Well, not quite.
In 2019, Iowa got 41.9% of its energy from 5,590 wind turbines.
Those numbers are down this week, since Warren Buffett’s MidAmerican Energy has shut down 46 of its 3,000+ giant Iowa windmills to investigate why Danish Vestas blades snapped off of two of its giant pinwheels in the past few weeks:
The blades, upwards of 175 feet long, broke somewhere along their length and not at the base, the company said.
On Thursday, MidAmerican said, a technician discovered that a turbine blade had fallen into a harvested field southeast of Paton in Greene County. The technician went to the Beaver Creek wind farm after its monitoring system detected a problem with the turbine, the company said in a statement.
MidAmerican said a blade also broke off a turbine and fell into a cornfield in September at its Arbor Hills wind farm in Adair County [Donnelle Eller, “MidAmerican Energy Takes 46 Wind Turbines Offline After Blades Fall in Rural Iowa,” Des Moines Register, 2020.10.20].
These raining blades of death appear not to have damaged any humans or human property besides several bushels of corn. I have to wonder what’s the more perilous picnic spot: under a gargantuan electrical whirligig or under a tree at the park?
Related Risk Reduction: Some Norwegians and a Swede have discovered that painting one blade (not all of them, just one) of a wind turbine can reduce birdkill by over 70%. Maybe MidAmerican can paint its replacement blades for those Iowa turbines black… before they hoist and install them.
Also painted black: the Cold Steel Torpedo:
Mid-America said one or both turbines had lightning protection systems that were designed to take nearby lightning strikes safely into the ground.
https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/money/business/2020/10/20/berkshire-hathaway-midamerican-energy-windmill-blades-break-iowa-farms/5991387002/
They are far from you, Mike. So far, so good, but be ready to duck, okay?
That’s really exciting news about the reduction in bird-kill study! It’s really quite ironic that a scientific study might produce a result that is beneficial to both the environment AND heavy industry…….
Weird. I thought that Universities, professors and researchers were all Lefty Libtards that are trying to destroy all jobs and industries with political correctness activism and wokeness.
Who knew that sustainable economic growth driven by innovation might emanate from allowing institutions of higher learning to flourish in an independent and free-thinking environment? I’m sure that we will see even more innovation coming from the Koch Brothers-funded programs at George Mason University and Liberty University, rather than a Koch-approved agenda of climate denial.
Tag, notm sure what goes on at Liberty, but, according to this Rolling Stone piece, the only professors at Liberty with tenure are the ones at the law school, which have to be tenured so the school can keep it’s accreditation. head’s up, seriously long read.
https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/jerry-fallwell-jr-becki-giancarlo-granda-scandal-liberty-university-1075672/
Liberty *only* tenures law school profs?! Well there’s the way to keep them jumping to Jr’s perverse tunes.