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
http://evolution.skf.com/premature-bearing-failures-in-wind-gearboxes-and-white-etching-cracks-wec/
Much premature wind gearbox bearing damage results in a failure mode that is not caused by the classic rolling contact fatigue (RCF) mechanisms (fig. 2). While these classic mechanisms are sub-surface initiated fatigue as well as surface initiated fatigue and can be predicted by standard bearing-life calculation methods (refer to ISO 281 and ISO/TR 1281-2), premature crack failures are not covered by these methods.
@ur momisugly BJ Hanssen
Whilst the Daily Mail is (rightly) lampooned for some of their shoddy reporting, they do cover many aspects of subjects such as this which other papers do not. Perhaps that is the reason you don’t like it?
As for the stresses large wind turbines are subjected to – I wonder how much attention is paid to the the changes in wind speed & direction present at low levels? As a (former) pilot I have first hand experience of this. With the size of machines now typical, I suggest that in many situations each blade can be subjected to considerable variations during each rotation. I regularly used to encounter inversions whilst climbing after take off, and again when descending to land. These often occurred between 3-700 ft above ground – exactly the range the blade tips are now operating in.
Then you have to consider the general turbulence created by trees & buildings, to say nothing of adjacent turbines! It’s little wonder that failures occur…
The wind turbine industry is superb in just a couple of fields, that of chopping up bats, birds and OPM in very large amounts and very inefficiently and thats about it!.
When those British entrepreneurs who created the Great Industrial Revolution which is ongoing to this day and now creates a better life for at least 90% of the global population, finally got their hands on those first, extremely dangerous, grossly inefficient steam engines in the very late 1600′,s they got to hell out of that 3000 year old wind power with all it’s known technology just as fast as they could and for darn good reasons.
Steam gave them a steady reliable controllable power source compared to wind, power, a reliable controllable source of power that was desperately needed to power the new spinning jennys and weaving looms that were so dependent for their operation and their potential efficiencies on such a steady reliable, predictable source of power..
Now the greens and associated eco- loons want to try and force our 24 hours a day, seven days a week, fifty two weeks a year civilisation which is entirely built on that cheap reliable power source and totally reliant on it to now return to the totally unrliable, unpredictable, immensly costly and inefficient, rural peoples health, bird and bat destroying, 24% efficiency wind turbines that those first industrialists after some 2000 or 3000 years of accumulated experience with wind power, abandoned at the very first opportunity..
The wind scammers want to force us to return to the Dark Ages in the most literal sense imaginable. .
[ OPM = Other Peoples Money ]
I see we have wind energy trolls and shills spewing the usual lies about wind energy. The truth is that it is probably the dumbest, least cost-effective, and environmentally-damaging of all the “renewables”, none of which are economically viable.
@ur momisugly BJ Hannsen
“The public wants renewables…”
Really? I was always under the impression that the public and society at large want cheap reliable power. Frankly, there is nothing wrong/unethical or undesirable about that. It may be inconvenient for those with ‘agendas’ based on marginal political ideals but until there is conclusive evidence that these magical renewables prove to be both cheap and reliable then any politically imposed mandate on their adoption is detrimental to the public good.
Looks like Ricardo are on the case. Despite (or perhaps because of) the fact that they have taken Ed Davey’s shilling at DECC they are hard headed engineers. Even if they do find a solution, however, a lot of retrofitting will be required. http://www.ricardo.com/en-GB/News–Media/Press-releases/News-releases1/2013/Ricardo-leads-project-to-improve-offshore-wind-turbine-reliability-and-reduce-operating-cost/
BJ Hanssen
“…the fossil fuel industry is *massively* subsidised.”
————————————–
No they are not, so you ar either using the term “subsidized” *massively* [loosely], are ignorant, or you are dishonest. Whatever the case that one statement forces me to ignore the rest of our comment.
BJHanssen says: “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.”
==============
It is not market forces at work. When states pass laws saying there must be 20 or more per cent of the energy use in the state from renewables that is not a market force. And as for people wanting renewables they only want them because of the lies being told about CO2 and how good renewables are. Lies are not market forces either.
Lets undo all the laws first and tell people there is no reason to restrict or reduce fossil fuel use then we will see real market forces and find out if people still want them.
On BBC ‘Costing the Earth’ a few weeks ago the head engineer of Siemens stated that the next generation of windmills will have 640 magnets – instead of the current 2. Guess that will solve the bearings problem. But ‘surprisingly’ the enviro journalist omitted to ask him the crucial question.
Won’t this massively increase the environmental pollution from rare earth mining in China?
Which is ironic really as the theme of the programme was the Chinese incredibly poor environmental standards from such extraction and processing. Basically they just take the top off a mountain, dissolve it in acid in lagoons, use other chemicals to remove the material they need and walk away without any clean up at all.
This item in The Times today highlights the way loony green interventionism can so easily bring the energy component of an advanced Industrialised economy to its knees:
‘the mood among Big Six (UK energy companies) has turned to wearied resignation and they welcomed the investigation by the Competition and Markets Authority as a chance to “clear the air”.
The truth is that investment dried up months before the CMA was even a glint in the eye of Ed Davey, the energy secretary. Power generators were already struggling to respond to increasing intervention from the state.
Most gas plants are loss-making because of a slump in wholesale electricity prices. The rapid expansion in heavily subsidised wind and solar farms means that gas plants operate only at night, or when the wind does not blow.
Despite warnings from Ofgem (UK energy regulator) that in the winter of 2015 Britain’s total generating capacity could only be 2 per cent above peak demand, it is uneconomic to build new gas plants. Under the government’s green energy reforms, virtually every type of generator will receive subsidies funded by levies on consumer bills — a system that makes a mockery of the concept of a freely functioning market.
“The industry is at a series of crossroads. Renewables are eating the lunch of fossil fuel plants. The government’s reforms are massive state interference that effectively treats the private sector as the delivery body for the state,” Peter Atherton, an analyst from Liberum Capital, said.
Given the extent of intervention which exists, an investigation by the CMA is not such a big leap.
Ho Hum……..
Pssst. Find out what energy source they use to manufacture the turbines and bearings (hint: it’s not wind)…and use that for everything.
Energy sources don’t need to be renewable or sustainable. Nothing is for keeps, nothing ever peaks. Something is good for a while, then something else comes along – which is why your should never have stocked up on mast timbers and whale oil.
Coal too shall pass. In the meantime, use this critical resource with care, respect and thrift. Modernise and improve coal power gen. Conserve coal. Don’t waste it by leaving it the ground or by burning it in old clunkers. You’ll need coal to help dismantle and cart away renewables – just like you needed it to manufacture and supplement renewables.
beng
August 26, 2014 at 5:37 am
> Maybe instead of a single overhung bearing, they need to go to a double-bearing — a bearing on both sides of the rotor-hub.
I.e. mount the rotor on something like an upside-down bicycle fork? Then you have two vertical supports to interfere with the wind and wake. I suspect it will cause big problems with infrasonics, which are already disastrous, and will mean significant redesign of the yaw mechanism due to the much longer moment arm.
The tradeoffs may be necessary though.
It would appear that axial cracking is one of the main problems, and that it is not covered by standard engineering design methods, because it is a relatively new problem. for reasons not well understood the problem is limited to just a few industries, and wind turbines gearboxes appear to be one of the worst affected.
this suggests it is not simply a bearing problem, but a combination of factors. perhaps a new industrial process was introduced 20 years ago to build/install/operate bearings, which is causing a previously unknown mode of failure in specific applications.
A reader above asked about road closure/public access closure due to failing blades flailing in the breeze: Yes, the links in the main story lead directly to a UTube video of the roads in California’s Tehachapi Pass being closed “regularly” because (older) wind turbines have lost their brakes. In that story, the TV news reader claims “newer” models rotate (yaw) out of the wind to prevent blade destruction, but fails to mentions the extreme cost of dismantling the thousands of old turbines.
Wind turbine lifetimes of 20 years? BS. 2–4 years with poor maintenance, 3-8 years then a complete rebuild with good maintenance. (The rebuild does NOT require replacing the tower, but DOES require changing out all of the tower and housing internals … 300 feet up in the air.
Additional wind turbine failure examples: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ppLh5pGX3qQ#t=13
Re my comment earlier it was a BBC World Service science programme ‘Elements’ 19 March 2014.
Listen from 16.20 minutes in. If you have an interest in wind turbines well worth a listen.
What a smokin’ hot Green Energy idea!!
In buidling enterprise business systems, there is a concept called “total cost of ownership”, which includes the cost of building the system, and very importantly the cost of maintaining it annually. The term renewable is based on the idea that the sun and wind are infinite and fossil fuels finite. Well nothing is infinite and we really do not know if 5 centuries from now what it’s all going to be, maybe we find a way to use fossil fuels 1000% more effciently, or a metorite the size of bus hits the earth and wipes out most of civilization. Who knows, what we do know is that the components harnessing sun and wind are not renewable, just replaceable at a cost.
This is true of all systems nucleur, fossil, renewable, and the like. Making cost of energy comparisons without taking “total cost of ownership” into account is foolish.
This is a remarkably clear video “tour” of the internals of most modern windmills.
They are using the wrong material for the bearings. Where are the engineers these days? Sometimes having balls of steel just isn’t good enough.
I don’t know why they are still using blade technology when the barrel system is more efficient
A double bearing only partly solves the issue. Yes, it works for the cantilevered moment issue (the over-hung mass of the blades placing angular loading on the bearing) however it doesn’t fix the pure side load especially during non-rotating idle time. These probably aren’t ‘ball’ bearings anyway, heavier loads are more likely supported by ‘needle’ bearings where the spherical balls are replaced by rotating shafts/rods. these provide a much larger load-bearing surface.
Hanssen said – well doesn’t matter, TL;DR.
If we were being asked to fund ONE pilot windmill so they can experiment with bearings, I’d grumble and say “why doesn’t GE fund their pilot plant.” But I MIGHT acknowledge a potential public interest in funding research.
Why was the 2nd uneconomic, dysfunctional windmill ever built in a country then? Were the people told that $1bn a day was being spent on things that didn’t work properly? Why didn’t we just wait for these great technological breakthroughs before buying the ones with bearings made of unobtainium?
I thought some turbines were motored when there was no wind for prolonged periods, as I have seen several turbines tuning very slowly when there was not a breath of wind. Doing this does mean they probably use more power than they ever generate but we won’t talk about that!
I heard someone the other day saying “they’er not green they’re white! I have never seen a green wind turbine”
James Bull
The thing that keeps the wind mills working is not so much the bearings but the “re-election grease” that keeps these tax payer fraud wind mills turning.
They spin, and push the power along power lines but mean old man resistance just uses most of the power up before it gets to a air conditioner. The electricty speeds along at the speed of light, but all that speed does upset the little bitty atoms who resist no matter what the payoff is to the fraud operations in the U.S. Congress.
@bj Hanssen:
The subsidy claim was debunked in the comments following these comments:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/08/17/nobody-expects-the-spanish-solar-inquisition/#comment-1710983
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/08/25/big-winds-latest-deceitful-ad-campaign/#comment-1717360
Here’s a balanced and worthwhile extract from the Daily Mail article: