Wind turbines - going strong 20 years on [View all]

[madokie]

Anti-wind campaigners claim that wind turbine performance more than halves after 15 years. Chris Goodall analyses the figures and finds that even 20-year old wind turbines in the UK are still going strong ...

The evidence strongly suggests that Professor Hughes greatly exaggerates the rate of performance decline.

The Renewable Energy Foundation (REF) has made the surprising assertion from the assertion that the performance of wind farms declines rapidly with age.

A study carried out by Professor Gordon Hughes for the REF in 2012 suggested that: "The normalised load factor for UK onshore wind farms declines from a peak of about 24% at age 1 to 15% at age 10 and 11% at age 15."

To put this in everyday English, Professor Hughes is saying that a 15 year old onshore wind farm will typically produce less than half its initial output of electricity.

Few people in the industry would demur from a conclusion that wind farms very gradually lose output but none accepted Hughes's finding that electricity generation falls at anything like the rate he stated.

http://www.theecologist.org/blogs_and_comments/commentators/2221532/wind_turbines_going_strong_20_years_on.html