Wind Turbines’ Dirty Secret
November 8, 2022
By Paul Homewood
h/t Joe Public
Oh Dear!!
In among the tsunami of news coverage (especially at the BBC and the Guardian) about COP27, another story emerged today, reported on by the Guardian with a somewhat alarming heading: “World’s ‘most potent greenhouse gas’ escaped during work on UK windfarm”.
There are several worrying aspects to the story. The greenhouse gas in question is sulphur hexafluoride (SF6), which can apparently cause respiratory problems in humans. It is colourless and odourless, which presumably makes it difficult to detect (and, given its potential for causing respiratory harm, therefore dangerous). We learn that workers on offshore windfarms are concerned about this:
Full post here.
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
I would just note that SF6 has been in use for many years in generating plant. The quantities are very small and the risk low. I’m not sure that this is a topic really worth raising in the global warming onslaught that we are now experiencing in the mighty meja.
Jack,
I would agree that the overall impact of SF6 is beyond trivial. Further, the fact that it is man-made only precludes any material % in the atmosphere. The point here, however, is that given the GWP of this gas (roughly 24,000 times that of a similar quantity of CO2 over 100 years) it is incredible to find that, whilst banned for many applications, it gets a classic green pass for use in windmills, which were meant to, er, reduce greenhouse gas emissions. One rule for one….
It also begs the question: how are the kilos of this gas needed per windmill to be disposed of once a windmill’s useful life (!) is over? Or do we just release them into the atmosphere?
magesox. I cannot let the GWP comment go without reply.
I’d like to know how to measure GWP when we cannot even get a measure of the climate sensitivity of CO2.
If it cannot be measured it cannot be observed. If it cannot be observed, it cannot be tested. If it cannot be tested, it’s not science.
And that sums it up for me: GWP is unscientific.
How could something have an effect as a multiple of Climate Sensitivity (to CO2) when Climate Sensitivity itself cannot be measured. Decades of research has failed to produce a meaningful constraint on the size of Climate Sensitivity. Which suggests we should be ready to drop the notion that Climate Sensitivity has any scientific merit.
It’s models from start to finish. These ideas are stuck in a theoretical cul-de-sac, detached from observational science.
GWP is a nonsense metric invented by the IPCC. Will Happer has pointed out its got no basis in physics.
On the one hand SF6 has a quite distinctive absorption spectrum with little overlap with other GHGs. On the other, volumes are so small – about 3 parts per trillion in the atmosphere – that it contributes about 1% of the total warming effect on the simplistic IPCC calculation..
https://phys.org/news/2020-01-sulfur-hexafluoride-truths-myths-greenhouse.html
Jordan, yes that is indeed the fundamental problem that for me removes climate science from being science. It is conjecture its interesting to conjecture and the models show we should probably keep investigating the possibility that we are altering the climate but that’s as far as we have got. The absurd claim ECS is an “emergent” property of the models illustrates how removed from sense modellers are. They are not even remotely close enough to accurately modelling the climate system for ECS to “emerge”. But I can see no way out of this madness except a significant and long-term cooling. And even that might not do it.
Sulphur hexafluoride has been used for years in high voltage land based switchgear, its really good at arc extinction, I really do not think it is much of an argument against wind farms, there are much bigger and better negative issues with them. Carbon dioxide is also used as fire suppressant in switching areas of land based facilities.
Hydrogen is used for cooling the the huge alternators in coal/biomass and nuclear plants, as long as it is above 95% it will not explode, it would be the last thing I would use, but it increases the efficiency (lower windage loss).
I know from personal experience that SF6 is also used to repair a detatched retina, in France at least, in pneumatic retinopexy
According to Wikipedia it’s non-toxic, and used in medical imaging, so I’m not sure why the workers are making a fuss. The “global heating” potential (Guardian speak) is hilarious though.
“…making a fuss..”
I suggest that we tell all the nervous nellies to start worrying about the Sun expanding and engulfing the Earth as the result of carbon dioxide emissions.
At least one part of the assertion is sober truth.
And then it will be appropriate to call it global heating.
Somehow I wasn’t worried because the ‘concessus’ was that it would happen 4-5 thousand million years in the future, but recently I saw a prediction that it MIGHT HAPPEN as soon as one thousand million years in time.
Worry about that replaced the less likelihood of CARBON causing global heating.
I don’t much disagree with the comments. For me, there is a health risk (however slight), and a huge irony in a powerful greenhouse gas being banned in Europe, save (in part at least) to the extent that it helps Big Wind. My writing was slightly tongue-in-cheek, but there is a serious point also – “green” energy isn’t so green as they would have you believe.
Paul – thanks for the plug!
Thanks for the article Mark.
Slightly OT, does anyone know why they chose “green”? Is it green as in jealousy, or green as in naive, or perhaps green because plants are green? But if the latter, surely they realise that plants hate green – they literally throw green photons back in your face!
To me, the biggest negative with wind farms – apart from the fact that they are as ugly as sin (IMHO) – is that they are, by their very nature, far too intermittent. It’s much like having a fleet of intermittent buses to service a particular bus route but it’s a bagatelle to find the one that will get you from A to B but you don’t know which one – or how many in union – will do the job.
Such a pathetic waste of money.
It isn’t just the intermittency of Windmills, which most will think it is when the wind stops, it is that when the wind speed halves, the power available drops to ONE EIGHTH.
So a wind farm that can provide power to 1000 homes when the wind speed is, say 50mph, and running at full capacity, ends up providing power to 125 homes, leaving 875 homes without any power when the speed drops to 25mph.
There was an article here that, some time ago, IIRC, showed that all wind speeds at a North Sea wind farm were equally likely, from nearly zero up to nearly the maximum windspeed.
Plotting x-cubed, from 0 to Max, and finding the area under the curve to find the average power available, I get that it is only a QUARTER of Max, so of the 1000 homes, only 250 would have enough power, and that would be with 100% efficient batteries, with the windmills running at all speeds, from zero to Max.
Are the ‘experts’ at the Department of Energy so Mathematically challenged that they have not done these simple back-of-the-envelope calculations, or have I made a mistake?
But there are going to be lots more:
https://www.businessgreen.com/news/4059801/cop27-uk-joins-global-offshore-wind-alliance
“Renewable UK CEO says decision represents a ‘major vote of confidence’ in the UK’s offshore wind industry
The UK has announced it will join the Global Offshore Wind Alliance, an initiative launched last month that brings together politicians, the private sector, and other international organisations to accelerate deployment of offshore wind technologies around the world.
The announcement puts the UK among a pool of eight countries that this afternoon signed up to the multi-stakeholder alliance on the side-lines of the COP27 Climate Summit which is taking place in Sharm El Sheikh in Egypt.
Belgium, Colombia, Germany, Ireland, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway, and the USA have also signed up to the Alliance, which was launched in September by the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), the Global Wind Energy Council, and the Danish government.
The group has set a target of increasing global offshore wind capacity more than six-fold, from 60GW today to 380GW by the end of 2030, by installing 35GW a year. The hope is to then increase deployment to 70GW annually throughout the next decade.”
Earlier this year Wind Europe warned that there was a shortage of the three types of specialised vessels required to build offshore wind farms which “poses risk for project execution worldwide”
These are Foundation Installation Vessels (FIVs), Wind Turbine Installation Vessels (WTIVs) and Cable Laying Vessels (CLVs) that connect the wind farm to the mainland.
The problem is exacerbated by the fact the turbines are getting bigger faster than the ships and the sheer number of offshore installations in the pipeline.
This has definitely come up before, bit of a non-story in the scheme of things.
A few years back WUWT/BBC.
Thr Guardian loves its ‘potent greenhouse gas’ mythology, conveniently forgetting as alarmists tend to do that most radiative gas in the atmosphere is water vapour.
If they admitted it, the whole greenhouse thing would look as silly as it is.
The BBC link from he WUWT story.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-49567197
According to a video from Doctor William van Wijngaarden and Professor William Happer that appears on the “Climate Realists of Australia” YouTube channel, the GWP (global warming potential) measure grossly exaggerates actual warming in the real atmosphere (although the video does not mention this particular substance.) I also seem to remember seeing a debunking of the warming potential of sulphur hexaflouride soon after an article about it by Matt McGrath (I think called something like “The Energy Industry’s Dirty Little Secret.”) Still, it is something we could well do without: but will have to put up with, sadly.
Clip that’s doing the rounds.
Homer Simpson goes off grid
and chooses WINDPOWER
“Kids we’ll be living intermittently”
National Grid is on the case.
https://www.current-news.co.uk/news/national-grid-to-explore-sf6-replacement-solution-with-the-university-of-manchester
IIRC switchgear that uses SF6 is built as lifetime sealed units precisely to reduce the risk of gas escape. Drilling these out to extract the SF6 and replace it with something else seems to carry risk to me.
I have been exposed to a SF6 leak and didn’t know or notice because the amount of gas used in typical HV switchgear applications is small.
Also the other life threatening hazards of operation of this equipment tend to put the risk of SF6 into context.
The website IamKate https://grid.iamkate.com, seems to think they are wonderful.
“Great Britain’s exposed position in the north-east Atlantic makes it one of the best locations in the world for wind power, and the shallow waters of the North Sea host several of the world’s largest offshore wind farms.
New wind power records are set regularly, and at 12:10pm on 2nd November 2022 British onshore and offshore wind farms produced a record 16.74gw of power.
Power Date achieved
16gw 19th October 2022
15gw 25th May 2022
14gw 13th February 2021
13gw 10th December 2019
12gw 28th November 2018
11gw 23rd October 2018
10gw 17th January 2018
What that doesn’t reveal is the extent of curtailment. National Grid claimed a record of over 20GW for November 2nd, suggesting close to 4GW was curtailed at the time.
As a rule if a union raises a safety problem all it’s really trying to do is squeeze more money out of the employer.
No doubt there has been the odd exception but I’ve never met one.
SF6 is given a very high GWP due to it’s stability and long lifespan in the atmosphere. Pure SF6 is non-toxic but asphyxiant. SF6 breakdown products, due to arcs taking place in the gas especially if there is also some moisture present, are toxic and irritant. The reported incident suggest that some form of failure took place possibly including arcing and unplanned release of the gas.
Industry practice is always to recover the gas from a chamber. Where the chamber does not have a filling/emptying connection a sealed drilling technique has been developed to safely remove the gas to a storage cylinder.
As others below have noted, this actually a complete non-story. SF6 is commonly used in switchgear for arc suppression and even if it did escape it is non toxic and being much heavier than air certainly will not suddenly go upwards! More to the point is the reporter Alex Lawson who has taken over from Silly Jilly Ambrose as the Graun’s “Energy Correspondent” is probably even thicker than she is.
The worry would be that some idiot would try to get SF6 use banned to save a few polar bears – and increase their population even more – and land us with a less effective and much more expensive alternative. After all, we have no shortage whatsoever of idiots.
And something for us to have a laugh about….
According to a piece on Blackout News, virtue signallers with solar panels will be just as much in the dark when the grid goes down as the rest of us – bar generator owners – as the systems will be shut off in the event of a power failure. They are not installed as independent power sources or emergency back ups.