That Windmill in Dodge County Isn't Alone

You've read that a windmill collapsed in Dodge County.

You also read that such a collapse is 'rare.'  Well, that depends on how you define "rare."

Bloomberg Business Week, no foe of green energy, headlines:  Wind Turbines Taller Than the Statue of Liberty Are Falling Over.” The article beneath the headline reports on a variety of alarming disasters involving wind turbines, including collapses of very tall structures....

...The article blames the “rash” of incidents on the rush to install turbine capacity, but there are also permanent factors that make engineering, building, and maintaining wind farms difficult and risky. To develop meaningful amounts of power, the blades on the turbine have to be big, and when big blades spin in heavy winds, the tips can end up hitting supersonic speeds, putting great stress of the materials used to construct them. Big blades also requite tall towers, which are then subject to stresses as winds blow and can gust during storms to velocities that test the strength of the materials and the design of the towers....

Although Lifson (the article's author) doesn't mention it directly, there is the matter of QC; stress analysis and finite-element analysis should be first on the list of tests.

After that, dismantle the windmills.  They're nearly useless except as a tax-dodge.