Most people do not think of wind turbines as being unsafe structures when it comes to generating energy. We've all heard about coal mining accidents, and refineries exploding – and we are aware of the safety issues there. Recently, in the news we've also seen what can happen with nuclear power plants, such as the one at Fukushima, Japan after the big earthquake and tsunami. A couple of years ago there was a horrific hydroelectric power plant accident in Russia.
Perhaps, this is why people believe that solar and wind energy are the way to go. Nevertheless, these giant wind turbine towers are often as tall as 200 feet high with 75 foot blades, meaning the wingspans of the two blades is 150 feet plus this inner diameter. Now then, there are lots of problems with wind turbine generators such as the fact that they create pressure areas behind them that can cause Bats to crash, believe me we need those bats for agricultural reasons. Also birds are sometimes hit by these blades, we call this bird kill, it is not as rare as you think.
There have been many videos posted on YouTube where wind turbine blades during high winds or turbulent conditions come apart and when they do it causes an unbalancing effect, just like when your dryer is unbalanced. The only difference is it can be so violent that rips the whole apparatus apart as the wind turbine blades fail and the tower comes crashing down. This can also occur when lightning hits one of these blades.
The other day I was talking about this with a fellow think tanker, Troy Laclaire about this – and I reasoned that perhaps there needs to be a device in the center which can offset to counteract the unbalancing affect when one blade is damaged, while the device slows down, and is eventually stopped from turning. One comment I had made was that perhaps there needs to be an ejection system which allows the blades to depart from the center and fall to the ground, rather than having the entire tower come crashing down.
In this case Troy disagreed because those turbine blades could end up hitting someone on the ground. And while that is true, those towers are quite heavy and will do serious damage, as they could kill someone if they landed on top of them. Plus, if they fall down the entire structure is 100% lost. Most people don't realize this but the cost to insure these wind turbine generators has increased over the years due to the number that have failed.
No matter how you look at it, wind generation is not as safe as it looks, and therefore the safety officials need to enforce the standards just as they would any other form of energy production – yes, this means increasing safety protocols, and raising the cost of wind generation, but if they are not viable in the marketplace because they are not a reliable energy source, as the wind doesn't always blow – maybe we should rethink these technologies completely. Maybe they shouldn't even exist in most places. Indeed I hope you will please consider all this and think on.
