RC Macaulay writes: > The cost of [wind tower] maintenance is high.
Not according to EPRI. They say that wind now has the lowest maintenance cost of any conventional power source, per KWH. The Danish Wind Industry Association says: "For newer machines the estimates range around 1.5 to 2 per cent per year of the original turbine investment." A $25,000 car that lasts 20 years and costs $500 a year to maintain would be quite a good deal. > Notice how many towers are out of service at any time. Very few! They are down for maintenance for one or two days a year, and maintenance is scheduled for days when the weather prediction is for no wind. If you see ones that are not moving, it is because the wind is not blowing. > The stress of the windshear as the prop passes the pylon is a cause of blade > fatigue. > Jed mentioned there is no better way to capture the wind with present-day, > off the shelf technology. True and the > incentives exist to keep building > them although there is a better, more efficent, less expensive and lower > maintenance way using available technology. They have stressed low maintenance and reliability for the last 30 years. That is one of the reasons the cost has fallen from $1/KWH to $0.04/KWH. Wind turbines take up little space on the ground, and they take no fuel. The only costs involved in making them is the initial materials and maintenance. The initial cost has not fallen. It is a little difficult for me to believe that competitive European companies are building the equivalent of 3 large U.S. nuclear plants a year with this technology, and spending billions of dollars, yet there are already better, proven designs available. I know that unproven and speculative technology such as CF is often ignored. Improvements such as hybrid cars were ignored for a long time, but after all, they were built in the end. The auto industry is old, mature, and stodgy, whereas wind turbine manufacturers are on the cutting edge, like aviation. They are among the fastest growing companies in Europe. In Denmark, they employ more people than the steel and concrete industries do. In the U.S. I can well imagine that a promising energy technology might be ignored, but the Europeans pay $5 per gallon for gas and they import nearly all of their fossil fuel. They are not idiots. - Jed
