Wind farms are becoming more common in Indiana. The state already boasts the fourth largest “farm” in the U.S. and produces nearly 3,500 megawatts of wind energy, with more on the horizon.
The towering windmills reaching up to the sky produce slightly more than 9% of all the electricity used in the state. That’s enough to power more than 1 million homes, according to the American Clean Power Association.
With more projects in the works that will produce another 302 megawatts, and a handful of bills proposed in this session of the General Assembly, wind power is likely to continue to grow across the state. And with the increasing presence of the conspicuous energy generators comes some curiosity.
So, for this edition of Scrub Hub, we took to our trusty submission form and chose a question from Teresa, who asked: Why are the wind turbines not turning right now?
It’s possible for the blades on wind turbines to reach up to speeds of 200 mph, so it may seem odd when some are spinning very quickly while the blades on others nearby are not moving.
We dug around in some state, federal and industry reports and reached out to academic experts in energy technology to determine why some turbines in a wind farm spin while others remain still.
Short Answer: The turbine is down for maintenance
Wind turbines, like all machines, need both scheduled and unscheduled maintenance. In some instances that explains why some are operating but not others.
The basic components of a wind turbine are the visible tower and rotor blades, as well as the gearbox and generator located at the top of the tower.
Scheduled maintenance helps prevent wear and tear from breaking parts and unscheduled maintenance occurs when the turbine experiences any of a number of failures.
Regular preventative maintenance can include periodic equipment inspection, oil and filter changes, calibration and adjustment of various parts, as well as replacing brake pads and seals. General housekeeping and blade cleaning can also temporarily keep a turbine from spinning.
In larger wind farms, several turbines on a circuit can be inoperable and not spinning because they are all down for maintenance, said John Roudebush, program chair of Ivy Tech College’s Energy Technology program.
Now Arizona’s new Governor Katie Hobbs has released a state report on the “crisis” in Arizona water supplies.
Meanwhile, people keep moving to places where they are vulnerable to the worst impacts of climate change. They will, of course, expect the rest of us to bail them out when it all collapses – a process that is already underway.
Fossil fuel interests are pulling out all the stops as they see their absolute power slipping away. As the earth is demonstrating every day that climate change is real, and a threat, this is the latest form that climate denial has taken.
Above, great deep dive from Deutsche Welle – Germany’s NPR. (actually, better than NPR – and don’t worry, in English)
Below, Iowa TV station in KCRG took on the disinformation about solar that they were seeing come in to their own studio.
Below, it’s not new, of course. Another Iowa TV report from 2017 shows how fossil fuel activists were trying to smear wind energy back then, as well. Disappointed that the turbines were not killing eagles as advertised, they took matters into their own hands, killing rabbits and strewing them around the base of turbines, hoping to lure raptors to their deaths.
Above, from Al Gore, encouragement and a warning. You may have seen a clip of this that went viral. This is the whole thing, 10 minutes or so. I’m old enough to remember when lefties like Ralph Nader and Michael Moore said “There isn’t a dime’s worth of difference between Al Gore and George Bush.” And that nihilism is largely responsible for the catastrophes of the last 20 years.
Below, from Stanford Engineer Mark Jacobson – no breakthroughs needed. Deploy, Deploy, Deploy.
The influential academic says renewables alone can halt climate crisis, with technologies such as carbon capture expensive wastes of time
“Combustion is the problem – when you’re continuing to burn something, that’s not solving the problem,” says Prof Mark Jacobson.
The Stanford University academic has a compelling pitch: the world can rapidly get 100% of its energy from renewable sources with, as the title of his new book says, “no miracles needed”.
Wind, water and solar can provide plentiful and cheap power, he argues, ending the carbon emissions driving the climate crisis, slashing deadly air pollution and ensuring energy security. Carbon capture and storage, biofuels, new nuclear and other technologies are expensive wastes of time, he argues.
“Bill Gates said we have to put a lot of money into miracle technologies,” Jacobson says. “But we don’t – we have the technologies that we need. We have wind, solar, geothermal, hydro, electric cars. We have batteries, heat pumps, energy efficiency. We have 95% of the technologies right now that we need to solve the problem.” The missing 5% is for long-distance aircraft and ships, he says, for which hydrogen-powered fuel cells can be developed.
Jacobson’s claim is a big one. He is not just talking about a shift to 100% renewable electricity, but all energy – and fossil fuels still provide about 80% of that today. Jacobson has scores of academic papers to his name and his work has been influential in policies passed by cities, states and countries around the world targeting 100% green power. He is also controversial, not least for pursuing a $10m lawsuit against researchers who claimed his work was flawed, which he later dropped.
I’ve said before that when conservative people in red areas begin to see themselves as part of the solution to climate change, rather than the problem, suddenly the whole conversation becomes a lot less toxic. Right now, despite our hyper polarized left and right, the discussion on clean energy is the most cordial, respectful, and productive conversation across the divide happening anywhere. I know, because I’m engaged in it.
Republican-leaning states are attracting most of the clean-energy investments spurred by the Biden administration’s signature Inflation Reduction Act, a bill that passed the U.S. Congress without any Republican votes.
Those announcements have so far clustered heavily in red states, where makers of components for electric vehicles, batteries, wind and solar equipment have proposed tens of billions of dollars of new investments in locations such as Georgia, Arizona and Texas, according to an analysis by The Wall Street Journal.
The Journal monitored large manufacturing investments in batteries, solar and wind components announced after the law was passed. Of nearly 30 such announcements where locations were given, all but three had chosen to set up facilities in Republican-leaning states, as defined by the Cook Political Report based on voting during the past two presidential elections. Together, they represent more than $35 billion in potential investments, the Journal found.
Red-leaning areas are also hosting the bulk of clean-power generation projects currently poised to benefit from the new law’s subsidies. Republican-held congressional districts harbor 82% by capacity of all utility-scale wind or solar farms and battery-storage projects that are currently in late-stage development, according to an analysis by business lobby American Clean Power.
Many politicians in those districts have opposed the Biden administration’s renewable-energy and climate push, and none of their Congressional representatives voted for the law. Still, local lawmakers and communities in those districts are welcoming an inflow of green projects, company executives and industry experts say.
PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — The warming of the waters off the East Coast has come at an invisible, but very steep cost — the loss of microscopic organisms that make up the base of the ocean’s food chain.
The growing warmth and saltiness of the Gulf of Maine off New England is causing a dramatic decrease in the production of phytoplankton, according to Maine-based scientists who recently reported results of a yearslong, NASA-funded study. Phytoplankton, sometimes described as an “invisible forest,” are tiny plant-like organisms that serve as food for marine life.
The scientists found that phytoplankton are about 65% less productive in the Gulf of Maine, part of the Atlantic Ocean bounded by New England and Canada, than they were two decades ago. The Gulf of Maine has emerged as one of the fastest warming sections of the world’s oceans.
Potential loss of phytoplankton has emerged as a serious concern in recent years in other places, such as the Bering Sea off Alaska. The loss of the tiny organisms has the ability to disrupt valuable fishing industries for species such as lobsters and scallops, and it could further jeopardize imperiled animals such as North Atlantic right whales and Atlantic puffins, scientists said.
“The drop in the productivity over these 20 years is profound,” said William Balch, a senior research scientist with Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences in East Boothbay, Maine, who led the study. “And that has large ramifications to what can grow here. The health of the ecosystem, the productivity of the ecosystem.”
The scientists did the study using data gathered since 1998 by tracking chemical changes in the Gulf of Maine. The samples used to perform the work were gathered via commercial ferries and research vessels that run the same routes over and over.
The data showed changes between the gulf and the broader Atlantic, Balch said. Intrusions of warm water from the North Atlantic since 2008 have created a gulf that is hotter, saltier and less hospitable to the phytoplankton, the study states. The scientists published their findings last June in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences.
Phytoplankton are eaten by larger zooplankton, small fish and crustaceans, and they are critically important to sustaining larger marine life up the food chain such as sharks and whales. Loss of phytoplankton “will likely have negative impacts on the overall productivity” of larger animals and commercial fisheries, the study states.
When freezing temperatures in the southeastern US led to blackouts over the holidays, some pointed their fingers at clean energy. That line of attack — solar panels and wind turbines are less reliable in storms than coal and gas plants — has become predictable. But it’s dead wrong, and it’s important to understand why, to avoid allowing a canard to slow the push for cleaner air and bolder climate action.
The issue of electricity reliability is a crucial one and is rightly at the center of energy debates. Blackouts from storms can lead to suffering and death: In western New York last month, nine residents died after power failures cut off heat to their homes. Blackouts also result in steep economic losses. Avoiding them should be a top priority.
The most common cause of blackouts, downed power lines, is also the most visible. But there is one source of energy that safeguards against that danger: rooftop solar. If a tree takes down wires, or the energy grid fails for other reasons, solar panels with batteries can help families and businesses weather a blackout.
It’s true that on-site solar is not practical for every home, but it’s viable in far more places than commonly imagined. And the main reason more homes and businesses don’t have their own solar panels is political: States and localities have made it unnecessarily difficult to obtain solar permits, and utilities have lobbied to block Americans from selling their excess power back onto the grid or force them into accepting prices far below what the utilities receive for transmitting the same units of power.
As a result, the public is paying a steep cost: in higher electric bills, dangerous blackouts, harmful pollution that kills thousands of Americans every year, and changes to the climate that are making extreme weather — and the suffering that it brings — worse.
The second-largest cause of electricity outages during extreme weather is production failure. And once again, renewable energy has advantages over coal and gas in severe weather.
