Story by Eric Worrall –
![wind_turbine_bearings[1]](https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/wind_turbine_bearings1.jpg?quality=83)
A few years ago, I used to know a senior wind turbine engineer. One evening, over a few beers, he told me the dirty secret of his profession:
“The problem is the bearings. If we make the bearings bigger, the bearings last longer, but making the bearings larger increases friction, which kills turbine efficiency. But we can’t keep using the current bearings – replacing them is sending us broke. What we need is a quantum leap in bearing technology – bearing materials which are at least ten times tougher than current materials.”
At the time there was very little corroborating online material available to support this intriguing comment – but evidence seems to be accumulating that bearings are a serious problem for the wind industry.
Siemens citing bearing failures as part of the reason for a substantial fall in profit;
http://www.offshorewind.biz/2014/05/07/siemens-energy-division-profit-down-54-pct/
In the announcement of the opening of a new Siemens research facility;
http://www.greenoptimistic.com/2013/03/19/siemens-wind-turbine-research/
“… The Brande test center would evaluate the main parts of their wind turbines such as main bearings …”
http://www.geartechnology.com/newsletter/0112/drives.htm (an attempt to make direct drive turbines, to reduce bearing wear)
“… More accurately, it is typically the bearings within the gearbox that fail, in turn gumming up the gearbox, but that’s a story for another time. …”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burbo_Bank_Offshore_Wind_Farm
“… During summer 2010 Siemens decided to change the blade bearings on all 25 turbines as a pre-emptive measure after corrosion was found in blade bearings found on other sites. …”
Of course, there is the occasional video of catastrophic turbine failure;
Suggestions the industry is trying to conceal the scale of the turbine fire problem;
All of which creates an interesting question – just how much of our money is the government prepared to waste, to keep their wind dream afloat? If the costs are far greater than the industry admits, how long is the wind industry going to carry that additional hidden cost, before they try to push the costs onto taxpayers, or abandon wind technology altogether?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2116877/Is-future-Britains-wind-rush.html
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BJ Hanssen (@BJHanssen):
“I mean, the current uptick in renewable energy production is just market forces at work. The public wants renewables, and the market is in a place where it obviously pays. ”
Give me a break. There are no market forces in favor of wind energy. During low demand times (especially spring runoff) in western Canada/USA, mandated, extremely expensive wind power is forced onto the grid, driving grid prices down into negative territory. That’s right, it’s cheaper to waste energy at those times. As a result, dams shut down their turbines and water is allowed to spill over the spillways, because it’s more cost effective.
Do you get that? During those low demand periods, every bit of expensive renewable energy is simply wasted by being spilled over a dam. Result: Truckloads of money are taken directly from ratepayers and given to corporations, with no net gain in renewable energy production during those times.
BJ Hanssen said
“Post ruined by the last paragraph and linking to The Daily Mail *twice*. Linking to the Daily Mail is a credibility killer, and for good reason.
Even if you are not an AGW believer, I don’t understand why you would be against developing renewables.”
I have absolutely nothing against *developing* renewables. As an engineer and taxpayer I do have real problems with large scale implementation of a technology that requires massive subsidy. You raised the canard that fossil fuels are heavily subsidised. This is true in a handful of developing countries but in the EU, USA, Canada and Australia fossil fuels are taxed, sometimes very heavily. The ‘subsidies’ so often quoted are tax breaks which simply means the government in question levies LESS of a tax than otherwise would happen. Take the UK situation
Tax revenue from Fuel 2009 £33.8 billion
Subsidy for renewables 2009 £1.1 billion
Note the bulk of the cost of renewables is recovered by a levy on domestic electricity prices which of course hits the poor disproportionately hard.
BJHanssen commented as if wind technology was new and the issues will be sorted like issues with internal combustion engines.
This ignores the fact that wind energy is a very old technology – 14th century perhaps. It was abandoned in the 19th century in Holland for pumping water in favor of fossil fuels. I don’t believe the Dutch are reverting to windmills for land drainage.
Modern materials might improve wind energy slightly but will not overcome the fundamental faults – low energy density and variable wind speeds. This article highlights the difficulties of making massive windmills. Unless the design of windmills changes fundamentally it is difficult to see how it could ever become cost effective. I expect that by the time fossil fuels become scarce and rise in price improvements in nuclear energy (thorium, fusion?) and possibly solar will cause them to be preferred to wind.
In Dixville NH the “Granite Reliable” wind project went online in December 2011 with 33 Vestas V-90 turbines, each with 3 MW output (on a good day). The original plan was to shrink the access road to return some of the land to a semi-natural state, but after one mainshaft bearing failed and others may follow, the operator has petitioned the state to leave it at the 16 foot width and “promises to make amends elsewhere on the mountain by planting more trees” per http://nhpr.org/post/public-counsel-hearings-widening-road-wind-turbines-should-be-held-coos
I think bearing failure rates in the field have been much higher than manufacturers anticipated. Steam turbines at large conventional power plants last a long time, or at least get replaced with little fuss.
Wind shear (different speeds at different heights) and turbulence may be putting much greater forces on the blades and hence on to the main shaft than anticipated. High power turbines such as those at Granite Reliable (who chose that name, anyway?) with their longer blades (lever arms) seem to have a shorter lifetime.
From second hand information, snowmobilers last winter reported the turbines were a lot louder last winter than the winter before. I don’t know if it’s just due to wind speed differences, but it certainly could be a sign of bearing wear. Twenty year lifetime? ‘fraid not.
M Seward
August 26, 2014 at 4:33 am
Yours truly is a design engineer and regognises this bearing issue as just another bit of engineering reality that loads up the capex and the repair and maintenance costs of this hair brained technology and its submerged cousin, wave power.
—
The answer to all this nonsense is economics. If it can’t be paid for then don’t try to buy it, or else you go broke. If you do ‘buy’ it you begin to send everyone else broke and are back asking for a bailout. If there is a much cheaper tech then use it. The idea everyone is forced to use a bankrupting technology, suppresses the economy and financial resources that could be used for other things, and raises all power bills thus draining disposable incomes of all, due to the lame old CO2 global warming excuse, is completely bonkers.
It would be cheaper to cut all the wind farms adrift, let them sink or swim on merit, like every other economic entity, no one needs them and most people don’t seem to want them, and when they fail, and the ‘business’ is no more, who will have to fork out again to have these clapped-out windmills removed?
Oh, just the people who ran profitable businesses and didn’t have any subsidy supports to do it. What happens when national economic advice and energy policy formulation comes from the gurus of greenism.
“… 28 For which of you, intending to build a tower, sitteth not down first, and counteth the cost, whether he have sufficient to finish it? 29 Lest haply, after he hath laid the foundation, and is not able to finish it, all that behold it begin to mock him, 30 Saying, This man began to build, and was not able to finish. …”
It seems like what you’d want to do is lay the windmill flat on the ground and use magnets so there’s no friction, like the monorail at Disneyworld, and no need for bearings… and then somehow funnel the wind down through the turbine.
M Seward
August 26, 2014 at 4:33 am
> The basic problem is, once you steel yourself and put aside the intermittent and fluctuating nature of the FREE ENERGY!!
In some sense, all energy is free, however the cost of converting it to something useful is expensive.
People pay for coal brought to the power plant (and to pay the lease on the land). People pay for wind by bringing the collector, turbine, and power grid to the mountain ridge (and pay for the lease on the land).
Actually, BJ has missed the entire point.
“Wind” and other “renewables” are far more than simple technology challenges. They had significant money put into them in the 70s during the Energy Crisis, and were found to be useless. Today, they are more useless, but this time it’s the government that is stuck paying for the uselessness.
Internal combustion engines, diesel, hydro, turbines, and all other portions of the current energy mix (except some parts of Nuclear) were created and refined with private money and not governments. As long as governments keep throwing more money into the deep, dark, failure hole of “renewables” and other climate related scams, I will be against them.
If you want to support “renewables” and waste your own private money, go ahead. Leave me out of it.
“But there do exist drawbacks to direct drive; for one, the uncertainty over the cost and availability of rare earth elements, a necessity for direct drive permanent magnets.”
So more Chinese miners and peasants die as part of the lifecycle cost of these green beauties.
Still, they are not middle class activists, so no probs!
BJ Hansen, nobody is against you spending your own money to develop alternative energy sources, what we object to is the desire of you and people like you to spend our money developing such sources.
You seem to be offended that we dare to point out that wind energy is not cost effective and that those who have been pushing it have continued to hide it’s true costs.
Shouldn’t you be upset with those who have been lying to us, rather than fuming at those who have exposed the lie?
BTW, the general method is to demonstrate that a source is faulty, merely declaring it to be so is insufficient.
At 3:54 AM on 26 August, BJ Hanssen perpetrates argumentum ad hominem…
…and then goes on to give us Real Soon Now:
Er, well, uh….
Okay. So until whatever “is coming” actually comes, why build those bird-munching bat-mangling, fireball-detonating screeching pedestal-mounted boondoggles?
Maybe instead of a single overhung bearing, they need to go to a double-bearing — a bearing on both sides of the rotor-hub.
Another bearing or a larger bearings increases friction and kills overall efficiency, what is needed is a better material to make the bearings out of which is likely to be prohibitively expensive.
To answer some of the commenters who seem to think that technical evolution will make wind farms ‘viable’.
This will _never_ be the case, given the original energy source, i.e. wind, is so unpredictable and variable; the law of economics will weigh so heavily against wind that it will never be picked as an energy source compared to more reliable or ‘on demand’ energy sources.
The only reason wind turbines are being put up is the subsidy to be collected. Without that wind turbine projects are quickly abandoned. This is therefore not about saving the planet, its all about collecting the monies.. Especially given the short life of wind turbines and their net ineffectiveness of energy production – any full cycle cost benefit analysis would mean they never get beyond the evaluation stage.
Also the act of subsidising to such a degree is a deterrent to real investments in R&D; it removes the whole market signal reward to encourage competition and real innovation. Why waste your profit margin when your risks & costs are so well covered?
Correct, ecoG.
Wind “farms” would be more accurately called subsidy “farms”. It is only the subsidies that give the wind companies any value at all.
BJ Hanssen (@BJHanssen)
August 26, 2014 at 3:54 am
You show a completelack of understanding of the problem which would take too long to explain to one whose thought processes lack the speed.
Think : suitable technology to invest in right now: Cost to the economies of the west while the east are gaining : Damage to the quality of life for all western countries and poor countries, etc.
I am not against renewables I’m against stupidity !!
People pay for coal brought to the power plant (and to pay the lease on the land). People pay for wind by bringing the collector, turbine, and power grid to the mountain ridge (and pay for the lease on the land).
Ric Werne: Don’t forget the pognon (french)
Watching the video is interesting because, here in Sw France, the gov want to put wind turbines in the middle of the forests. Did you see those flares coming away from the turbine ? Oh, and as in the US, the thurbine crimes are ignored. Normally, you must replant all the trees to cut down or cause to be cut down on a sperate piece of conserved land but that has been waved for the turbine companies.
So the technology is not production ready and taxpayers and energy consumers are subsidising the testing to destruction of expensive hardware.
Seems fair /sarc
There are tens of thousands of these machines out there, having a few with issues seems appropriate given the size and complexity. As far as the cost, pretty much EVERY technology required government to assist it getting started. When gas natural prices are higher wind actually starts to make economic sense. The EROI shows wind as one of the more competitive approaches. I also believe that they are under estimating the life of these machines, the typical life could probably be doubled or more, thus the EROI would be even more competitive.
Any issues typically only require a year or two to work out, I see no reason these machines would be any different than automobiles, which sometimes have new approaches that require some time to work out the bugs.
A reply remarkably similar to BJ’s.
pissedman should change his/her handle to “pollyanna” to reflect the true character of the poster.
Brinelling is the tip of the wind turbine iceberg that could be helped if they could find a lubricant able to avoid it being squeezed out at the lowest point of the arc when the shaft bearing stops rotating. As it stands there is no lubricant available now or likely to be available in the future because the load is immense the fluid technology just does not exist.
More critically as of now there are about 100,000 wind turbines across the planet which generate about 2% of the total global electricity demand and this has taken about 25+ years to achieve. As they only last about 20 years by the time another 100,000 are installed the first 100,000 will become obsolete, beyond repair or just flailing in the wind so will we ever get past wind ever generating more than 2%, I think not but for Siemens the pretence that we need more will keep them in business seemingly forever, the question is can culpable politicians continue to promote the myth laden propaganda whilst temperatures flat line and may even fall just one more harsh winter in Europe with frozen turbines across Germany may be enough to start the rot.
Germany burns the same volume of coal now as in 1970 in spite of spending Euros 600 billion on wind and solar, if they cant make it work then who can?
How many of the “100,000 wind turbines across the planet” are actually operational? The one thing I’ve noticed when driving through the Altamont Pass is how many of the multitudes of wind turbines are no longer operational. For the amount of power wind turbines generate I’ll bet we’ll find they require a lot more maintenance than than conventional means of generating power, and that maintenance costs a lot more, too.
A grille round each rotor might stop birds being killed?
[url]http://dailycaller.com/2014/05/01/bird-enthusiasts-to-sue-feds-for-allowing-wind-turbines-to-kill-eagles-for-30-years/[/url]
BJ Hanssen (@BJHanssen) August 26, 2014 at 3:54 am
All energy production technology has technological limitations to be overcome. Internal combustion engines have been constantly improved since their inception simply to overcome known limitations of their design. Gearboxes, carburators and different engine geometries and mechanisms (2-stroke, 4-stroke etc) were early examples of leaps in technology to overcome existing issues.
==========================
BJ– You’re making a false equivalency. All new technologies improve through innovation, but throughout their life cycle, the technology is still superior to the alternative of not using it…
Wind/Solar are not viable technologies because other alternatives are far superior in every respect.
In a free-market economy, wind/solar would not exist except for specialized niche applications.
The only reason wind/solar are wastefully utilized at current levels is because of the $billions in government subsidies. Without these market distorting subsidies, wind/solar would be just be very niche-market technologies.
http://machinedesign.com/mechanical-drives/bearing-failures-cause-serious-problems-wind-turbines-there-are-solutions
Gearboxes in wind turbines, more than those in any other application, tend to fail prematurely. In fact, at some wind projects, up to half of all gearboxes fail within a few years.
oil leaks-
http://www.windaction.org/posts/40854-investigation-launched-into-hydraulic-oil-leaks-at-ocotillo-wind-facility#.U_yGA7vLjxw
Persistent problem: Axial cracking
Despite all the recent improvements, one major cause of gearbox-bearing failures is axial cracking, sometimes called white-etch cracking for the irregular white areas that appear when affected bearing surfaces are chemically etched and examined under micrographs. Axial bearing cracking consists of lengthwise cracks on the bearing’s inner ring along the roller path. The cracks form in gearboxes from all manufacturers, on turbines in disparate installations. For reasons that remain unclear, axial-cracking failures usually arise in bearings that support gears of the intermediate and high-speed stages.
…
In contrast, axial-cracking failures have only been observed for the last 20 or so years in just a few industries, so they aren’t fully understood — and GL calculations don’t factor for their effects. But axial-cracking failure is common. It happens at stress levels much lower than those that cause rolling-contact fatigue. Plus, it typically happens within the first couple years of turbine operation.
http://machinedesign.com/mechanical-drives/bearing-failures-cause-serious-problems-wind-turbines-there-are-solutions
ulickstafford
Your very good post at August 26, 2014 at 5:11 am says in total
Wind power is much older than you suggest.
Wind energy powered most of the world’s shipping for thousands of years. Primitive wind turbines powered pumps (notably in the Netherlands and England) and mills throughout Europe for centuries.
There are a number of types of wind turbines
They are divided into Vertical-Axis and Horizontal-Axis types.
Vertical-axis windmills to mill corn were first developed by the Persians around 1500BC, and they were still in use in the 1970’s in the Zahedan region. Sails were mounted on a boom attached to a shaft that turned vertically.
The technology had spread to Northern Africa and Spain by 500 BC.
Low-speed, vertical-axis windmills are still popular in Finland because they operate without adjustment when the direction of the wind changes. These inefficient Finnish wind turbines are usually made from a 200 litre oil drum split in half and are used to pump water and to aerate land.
Low speed vertical-axis windmills for water pumping and air compressing are commercially available.
The horizontal-axis wind turbine was invented in Egypt and Greece around 300 BC. It had 8 to 10 wooden beams rigged with sails, and a rotor which turned perpendicular to the wind direction.
This type of wind turbine later became popular in Portugal and Greece.
Around 1200 AD, the crusaders built and developed the post-mill for milling grain. The turbine was mounted on a vertical post and could be rotated on top the post to keep the turbine facing the wind. This post-mill technology was first adopted for electricity generation in Denmark in the late 1800’s.
The technology soon spread to the U.S. where it was used to pump water and to irrigate crops across the Great Plains.
During World War I, some American farmers rigged wind turbines to each generate 1 kW of DC current. Such wind turbines were mounted on buildings and towers.
On western farms and railroad stations, wind turbines for pumping water were between 6 and 16m high and had 2 to 3m diameter. With 15kmh wind speed, a 2m-diameter turbine operating a 60cm diameter pump cylinder could lift 200 litres of water per hour to a height of 12m. A 4m diameter turbine could lift 250 litres per hour to a height of 38m.
Clearly, there are niche markets for wind turbines in some remote locations to this day where e.g. water needs to be pumped. But wind turbines were abandoned for most uses when the greater energy intensity in fossil fuels became available to do work by use of the steam engine.
Wind turbines are ancient technology which originated 1500 years before Christ, was developed for electricity generation in the 1800s, but was generally abandoned in favour of the superior steam engine.
Richard
I’m looking out my back door and across the paddock at the moment at a metal windmill (8-10 m high) that is used to pump water into a cattle trough. Perhaps out of nostalgia, but more likely frugality, the grazier rescued and refurbished the windmill from another property where, until recently, there was no alternative and affordable source of power. It has 20 blades each about 2m long and other than greasing the bearings (a somewhat difficult and dangerous job), seems to need no maintenance. I doubt that the windmill new would be cost effective compared to a diesel or electric pump, but it is certainly less noisy and hasn’t killed a single bird as far as I can tell.
Richard, you are close. But your words are more accurately
Wind turbines are ancient technology which originated 1500 years before Christ, were adapted for low voltage, low amperage, single-farm, single-family, simple-circuit electricity generation in the early 1900-1920’s, and were immediately and completely abandoned in favour of the superior steam engine and central power generation as soon as the power lines could be brought to each farm.
Windmills can pump water from shallow depths, can generate a little bit of electricity over limited periods of time. They DO work, and ARE a good idea IF – and ONLY IF – you have no other choice. Condemning the world’s poor and hungry to wind turbines because elite liberal over-educated whites living in protected cities under air conditioning and heating from cenralpower plants with centrally-pumped purified and sterilized water running in steel pipes from electrically-driven pumps is merely condemning those poor to an early death.
So the liberal over-educated but guilty elites can “feel better” about climate change.