5 ms·

How easy to maintain are these? Have they gotten better in the last decade? I see these things failing all the time around me but perhaps they are just shitty

How easy to maintain are these? Have they gotten better in the last decade? I see these things failing all the time around me but perhaps they are just shitty and better manufacturing saves the day?

ajross 7y ago
It's a highly redundant technology. Any turbine is as good as any other in the farm. As long as the economics work out (which is the real question, and I don't have an answer), there's no particular reason to demand perfect reliability for situations where maintenance is expensive. It's just like leaving stale servers to rot in giant data centers.
macspoofing 7y ago
>How easy to maintain are these? The current lifespan of wind turbines is around 20 years (but 15 years is closer to reality). So ... not great.
- tda 7y ago
  Do you have some sources? All windfarms I know of are designed for at least 25 years. Not many have reached that age yet, so if they last is yet to be seen. The first offshore wind farm Vindeby was decommissioned in 2016 (after 25 years) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vindeby_Offshore_Wind_Farm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vindeby_Offshore_Wind_Farm In 2015 Yttre Stengrund (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yttre_Stengrund_offshore_wind_farm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yttre_Stengrund_offshore_wind_...) was decommissioned after only 14 years in service. But that was a really small park and the decision to do so was mainly economical as the turbines were rare and thus spare parts expensive. had just a few (<10) and really small (<2MW) turbines. Currently parks are designed/built with perhaps 100x9MW turbines. Because fo the scale differnece, older parks are reach end of life more for economical than purely technical reasons. The same reason why computers only lasted a few years in the early 2000's: they just became so much better so quickly that there was no economic point in holding on to them for more than that.
  - macspoofing 7y ago
    Here you go[1]. 12-15 years [1]https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/energy/windpower/9770837/Wind-farm-turbines-wear-sooner-than-expected-says-study.html https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/energy/windpower/9770...
    - NeedMoreTea 7y ago
      Trouble is, the "Renewable Energy Foundation" is really an anti-wind farm lobbying group set up by Noel Edmonds. Presumably a NIMBY reaction to some plan for a wind farm near wherever he lives. I'll need some validation of any "study" from them. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/blog/2011/may/18/renewable-energy-foundation-wind-farm https://www.theguardian.com/environment/blog/2011/may/18/ren...
      - cbmuser 7y ago
        20 years is a common number that is used for windparks and solar cells. A lot of sources cite that number. And that with capacity factors ranging between 10% to maximal 50%. Modern nuclear power plants (VVER-1200) reach 60 years of lifetime and have a capacity factor of 90%.
        jerven 7y ago
        20 year is the guarantee period for wind and solar. Considering wind and solar are turn key provisioned, it is a reasonable assumption. Also consider than these sites are then habitually repowered. Which in the last 20 years would give you double the power on a site or more. Depending on the tower choice up to a third of the cost of wind park is in raw metal costs. This does not lose value over all the years. Metal towers are going to be even more common in the future onland (cheaper to transport build and design) and on sea the only reasonable choice. A VVER-1200 will see like most nuclear plants at least a major turbine renovations in a 60 year range. Which is a major historic source of failure and costs. Fuel cost is not as insignificant as we might think. Remember, as well that for any single provider grid capacity factor is limited by the demand of such a grid. When talking whole grids you are limited to 75% max capacity for all sources combined. If you only have nuclear your 90% capacity factor will drop to 75%ish. This is why for example the UK has so much storage capacity. It's from when their nuclear energy was building out. Also look at when construction even serial in Nuclear started to fail. In france this was the N4 generation that was designed in the 1970's. Since then costs and complications have arrived. i.e. to be safe the plants have become more complicated to build. EPR's are terrifying in their complexity and the 11 year death march the European builds are on. The chinese build them but with closed books and unknown oversight. They are not going to build more of this model. Westinghouse could not build it's design either. VVER-1200 was specced to be build in under 5 years. It also took the Leningrad builds double that time. Novovoronezh-1 took 8 years, but -2 which is supposed to be faster took 10. What is up with that. Also remember that Wind and Solar are often reported full project costs, including transmission, with repairs etc. . Nuclear is often only the reactor and transmission and other costs that are part of the project are not reported. For wind if I have site and 10 billion, next year or the year after it's full and on schedule. For nuclear I might have something next decade. Take a VVER-1200 at 90% capacity costing 10 billion USD 10 billion / (1200 * 0.90) => 9259259 Watney extension number, a current gen offshore 3 billion / (659 * 0.45) => 10116337 Wow you say, look nuclear is at least 10% cheaper! Yes, but your financing costs are double that for wind. Your running costs are higher, and you don't have a transmission. You can of course complain that I added 1.4 billion to the nuclear story (costs from the finish VVER-1200) project. Taking into account the finish VVER-1200 first paper work was granted in 2010 and is likely to be operational no earlier than 2028 the then year USD will easily make those numbers. So in the best case nuclear is cheaper by 30%. Worst case it is 300% more expensive. What will you do if someone builds wind next to your nuclear powerplant? They have 8 years of profit before you turn on. Will you be able to sell your electricity? Will there be a market? i.e. you are building expecting an aluminium smelter as customer but it went bankrupt in the decade that you are building. Nuclear, risks, risks and risks. For insignificant potential upsides on the market. Wind, known quantities, insured, guaranteed, with fixed costs and often known profit margins. This was too long ;)
cagenut 7y ago
remember how there used to be articles about how google wouldn't bother to replace failed hardware in racks because it was easier to just map around it? thats what wind and solar are like for the grid. its pets vs. cattle gone terrawatt.
- xwdv 7y ago
  They won’t replace it right away but a spelunker will eventually get to it after some years.
tlb 7y ago
You see a lot of dead ones around the Bay Area, because of an experiment by Lawrence Livermore Labs (1990s?) where they installed windmills of many different designs all over the East Bay. Many of the designs were unreliable.
josefresco 7y ago
> I see these things failing all the time around me You do? Where?
- zdragnar 7y ago
  Pretty much anywhere with turbines installed between 1990 and 2000 or so. They don't work forever, and the tradeoff between durability and efficiency is often set to around a 25 year lifespan. In fact, if they were cheaper to build, it might make sense to design them with shorter lifespans to take better advantage of the improvements in technology faster.
- Rebelgecko 7y ago
  I see dead ones at the San Gorgonio wind farm all the time. I imagine the maintenance situation is even worse for offshore installations.
  - jerven 7y ago
    Are they dead/broken or market optimizing power delivery? Spinning a few down to nothing can be better for a farm total life time efficiency. You might make more money curtailing output because it is easy to turn off a wind turbine, compared to reacting with an inflexible baseload plant.
    - Rebelgecko 7y ago
      For many I can't tell the difference between off and broken, but some are clearly broken (missing blades, collapsed towers, etc). Supposedly a lot of the companies that were originally operating in the San Gorgonio pass went out of business, and their old windmills are being gradually replaced.

How easy to maintain are these? Have they gotten better in the last decade? I see these things failing all the time around me but perhaps they are just shitty and better manufacturing saves the day?

ajross 7y ago

It's a highly redundant technology. Any turbine is as good as any other in the farm. As long as the economics work out (which is the real question, and I don't have an answer), there's no particular reason to demand perfect reliability for situations where maintenance is expensive. It's just like leaving stale servers to rot in giant data centers.

macspoofing 7y ago

>How easy to maintain are these? The current lifespan of wind turbines is around 20 years (but 15 years is closer to reality). So ... not great.

tda 7y ago
Do you have some sources? All windfarms I know of are designed for at least 25 years. Not many have reached that age yet, so if they last is yet to be seen. The first offshore wind farm Vindeby was decommissioned in 2016 (after 25 years) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vindeby_Offshore_Wind_Farm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vindeby_Offshore_Wind_Farm In 2015 Yttre Stengrund (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yttre_Stengrund_offshore_wind_farm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yttre_Stengrund_offshore_wind_...) was decommissioned after only 14 years in service. But that was a really small park and the decision to do so was mainly economical as the turbines were rare and thus spare parts expensive. had just a few (<10) and really small (<2MW) turbines. Currently parks are designed/built with perhaps 100x9MW turbines. Because fo the scale differnece, older parks are reach end of life more for economical than purely technical reasons. The same reason why computers only lasted a few years in the early 2000's: they just became so much better so quickly that there was no economic point in holding on to them for more than that.
- macspoofing 7y ago
  Here you go[1]. 12-15 years [1]https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/energy/windpower/9770837/Wind-farm-turbines-wear-sooner-than-expected-says-study.html https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/energy/windpower/9770...
  - NeedMoreTea 7y ago
    Trouble is, the "Renewable Energy Foundation" is really an anti-wind farm lobbying group set up by Noel Edmonds. Presumably a NIMBY reaction to some plan for a wind farm near wherever he lives. I'll need some validation of any "study" from them. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/blog/2011/may/18/renewable-energy-foundation-wind-farm https://www.theguardian.com/environment/blog/2011/may/18/ren...
    - cbmuser 7y ago
      20 years is a common number that is used for windparks and solar cells. A lot of sources cite that number. And that with capacity factors ranging between 10% to maximal 50%. Modern nuclear power plants (VVER-1200) reach 60 years of lifetime and have a capacity factor of 90%.
      - jerven 7y ago
        20 year is the guarantee period for wind and solar. Considering wind and solar are turn key provisioned, it is a reasonable assumption. Also consider than these sites are then habitually repowered. Which in the last 20 years would give you double the power on a site or more. Depending on the tower choice up to a third of the cost of wind park is in raw metal costs. This does not lose value over all the years. Metal towers are going to be even more common in the future onland (cheaper to transport build and design) and on sea the only reasonable choice. A VVER-1200 will see like most nuclear plants at least a major turbine renovations in a 60 year range. Which is a major historic source of failure and costs. Fuel cost is not as insignificant as we might think. Remember, as well that for any single provider grid capacity factor is limited by the demand of such a grid. When talking whole grids you are limited to 75% max capacity for all sources combined. If you only have nuclear your 90% capacity factor will drop to 75%ish. This is why for example the UK has so much storage capacity. It's from when their nuclear energy was building out. Also look at when construction even serial in Nuclear started to fail. In france this was the N4 generation that was designed in the 1970's. Since then costs and complications have arrived. i.e. to be safe the plants have become more complicated to build. EPR's are terrifying in their complexity and the 11 year death march the European builds are on. The chinese build them but with closed books and unknown oversight. They are not going to build more of this model. Westinghouse could not build it's design either. VVER-1200 was specced to be build in under 5 years. It also took the Leningrad builds double that time. Novovoronezh-1 took 8 years, but -2 which is supposed to be faster took 10. What is up with that. Also remember that Wind and Solar are often reported full project costs, including transmission, with repairs etc. . Nuclear is often only the reactor and transmission and other costs that are part of the project are not reported. For wind if I have site and 10 billion, next year or the year after it's full and on schedule. For nuclear I might have something next decade. Take a VVER-1200 at 90% capacity costing 10 billion USD 10 billion / (1200 * 0.90) => 9259259 Watney extension number, a current gen offshore 3 billion / (659 * 0.45) => 10116337 Wow you say, look nuclear is at least 10% cheaper! Yes, but your financing costs are double that for wind. Your running costs are higher, and you don't have a transmission. You can of course complain that I added 1.4 billion to the nuclear story (costs from the finish VVER-1200) project. Taking into account the finish VVER-1200 first paper work was granted in 2010 and is likely to be operational no earlier than 2028 the then year USD will easily make those numbers. So in the best case nuclear is cheaper by 30%. Worst case it is 300% more expensive. What will you do if someone builds wind next to your nuclear powerplant? They have 8 years of profit before you turn on. Will you be able to sell your electricity? Will there be a market? i.e. you are building expecting an aluminium smelter as customer but it went bankrupt in the decade that you are building. Nuclear, risks, risks and risks. For insignificant potential upsides on the market. Wind, known quantities, insured, guaranteed, with fixed costs and often known profit margins. This was too long ;)

cagenut 7y ago

remember how there used to be articles about how google wouldn't bother to replace failed hardware in racks because it was easier to just map around it? thats what wind and solar are like for the grid. its pets vs. cattle gone terrawatt.

xwdv 7y ago
They won’t replace it right away but a spelunker will eventually get to it after some years.

tlb 7y ago

You see a lot of dead ones around the Bay Area, because of an experiment by Lawrence Livermore Labs (1990s?) where they installed windmills of many different designs all over the East Bay. Many of the designs were unreliable.

josefresco 7y ago

> I see these things failing all the time around me You do? Where?

zdragnar 7y ago
Pretty much anywhere with turbines installed between 1990 and 2000 or so. They don't work forever, and the tradeoff between durability and efficiency is often set to around a 25 year lifespan. In fact, if they were cheaper to build, it might make sense to design them with shorter lifespans to take better advantage of the improvements in technology faster.
Rebelgecko 7y ago
I see dead ones at the San Gorgonio wind farm all the time. I imagine the maintenance situation is even worse for offshore installations.
- jerven 7y ago
  Are they dead/broken or market optimizing power delivery? Spinning a few down to nothing can be better for a farm total life time efficiency. You might make more money curtailing output because it is easy to turn off a wind turbine, compared to reacting with an inflexible baseload plant.
  - Rebelgecko 7y ago
    For many I can't tell the difference between off and broken, but some are clearly broken (missing blades, collapsed towers, etc). Supposedly a lot of the companies that were originally operating in the San Gorgonio pass went out of business, and their old windmills are being gradually replaced.