Cost of wind keeps dropping, and theres little coal, nuclear can do to stop it

[Finishline42]

10. I'm not familiar with that data

The lifespan of a windmill is a function of the cost.

The typical windfarm is built by one company and once it's up and producing power is sold to another company. They then use the returned capital to develop additional windfarms. The problem with a process like this is that the a better quality windmill drives up development cost and since the intention is to sell early in the lifespan, it's more likely that cheaper windmills will used.

Now if the first question the buyer of a producing windfarm was to ask is what is about the MTBF (mean time between failure)? That pushes the initial developer to source a better quality windmill and thus a longer average lifespan.

Going back to your analogy using cars - typical powertrain warranties today are much longer than 20 yrs ago. Pretty much the same process would apply to windmills.