Trent Brome writes on his Facebook page:
Arlington, WY – avg annual wind speed of 31mph, gusts above 110mph, seems like a great place for a wind turbine ….right?
Photos from Feb 1, 2011 as the cold air mass that formed Snowzilla barreled through. The wind chill in the area from yesterday was extreme, -54F !!
0453 AM EXTR WIND CHILL PUMPKIN VINE 41.05N 105.46W 02/01/2011 M-54.00 F ALBANY WY DEPT OF HIGHWAYS
A new record low was set in Cheyenne:
RECORD EVENT REPORT NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE CHEYENNE WY 523 PM MST TUE FEB 01 2011 ...RECORD DAILY LOW HIGH SET AT CHEYENNE WYOMING... A RECORD DAILY LOW HIGH WAS SET TODAY AT CHEYENNE WYOMING. THE OLD RECORD WAS MINUS 5 SET IN 1899. THE NEW RECORD LOW HIGH IS MINUS 9.
Combine cold temperatures that make steel brittle along with gusty winds, and you have a Titanic recipe for disaster. For those that will argue that I’m being unfair to the promise of wind power, I welcome you to provide photos of any power plant in the USA that has been collapsed due to weather. Downed power poles sure, but power sources?
h/t to Eric Nielsen for the photo
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UPDATE: While the Facebook page source of these photos shows them dated yesterday, Feb 1st, it appears the event actually happened November 25th. A similar photo here:
http://www.windaction.org/pictures/30961
The same author, Trent Brome, submitted them. It is unfortunate he did not make note of the correct date on his facebook page, and given a strong storm had just passed, I had no reason to expect otherwise. I apologize for not checking further. Thanks to V Marti for pointing out the other website link above. – Anthony
It looks like “Ivory Tower” meets “Real World Data” in a snow storm
apologies to Bambi and Godzilla!!
I suppose a hydroelectric rig could be down due to weather; drought – caused by global warming of course.
Might should take a look at this, this wind turbine collapse is probably not going to be the last.
Press Release 1-2011 NASA Data Confirms Solar Hibernation and Climate Change to Cold Era
http://www.spaceandscience.net/id16.html
Also see (google up) ssrcresearchreport1-2010.doc
Degree of correlation for global volcanic activity (>80.6%) and for the largest USA earthquakes (100% of the top 7 most powerful) vs solar activity lows…
Last 350 years 1650-2009 for global volcanic activity and 300 years 1700-2009 for seismic (earthquake activity)
ssrcresearchreport1-2010.doc I haven’t been able to capture a link with Droidx.
This happens all the time, see http://www.caithnesswindfarms.co.uk/page4.htm
These are also fun!
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QL-cRuYAxg0&w=480&h=390]
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3FZtmlHwcA&w=640&h=390]
My ignorance,
What is a Record “Low High”? does it mean biggest (high) in magnitude for the Lowest temperature of the day?
TIA
A good collection of structural failures is available here:
http://www.windaction.org/pictures/c48/
Ecotretas
Once there was a silly old ram
Thought he’d punch a hole in a fan
No one could make that ram scram
He kept buttin’ that fan
‘Cause he had hi-i-igh hopes, he had hi-i-igh hopes
He had high apple pi-i-ie-in-the-sk-y-y hopes
So, any time your feelin’ bad,
‘Stead of feelin’ sad,
Just remember those fans
Oops, there goes those kilowatt fans
Oops, there goes those kilowatt fans
Oops, there goes those kilowatt fans
Following on; Sorry, worked it out.
The Warmest temperature for the day was -9c. So this was the lowest ‘Maximum’ temperature recorded. Apologies to All.
Just for the record, the Titanic was made with poor quality steel rivets with significant quantities of impurites which, in the very cold north Atlantic, “opened” like a zipper. The sheet hull plates were made from a different grade of steel. Like not having enough life rafts and davits, the cost saving using the cheaper rivet was the priority for the builder.
Wonder what grade of steel was used in that tower, looks a bit thin at the base to me. But a classic example of too much wind. It’s usually the turbine and/or blades which fail first, but this is a classic fail!
How much solar power did they generate with panels under 2+ feet of snow?
This is the poster of the collapse of CAWG
A(nother) new record LOW temperature AND a downed wind turbine in one story. The one causing the other.
This is pure denialist porn !
Shock and awe. /Sarc off. To be expected. Subsidized low cost products designed with an ideal environment in mind. In reality they need power inflow for heaters to keep this from happening which means that often wind turbines are net users of power instead of net producers – at least in Europe. What to you wanna bet they get a grant to study what went wrong and at least a couple of expense paid trips to Europe to see how it is done there?
Greetings, this is a shame , I am a great fan of these machines, I have 28 + on my doorstep in the UK and they are quite something upclose. There is however a nagging doubt in my mind that it is so difficult to get a handle on the efficiency of the “spinners” as I call them. I know that the wind does not blow every day, but I see figures bandied about of 20% EFFICIENCY EVEN WHEN CONDITIONS ARE PERFECT. Presumably there is a department in Government which is collating this sort of information but trying to find a cogent report without the attendant sub agenda is a trial. I think they are here to stay, I just do not want to keep paying tax money out to make them seem plausible.
In case someone missed this classic video of an exploding windmill:
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=8be_1203819244
Not in the USA and not recently but at least 4 cooling towers have collapsed in the UK due to wind and a design flaw. 3 towers at a powerstation called Ferry Bridge (1965) and the fourth at a sister station Fiddlers Ferry (1984). Other parts of power stations blow up from time to time but they’re mostly fixable/replaceable.
http://www.knottingley.org/history/tales_and_events.htm
That asside, both powerstations are still up and running (years after their decommissioning dates), the same will not be true of windmills. The biggest thing against windmills is the poor performance, unreliability of supply and the ones at sea will be a maintenance nightmare.
I know the feeling. I’ll add those two snapshots to my collection of wind turbine glamour shots.
http://www.rockyhigh66.org/stuff/wind/
The green movement clearly could do with some Viagra ….
That is a very expensive problem. If the conditions were right for one tower to fail then it is likely that more than one collapsed. I have been unable to find any additional news about this particular incident.
Solar is also very effective in a snowzilla storm like that. Gee.. I wonder what type of power would be effective for a long time and work even in bad weather…
Wind chill is really only relevant to living things that expire water through their skin, however it warms my heart to see those brittle/steely useless towers doing a Titanic.
David Cameron please note; wind power is not of any use, except to assuage the Green Hysterics and your pal Zak. Spend the money on Thorium energy generation. Do it – Now!
Met my neighbour on Monday, told him of the weather being wet and windy inc gales for next few days, his reply ‘Loads of extra work for me then’ , which as he maintains the local Wind turbines that have been marooned since the start of Nov does not make much sense.
Also, it doesn’t look like a very good place for solar panels.
Somewhere around -20 degrees C, steel begins losing its tensile strength. As the temperature drops further, it becomes increasingly brittle – mining companies in the far north learned about this fact the hard way a long time ago.
One solution is to use stainless steel, which is much more temperature resistant – the problem here is that it costs several times the amount of ordinary steel.
Green energy solutions are always very expensive and/or unreliable.
Yes well. Umm err. Quite.
Not perhaps the finest engineering. And who is paying for the loss?
Insured no doubt so who payed the premiums? and what was the rate percent?
And can anybody get any answers? as regards the cash that is?
Somehow I doubt it. And whose responsibility was it anyway?
I think we should be told.
We won’t be of course.
Kindest Regards
Right, for those that live in the bit of the world that uses sane systems of units, that’s an average of about 13.5m/s, gusts to 50m/s, a record low of -22C and a wind chill of -47C.
The extreme cold is indeed likely to be the culprit. On very little evidence, it looks like a weld failure around the top of the tower door, always a weak point in a tower structure. Not the first time a tower has collapsed due to weld failures in cold weather.
There are basically three questions to ask: Was the temperature range specified in the tower requirements appropriate for the site? Was the tower design appropriate for that temperature range? Was the tower manufactured in accordance with the design? The answer to at least one of these questions is ‘No’.
Painting this as a general problem with wind power is frankly pretty childish. That it is a problem is self-evident, but if you’re going to throw out wind power because a turbine fell over due to (likely) a manufacturing problem then you should also throw out nuclear power because there have been radiation leaks. I know which I’d rather live near! But of course we don’t throw out either; we learn from our mistakes. At least with wind the cleanup is quick and cheap.