Wind turbines do fine as long as they are not installed in a hostile environment. Unfortunately, "hostile" includes the marine environment. The cost of maintaining an offshore wind farm is triple that of a similar inland installation. In fact, the only worse place to put a wind farm is a desert.
They do kill millions of birds every year, and I'm not too sure that locating a large offshore farm in the middle of the Atlantic flyway is too good an idea. Hunters and bird lovers have some pretty powerful lobbies.
So the people who will be paying for these offshore installations (a.k.a., the customers of PGN, soon to be DUK) have to ask themselves if they want to pay higher electric bills, only to see the farm possibly shut down by an environmental lawsuit within a few years.
BTW, I own stock in both Vestas and Gamesa, so don't think I'm anti-wind turbine.
I'm anti-putting them in stupid locations that explode your maintenance budget.
I'd say Carol is totally correct
Wind turbines do fine as long as they are not installed in a hostile environment. Unfortunately, "hostile" includes the marine environment. The cost of maintaining an offshore wind farm is triple that of a similar inland installation. In fact, the only worse place to put a wind farm is a desert.
They do kill millions of birds every year, and I'm not too sure that locating a large offshore farm in the middle of the Atlantic flyway is too good an idea. Hunters and bird lovers have some pretty powerful lobbies.
So the people who will be paying for these offshore installations (a.k.a., the customers of PGN, soon to be DUK) have to ask themselves if they want to pay higher electric bills, only to see the farm possibly shut down by an environmental lawsuit within a few years.
BTW, I own stock in both Vestas and Gamesa, so don't think I'm anti-wind turbine.
I'm anti-putting them in stupid locations that explode your maintenance budget.