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
Another unfavorable facet of wind mills and farms is leaving the decaying structures in place long after they have stopped working. South Point on the big island of Hawai’i is a very sceninc and windy place and has two wind farms. One old and decaying, the other new and producing. The website below has pictures of this and some other shut down renewable energy projects. When compared to the lifetime of of coal-fired, nuke, and hydroelectic plants; solar and wind don’t seem to last as long and don’t seem to require clean-up.
http://webecoist.com/2009/05/04/10-abandoned-renewable-energy-plants/
Living in Laramie, WY I have seen the construction of the Foote Creek wind farm first hand, in fact I have toured the facility. The turbines at Foote Creek are what they call “Arctic Rated” and have a higher cut-out speed than the standard turbine of the same size. Unfortunately the higher wind speed does lead to higher metal fatigue.
This happened on Nov 25th in case anyone cares to update the main story. I have pics from that day including the nacelle. Just email me mod.
BTW it was -38F at the Laramie Airport this morning, tying the record set in 1951.
richard verney says:
February 2, 2011 at 7:16 am
Chris Wright’s observations at February 2, 2011 at 4:52 am are absolutely right. If there was any doubt as to the unsuitability of these windmills as a serious energy provider, it was dispelled in the winter 2009/10.
I concur.
Wind is not a “serious energy provider” period. The basic problem with them is they have to be backed up. So they automatically “double” the price of electricity. Anytime a thing relies on a formula that has a variable that can got o zero then watchout cause zero is what you might get.
SteveE says:
February 2, 2011 at 5:58 am
“…I’d perfer a wind farm to the sight of the giant cooling towers and the billowing steam cloulds any day of the week!”
————————————————-
Different strokes for different folks, Too bad power generation isn’t a beauty contest then wind turbines might have chance.
Wind power, All show and no go
“MattN says:
February 2, 2011 at 3:51 am
I’m failing to see the brittleness. The steel seems like it was still very maleable. It wouldn’t have deformed like that if it wasn’t still maleable, it would have just snapped off clean. The ductile/brittle transition temp for common steels these days is way, way, WAY below zero. Near liquid-nitrogen temps.
But I do get your point.
MattN<—has a materials science degree….."
Matt: Second the concept. Not really NDT of -200 F however, more like -20 to -40 F for good quality structural steel. (More towards -20 F…but sometimes as high has 0 F.
As you noted this is a BUCKLING FAILURE. Which translates to one thing, STRUCTURAL OVERLOAD.
The other translation is: Not designed to handle all potential weather conditions. One of the problems here is "feathering"the blades for high winds. You can't just lock the turbine, you have to "feather" so that you minimize the cross sectional area.
If this was done, then the DESIGN was not adequate for the cantilivered load.
That's a design/enviromental interface problem. Since the ASME has WIND and SEISMIC criteria for various zones for DISTILLATION TOWERS, (which are equally high..) and we haven't had a lot of toppled distillation towers of the last 60 years…(ASME B&PV Code, Section VIII, non-fired pressure vessels), one has to wonder about this design criteria.
If the blades were LOCKED and NOT FEATHERED or if the turbine was running and went into "overspeed" and did not lock/feather…this is an operational problem.
YES, it does not give you a multi million $ contamination problem, as an accident at a nuclear plant (score – one in the US, Three Miles Island). However, if you are into some marginal financing, losing your $2,000,000 wind turbine, could make you "hurt", until you go to the public trough to pay for it.
Max
Wind farms require 80 acres per turbine, presumably because the owners recognize the potential consequences of failure (and fratricide) when pieces weighing tons fly 1/2 of a mile. One 100m turbine dominates that 80 acres. Imagine how many acres must be used to put a dent in actual energy demand?
In California, you need 10,000 1.5 MW turnbines for 10% of power needs, given a generous 30% capacity factor. These would require 1250 square miles of land. Unfortunately, there isn’t enough land area in California with class 5+ winds. That means they have to be built in the ocean. That means along 500 miles of coastline, we will have 7 or so rows of turbines going 2.5 miles out to sea.
Dont even mention the damge done to the enviroment in china resulting from the production of magnets.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-1350811/In-China-true-cost-Britains-clean-green-wind-power-experiment-Pollution-disastrous-scale.html
MostlyHarmless says: February 2, 2011 at 1:53 amScore at half-time:
” Birds 1
Wind Turbines – god only knows how many”
We call them Eagle Choppers here in WY.
Interestingly this lunchtime a colleague of mine at work said that he knew of a wind turbine snapping in high winds on Orkney (an island off the north coast of Scotland, a location of the UK where the government hope to build lots of wind turbines because the conditions are suppossed to be favourable…).
So someone commented along the lines of Omegaman66 below:
omegaman66 says:
February 2, 2011 at 12:23 am
So build it stronger don’t see this as a big issue. There are much bigger.
The only problem was, went my engineer colleague, building them stronger, or even with a system which allowed the turbine to be lowered in high winds, would increase the cost of the turbine exponentially…. Making wind power even less competitive with good old fossil fuel power generation systems.
Man Can Not Engineer for ANY and ALL possible loads, only the assumed loads.
Engineering ONLY provides for design within relatively narrow parameters.
Mother Earth (natural forces) can ALWAYS exceed the design safety factor loads and failure results.
There are no firePROOF, earthquakePROOF, windPROOF, or climatePROOF designs and constructs.
The ‘what if scenarios’ either were not considered, were ignored, or were considered too expensive.
Wind Energy Generation is fun as an academic exercise but should stand on its own without economic subsidies.
Thanks for all of the links to other failures, I am not at all surprised.
I was surprised by the number of wind-power-related fatalities but, reading about them made me hearken back to a comment by Dr. Petr Beckman 35 years ago. He said that the erection of wind (and rooftop solar) instalations would lead to “carnage”. Prescient.
Tom says:
February 2, 2011 at 8:25 am
Wind turbines are well known for producing around 1/3 of their rated power on average…
That means 2/3 of the materials involved in making them are wasted. That’s not very sustainable is it? It’s like having 3 cars and only ever using one.
Tom:
…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
brad says:
February 2, 2011 at 3:31 am
Wow, one wing turbine feel over? What huge news. WUWT claimed one well exploding in the Gulf as minor, and that was much biggger than this, WUWT is all for nukes even after Chrnobyl and 3 Mile Island!
This fair and balanced reporting is just great, and adds lots of cred to this site, it realy does!
Of course the essential background condition is that nuclear and “fossil fuel” work, and we’ve also known for a while now that wind doesn’t. You guys should ask yourselves why you’ve missed this critical difference.
Found the link from where Tallbloke copied it when I posted it in tips & notes.
http://www.spaceandscience.net/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderfiles/ ssrcresearchreport1-2010.doc …An independent review of historical records was performed for 350 years of global volcanic activity (1650-2009) and seismic (earthquake) activity for the past 300 years (1700 to 2009) within the continental United States and then compared to the Sun’s record of sunspots as a measure of solar activity. All three data sets were examined to determine whether a relationship existed between them and if the results of such a study could be used to develop methodology for identifying future geophysical events. The preliminary results from the study have shown that there exists a strong correlation between the solar activity that causes climate changes and the Earth’s largest seismic and volcanic events. The impressive 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 provides a basis for future estimates of the time periods and magnitudes for the largest volcanic and seismic events many decades in advance. Finally, the coincidence of the Centennial and Bi-Centennial cycles of the RC Theory showed unmistakable relationships to these largest geophysical events…
http://www.spaceandscience.net/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderfiles/ssrcresearchreport1-2010.doc
It’s not only Wyoming that had problems during a winter storm.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy/windpower/8234616/Wind-farms-becalmed-just-when-needed-the-most.html
Electronic problem . Failure to automaticly feather the prop. aerodinamics did the rest.
If this turbine was in a farm of 20 ,they lost 5% of production.
I always enjoy the snow gates and “Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here” signs on them on I-80 while driving thru Wyoming. . .
Question: does the poster know if this was a recent collapse? A tower collapsed in the Arlington area on Thanksgiving Day. Is this a photograph of that event or a second one?
Tom: Very little electricity is made using oil fuels. A comparison of coal or natural gas consumption with turbine output is relevant, oil is not. But, this comparison is meaningless unless the quantity of fuel and cost of necessary backup or standby capacity is included. Perhaps you can share your insight with us after including these additional costs.
I too am surprised that the point of failure is so low to the ground. Would a gearbox seizure produce sufficient torque at that point to topple the tower or would it be higher up?
Are wind turbines (or as I call them Money Spinners) built with earthquake protection?
Are the blades gunshot-proof? “Road signs are boring, bet you can’t hit one of the blades of that”? Do they do that in Wyoming? Is the whole shooting at roadsigns thing a Hollywood myth?
Inquiring Brits want to know!
Looks like a case of WED (Windmill Erection Dysfunction).
[moderator comment award winner +++$$$+++]
SteveE says: It’s gone from 3 week observation of a wind farm during a quiet period in the winter to millions dying every year in the UK!
I don’t know where SteveE got the “millions” from. But it only takes a few days of no heating to kill off thousands of vulnerable (very old and very young) people.
Windturbines frequently fail to produce any electricity on the coldest days of winter as these occur predominantly during windless anticyclonic periods.
Here in the UK we have a lunatic (Chris Huhne) in charge of energy policy.
In ten to twelve years time several coal-fired power stations will have been closed down under EC emissions regulations, and most of our nuclear installations will have come to the end of their lives. These plants currently supply 40 per cent of our needs.
If we can hope to build enough wind turbines to provide, say, 25 per cent of our electricity (10 times the current proportion needing at least 10,000 turbines) the cost will be well over £80 billion, plus another £40 billion to connect them up to the grid. Even then we we will still have a generating shortfall of 40% during periods of extreme cold such as those of last December, which will mean power cuts on a scale never before experienced in this country! All central heating systems require mains electricity to function, so there will be thousands if not tens of thousands of deaths from hypothermia. Yet for £30 billion we could have ten clean modern super efficient nuclear power stations.
So the leetle wind mill couldn’t stand against a little wind when suffering a common cold.
Last thought of a wind mill: Geez the cold, the wind, OMG but what wouldn’t I’ve given for a don Quijote instead?
One presumes that they did not calculate for the extra weight of snow on the blades; and the extra drag that snow causes on the blades, which translates into extra force on the pylon.
.