Wind energy is NOT free
Quite aside from the large capital cost of building windmills, they need a lot of maintenance. It’s actually a step back in time, rather like steam trains, where you have to go around oiling them all the time: “Wind is clean, but it’s also very labor-intensive”
From a distance, say about three nautical miles, the future looks very simple. You stick a wind turbine up into the air, and it turns. Ralf Klooster can explain this to his five-year-old at home. The more difficult question is why Daddy has to drive to the jetty at Norddeich harbor every morning at six to make sure that those simple things out there in the water keep turning.
“It’s not as easy as you think,” says Klooster. He is a native of the East Frisia region of northwest Germany, has the physique of an Olympic rower and looks as if E.on has cast him for its advertising photos. Klooster is actually a custodian of sorts for the Alpha Ventus offshore wind farm, 45 kilometers (28 miles) from the North Sea island of Borkum. Even at high wind speeds, he is able to finish his sentences. As Klooster says, none of this is easy.
He awoke this morning at 4:45 a.m., boiled water for his tea (he uses “NaturWatt” green electricity, at 23.6 cents per kilowatt hour) and drove to the jetty to board the “Wind Force I.”
It sounds like “Air Force One,” but it’s merely the service boat for the Alpha Ventus wind farm, which consists of 12 five-megawatt towers and produces electricity for 50,000 households. It’s the largest offshore wind farm in the country. The morning greetings: “Moin!” – “Moin!”
A few men in overalls are standing by the boat, smoking. Others are hoisting boxes full of screws on board, “Big Bags” filled with tools, canisters of grease and lubricants, and duffel bags containing protective suits and provisions. The entire stern is filled with equipment and supplies.
Three Dutchmen, who are joining the crew for the first time, are told that if they have to vomit they should do it overboard (“the easy way”) and not into the toilet. Then a safety film is shown, in which a woman puts on a life vest to a soundtrack of club music. The Dutchmen have already dozed off.
The Wind Force I plies between the mainland and the wind farm, as long as the weather is acceptable. It’s a four-hour round trip. Helicopters are used during the winter and in bad weather. Batteries and transformers need constant maintenance, and all moveable parts on the crane and turbine have to be oiled and lubricated regularly. The switches have to be tested regularly, as do the fire protection systems, the lights, the life vests and, if there are control devices, those too. Wind is clean, but it’s also very labor-intensive.
Joselito from Manila has tied his paint-spattered overalls around his hips. He is one of the four “coaters” whose job it is to constantly paint the towers to protect against rust. He works as a painter at the Blohm + Voss shipyard in Hamburg during the winter, but now he is here. “Wind energy? Good, very good,” he says. “Good work.”
On this morning, three mechanics with turbine maker Areva Wind were driven to the pier in a black van. With their tattoos, ponytails and black overalls, they look like roadies on a heavy metal tour. But they’re just here to service the crane on tower 11.
The roughly 20 men on board the Wind Force 1 aren’t necessarily Green Party voters. In fact, they look more like people who might be working on plutonium plants, if they existed offshore. Or perhaps not? “The difference,” says one man who is leaning against the deck crane, wearing glasses and a Hulk Hogan goatee, “is that if a wind tower falls over, it isn’t likely to cause a lot of damage out here.”
Klooster says that he wouldn’t describe himself as the custodian of the wind farm, but rather as an “offshore service technician.”
Pages of Conditions and Regulations
On Nov. 9, 2001, wind power pioneer Ingo de Buhr received permission from the Federal Maritime and Hydrographic agency to build and operate an offshore wind farm beyond the 12-mile zone marking Germany’s territorial waters.
The license included 43 pages of requirements, conditions and regulations. Item 6.1.4, for example, describes the painting requirements: “The towers are to be painted yellow up to a height of 15 meters (49 feet) above the HAT (Highest Astronomical Tide) (RAL 1023 pursuant to DIN 6171, Part 1).”
The license also requires the operator to make allowances for military flight safety, to ensure that hazard lights are on at night and to monitor the facility’s impact on marine mammals and bird migration. According to item 24, when the facility is no longer in use it must be “properly disposed of on land.”
Four years later, De Buhr sold the license for €5 million ($6.85 million) to the German Offshore Wind Energy Foundation, a deep-pocketed association of power producers, banks, manufacturers and operators.
The bow of the Wind Force I is now pressing up against tower AV 4, the rubber squeaking against the steel tower in the waves. One after the other, the men climb onto the tower. Wearing their survival suits, they climb the rungs of the ladder to the platform. They will spend the next six hours servicing the tower.
The massive guillotine-like rotor comes down from above every two seconds. The 61-meter rotor slicing through the air, seemingly without making any noise, is longer than the wing of an Airbus 380.
In strong winds, the tips of the rotors travel at racecar-like speeds of up to 300 kilometers per hour (186 mph). The rotors wear out the fastest, and not, as one might expect, the transmission or the foundations in the water.
More HERE
Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.). For a daily critique of Leftist activities, see DISSECTING LEFTISM. To keep up with attacks on free speech see TONGUE-TIED. Also, don’t forget your daily roundup of pro-environment but anti-Greenie news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH . Email me here
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Posted by JonJayRay on October 22, 2011 9:08 am
» Filed Under Alternative Energy, Energy, News
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