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Wind turbine energy claim is all spin and no power (www.aap.com.au)

submitted 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) by Treevan@aussie.zone to c/environment@aussie.zone

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Social media posts are full of hot air in claiming wind turbines take years of operation to make up for the energy needed to manufacture them.

"The turbine has to spin continually for over 4 years just to replace the energy it took to manufacture it. Most turbine blades last 3 to 7 years," it states.

Prof Cleveland co-authored a meta-analysis on the net energy return of wind power systems which found the energy return of investment, the ratio of energy delivered to energy costs, placed wind favourably in comparison to other technologies such as fossil fuels and nuclear.

"The average life of wind turbine blades is 18 to 25 years, with 20 years as a widely used industry standard," Prof Cleveland told AAP FactCheck.

The claim wind turbines take at least four years to recoup the energy used to create them is false. It typically takes about six months for turbines to recoup the energy costs of making them.

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[–] drmoose@lemmy.world 9 points 2 years ago (1 children)

The original claim makes no sense either as it would make the turbine economically unfeasible even with support from the government.

I get the bird and noise argument (though both are highly contested too) but the rest is gibberish as wind clearly makes surplus energy thus the profits.

[–] IncognitoWolf@kbin.social 3 points 2 years ago

I used to work on turbines, and I can attest the bird argument is very blown out of proportion. In my time working on turbines I never saw a single dead bird near the bases. We had a farm of Vestas V112-3.3mw turbines. Noise i can see, those blades whip through the air and cause almost the same sound as a distant jet as they whip by. Its not too loud unless winter then its very noticeable when the blades ice up. The hydraulics and such can be loud as well but its not terribly loud.

However the biggest thing I noticed was how not green they are when it comes to the lubricants. Its not uncommon to have the pitch cylinders leak, and fill the hub and spinner with oil. Lots of times the blade bearing grease would overfill the cups and throw grease in the spinner. Another thing is the hydraulic systems would leak and cause excessive oil spillage, which sometimes would make its way out into the world. We could only clean with rags and pig mats so its super oily and greasy everywhere. The cooling systems would also leak and usually spill many gallons of coolant out into the wind.