r/EnergyAndPower • u/Fiction-for-fun2 • 19d ago

Two more wind turbines suffer damage in Canada and Norway

https://reneweconomy.com.au/two-more-wind-turbines-suffer-damage-in-canada-and-norway/
10 Upvotes

67% Upvoted

76 comments sorted by

9

u/chmeee2314 19d ago

So like at most 50MW in 4 years? Who cares?

0

u/Fiction-for-fun2 19d ago

Who cares if expensive infrastructure is falling apart and could potentially kill people?

4

u/Puzzleheaded_Egg9150 18d ago

Did they kill people? Because wind farms are pretty far away from populated areas, so whatever breaks would fall down in the fields. You can clearly see that in the article. It took them one full day to even notice that one of the turbines broke.

No power generation method is 100% foolproof. Dams break, nuclear power plants go kaboom, countless miners died extracting the coal needed for coal plants, etc. If you really want to link deaths to power generation, you could at least do a basic google search: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-deathprint-a-price-always-paid/

You'll see that solar, wind, hydro, and nuclear have the lowest deaths per kWh. By far.

0

u/Fiction-for-fun2 18d ago

Wind turbines have absolutely killed people, yes.

5

u/AnAttemptReason 18d ago

So has water, better stay away from that tap and turn of the mains!

1

u/Fiction-for-fun2 18d ago

I like how multi-ton, million dollar pieces of infrastructure plummeting from the sky, well before their end of life, is just something we should accept apparently.

🤣

3

u/AnAttemptReason 18d ago

I'm pretty sure this will get looked into and addressed, just the same has occurred with other power generators when things have gone wrong.

1

u/Fiction-for-fun2 18d ago

So that means retrofitting how many faulty wind turbines?

Very expensive to fix, I'm sure.

2

u/AnAttemptReason 18d ago

Yea, it will depend on what the root cause is, could be very expensive, could be some idiot forgot a bolt.

1

u/Fiction-for-fun2 18d ago

Did you even read the article?

No known cause for the failure is known at this early stage, however it remains baffling how a turbine hub could simply detach itself from the turbine.

The Erie Shores Wind Farm consists of 66 wind turbines from GE Vernova, which has suffered several turbine failures in recent months. Wind turbines have broken or failed at the 800MW Vineyard Wind project off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket, Massachusetts, as well as at the first phase of the massive 3.6GW Dogger Bank project in the North Sea off the coast of the UK.

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u/blunderbolt 18d ago

Are you also one of those people who thinks no nuclear plants should ever be built again after Chernobyl or Fukushima, or are you simply a hypocrite?

1

u/Fiction-for-fun2 18d ago

When did you stop hitting your wife?

2

u/Puzzleheaded_Egg9150 18d ago

Significantly fewer than non-renewables. By moving away from wind to gas/coal, you'd kill significantly more people. Is that what you want?

It looks like you are purposefully making inflammatory and misleading statements. I'm pretty sure that violates this sub's rules.

2

u/Fiction-for-fun2 18d ago

When did I say to move to gas and coal?

2

u/JasonGMMitchell 18d ago

For someone with a username suggesting they enjoy either fiction books films or games, you're quite bad at inferring. You're attacking wind based on a statistically negligible amount of failiure with no mention of fossil fuels which combined are killing upwards of a million people a year under normal conditions, when plants burn down and collapse even more did in the short term.

If you're not actually trying to defend fossil fuels by attacking renewables then you're accidentally doing so to the detriment of all clean energies including nuclear since this same argument of "but something broke" is used against nuclear constantly despite the worst failures if nuclear failing to even compare to normal operating conditions of big coal, gas, oil plants.

2

u/Fiction-for-fun2 18d ago

So, just to be clear at no point did I say to use more coal or gas.

Agreed!

6

u/chmeee2314 19d ago
  1. 50MW is nothing. We are probably talking about less than ,05% of Windmills. At that rate German Nuclear had more capacity lost due to the losses of Grundremmingen A and Würgassen spread across the 70years of the industries existence.
  2. Who stands next to a Windmill? Wheat and Cows. Humans rearly get close. The chances of a blade droping on someones head without indication are exeedingly small.

-4

u/Fiction-for-fun2 19d ago

Yes, infrastructure falling apart and almost hurting people is not a big deal to you, understood!

5

u/Appropriate-Owl5693 18d ago

If this level of failure rates is not good enough, what is your opinion on roads and cars? Nothing is ever 100%...

Can you give me some examples of infrastructure that you think is safe enough?

1

u/Fiction-for-fun2 18d ago

Are we on r/roadsandcars ?

Look I get it. You don't care that wind turbines are falling apart.

I have a different opinion. You gonna be ok?

3

u/Appropriate-Owl5693 18d ago

Are we on r/infrastructure ?

Everyone can see you're just a troll, but it's funny to try and see if they can at least reason.

2

u/Fiction-for-fun2 18d ago

Energy and power are generated and delivered by grid infrastructure. I'm not trolling anyone. I think it's absurd to just shrug and say "oh well the front fell off".

And in response to your question about cars, cars are a crime against humanity and should be replaced with trains and public transport, which are much safer.

1

u/Appropriate-Owl5693 18d ago

It's also absurd to cheery pick events instead of looking at the wider picture :D

Nobody is cheering that maintenance people were in danger, I was just trying to give you an equally absurd concern troll...

What about the derailment that happened last week where people did die? Are you ok with putting all those people in danger just for transport, which is arguably less important than electricity.

2

u/Fiction-for-fun2 18d ago

When did I claim people were cheering?

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4

u/chmeee2314 19d ago

Who did it almost hurt?

2

u/Fiction-for-fun2 19d ago

You realize these things need servicing right, they have to be accessed by technicians and engineers?

If you've ever worked in a safety culture you'd know this should be identified as a "near miss" incident, which in a properly run organization is treated as seriously as someone dying.

2

u/chmeee2314 18d ago

How many hours in a year do technicians spend next to a specific windmil / year?

5hours/year?
What is the chance during those 5 hours that a Windmil blade randomly drops on their head without warning?

Ther are a lot more dangerous things that can hurt or maim a Windmil technician in the line of work that this scenario.

1

u/Fiction-for-fun2 18d ago

Yeah I get it you don't care about dangerous infrastructure. You've kept repeating yourself, it's fine.

5

u/chmeee2314 18d ago

Your making Mountains out of molehills is the issue.

1

u/Fiction-for-fun2 18d ago

You being fine with people's lives being in danger is the issue.

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2

u/JasonGMMitchell 18d ago

And we get your stacking renewables to take heat off fossil held where millions die yearly from.

This is a non issue, when you have thousands of turbines some will break, fun fact that's why we don't build homes under turbines or roads under turbines. Ships sink and bridges collapse, should we stop using boats and building bridges?

1

u/Fiction-for-fun2 18d ago

Where did I give you the impression that I'm a fan of fossil fuels?

10

u/asdf333 19d ago

TWO!? it’s over. stick a fork in it. the industry is finished 

8

u/photoinduced 18d ago

Quick stop building any bridges! I've read that at least 2 collapsed in the last 2 years!

1

u/asdf333 18d ago

it’s time to go back to the tried and true method of swimming across. sure people drowned but at least nothing collapsed 

2

u/nodrogyasmar 18d ago

Yes. I was also wondering if we are supposed to get upset about this. Seems trivial.

4

u/Tortoise4132 Pro-nuclear 18d ago

Only gonna get worse with worsening weather patterns.

5

u/drangryrahvin 18d ago

We should build them from the same stuff we make those indestructible coal/gas/nuclear plants from then. Duh.

1

u/Fiction-for-fun2 18d ago

Are you comparing a criminally negligent Soviet bureaucracy and a once in a lifetime tsunami with a wind turbine in normal conditions suddenly just falling apart?

6

u/tx_queer 18d ago

If you think only two power plants have broken in the last X years I have news for you. Coal power plants catch on fire and have an explosion pretty regularly. Same with gas plants. Also, battery farms frequently go up in flames. And entire solar farms get crushed by wind. We build things to break

1

u/Fiction-for-fun2 18d ago

I don't know what kind of engineering you are doing but I do not build things to break when I design systems.

2

u/AnAttemptReason 18d ago

Go look at all the issues Texas has had with their grid over the last while, nuclear power plants catching fire, fossil fuels getting to cold and shutting down. 

The only reliable source of energy the had was wind turbines and solar 😅

1

u/Fiction-for-fun2 18d ago edited 18d ago

The grid doesn't run on intermittently sourced energy. It's system that distributes power, and therefore generation has to match load in real time. If not, then grid frequency drops, something that solar farm inverters flipping off has caused in Texas, often.

1

u/AnAttemptReason 18d ago

Sounds like Texas is just incompetent. 

South Australia runs a multi-gigawatt grid on 70% Solar and Wind just fine. 

In fact since VRE share has increased the grid has become the most stable one in Australia, as a single turbine going down does not impact the grid, while having to shut a big plant down does.

0

u/Fiction-for-fun2 18d ago

Yes, Texas is incompetent.

Edit: More precisely, they are focused on profits not a functional system. A different kind of incompetence.

1

u/tx_queer 18d ago

All engineering is a tradeoff of cost and likelihood to break. Everything that is engineered is engineered to fail somehow. They all have maximum design limitations. Car alternators are designed to fail every couple hundred thousand miles. Bridges are designed to fail every 50 years or when a bunch of construction equipment is sitting on it. Planes are designed to fail over 750 miles per hour. Solar panels are designed to fail with any hail baseball size or larger.

What kind of engineering do you do.

1

u/Fiction-for-fun2 18d ago

So why aren't these wind turbines designed to stay intact for their lifespans like a bridge, alternator, etc?

1

u/tx_queer 18d ago

Why did my alternator in my Ford fail at 40,000 miles?

1

u/Fiction-for-fun2 18d ago

So should we expect better from multi-million dollar electrical installations than a Ford truck alternator?

1

u/tx_queer 17d ago

Every product is engineered with acceptable failure rates in mind. Couple windmills a year would be acceptable in my mind. Otherwise that multi million dollar installation would become multi billion.

the same argument can be applied to everything. Why do ships sink. We have the technology to make them unsinkable. Why don't we spend the money to make ships unsinkable

1

u/Fiction-for-fun2 17d ago edited 17d ago

Did you read the article?

There's multiple wind farms shut down because of multiple failures of this specific turbine.

I doubt the people who invested in the infrastructure and are trying to profit off of it are very happy with the so-called acceptable failure rate.

I doubt technicians working around falling apart wind turbines are very happy with the so-called acceptable failure rate either.

I mean the Pinto did get someone from A to B! Maybe they were good enough!