WIND AND SOLAR FARMS ARE FRAGILE AND HUGELY EXPENSIVE

By Cliff Reece / Steve Goreham

Wind turbines can be destroyed by excessive wind speeds and can also catch fire potentially causing bushfires, destruction of property and loss of lives.

They also create massive environmental damage during their construction and are hugely expensive and difficult to dispose of when they need to be replaced.

In July, a 107-metre-long offshore wind blade splintered and washed up on the beaches in Nantucket, USA.

Beaches were closed and clean-up crews collected six truckloads of fiberglass and plastic debris from just the one single destroyed blade!

Residents, beachgoers, fishermen, and local businesses posted signs, complained to the press, and spoke out at board hearings.

But this was just one turbine blade - imagine the outcry when a whole offshore system is destroyed by high winds, producing mountains of beach debris!

Media headlines falsely claim that weather is becoming more extreme because of human-caused climate change. They forecast a future Armageddon.

And yet, to solve this supposed problem, these same doomsayers propose that we install more and more wind and solar systems, despite them being fragile and therefore highly vulnerable to their predicted more violent weather.

How does that make sense?

If weather events become worse as predicted, incidents of destruction of wind and solar installations will surely increase. So why are we doing it?

To date, most offshore wind systems have been deployed in China, Europe, and Vietnam.

Turbines deployed in Asia coastal areas suffer typhoon wreckage. Also, 80% of the turbines installed in Europe’s North Sea have required repairs due to weather damage.

The London Array, east of England, the world’s largest offshore wind system, required extensive repairs after only five years of operation.

Danish wind operator Ørsted needed to repair undersea cables to offshore wind systems in the North Sea at a cost that exceeded $150 million.

Turbines sited off the US East Coast must survive brutal weather, even more severe than that experienced by offshore wind turbines in Europe.

Australia will be just as badly affected in locations where high wind speeds are commonplace.

In 2018, Hurricane Maria passed over Puerto Rico, ripping blades from many turbine towers.

Wind systems are designed to try to protect wind towers and blades in high winds.

When winds exceed 88 km/h, a braking system brings the rotor to a standstill to try to avoid turbine damage. Tower blades are also ‘feathered’ or oriented so that they no longer catch the wind.

But near the eye of a hurricane or tropical storm, violent winds can change direction instantaneously and powerfully, too fast for damage-prevention systems to react. The result will be destroyed blades and damaged towers.

Offshore wind must operate in one of the world’s harshest environments, buffeted by wind, waves, lightning, and salt spray that is very corrosive to human-made structures.

Despite all of these catastrophic events, wind and solar have been growing as a share of electrical power generation over the last two decades.

Wind and solar systems are located on ridge lines, on plains, and offshore, and are exposed to weather forces that usually don’t affect building-housed coal, gas and nuclear generators.

In addition, these systems require about 100 times the land area of traditional generators to deliver the same average electricity output, increasing the chances of storm damage. Such incidents are rising as more and more systems are deployed.

In May 2019, a massive hailstorm in West Texas destroyed 400,000 solar modules of the Midway Solar Project, about 60% of the facility. The project was only one year old.

The system was rebuilt, costing insurers more than $70 million.

On 23 June 2023, the Scottsbluff Solar System Farm was destroyed in Nebraska USA (see above). Baseball-sized hail falling at up to 240 km/h smashed most of the 14,000-panel system.

The system had only been operating for four years of its 25-year lifetime and had to be completely rebuilt.

Solar loss insurance claims from hail damage now average about $90 million per claim in the USA.

Hail damage claims have increased to account for about 54% of solar insurance loss claims.

Fighting Jays Solar Plant became operational in July 2023, 40 miles northwest of Houston, Texas. Less than one year later, on March 15 2024, hail destroyed much of the system, with repair costs estimated to be hundreds of millions of dollars.

The system had not yet completed full construction.

Hail is not the only weather hazard facing solar installations. This autumn, a tornado associated with Hurricane Milton destroyed much of the Lake Placid Solar Plant in Sylvian Shores, Florida.

The facility had only been operating for about five years.

As a result of hail and other weather damage, insurance premiums for solar facilities are skyrocketing, in some cases up by as much as 400%.

In addition, policy coverage is being capped at as little as $15-20 million, requiring system developers to obtain multiple policies to try to cover their projects.

The Albanese government must surely be aware of these facts – and yet it continues with its farcical crusade toward achieving net zero!

Hopefully, the incoming Peter Dutton government will show commonsense and leadership on this issue, qualities that are both sadly lacking in the current Albanese government.

Firstly, they need to cancel Net Zero, as it’s both unnecessary and also totally unachievable.

They also need to restrict the installation of wind turbines and solar farms to locations where they make commercial (i.e. without subsidies) as well as environmental sense - and also do not adversely impact on communities.

Finally, they need to challenge the terms of the Paris Agreement so that we decide how and what we produce to deliver our energy needs rather than being dictated to by bureaucrats at the United Nations.

Thanks to Steve Goreham who is an acknowledged expert on energy, the environment, and public policy. His books include Green Breakdown: The Coming Renewable Energy Failure, which is on the bestseller list.

Steve’s interview with renowned energy communicator and podcast hostStuart Turley is well worth watching at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUYyjigJBUc

Thanks also to The Frontier Post for the lead image, MasterResource for the Puerto Rico image, Reddit for the solar panels image and Johannes Leak for his cartoon.