So much for Endurance…
From Louise Gray at The Telegraph:
Wind turbine collapses in high wind
A controversial 115ft wind turbine has collapsed after being hit by heavy winds.
The £250,000 tower, which stood as tall as a ten storey building, was hit by gale force gusts of 50mph.
The structure then collapsed at a farm in Bradworth, Devon, leaving a “mangled wreck”.
Margaret Coles, Chairwoman of Bradworthy District Council, said hail storms and strong winds have hit the area and the turbine, installed just three years ago, simply could not withstand the wind.
“The bolts on the base could not withstand the wind and as we are a very windy part of the country they [the energy company] have egg on their face,” she said. “There are concerns about safety.”
The Bradworthy Parish Council, who opposed the turbine, expressed concern that there was “nothing exceptional” in the speed of the winds.
Installed by renewable energy company Dulas it was supposed to have a life expectancy of 25 years.
Full story here: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy/windpower/9837026/Wind-turbine-collapses-in-high-wind.html
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Of course, Ms. Gray calls a 50 mph wind a “high wind”, but that sort of wind isn’t an unusual event for the area. Besides, the specs for the Endurance E-3120 wind turbine say:
Given its, ahem, endurance, one wonders if the council will allow it to be reconstructed. I’m thinking no.
“I cannot tell a lie, father, you know I cannot tell a lie! I did cut it with my little hatchet.”
More seriously; other than a design flaw (which is quite plausible given the gross ignorance about the structural loading; especially dynamic), it is possible that the wrong nuts or steel for the bolts was used. Or that they were incorrectly tightened. Corrosion should not be a factor, but cannot be ruled out unless checked. The “bolts” in such structures are usually the threaded ends of the steel reinforcing cages of the concrete footings. Concrete is usually required unless one has a rock of sufficient strength in which case holes are drilled and the bolts epoxied into place.
The windmill in this case is a small one. The photos don’t show extreme undulations so the wind velocity profile is pretty flat above 10 metres height. (Ever wondered why there are few tall trees in the plains?)
Sustainable does not imply it will last!
benfrommo says:
January 30, 2013 at 9:33 am
From
FORM 10-K Annual Report Pursuant to Section 13 or 15(d) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 For the fiscal year ended December 31, 2011. MIDAMERICAN ENERGY HOLDINGS COMPANY 94-2213782 (An Iowa Corporation) Des Moines, Iowa 50309
Note: MEHC owns two electric utilities heavily invested in wind energy, Pacificorp, and Mid-American Energy.
Page 16 of 310 of Form 10-K
Page 28 of 310
Thus there is no specific power plant constructed as a backup for any other. There is no specific power plant turned up or down as wind energy or power demand varies, the entire system is modulated according to efficiencies and availability. Therefore you cannot assign the costs of a natural gas plant idling to wind energy backup.
Elsewhere in in the same Form 10-K mentioned above, there are reserves listed for decommissioning facilities, though no detail assigning those reserves to specific facilities. On what basis do you assert there is no such set aside for wind energy facilities?
Bernd Felsche says:
January 30, 2013 at 6:26 pm
My experience is different though with smaller structures: stoplights, power poles, other equipment. The bolts are usually galvanized steel, sometimes stainless, with a hook on the end in the concrete. The bolts are specifically inside of the hoop steel that forms the outside horizontal parts of the reinforcing steel cage.
The engineers will figure it out, looks like a failure at the base.
They live for this kind of stuff, failure stress cracks in metal.
Harmonics, did it lose a blade and shake apart, gear box lubrication failure, etc.
John F. Hultquist said (January 30, 2013 at 8:37 am)
“…Note the “cut-out wind speed” [the wind speed at which the protective device fitted to a wind turbine is activated to prevent mechanical damage to the machine] is given as 25 m/s (56 mph). That is higher than this structure’s oops! speed…”
I noticed the same thing. It all depends on what the “cut-out” was designed to do – free-wheel, protecting the generator from excess speed, or put on a brake and feather the props.
Either way, I think they’ll find a fault with the “cut-out” device, and force an inspection of all the others in service.
https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2013/01/30/wind-turbine-comes-down-in-bradworthy-as-high-winds-strike-north-devon/
From the link, “Bob Barfoot, North Devon chairman of the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) and an expert on turbines, said photographs showed the tower had been turned into a “mangled, blackened wreck” with melted blades.”
Note that Mr. Barfoot opposes windmills in general and appears to be an activist.
Also, “In a statement, Dulas chief executive officer Sanjay Bowry said: “[…]We will continue to keep communication open and provide updates as and when we have more information.” ”
http://www.ecobuild.co.uk/var/uploads/exhibitor/127/9w4aoys9v3.pdf
Couple of extra photos here, and it doesn’t look like the base ring broke.
http://www.thisisnorthdevon.co.uk/story-17994623-detail/story.html
This may explain why the farmers are allowing the turbines:
http://www.cmsuk-services.co.uk/news/wind_turbine_devon.html
It says the dairy farmers expect £50k per year from the turbine.
It does seem the farm pays for the installation:
http://www.endurancewindpower.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/East-Ash-Farm-British-Dairying-March-20111.pdf
Lots of government “guaranteed” feed-in-tariff.
To borrow from the Clarke/Dawes sketch:
50MPH winds, what are the chances of that?
High winds on land? one in a million.
I hope the three little piggies weren’t at home.
As to rebuilding this windmill, that seems assured. Who will reimburse the investor(s) if Endurance is not allowed to make good on their warrantee? It will be rebuilt, even if the farmers had grown disgruntled. They probably know they still need at least five more years of operation to pay it off and start actually making (some of) the expected return.
Chris Beal says:
January 30, 2013 at 7:51 am
Hardened bolts would of never broke.
I think you mean High Tensile bolts.
The peat bog it was potted in was rated at 45 mph. Epic fail.
Under “fast facts”:
The construction of each tower’s foundation required 120 anchor bolts, 30,954 nuts, and 11,750 cubic yards of concrete.
Each anchor bolt is 28 feet long and weighs approximately 150 lbs.
Interesting. That works out to just about 30,000 tons of concrete.
From this government site this is how much CO2 is produced per ton of concrete.
http://www.buildinggreen.com/features/flyash/appendixa.cfm
1.25 x 30,000 = 37,500 tons of CO2
The turbine is a 50 kW turbine that according to its specs generates between 100,000-250,000 kw/hr year so that is 2.5-6 million kilowatt hours hours over its lifetime….
The CO2 output for a coal fired plant is an average of 909 grams/kw/hr so the carbon offset is…
Source
http://www.stewartmarion.com/carbon-footprint/html/carbon-footprint-kilowatt-hour.html
909 grams x 2.5-6 million/kw/hr is 2,272-5,454 tons for an equivalent power generated.
I would bet that the foundation is for a much bigger turbine but even if it was a 500 kw turbine that is 22,720-54,540 tons which is barely enough to offset the CO2 emissions of the foundation!
From the same source a natural gas fired plant has half the CO2 emissions of a coal fired plant so you would need a megawatt class turbine in a good site (and I assumed that the turbine would run fault free for 25 years when the operating fraction is less due to maintenance and downtime, probably about 5% at best less.
Now take a look at a nuclear plant.
SIX GRAMS OF CO2 PER KW/HR
I would bet quite a lot of money that if you did an end to end analysis wind and solar are close to break even over coal, or at best gas CO2 wise and they suck compared to a nuclear power plant (suck is a technical term here).
What the hell are the greens thinking?
@chris Beal January 30, 2013 at 7:51 am
Not true at all, about hardened bolts. If the design didn’t call for enough bolts, those used could still fail. For example, ONE hardened bolt would certainly not be enough.
At the same time, no structural design out in the wind in the USA is designed for less than about 120 mph winds (whatever the max expected wind at the site), with plenty of safety factor (normally 2.5 or 3.0). For a 50 mph wind to take down a structure is a TERRIBLE and irresponsible design, bordering on incompetence. Actually well WITHIN the range of incompetence. That means it was designed for only about 17-20 mph – counting the safety factor. WTF?
Steve Garcia
Well the load on the bolts would increase at least as the square of the wind speed, so 116 mph / 50 mph squared is over five times the load these bolts were supposed to be able to withstand.
I’m guessing it was a fatigue failure caused by the built in shake yourself to pieces oscillation.
At 42 rpm, and three blades, the gizmo has a built in 126 cycle per minute oscillation due to wind shear.
Wind speed at the top of the mast is higher than at deck height; every sailor knows that. so a blade at the top has a higher axial and tangential thrust than when it is at the bottom in lower wind. If it was a linear relationship, the three phase 42 cpm driving force would even out, but since it is at least a squared relationship, they do not cancel out either axial thrust or rotary torque, so those bolts get hammered with a 126 cpm jack hammer, till they simply crap out.
Ever notice that the old farm windmill pump had about 20 or so blades, and the diameter is small compared to the tower height; no wonder they run for a hundred years.
Faustino says:
January 30, 2013 at 5:52 pm
The real point here is the confirmation of extreme weather caused by AGW, without which the wind tower would have had a long and productive life. 😉
Back in 1965, at the UK’s Central Electricity Generating Board’s HQ, I got a report on my desk that cooling towers at the you-beaut super-duper Selby power station had been wind-tunnel tested to withstand 200 mph (320 kph) gales. That night, three fell down in much more modest winds, with three deaths.
I remember the collapse of those towers. However you cannot expect the Greens to take any notice of anything that happened in 1965. That was before most of them were born and anything outside their experience they regard as irrelevant.
The wind turbines in the UK are all designed to fail during a hurricane, and we do occasionally get hurricanes here.
It’s a scam.
“Dennis Ray Wingo says:
January 30, 2013 at 10:50 pm
What the hell are the greens thinking?”
It’s interesting the supporters of renewables don’t take into account the facts you raise. Clearly, the Greens are thinking of just that, The Green. Farmers, land owners and the British Royal Family too.
Tonyb says:
January 30, 2013 at 12:25 pm (replying to)
John
usually, that type of “can power up to 500 homes” is a pure “propaganda-laden” sales exaggeration. Means nothing in the real world except to politicians and their enviro-theists trying to “sell” the “green energy” tricks.
The “homes energized” takes the nameplate rating (the absolute maximum possible from a new, perfectly clean turbine in perfect winds (no gusts, steady direction, no interference from nearby turbines or towers or hills). Then “homes energized” takes some nominal values for “energy used by a average house” in some assumed given time period. Nameplate rating is then simply dividing “maximum theoretical energy possibly delivered (under perfect conditions)” by “energy used by an (conveniently assumed) “average house.” So, a green politician makes some “number of homes powered” exaggeration, and nobody ever checks to so see if that is an average home in the area, or a seasonal load, or a spring load when the AC is not running and the heat is not turned on.
The nameplate rating, however, does noting but go down under use: blades get dirty or worn edges or torn fiberglass, bearing degrade, oils go sticky and controllers need work – Routine maintenance to replace this kind of wear-and-tear even on conventional gas turbines is ESSENTIAL every 18 months. Worse, the actual average service factor for wind turbines is less than 23%. Thus, actual “power delivered” hours are only achieved 23% of the time worldwide, even at reduced ratings. But the greenies never mention this. (Note that the power lines, transmission switchboards, and cables and roads and control networks MUST be sized not for the 23% capacity that is usually delivered, but for the 100% that “might be” delivered at any (unpredictable) time day, night or Sunday – regardless of actual electrical need. Therefore, the power lines are actually a little more than 4 times the size for the current they usually carry, because some times, they are actually carrying full load and must be large enough to prevent overheating. That follows true for everything electrical: the controllers, and the transformers, and the switches and the towers and the circuitry are all 4 times larger than what average power is actually delivered really needs.)
All contribute to the waste and loss of resources these failures represent.
“Average house” could mean anything, and is rarely – if ever – actually defined, and NEVER, EVER “verified” by the propagandists writing the “green energy is the only solution to everything” story for the press.
BLACK PEARL says:
January 30, 2013 at 8:31 am
Imagine the cost of decommissioning the ones out at sea.
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Don’t worry.
A good, old-fashioned Atlantic winter storm will be suffice to dispose them off with a snap…
Backs of envelopes are great for fact checking… I found a link supposedly relating to this:
http://www.pse.com/inyourcommunity/kittitas/Pages/Wild-Horse.aspx
Among the fast facts enumerated were :
‘The construction of each tower’s foundation required 120 anchor bolts, 30,954 nuts, and 11,750 cubic yards of concrete. Each anchor bolt is 28 feet long and weighs approximately 150 lbs.’
That implies a nut every 33mm on each anchor bolt, and a block of concrete 22 metres on a side.
Like, wow.
Chris4692:
You provide misleading propaganda in your long-winded reply (at January 30, 2013 at 6:49 pm) to benfrommo (at January 30, 2013 at 9:33 am).
It is very misleading for your report to say
Put into plain English, that says,
Coal and natural gas-fueled generation are throttled back to enable windpower onto the grid at the times when wind turbines provide power because the wind is strong enough but not too strong.
That poses the question as to why the windpower – with its costs – exists and is used.
And you say
At less than 20% total capacity from windpower, the ‘back-up’ is provided by the existing “coal and natural gas-fueled generation” which when throttled back operate at reduced efficiency so increase their emissions.
Furthermore, you ask benfrommo
Well, perhaps he asks because there is “no detail assigning those reserves to specific facilities”?
Richard
I can see one of these wind turdbines from my front room window. Identical. Praying for more wind.
Ivor Ward
What wonderful news. Ms. Gray must be annoyed since she loves the things. So two bits of good news.