Wind Power Extreme Costs Hidden, Maintenance, Consumers must pay

[elektra]

As the turbine turns,
It sounds like a bad soap opera spin off, the stories that can now be told about the Government dictating that consumers must buy expensive Wind Turbines, but sadly it is reality.

We here of German families power being turned off when they can not afford the extreme costs.
In California the electric bills of middle classed families are now paid with welfare programs.

Why? We were told the Green Industry was free and clean. But sadly, reality emerges in yet another way.

Maintenance costs are not accounted for, and have been extreme, in some cases doubling the cost of Wind Power.

Wind turbine maintenance costs to almost double by 2020

Wind turbine maintenance costs to almost double by 2020
19 March 2015, source edie newsroom

The global maintenance expenditure on wind turbines - vital to productivity - is expected to rise from $9.25bn in 2014 to $17bn in 2020

 

[elektra]

Engineering Fiasco…Spiegel On Offshore Wind Parks: “Does Not Fulfill The Hopes Of Reliable Energy”!

Engineering Fiasco…Spiegel On Offshore Wind Parks: “Does Not Fulfill The Hopes Of Reliable Energy”!
By P Gosselin on 26. December 2015

Today I have a short but interesting report from Spiegel.de here concerning the performance of North Sea wind parks, which were once seen as the future backbone of Germany’s energy supply. Unfortunately things are not working out that way at all.

Delivering only a tiny fraction of rated capacity

Spiegel writes that Germany now has some 3000 megawatts of North Sea offshore installed rated capacity, but which at times “delivers only single or double digit megawatts” and that “it does not fulfill the hopes of a reliable energy supply“. Spiegel writes that on one Tuesday morning in mid December the “total power fed-in dropped to just a single megawatt” (0.033% of rated capacity!)…”enough to supply only a few hundred households“.

Dogged by engineering woes, shoddy planning

Germany’s drive to offshore wind energy has been dogged by multiple technical problems and shoddy planning. Even when the wind does blow, the cross-country power transmission needed to deliver the power to markets still have not been constructed, and so it is impossible to deliver the generated power where it is needed (if needed). Wind parks operators are often ordered to shut down their turbines in order to prevent grid overloads. Also read here.

 

[elektra]

 

[elektra]

 

[elektra]

 

[elektra]

 

[elektra]

Hunderttausenden Haushalten wird der Strom gesperrt

In this link is the story of thousands without electricity in Germany because of the high cost of Renewable Energy. It is a German website, thus needs translation which prevented me of quoting it in english.

 

[elektra]

One can only thank God we have a presidential candidate that understands the value of going bankrupt for big corporations. Many Wind Power Projects are now no longer under warranty. I expect many to simply go bankrupt to avoid the cost of maintenance.

Project Overview |

The business case then depends on building as many turbines as possible and in order to maximize power yield per turbine, those turbines have to push the limits on size. Delivering projects of this scale and scope successfully means overcoming three obstacles: supply constraints, logistical difficulties and technical challenges.

The latter, technical challenges, currently presents the biggest potential risk to the future of the wind industry. Technical failure rates in offshore wind can be high compared to onshore, reducing availability to 60%. Offshore failures are difficult and expensive to fix. This is underlined by an analysis of maintenance records, which shows that while service teams for offshore wind farms are supposed to make two scheduled maintenance visits every year, unscheduled visits to many installations are made 20 times a year.

The Operation and maintenance (O&M) costs constitute a sizeable share of the total annual costs of a wind turbine. For a new turbine , O&M costs may easily make up 20-25% of the total levelized cost per kWh produced over the lifetime of the turbine. If the turbine is fairly new, the share may only be 10-15%, but this may increase to at least 20-35% by the end of the turbine’s lifetime. Unpredictable failure of certain wind turbine components, such as turbine blades, tower, gearbox, generator, braking system, yaw system, etc., can lead to substantially higher maintenance costs and reduced availability of wind turbines. As a result, O&M costs are attracting greater attention, as manufacturers attempt to lower these costs significantly by developing new turbine designs that require fewer regular service visits and less turbine downtime.

 

[cnm]

When I look up Gosselin I find he is a blogging denier from the 'NoTricksZone'. Which of course is full of tricks.

 

[cnm]

Here's an example of Gosselin's work, archived here...

Pierre Gosselin says:

October 23, 2008 at 2:03 am

-2.5°C by 2020!
​

 

[elektra]

When I look up Gosselin I find he is a blogging denier from the 'NoTricksZone'. Which of course is full of tricks.

Well, then it is a good thing that I included much more than one link to more than one place.

 

[elektra]

Turbine Maintenance: Pay Now Or Surely Pay Later

According to the American Wind Energy Association, nearly $40 billion worth of wind installations in the U.S. came out of warranty in 2011, and 50% of the country’s wind turbine generator fleet is behind in original equipment manufacturer (OEM)-recommended maintenance schedules. Now wind farm owners must assume the entire financial risk and provide cost-effective operations and maintenance (O&M) programs.

According to the American Wind Energy Association, nearly $40 billion worth of wind installations in the U.S. came out of warranty in 2011, and 50% of the country’s wind turbine generator fleet is behind in original equipment manufacturer (OEM)-recommended maintenance schedules. Now wind farm owners must assume the entire financial risk and provide cost-effective operations and maintenance (O&M) programs

 

[elektra]

There is a lot of information out here on the extreme cost of maintenance, to deny they need maintenance is the height of ignorance.

http://www.ecn.nl/docs/library/report/2007/m07045.pdf

Summary The contribution of the O&M costs of offshore wind farms to the cost of electricity is relatively large. The O&M effort in the wind farm is therefore one of the issues to optimise. ECN develops the 'Operations and Maintenance Cost Estimator'. This tool can assist owners and operators of offshore wind farms to better estimate and control the O&M costs of offshore wind farms. Since cost estimating of the operation and maintenance will be especially important during operation of the wind farm, all information, experience and data from the wind farm should be used to optimise this task. It is therefore necessary to collect information of the wind farm, the turbines, the operation and the maintenance in order to analyse trends. Since a main part of the O&M costs are determined by unexpected failures and corrective maintenance, the task is to determine trends that indicate if failures will occur, how many and what costs are associated to these failures on the longer term. The O&M cost estimator consists of a core that is able to calculate the failures, repairs, logistics etc. of the wind farm in order to estimate the time-varying O&M costs. The input into this core should be updated by the wind farm operator based on the wind farm data. In order to do so, several tools (decision support) are under development. In this report the structure of the O&M cost estimator is presented and the underlying tools are highlighted

 

[elektra]

Here's an example of Gosselin's work, archived here...

Pierre Gosselin says:

October 23, 2008 at 2:03 am

-2.5°C by 2020!
​

I guess you missed the part of this thread that is talking about maintenance.

So here you have a random poster that must defend his/her ideology even when faced with the reality that all they believe is wrong.

 

[Tommy Tainant]

Broad optimism

The offshore wind market as whole is set to boom in the next decade, with consultancy firm EY recently prediciting installed capacity to triple in Europe by 2024.

This growth is expected 'largely from the UK market', which already accounts for 55% of all European offshore capacity.

Why is this not a good news story ?

 

[elektra]

Broad optimism

The offshore wind market as whole is set to boom in the next decade, with consultancy firm EY recently prediciting installed capacity to triple in Europe by 2024.

This growth is expected 'largely from the UK market', which already accounts for 55% of all European offshore capacity.

Why is this not a good news story ?

Because of the extreme costs, higher taxes, higher electric bills, feed in tariffs and subsidies. Further there is no energy to supply industry.

Basically it is a lose, lose, lose, endeavor.

Which if you read the quotes, and follow the links you can see.

What I have not gotten into, is the bankruptcies, which seems to be its own thread in itself. It is really unbelievable the magnitude of the costs and how the super rich can just go bankrupt and pass the company on to the next, for pennies on the dollar.

Either way, you have plenty to read and contemplate just with maintenance costs.

 

[elektra]

It is asked, in a thread about the hidden costs, "Why is bad to build the largest offshore Wind Farms in history."

Maintenance costs of Offshore Wind Turbines are extreme.

Salt water, heavy seas, storms, high winds are thee most extreme conditions anything can operate in, this has been known for centuries. Now we must do maintenance on Wind Turbines, which the companies claim was impossible to foresee?

 

[Skull Pilot]

Let's add to the costs by calculating the initial cost to the ACTUAL output of these wind mills not the nominal output stated on the specs

On average wind turbines only produce at best about 30% of their rated capacity so in reality the cost per KW is more than triple than the industry uses

 

[elektra]

Let's add to the costs by calculating the initial cost to the ACTUAL output of these wind mills not the nominal output stated on the specs

On average wind turbines only produce at best about 30% of their rated capacity so in reality the cost per KW is more than triple than the industry uses

Actually they have found that with Offshore Wind, it is even less. As little as nothing. Currently one of the biggest problems in Germany is the high voltage cables underwater failing.

 

[elektra]

Broad optimism

The offshore wind market as whole is set to boom in the next decade, with consultancy firm EY recently prediciting installed capacity to triple in Europe by 2024.

This growth is expected 'largely from the UK market', which already accounts for 55% of all European offshore capacity.

Why is this not a good news story ?

The story hides the facts, it is a fluff piece, nothing more. In keeping with the premise I have established and proved to be fact, I can add this.

Wind farm turbines wear sooner than expected, says study

Wind farm turbines wear sooner than expected, says study
Britain’s wind farms are wearing out far more rapidly than previously thought, making them more expensive as a result, according to an authoritative new study.