, not in Hawaii.
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They have 10 of them on Aruba. They are in the middle of the island where they are not seen easily.

The 10 generators supply approx 20% of the islands needs
 
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