14,000 Abandoned Wind Turbines in the USA;
The problem with wind farms when they are abandoned is getting the turbines removed, as usual there are no Green environmentalists to be seen. The City of Palm Springs was forced to enact an ordinance requiring their removal from San Gorgonio. But California’s Kern County, encompassing the Tehachapi area, has no such law. Imagine the outraged Green chorus if those turbines were abandoned oil drilling rigs.
Well, if they are really “abandoned” then the landowners on whose property these monstrosities sit can claim them for scrap metal as per the commonlaw right of salvage. If they sit on public land then a contractor may pay the government 10 cents on the dollar to salvage the scrap material.
They are an eyesore and those who are effected by this urban blight foisted on rural citizens should profit or be compensated for their trouble – either claim the scrap value through salvage or , if the pinheads in government order them left standing submit billings for storing this garbage on your property and enforce the invoice through the claims courts.
Anybody involved in the Oil Industry knows the requirements to get an oil site signed off and that the number of leases are restricted, so sigh off of old leases are critical. how come no such requirements for wind turbines? The enviro-left are hypocrites
Wind and solar have been a huge success for everybody involved.. Rich people, schools and government workers have all made out like bandits..
The fact that they have bankrupted our energy capacity and bankrupted our tax base is overlooked..
The average home will be paying 1000 dollar hydro bills in the near future.. Political energy poverty because the lib left started a green economy based on tax dollars..
Criminal any way you look at it..
Our ruling class is feeding on us like a corrupt dictator..
Yeah well, I know quite a bit about the scrap business.
The cost of scraping an old radio/TV tower comes to mind. It’s seems simple enough..cut the guy wires then cut the sucker up.
Not so easy….gotta separate the copper cables from the mast segments….cutting, loading and transport of the guy wires is labour intensive.
These bird blenders…..for starters there is market for scrap fiberglass (blades)…..lotsa cost reducing transporting and disposal….a landfill tiping fee at minimum. The pods contain a whole mess of windings, gears, shafts…..and then there is the problem of getting the sucker down…..the cost of commisioning a crane will probably takes the gross receipts not just the profit.
You wanna scrap one of them bird blenders….I’ll watch….enjoy.
I believe in Ontario the landowner is responsible for all demolition and disposal of these things. At their own expense, of course.
When it comes to making bucks on scrap metal from bird killing turbines, Ontario will set records.
No chance of it happening unless we have a majority PC government elected nest time around or when the NDP stop supporting them and vote to boot them at first opportunity. Of course this won’t happen, they’re birds of a feather in coalition.
Yeah. But they are a tourist attraction. Remind you of medievial Europe. Or you can use them to store grain. Or hang panties/bras from raids on. Or target practice.Or when the muzzies get their way,string up a few gays.The uses are endless! (except for generating power)
I saw this problem decades ago. I traveled near a lot of wind
farms in California. I noticed that 20-25 percent were not
turning.
These things are hideously expensive to maintain. In the
event of a major component failure (Fan bearings, gearbox or
generator,)it would cost more than they are worth to repair.
Imagine the cost to erect a large crane to replace a gearbox
or bearings on the rotating element. Now imagine having to
do it 20 or 25 times in a wind farm of 100 units.
In addition to crane erectors, and operators, you would
need riggers, millwrights or mechanics, and electricians who
do not mind climbing 240 foot ladders.
Without massive government subsidies, these things would never
have been built. No thought was given to major equipment
failure, only routine maintenance. Once the subsidies went
away, they became too expensive to repair for the companies
that operated them!
I think a strategically placed cutting charge of about 30 blocks of military TNT, would have these monstrosities down to a working level right sharpish..
Yeah, bringing them down with explosives is probably the only viable way to do it.
If they were to sell raffle tickets for a couple of bucks,with the prize being the right to push the plunger or flip the switch to set off the charges,they might recuperate some of the cost.
yes some in here get it, Occam doesn’t. And yes, blow the base is a only cheap way to bring them down, and minimize your lose, as there is no way in hell any one can recover and recycle these pieces of junk at a profit, too labor intensive, I know, I do recycling as a side line, have a barn yard full of scrap.
Think of how many reliable, functioning coal fired/NG power plants could have been built with the money squandered on these white elephants. Meanwhile, Ontario carries on. Forward.
Where are the metal thieves when you really need them?
The birds are dying
if there were no restrictions on removing them, such as permits and environmental studies, they would be gone over a few short years. just let it be known they are free for the taking with absolutely no conditions.
In Ont the wind companies pay lip service to dismantling the towers and returning the access roads and foundation pads to agriculture.
No one in the anti-wind struggle believes for a minute the companies, many registered abroad, have any notion of doing so. The clean-up down the road will be financed by the Ont taxpayer and will cost more than the construction costs.
A test case bears watching. A foreign wind company has been ordered by Transport Canada to remove 8 turbines at the Chatham-Kent airport.These were licensed by Ont but have been built on restricted areas according to federal law. I would expect the company to sue and the Ont government has the deepest pockets. Look for the hapless taxpayer to pay for dismantling. This I expect will be a foretaste of the future. Again part of the proud legacy of Dalton McGuinty.
In Ontario, the operators are bringing aboriginal partners into each project. Several advantages for the scammers: (1) an additional 1.6 cents per kW/hour (2)Because each project is set up as a separate partnership, the liability is limited to that singular entity. So when it all falls apart, the guilty party, after ripping Ontarians off for millions, has already crashed and burned. (3) The ones left holding the bag are (a) The aboriginals who, in their blind greed end up with total liability and because they’ll find some (race-based) excuse to get out from under,(b) the Ontario taxpayers (again).
Good luck with that.
It will be the taxpayer and customers who gets dismantled – the essence of crony ” capitalism “.
Don’t forget those lovely concrete pads upon which these testaments to leftist folly sit. I don’t know how thick most of them are, (the concrete pads that is) but I suspect the environment would have done better over the long term if the sites had simply been used to test a tactical nuclear weapon since life could have returned in relatively short order (vis Hiroshima and Nagasaki today). With the concrete poured on the ground I doubt anything will be growing on those sites for the next thousand years.
If there were justice in the world, every last member of an “environmental” movement would be forced to spend their weekends with a sledge hammer and chisels busting these things up until the ground was cleared. Either that or give them the option of using a carbon-fueled jack hammer. Then we’d see how truly committed they were to “low carbon” living.
The concrete foundation pads contain up to 700 tonnes of reinforced concrete, depending on the tower size. Any dismantling plans or promises skips over this issue rather briefly. To dig up these foundations would erode all the profits wind companies managed to gouge out of Ont during their life span. At best they will be covered over with a few inches of fill and left. The farmer can cultivate around them. They will be like tombstones, forever a reminder of Ont insane green energy follies in century 21.
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