Wind power is a fickle critter: wind too slow (no power); wind too fast (no power); wind turbine frozen solid (again, no power).
The habit of freezing up during cold spells is just another reason why wind power will never amount to a meaningful power source, not now, not ever.
Sure, there are ‘solutions’ when these things turn into giant popsicles.
Spraying steam from a diesel-fuelled boiler slung under a helicopter can help remove tonnes of debilitating ice from their blades.
But that doesn’t deal with the inner workings of these things, when bearings, brakes, gearboxes, yaw controls and generators lock-up solid.
Some are equipped with internal heating systems meant to keep their working from doing so. Those heating systems are run from power delivered from the grid – ie, electricity generated with coal-fired power – or even local diesel generators. Which is precisely what’s been happening in the Scottish Highlands. As Jack Montgomery reports below.
Green Fail: Dozens of Scottish Wind Turbines Powered by Diesel Generators, Pour Hydraulic Oil into Countryside
Breitbart
Jack Montgomery
6 February 2023
Scotland’s green-obsessed left-separatist government has been left with egg on its face by revelations that dozens of gigantic onshore wind turbines are having to be hooked up to diesel generators, leaking thousands of litres of hydraulic oil into the countryside.
Scottish Power — led by a Spaniard, Ignacio Galan, and actually a subsidiary of Spanish firm Iberdrola — conceded that some 71 of its turbines had to be hooked up to diesel generators to keep them warm in December, according to the Sunday Mail, with a whistleblower telling the left-leaning newspaper that problems with the turbines are deep-seated.
“During December 60 turbines at Arecleoch and 11 at Glenn App were de-energised due to a cabling fault… In order to get these turbines re-energised diesel generators were running for upwards of six hours a day,” they revealed.
Indeed, the Record went on to say that some 4,000 litres (over 1,000 U.S. gallons) of leaking hydraulic oil was “sprayed over the countryside” by the turbines — a less than environmentally-friendly impact.
“The Scottish Government wants to make our country attractive to foreign investors as 40 per cent of the wind that blows across Europe blows across Scotland. However, that should not mean we put up with our waterways and nature being polluted with carbon from diesel generators and hydraulic oil,” the whistleblower complained to the Mail, evidently a true believer in the climate change agenda.
“People should be aware that, while their energy costs continue to rise, our windfarms are not operating as efficiently as they could be due to corporate greed,” they added — possibly a reference to things like the reported £11 million Scottish Power’s Spanish chairman raked in during 2021, as regular Scots were being crushed beneath sharply rising energy bills.
Indeed, Richard Tice, the leader of the Reform Party — formerly the Brexit Party — recently complained that some 83 per cent of Britain’s offshore wind turbines are foreign-owned, with the largest single owner being the government of EU-members-state Denmark.
“We British taxpayers are paying huge inflation-linked subsidies to create ever larger profits for the Danish taxpayer. What’s the advantage of that?” Tice demanded.
Colin Smyth, a Member of the Scottish Parliament (MSP) for the leftist Scottish Labour Party in the region, conceded that “having to use diesel generators to de-ice faulty turbines is environmental madness,” attacking Scotland’s devolved government — also led by two other leftist parties, namely the separatist Scottish National Party (SNP) in coalition with the Scottish Greens — for the fact that their “rhetoric on net zero is very different from the reality” and accusing them of “dishonesty”.
However, the Labour Party is itself far from free of wind-related fiascos in Wales, where it runs the devolved government, with a 300-foot behemoth of a wind turbine costing millions of pounds toppling over in the country last year and terrifying local villagers, for instance — apparently due to high winds.
Wind turbines having issues with wind — the resource they are supposed to be able to tap for renewable energy — was far from unheard of prior to this, with other Welsh turbines lighting up like “giant Catherine wheels” after gales caused them to burst into flames in a 2014 incident, for example.
STOP THESE THINGS 
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