The wind industry started out as absurd, and only became more so over time. The turbines became bigger, the blades longer and capacities went from piddling 1.5 MW machines to 18MW monsters – albeit so large they can barely stand up against stiff breezes, let alone a full-blown hurricane.
As the blades grew, their habit of disintegrating and/or unshackling increased to the point where – these days – the blades simply shred themselves when the machines are brand-new.
Little wonder that rural and coastal communities have taken a set against these things, as The Spectator outlines below.
Wind energy enters its mid-life crisis
Spectator Australia
Editorial
12 August 2024
When I first heard that China was installing a two-headed wind turbine, I thought the Babylon Bee was having a laugh.
The Mingyang twin-rotor floating wind turbine platform isn’t a prank, it’s another grotesque evolution of the ‘Net Zero’ at any cost philosophy which has started creating sea monsters.
Video of OceanX being put together in Guangzhou reveals an awkward-looking creation that is supposedly able to harness typhoons when installed in deep water. We’ll see.
More likely, it’ll be a speed bump in the ocean – a metal iceberg – a bit of jetsam bobbing about while the world goes to war over wobbly lines in the South China Sea.
Articles praising the installation insist that it’s built to withstand 287 km/h winds, leaving ‘plenty’ of safety over the strongest record typhoon in the area of 260 km/h – but they add a bit of wriggle room by insisting that ‘weather systems are flying off-kilter as climate change continues to advance’.
Remember, if it ends up in bits, you gotta blame ‘climate change’.
If you’re like me and thought this green fable sounded familiar, you may remember the Donghae TwinWind Project planned for the coast of Norway in 2021. The same technology is on track for the Celtic Sea (with support from the UK government) due for completion in 2030.
There have been other designs for twin-headed rotors. A Chinese-made land-based turbine experienced a dramatic failure in which it caught fire after two months.
My point is not that technology is always perfect, only that I’m glad these new air-mounted machetes will be a long way out to sea and not hovering over unsuspecting cows in a paddock.
Besides, two-headed turbines are nothing compared to the ‘wall of wind turbines’ – or as I like to call it – ‘Resident Seavil’.
A Norwegian company has decided to mount 117 turbines on some scaffolding. It’s the stuff of nightmares if you identify as a seagull.
Wind Catching Systems’ wall of turbines dubbed ‘Windcatcher’ has won certification from the world’s leading technical authority on wind power – DNV. At 300 metres high and 350 metres wide, you can only imagine the engineering that will need to go into securing it to the ocean floor.
To me, it feels as if we’re entering the mid-life crisis version of wind energy where everything has to be bigger and have more sharp spinning bits. The crazier, the better. This behaviour is more common than you think. The dinosaurs entered a size-based arms race, and so do our bros at the gym when they skip leg day and end up walking around like they have implanted their girlfriend’s silicon breasts under their biceps.
Back in the real world, Australia’s previously approved wind farms are being cancelled as landholders and communities nix their support.
A 55-turbine wind farm application near Armidale tabled by Ark Energy has been withdrawn when nine landholders contracted to ‘host’ turbines changed their minds and ripped up their contracts.
The Clean Energy Council seemed surprised, saying: ‘I haven’t heard of too many instances where landholders have changed their minds.’
They might need to get used to the word ‘no’. Despite these projects paying property owners a fortune per turbine (presumed to be around $35,000 per turbine per year), the reality of these turbines is harder to live with.
Not only that, neighbouring farms get nothing despite shouldering a major imposition from wind farms – not least of all, how they look. This creates community tension.
Rural communities are being inundated with projects. Many are terrified their sleepy, pristine areas will be ripped up and industrialised by Big Green. It’s a feeding frenzy out there. The government opened the doors, removed basic landholder protections, and said have at… Suddenly mountain ranges are being interrupted by dozens of skyscraper-sized turbines.
Farmland is blanketed in solar panels. Battery farms sprawl out across the landscape. And worst of all, ugly and intrusive transmission lines are being draped across properties – not only destroying the natural beauty of these areas – but also creating a fire hazard. You remember all those little wildlife walkways draped over the freeway to help nature navigate highways? What a cruel joke these environmental projects are in light of Net Zero.
Big Wind is not fitting the Utopia of ‘green energy’ that people were promised.
With households struggling to feed their families, images of Australia’s world-leading farmland being covered in solar panels has raised questions about whether the government’s obsession with Net Zero and use of public money to prop up these projects is the right thing to do.
Shouldn’t we be helping the agricultural sector return to profitability after decades of abuse and neglect? That way they wouldn’t be tempted by Big Green barons to calve up Australia’s most important agricultural resource.
These renewable energy projects might be flashy and eye-catching, but getting the fabric of civilisation right is the most important thing.
The fat has come off the Australian economy.
There is no more room to waste public money or squander our natural resources on ‘feel good’ technology.
Cheap power, plentiful food, and a self-sufficient nation must top the list if we’re going to make it through the next century without becoming a vassal state of Pacific communists who have used the shiny lure of ‘Net Zero’ to hook our single-minded, short-sighted political class.
The Spectator
