Another wind farm going up

[Natman]

A short flight from my place, and on the way to jobsite I needed to eyeball. Quite the big construction project, what with the roads they had to build, underground powerlines, etc. There had to be a 100 man crew there, 2 of the large cranes and several "small" ones.

The mechanism used to latch onto the blades, it must have a radio control release? Any other tricks, like being able to rotate a bit to get the bolts lined up with the turbine hub? The picture is fuzzy, but it seemed to be a complicated piece of equipment. Dead calm this day, I'd pay money to watch this from close up on a day with a bit of a breeze. Talk about precision crane work..., I noticed how the crane was setup perfect, relative to the tower, they must have done this before a few times. I could have safely gotten a LOT closer, but I didn't want to get anyone excited or distracted.

 

[terex herder]

Thats interesting. All the rain repellers I've seen the 3 blades are put on the hub before the hub is lifted.

 

[DMiller]

Depends on weight and/or if no other crane available to steady the assembly from Horizontal to Vertical. Last I saw going up done this way as only One crane.

 

[kshansen]

Hope that fan doesn't blow more of that smoke from Canada our way!

 

[Truck Shop]

There's wind farms going in all the time around here. Omega is here moving in transformers.
This is old video. But the idea. They only use one crane around here erecting.
*

 

[Labparamour]

Hadn’t heard about this until recently.
Maybe why they have to build more sites

Giant Wind Turbines Keep Mysteriously Falling Over. This Shouldn't Be Happening.

The taller the turbine, the more epic the tumble.

www.popularmechanics.com

Wind turbine failures are on the uptick, from Oklahoma to Sweden and Colorado to Germany, with all three of the major manufacturers admitting that the race to create bigger turbines has invited manufacturing issues, according to a report from Bloomberg.

 

[Truck Shop]

Maybe why they have to build more sites

There's been several that have lost blades around here, and one wind farm was torn down
because of age-will be replaced.

 

[DMiller]

Farm the Company bought into at NW MO has been having issues, Blades, inspections finding stress cracks in support towers, bolts flanges, rotational tables, a few were taken back down in less than 12 years age line. Newer tower stanchions getting REAL Heavy, Pedestals getting HUGE for rebar and concrete, been told are well out of the ability to recover costs in under 15 years so some are taking a beating on them. "All of them LEAK Fluids like a old Driptroit"

 

[Natman]

Having had wind turbines for the last 40 years, lately grid tied, at first off grid, I can tell you PV beats winds every time it's tried. I just took down my 18 year old turbine as the grid tie inverter failed, and the separate company that made it had discontinued that model, so I had no way to get the power the turbine was still producing into the grid. I bought an inverter meant for a PV system as an experiment, but it did not work out, so I took it down 2 weeks ago, scrapped the tower (an old gas station sign pole I got for free instead of charging to take down) sold the mill and just put up another 3 KW PV system, using used solar panels as they are still going to outlast me and are a fraction of the cost of new. The new array will more than make up for the increased juice I'll be using on charging my "new" (2021) RAV4 Prime plug car, that hopefully I can write off as my business vehicle. I'll post a picture of the takedown later.

 

[Natman]

Mine didn't fall down! For some years, every time I drove by a Sinclair gas station sign that was supported by 3 of these tapered poles, I thought how they would make a good turbine tower. Then I got a call to take them down, and when told they were going to be scrapped I did the work for free, saving my customer and me money. I sold to of them, kept the third. I scrapped it though last week, got around $100.00 for it, with the high price of scrap right now, seemed a shame but I had gotten my use out of it and didn't want to keep it around anymore.

 

[Welder Dave]

It must take quite awhile to get used to operating an extremely long boom crane with the boom at the max angle. You'd think a little wind and the boom would flip over backwards.

 

[DMiller]

The units I have witnessed in use had anemometers at boom tip, they hit a certain speed lift shuts down. Watching ironwork in light breeze is very spooky as gusts do set dangerous conditions ever more so.

 

[DMiller]

Having had wind turbines for the last 40 years, lately grid tied, at first off grid, I can tell you PV beats winds every time it's tried. I just took down my 18 year old turbine as the grid tie inverter failed, and the separate company that made it had discontinued that model, so I had no way to get the power the turbine was still producing into the grid. I bought an inverter meant for a PV system as an experiment, but it did not work out, so I took it down 2 weeks ago, scrapped the tower (an old gas station sign pole I got for free instead of charging to take down) sold the mill and just put up another 3 KW PV system, using used solar panels as they are still going to outlast me and are a fraction of the cost of new. The new array will more than make up for the increased juice I'll be using on charging my "new" (2021) RAV4 Prime plug car, that hopefully I can write off as my business vehicle. I'll post a picture of the takedown later.

PV does work as a supplemental or a storage system charging mechanism but cannot and doubtful can ever support industrial scale. My old employer has a Office bldg downtown ST Louis, entire roof is covered to show validity, only serves as a battery charging system for computer UPS systems and emergency lighting.
The major issue of PV or Wind systems is they are a fixed reference power level, unlike a rolling generator that can adjust field strength to increase or decrease power for load, is commonly referred to as Base Load energy. PV and Wind are great supplemental, no good for base load.

 

[DMiller]

The major issue of PV or Wind systems is they are a fixed reference power level, unlike a rolling generator that can adjust field strength to increase or decrease power for load, is commonly referred to as Base Load energy. PV and Wind are great supplemental, no good for base load.