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Germany begins dismantling wind farm for coal (euobserver.com)

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

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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?

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[–] RickRussell_CA@lemmy.world 79 points 1 year ago (6 children)

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 15 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.

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