Monday, April 25, 2011

Windmill Blades Go Flying as "Green Jersey" Becomes a Massive Clusterf**k

An appropriate metaphor for the entire government-funded "green technology" movement can be found in this tale of renewable woe out of Forked River farm country, deep in the heart of New Jersey:

Hoping to save money by generating renewable energy from wind turbines instead of buying it from a power company, two Forked River farm owners had 120-foot turbines erected on their properties in December.
 But by March 8, the turbines no longer were rotating. Three fiberglass blades ranging in weight from 265 to 290 pounds flew off the tower of the turbine at James Knoeller's Christmas Tree Farm on Carriage Road on March 2.
Cracks in the blades of an identical turbine tower at Argos Farms, operated by Spyro Martin, were discovered around the same time. Martin's turbine was shut down as a precaution.
 The incidents prompted an investigation by the state Office of Clean Energy, which is freezing applications for its Renewable Energy Incentive Program wind project until officials know why the blades at Knoeller's farm came off....
 
Let's stop here for a moment.  How soon do you think this moratorium on government-funded, Obama-approved, elitist-embraced energy will last?  Fifteen minutes, perhaps?  And as a contrast, how many permits have been issued for offshore drilling in the Gulf since the BP spill? 
 
Yeah.  One.  But wait, the stupidity has only just begun:
 
Knoeller's 17-year-old granddaughter, Sarah, was working with horses near the tower when the blades flew off.


"One of them nearly hit her," Knoeller said. "The weather was fine. There were mild winds.

No blood for wind!  And no more lies about the efficiency of "green energy"!  Truth is...it sucks:
 
"The most disappointing aspect of this project prior to the blades falling off was the electric production was only 25 percent of what I was told I was going to get by Skylands Renewable Energy. The catastrophic blade failure was the last straw," Knoeller added.


Knoeller said his tower was to produce 66,000 kilowatts a year, which would have amounted to a savings of $14,000 to $15,000 from not having to purchase the power from a power company such as JCP&L. He said he is not satisfied with the safety of the tower or with the manufacturer.

But you're dealing with government cronies here, so here comes the bird:
 
Now, he wants the bladeless tower removed from his farm and his money refunded. Enertech and Skylands Renewable Energy, however, say Knoeller is not covered by the contract's warranty because he missed scheduled payments.

Enertech sales manager Dylan Jones said his company is taking responsibility for the problem, which he said was not a design flaw but a manufacturing issue. He added that there were no problems related to the towers' installation by Skylands.

Take responsibility, then pass it like a hot potato.  Sounds like a certain president I know...

And while windmill blades are flying all over New Jersey in an attempt to decapitate the Innocent, other townships are taking precautions - by refusing to put up windmills at all.  NIMBY-ism from liberals? No way!  It would be so...hypocritical:

Residents who were worried about a 325-foot high industrial wind turbine dominating the skyline can breathe a sigh of relief now that the proposal to build it at the National Guard Training Center has been canceled.


Sea Girt Mayor Mark Clemmensen, who made the announcement Wednesday in a prepared release, said that "this was a project which was wrong for Sea Girt as well as our neighbors in Manasquan and Spring Lake."


"The governor called Mark and I up Tuesday to tell us the project was being terminated," Manasquan Mayor George Dempsey said.
 "Environmentally, it (the wind turbine) is the right thing to do, but it was not being placed in the right location," said Dempsey

Right.  Green energy, like taxes, are for other people.  Just ask the Guru himself, Al Gore.  And besides - it can kill you!  Really!
Sea Girt and Manasquan residents also raised concerns about "wind turbine syndrome," which can cause nausea, insomnia and other health problems that some researchers say arise from the continuous whooshing sound made by turbine blades....
 
Ludicrous.  Everyone knows that "Wind Turbine Syndrome" symptoms are the same as those seen in the general population due to stresses of daily life!  Just ask the Wind Industry, who commissioned a study to prove it!  Any type of symptoms at all can be blamed on...the media:
 
....the power of suggestion, as conveyed by news media coverage of perceived 'wind-turbine sickness', might have triggered "anticipatory fear" in those close to turbine installations....
 
And Chris Christie is getting into the act to, finally manning up (after months of  heat from AFP, who are even bringing Democrats on board) and admitting he's thinking about pulling New Jersey out of the northeast's little cap & trade cartel:
 
New Jersey could become the next state to pull out of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI, pronounced “Reggie”), a system in the northeast that environmentalists until recently pointed to as a cap-and-trade success story. Earlier this month, the New Hampshire state house voted to repeal its membership, and now Gov. Chris Christie is hinting at doing the same thing.

“Is there enough of a benefit to the state to keep it going, or is it too much of a detriment on business? And the thing I’m most concerned about is that it doesn’t seem to be working in the entire region,” said Christie. “The value of these credits is getting less and less as we continue to go further and further out, and so the value of the program is becoming less and less.”

"The value is less and less"  Yup.. just ask Farmer Knoeller, the city of Manasquan, and New Jersey taxpayers, who get hit by a RGGI "tax" on their electric bills while gas creeps up to $4/gallon.  "Green" has got you coming and going, and it adds no benefit to our lives, while costing us our hard-earned cash and distracting us from our true calling:  Drilling for oil, on which this country sits on a sh*t-ton...

It's a fiasco.  Just like anything the government tells us is "for our own good..."

1 comment:

farmer said...

what does my wind turbine have to do with RGGI?