612
submitted 1 year ago by lntl@lemmy.ml to c/worldnews@lemmy.ml

German energy giant RWE has begun dismantling a wind farm to make way for a further expansion of an open-pit lignite coal mine in the western region of North Rhine Westphalia.

I thought renewables were cheaper than coal. How is this possible?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] RickRussell_CA@lemmy.world 78 points 1 year ago

So, if I'm reading this correctly, this is the Konigshovener Hohe wind farm which is built on the site of the Garzweiler open-pit lignite mine. According to this article, the site was inaugurated in 2015 with 21 Senvion turbines.

The problem is, Senvion went out of business in 2019, and customers have been struggling to support their turbines. Apparently the Senvion design is exceptionally dependent on software access. Siemens and others have stepped in to offer support contracts to Senvion turbines in good working order, but with the opportunity to mine more lignite at the site, maybe RWE felt that it was time to spin down the Senvion turbines.

It seems like there may be many factors in this decision.

[-] teeps@feddit.uk 14 points 1 year ago

Thanks for providing this context. From what you say it sounds like a bad initial decision from RWE - tieing themselves in to 'wind turbine as a service'doesn't seem sensible.

load more comments (5 replies)
this post was submitted on 31 Aug 2023
612 points (83.0% liked)

World News

32317 readers
727 users here now

News from around the world!

Rules:

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS