This morning, G went walking up to the wind turbines, about 1/2 a mile up the lonnen. He found 3 or 4 men sitting eating their sarnies, so stopped to talk to them. We had noticed that once again 2 of the turbines were stopped, despite a good wind. He was about to find out why.
First, let me go back a year or two. One turbine was stopped. At dusk a huge low loader stopped outside our gate and stayed for the night. On it was a single blade for a turbine. Next day it went on up. Later, another vast great piece of transport came by with a huge crane on it and another smaller crane separately. The smaller crane lifted the blade off and the huge one removed one blade from the turbine and put it on the low loader, which went away. The huge crane put the new blade on and then they all went away. I later discovered that the blade had come all the way from Denmark. I was very busy wondering how much carbon etc was put into the atmosphere by all this activity, and how long the 3 turbines would have to work at full capacity to make up for it. Did not add up as far as I could tell.
Back to today. One of the men was a van driver, who had brought the others from the Airport Hotel, where they were staying and was going to take them back. He spent the day reading in the van. The others were blade menders! Apparently you get lots of cracks in blades. I had understood that that was why the one above had to be changed. Anyway, these men were over from Germany. They climb up the inside of the turbine and out onto the blade to be mended and then abseil down to do the repairs. Or something. G was not entirely clear as to how they do it as his German is rusty and they didn't have much English. However he did gather that either 2 or 1 of the turbines will be stopped for the next 2 weeks, having already been stopped for a few days.
These things are meant to supply the country with green energy. Maybe, but how much and at what cost? i believe that global warming is really happening but I also believe that measures to cope with it must be realistic and I will never be persuaded that wind power on this scale will ever do anything worthwhile to help.
7 comments:
All the energy used toing and froing to Germany to mend these things will counteract any energy made by the turbines!
Hear hear! And they were made in Denmark and had to be shipped over.
Surely, we can train British people to do this repairing of cracked blades??? I have often wondered why some are standing still in the gales - thanks to you now I know....
Mootia x
Now that really is food for thought . . . there are many cases too where the energy used in recycling far out weighs the good it does.
There's a terrible lot of food for thought about a lot of what we do for global warming. But things like going more slowly etc do work.
Wind turbines are stationary in a gale because they cannot be used when the wind is over about 55 miles/hour. Seems mad to me!
There is so much in the papers up in this part of Northumberland about wind turbines. Local farmers are quids in for having them built on their land but apparently they make such a noise. They aren't all they are cracked up to be. Farmers are being offered somewhere in the region of £10k per year, per turbine. One farmer has been offered 10 turbines. Would you turn that down?
Crystal xx
No, I don't in any way blame the hard-pressed farmers, but they are not nice things when you live within sound of them, as we do.
It is up to the planners to make the decissions, but that usually means, at appeal, some towny who has a quota to fill from his masters.
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