THE company that operates “renewable energy” projects worldwide is investigating why one of the wind turbines it operates at the Berrybank Wind Farm in Western Victoria collapsed last week.
Global Power Generation, which operates the BerryBank Wind Farm, and is a subsidiary of Spanish company Naturgy, said a section of the wind turbine detached in the early hours of Tuesday morning after thunderstorms and damaging winds of 60–70 kph hit parts of the state.
A structural engineering professor Amin Heidarpour told the ABC the wind turbine should have been able to sustain strong winds.The expected service life for an entire wind turbine was 30 years, but other elements of the infrastructure may need to be replaced earlier.
The professor said the failure was likely in the blades. “It is totally unacceptable to see a two-year-old wind turbine collapse,” he said. “The normal service for blades is designed to be 20 years, so two years is very short.”
He also pointed out that while foundations and main towers should meet this timeline, blades, gearboxes, generators and other smaller hardware may need to be repaired or replaced more frequently.
What the professor says highlights the issue that when you multiply these repairs over thousands of wind turbines, the economics of wind power do not appear to be so “smart”.
Dr Heidarpour said Australian wind farm infrastructure was designed to withstand winds of at least 108kph, depending on the location of the structure, and the magnitude of the wind speed changes.
Ironically Global Power Generation (GPG) operates five gas-fired generators in Mexico but none in Victoria, which has several of Australia’s major gas fields. Basically, the Victorian Green-Left governments, in cahoots with gas companies, has stolen the gas and committed it to export rather than its traditional uses in the state.
GPG says the project’s remaining wind turbines had been temporarily paused and the site was safely secured. “An investigation is underway to confirm the root cause of the incident,” a Naturgy spokesperson told the ABC.
The incident exposed the vulnerable nature of wind generators that not only produce electricity sporadically, making supply and distribution a highly complicated task, but also the relatively short life of wind farms.
The Victorian government sees itself on a holy mission to end coal-fired power generation in the state, which is absolute stupidity, given that coal 24×7 without fail, provides between 30 and 60% of the state’s electricity requirements.
On clear, sunny days the state’s solar farms can temporarily provide more than half of the state’s electricity supply – at least while the sun is shining. But take away the coal and a week of bad weather across south-eastern Australia, will leave the electricity supply tentative or with blackouts.
For instance, the AEMO dashboard showed that on the morning of February 9th, solar in Victoria was providing 52% of the state’s electricity. By midday this had dropped to 17% while wind lifted to 42%. At the same time the state’s brown coal was also providing 42% of supply.
From the start of 2024, the Victorian government banned gas connections in all new housing, instead mandating total electrification of the state, stupidly hoping that it can fill the gap left by coal with batteries.
Public buildings such as schools and hospitals and other government-owned buildings were banned from gas connections for all projects yet to reach design stage. Total electrification is most likely connected to digitalisation of the energy system, which will effectively allow a government authority to monitor and control energy use in individual households.
Victoria’s Labor-Green loonies claims it is phasing out gas because of rising gas bills, the alleged “need to meet its emissions reduction targets” and alleged health concerns.
The state’s Climate Action and Energy Minister Lily D’Ambrosio claimed in 2023 that the state’s gas sector contributes about 17 per cent of its “greenhouse gas emissions” and without cutting gas, Victoria will not meet its emissions reduction targets of 75 to 80 per cent by 2035 and net zero by 2045.
By that time, if the Labor-Green Left crowd remain in power, Victoria will be a totally deindustrialised, totalitarian state with the entire population forced to live in two or three urban areas with the remainder of the state closed down as human and agriculture-free nature habitat.
Victorians will most likely be mandated to factory-produced eat insect protein and given monthly mRNA shots to ensure a “sustainable” population is maintained.
