The amount of rare earth metals in a typical windfarm is quite staggering – and the negative environmental impact of extracting and refining those metals even more so. But that happens in China so none of the windfarm evangelists ever mention it…
Really? I thought the reason it wasn’t mentioned much was because most of the generators used in large scale farms were induction generators, not permanent magnet ones like those used in back-yard turbines, meaning there’s sod all rare earth content?
Other types of machines like dc-generators, permanent magnet
machines or variable-reluctance generators are not important in
the state of the art market in wind power generation [2].
(taken from Development of Induction Machines in Wind Power
Technology, Stefan Soter, Member, IEEE, Ralf Wegener, Student Member, IEEE))
([2] J. Marques, et al. A Survey on Variable-Speed Wind Turbine System, Con-
gresso Brasileiro de Eletrˆ onica de Potˆ encia (COBEP), 2003, Fortaleza – CE.)