Costly Broken Wind Turbines Give College Whopping Negative 99.14% Return On Investment

[Manonthestreet]

“While they have been an excellent teaching tool for students, they have only generated $8,500 in power in their lifetime,” she said. “One of the reasons for the lower than expected energy power is that the turbines often need to be repaired. They are not a good teaching tool if they are not working.”

Read more: Costly Broken Wind Turbines Give College Whopping Negative 99.14% Return On Investment
On the contrary I think they were highly educational.....

 

[Mr. H.]

It doesn't matter.
It doesn't even matter that without hydrocarbons, the wind turbine industry couldn't exist.

What matters is smoke and mirrors and tax monies that flow to these nonsense applications for the "sake of the environment".

Pure bullshit.

 

[flacaltenn]

Darn you beat me to this sad story..

What were they THINKING?? We're gonna indoctrinate our students in how to save the planet.. Allow them to work hands on with the TRUE solution to "Global Warming".. And the Government -- is gonna pay for all this while we get FREE energy to run our dinky university..

What did the University LEARN?? That Universities should NEVER be in the Energy business. That wind energy is an entirely unreliable and sketchy way to power your University. And that the Economics and Engineering Depts should have VETTED this project and run some numbers and scenarios BEFORE they got in over their heads.

From the original source..

Costly Broken Wind Turbines Give College Whopping Negative 99.14% Return On Investment


Lake Land College recently announced plans to tear down broken wind turbines on campus, after the school got $987,697.20 in taxpayer support for wind power.

The turbines were funded by a $2.5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Labor, but the turbines lasted for less than four years and were incredibly costly to maintain.

“Since the installation in 2012, the college has spent $240,000 in parts and labor to maintain the turbines,” Kelly Allee, Director of Public Relations at Lake Land College, told The Daily Caller News Foundation.

The college estimates it would take another $100,000 in repairs to make the turbines function again after one of them was struck by lightning and likely suffered electrical damage last summer. School officials’ original estimates found the turbine would save it $44,000 in electricity annually, far more than the $8,500 they actually generated. Under the original optimistic scenario, the turbines would have to last for 22.5 years just to recoup the costs, not accounting for inflation. If viewed as an investment, the turbines had a return of negative 99.14 percent.

“While they have been an excellent teaching tool for students, they have only generated $8,500 in power in their lifetime,” she said. “One of the reasons for the lower than expected energy power is that the turbines often need to be repaired. They are not a good teaching tool if they are not working.”

The college estimates it would take another $100,000 in repairs to make the turbines function again after one of them was struck by lightning and likely suffered electrical damage last summer.

Even though the college wants to tear down one of the turbines, they are federal assets and “there is a process that has to be followed” according to Allee.

The turbines became operational in 2012 after a 5-year long building campaign intended to reduce the college’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions to fight global warming. Even though the turbines cost almost $1 million, but the college repeatedly claimed they’d save money in the long run.

“It is becoming more and more difficult for us financially to maintain the turbines,” Josh Bullock, the college’s president, told the Journal Gazette and Times-Courier last week. “I think it was an extremely worthy experiment when they were installed, but they just have not performed to our expectations to this point.”


So their little "education" cost them $240,000 in repairs with another $100,000 just to get back into operation not yet shelled out. The TAXPAYERS are already over $1,000,000 in the hole. And the dollar amount of ACTUAL energy that's been produced yearly is only 0.5% of the ANTICIPATED energy they SHOULD have produced.

How fucking sad is all that??? For damn near EVERYONE... BUT

Has the University LEARNED IT's LESSON about planet saving ????

Hell no.. They Flunked the Einstein statement about repeating the same failed actions..
The WORST part of the news from this story..

Bullock states that the turbines simply haven’t been able to power the campus’ buildings and that most of the electricity wasn’t effectively used.Lake Land plans to replace the two failed turbines with a solar power system paid for by a government grant. “[T]he photovoltaic panels are expected to save the college between $50,000 and $60,000 this year,”Allee told the DCNF.

THAT -- proves these folks are morons. They STILL want to save the Planet by being an "energy generator".

 

[Manonthestreet]

If lightning can disable these.....WTF......

 

[flacaltenn]

If lightning can disable these.....WTF......

Yeah I know.. I find that strange also.. Because you COULD put an adequate lightning rod up as cheap insurance..

THEN --- started to think about the problem. A turbine generator is always some combination of stationary electro or permanent magnets and a spinning stator section with more coil windings to pick up the field and generate the juice.

A lightning rod would probably protect the control electronics and the body and the OUTSIDE of the turbine quite well --- but maybe the problem is the spinning part -- blades and all are isolated enough to require some other kind of lightning/transient suppression scheme. Don't know.. Haven't look it up.. Again -- people IN the power biz (not Universities) would know how to protect their investment a bit better..

The other possibility is that the lightning took out some Ground equipment that is used to regenerate standard AC voltage/current and feed the grid. And the journalists just didn't care about the distinction..

 

[elektra]

If a university can not make them work, is it true that they are working commercially?