• Question: How can we reduce the amount of money spent on wind turbines?

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      Asked by amyjordan to Chia-Yu, Helen, Matthew, Matt H, Rhod on 24 Jun 2013.
      • Photo: Matt Carnie

        Matt Carnie answered on 24 Jun 2013:

        We need to spend some money on wind turbines to encourage investors to build windfarms. New materials and designs for wind turbines are being developed all the time and hopefully they will become cheaper to build.

      • Photo: Matthew Hudson

        Matthew Hudson answered on 25 Jun 2013:

        That is tough to achieve as they are very big and require a lot of materials to build them, which contributes to the cost.

        As Matt said below, as technology gets better they should get cheaper. Shell actually develops special oil for wind turbines, as they contain very very big (the size of a truck!) gear boxes which are very expensive. One of the big costs of wind turbines in maintenance of the gear box, so the special oils we develop for these are designed to reduce the maintenance costs, so reduce the amount it costs to keep them running.

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