Opinions
Show us the truth about wind farms
The "inconvenient truth" is out on wind farms. Under-performing around the world, our local line-up at Toora and Wonthaggi are no exception.
With average output levels 10 to 15 per cent below the stated 30 to 35 per cent of installed capacity (and that is when all turbines are operational - rarely the case), investors must be getting a little anxious.
It is a pity. We all wish for a reliable alternative to the burning of fossil fuels and hoped that wind generators, sensitively placed, may have been part of the solution.
They don't pass muster. It is time for the wind industry to come clean and accept that it is promoting a lemon. With the focus now on creative development of radical new technologies, the wind farms currently industrialising our beautiful coastlines will soon stand motionless and abandoned, dripping with gearbox oil. White elephants. The wind power industry and the State Government should make the real performance figures on wind farms public. To not do so is pure "greenwash".
July 19, 2007
by Colin Suggett, Venus Bay
in The Age
The "inconvenient truth" is out on wind farms. Under-performing around the world, our local line-up at Toora and Wonthaggi are no exception.
With average output levels 10 to 15 per cent below the stated 30 to 35 per cent of installed capacity (and that is when all turbines are operational - rarely the case), investors must be getting a little anxious.
It is a pity. We all wish for a reliable alternative to the burning of fossil fuels and hoped that wind generators, sensitively placed, may have been part of the solution.
They don't pass muster. It is time for the wind industry... [continue via Web link]
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