Windpower: The Hidden Dangers
Germans are making an alarming discovery about wind power, writes Michael Frohlingsdorf in Der Spiegel (Hamburg) September 2007. We congratulate ourselves on the way we’ve taken to this clean form of energy: thanks to big subsidies, more than 19,000 windmills dot the countryside, and vast new wind farms are planned along the northern coast.
But it turns out that the turbines are highly unreliable, and in populated area can be dangerous. A few months ago, a broken rotor blade crashed on to a road near Trier just before rush hour, and a 70 metre-high wind turbine collapsed next to a motorway in Schleswig-Holstein. |
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Fires Frequent
Turbines are apt to combust, and flames are hard to extinguish as firefighters’ ladders can’t reach that high. It makes a mockery of claims by manufacturers that the turbines would last at least 20 years: in reality the gearboxes pack up after as little as three, fractures in the rotor blades are common, and short circuits cause frequent fires.
It’s partly due to the way wind power is taking off: German turbines are in such demand around the world that there isn’t enough time for adequate testing, and spare parts delivery can take 18 months.
But something needs to change, otherwise a fatal accident is only a matter of time, and then windpower won’t seem such a wonderful idea after all.
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