From the ABC Australia, video follows. Proof of something we’ve always said: You need a fossil fueled backup generator for any “green”wind/solar power project.
Mawson Antarctic research station relying solely on diesel after wind turbine crashes to ground
An Australian Antarctic research station is now relying solely on diesel power generation after a wind turbine collapsed overnight.
Expeditioners at Mawson station discovered the head of the 30-metre Enercon E30 turbine had fallen to the ground about 9:00pm on Tuesday.
The Australian Antarctic Division’s general manager of support and operations, Dr Rob Wooding, said he was thankful no-one was injured in the incident.
…
Dr Wooding said the cause of the collapse was unclear, as weather conditions had been moderate over the last few days.
“We have no idea what the cause of it is yet,” he said.
“The winds at Mawson are always quite strong at night, so they were up to about 40 knots, but that’s not, by Mawson standards, especially strong.”
Dr Wooding said the turbine was one of two on the station, but both had been deactivated as a precaution while investigations continued.
Full story here
Video:
I would stick with diesel or “jet fuel”, or coal for power if you need it for electricity 24/7 in Antarctica stations…
Wouldn’t coal require a power plant to be useful for electricity? They might be able to use it for heat, but coal is a very dirty fuel for that use. We tried it years ago.
After 14 years, maybe it finalled pivoted CCW enough times to unscrew itself from the pole?
/s
Saw this bit of news on Jo Nova’s yesterday. Got me curious.
While searching for electricity generation information at Mawson, I came across references to the power generating history at Mawson; only the links were broken.
Searching a bit more, one finds this tidbit at :
Diesel generating waste heat is used to heat the stations.
consider, if this waste heat pump is shut down in favor of wind generated electric heat; when the wind shuts down, or a turbine crashes?
That would require restarting the diesel generators and some time to pass before sufficient waste heat is available. Much like automobile heaters dependent upon waste engine heat for the passengers, it takes time.
The broken link to a electricity generation chart is apparently broken on purpose. Even http://www.antarctica.gov.au links for that chart end up at the wind turbine press page. Without the actual operating chart available, proponents can claim any waffle word fantasy without worrying that the truth would suddenly expose them. Quick examples are seen where various Mawson wind turbine pages use capacity figures to claim energy production levels.
Perhaps those diesel generators work much more frequently and consistently to ensure quality frequency, voltage and amperage for critical equipment.
The diesel generators are always on. The wind turbines provide an average of 34% of the electricity needs. They do not provide the heat needs.
And sometimes they provide nothing.
and sometimes they will need diesel power to get started
Thanks Steve!
That was my suspicion.
One of the very few times and places “renewables” makes perfect sense and they use the wrong oil. Sheese.
Producing a machine that operates effectively at a temperature of say -50ºC needs detailed knowledge as to how materials operate at such temperatures: not just lubricants but also structural materials. “Off-the-shelf” won’t cut it.
There is a town in northern Minnesota named Grygla. That’s the only sound your car makes when you try to start it at -40F (=-40C). Say it softly and briefly, and once.
Producing a machine that operates effectively at a temperature of say -50ºC needs detailed knowledge as to how materials operate at such temperatures: not just lubricants but also structural materials. “Off-the-shelf” won’t cut it.
Well, it did last 14 years, which included 14 winters, which are far harsher than when this one failed.
So I doubt it was a misapplication of machinery, per se.
how would you know what it was unless you know the expected design life? if it only lasted 50% it could exactly be that type of failure
I wonder how they keep the wind turbines from of ice build-up?
Darn wrong word. My mind said it, fingers didn’t. !
I wonder how they keep the wind turbines free of ice build-up?
Not a problem at those temperatures. Icing is mostly caused by supercooled droplets. Extremely dry air in East Antarctica. Might be a problem up on the Antarctic Peninsula though.
Here is the link to Mawson’s webcam video.
Though at only two days, it is fast approaching past turbine failure time.
http://www.antarctica.gov.au/webcams/mawson Halfway down the page.
NB, The article above makes a claim about measuring Mawson wind speeds at around 40 knots; “they were up to about 40 knots”.
Well, maybe at maximum gust.
This I couldn’t resist
[The Front Fell Off – Mock Interview From Clarke And Dawe (with slight modifications for this story 🙂 ]
[Senator Collins:] It’s a great pleasure, thank you.
[Interviewer:] This wibd turbine that was involved in the incident in Antarctica this week…
[Senator Collins:] Yeah, the one the blade fell off?
[Interviewer:] Yeah
[Senator Collins:] That’s not very typical, I’d like to make that point.
[Interviewer:] Well, how is it untypical?
[Senator Collins:] Well, there are a lot of these wind turbines around the world all the time, and very seldom does anything like this happen … I just don’t want people thinking that wind turbines aren’t safe.
[Interviewer:] Was this wind turbine safe?
[Senator Collins:] Well I was thinking more about the other ones…
[Interviewer:] The ones that are safe,,,
[Senator Collins:] Yeah,,, the ones the blade doesn’t fall off.
[Interviewer:] Well, if this wasn’t safe, why was it installed?
[Senator Collins:] Well, I’m not saying it wasn’t safe, it’s just perhaps not quite as safe as some of the other ones.
[Interviewer:] Why?
[Senator Collins:] Well, some of them are built so the blade doesn’t fall off at all.
[Interviewer:] Wasn’t this built so the blade wouldn’t fall off?
[Senator Collins:] Well, obviously not.
[Interviewer:] “How do you know?”
[Senator Collins:] Well, ‘cause the blade fell off. It’s a bit of a give-away. I would just like to make the point that that is not normal.
[Interviewer:] Well, what sort of standards are these wind turbines built to?
[Senator Collins:] Oh, very rigorous … maritime engineering standards.
[Interviewer:] What sort of things?
[Senator Collins:] Well the blade’s not supposed to fall off, for a start.
[Interviewer:] And what other things?
[Senator Collins:] Well, there are … regulations governing the materials they can be made of
[Interviewer:] What materials?
[Senator Collins:] Well, Cardboard’s out
[Interviewer:] And?
[Senator Collins:] …No cardboard derivatives…
[Interviewer:] Like paper?
[Senator Collins:]. … No paper, no string, no cellotape. …
[Interviewer:] Rubber?
[Senator Collins:] No, rubber’s out .. Um, there’s a minimum maintenance requirement.”
[Interviewer:] What’s the minimum maintenance?
[Senator Collins:] Oh,… once, I suppose.
[Interviewer:] So, the allegations that they are just designed to attract as many tax-payer funded subsidies as possible and to hell with the consequences, I mean that’s ludicrous…
[Senator Collins:] Ludicrous, absolutely ludicrous. These are very, very strong wind turbines.
[Interviewer:] So what happened in this case?
[Senator Collins:] Well, the blade fell off in this case by all means, but that’s very unusual.
[Interviewer:] But Senator Collins, why did the blade fall off?
[Senator Collins:] Well, the wind blew.
[Interviewer:] The wind blew?
[Senator Collins:] Tge wind blew on the turbine.
[Interviewer:] Is that unusual?
[Senator Collins:] Oh, yeah… In Antarctica? …Chance in a million.
Now THAT is funny!
Brill, Here’s the original
enjoy
ROFL²
I didn’t see any of the Monty Python people in the credits … whats up with that?
There are a lot of the really big windmills close to freeways and even at the Budweiser plant off I-80. How will the greenies react when one of these self destructs and slices through a few cars, along with their occupants. Will they call it a sacrifice for the greater good?
I don’t think the turbines are close enough to I-80 for that to happen. There are some close to the roads in Wyoming, too. When turbines come apart, from the pictures I’ve seen, mostly they fall more or less straight down (the one near I80 at Arlington did fall over, but was not near enough to the highway to be a problem). Gravity works. I can’t see how the turbine itself could fly very far. Ice throw might hit the highway, but even then, it’s unlikely. If you’re out hunting under turbines, picnicing under them or strolling along a walkway under them (that “multiuse” thing, you know), there’s a higher chance. Cows and wildlife underneath could be in serious trouble.
The Bud plant on I80 is probably far enough away to be OK. There are some on Altamont pass that are a lot closer. I can just see one of the big ones pin-wheeling down the hill and across I-580 …
I think the nacelles on those are exceedingly heavy.
Pieces from a runaway turbine can go a couple of hundred meters:
Must have been all the penguins dancing at the resonant frequency of the turbine.. Also a known cause of iceberg cleaving.. Dangerous place the Antarctic when the penguins dance..
The windmills look quite close together so maybe there really was some resonance.
Famous case in UK of cooling tower collapse at Ferrybridge (those ones that are always belching evil black carbon!).
https://matzagusto.wordpress.com/2011/12/14/vibration-damages-towers-case-ferrybridge-cooling-towers-collapse/
Mawson and the others are a massive waste to tell us the ice is thickening!
How will ‘fact finding’ in the Antarctic help pay down Australia’s trillion dollar State and Federal debt?.
Huge salaries with over-generous benefits and superannuation.
Contractor fraud and overcharging are rampant.
Massive CO2 emissions from helicopters, snowmobiles, generators and vessels etc.
A Government department (the AAD) dedicated to paper shuffling and shovelling money at anything that seems remotely like a good idea regardless of the merit.
The waste and duplication of work already done by other countries is on a scale of unimaginable squandering.
People must rise-up and stop these criminal scientific enterprises that keep worthless academics in clover. Their productivity is that near zero it’s unmeasurable.
.
Indeed…one might wonder why there are a whole slew of research stations in Antarctica, manned all winter log when it is pitch dark and too cold to go outside.
I mean, exactly what are they doing down there all Winter?
Or the rest of the time, for that matter?
Well, as reported, they are drinking, carousing and fighting. With research scientists from all over the world, it must be WW3 down there. But nobody dead yet, so they must be sorting it all out. Elon Musk and NASA should be taking notes, since this may be like a one way trip to Mars.
Chopping down trees, I’m told.
“Chopping down trees, I’m told.”
You mean like a LumberJack !!!!!!
Maybe someone mistook the turbine for a tree while in a drunken stupor ?
Only someone who has been there will understand Antarctic “trees.”
Maintaining a presence, so as to uphold national claims to territory. The Argies went so far as to fly in a pregnant woman so that they could claim the only native Antarctican.
14-years . . .
It’s called metal fatigue followed by fracture (likely no plastic deformation in between).
Can anyone imagine the cost to repair?
The properties of most metals change at extremely low temperatures (strength, toughness, brittleness and durability). Most metals increase in brittleness.
Selecting metals for service at extremely low temperatures is important with respect to composition as well as fabrication technique.
Preventive maintenance including checking fasteners and frames exposed to extreme cold and shock is critical. None of this would have been undertaken at the exterior top of the turbine as it would be impossible to do for many reasons in such a climate.
Installing a wind turbine in Antarctica is pure insanity and only something the ADD would do without much thought for the consequences.
I’d say IRREPARABLE. No part of the tower can now be guaranteed to be tenable.
Most likely will have to be completely removed, (maybe) and replaced with a new one.
That means new from the very bottom of the foundations !!
Leave the old foundation where it is, most probably, like most “environmental” cases.
Sorry AAD Australian Antarctic Division (not ADD); but yes many there suffer from attention deficit disorder when considering money conservation.
No reasonable plan… No plan to reasonably isolate non-renewable, gray energy converters from the environment.
Wild guess: failure in the feathering mechanism, allowing one vane to wobble a millimeter or two.
Metal becomes brittle when exposed to extreme cold, in this case for 14 years. Plus, you mentioned it, thermal expansion and contraction. Unfit for purpose under these circumstances.
Very likely. But (1) it depends on the alloy; (2) if it’s embrittlement, the metal has been like this since the turbine was installed and it has functioned fine for 14 years. Something must have changed. That’s what must be determined.
The ultimate irony would have been if the windmill fell on the diesel house and put it out of operation, I’m not sure what the red shipping container is but if it’s anything to do with the diesel power plant or power distribution I’d get it moved to a safer distance from the windmill.
James Bull
In autumn leaves are falling of trees. Simpels.
It’s spring down there. Fortunately, since they can ship in more diesel as needed.
Plus some more Diesel generators. I hope they’ll remove the windy debris before a peng gets hurt.
Basic safety require that they already have fuel (and other supply) enough even if next scheduled ship have some problem and doesn’t make it. But who knows, we are talking about people fool enough to have a wind turbine there…
Metal embrittlement.
diesel generator are especially great in Antartica, because there, heat is not wasted, it is needed as much as electricity. So they basically have 100% efficiency for the fuel. That makes wind turbine all the more stupid.
No, cogen is not magic. They might get 90% efficiency, tops.
Quite a lot of interesting information here:
http://www.antarctica.gov.au/living-and-working/station-life-and-activities
However, I cannot see any actual figures for cost of fuel saved or cost of installing the wind turbines and associated energy storage. They are both expensive, given the transportation costs, and I would love some hard data.
Interestingly https://www.researchgate.net/publication/237467103_Power_Needs_at_McMurdo_Station_and_Amundsen-Scott_South_Pole_Station_Antarctica
says
“Total net present savings for the use of wind, including all costs associated with the wind system installation, would be between $1 million and $4 million over a 20-year project life. The cost of the project was modeled to be between $2 million and $3 million.”
That gives me 2 questions:
1. What did the project actually cost, we all know how inaccurate “modeled” can be.
2. How do the numbers work for a 14 year life?
I tried to follow http://www.aad.gov.au/apps/operations quoted by Steve from Rockwood, but the link does not work. Taken down to conceal bad news? That apparently said that total use was 650,000 litres and fuel savings 29% per year which does not match Wiki “saving over 600,000 litres.”
Putting the wind turbines close to other things was clearly a mistake, if it had landed on a person or some important equipment they would really have a problem.
interesting figures anyway.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-11-08/mawson-antarctic-wind-turbine-failure-investigated/9130554
says that “The pair of turbines had been in operation since 2003 and usually provided about half of the station’s power each year.”.
Since they certainly use fuel for vehicle, heating, etc., the equation “29% fuel saving = half the power” makes sense. That would be ~200.000 liters, worth ~$100.000.
Whatever model they use, only a fool invest “between $2 million and $3 million” to save “between $1 million and $4 million over a 20-year project life”, that is, between $50,000 and $200,000 a year, in a risky business in harsh environment. The project just pay for 5% financial cost, IF everything works OK, which was pretty improbable, as evidenced. That’s a NO-NO for any banker.
We can safely estimate that ~1 or 2$Million went down the drain.
In Antarctica, you need proven stuff easy to maintain, repair, and replace if need be; you need diesel generator that don’t even have to stand the weather because they are kept in-door, not exposed wind turbine impossible to replace if they fail. I MAY trust russian device proven in Siberia or at their Vostok station (where, guess what, they DON’T have wind turbine, despite steady wind….), but western econut-backed stuff was a gadget from the start.
The Russians did it.
well, for sure they didn’t the wind turbine.
Dear Forrest, I beseech you, do not give ‘them’ ideas. I have visions of the moon covered with giant turbines like these.
let me give you a new hypothesis: a climate change denier, frequent writer at WUWT sabotaged the turbine.
that would explain everything 🙂
Unlikely, as that would require a very expensive ticket to get down there, and the Big Oil Climate Denying Conspiracy Cheques don’t even cover the in-flight peanuts.
Are there any coal deposits in Antarctica?
I like the idea of a coal fired electrical plant there, far away from the northern hemisphere. Is it really any worse than diesel fuel with today’s clean air technologies? We could turn the whole continent into one big power plant, and power the whole world! There cannot be that many endangered species in Antarctica, like the flying penguins.
Toronto has a single windmill. When it came online, Bob Hunter (founder of Greenpeace), positively chortled with delight that he was a shareholder, and got in before those “greedy” capitalists did…
Of course, the damn thing rarely works, certainly hasn’t made any money, and for added good measure, has been offline for months, pending an “upgrade”, while being shut down for “routine” maintenance.
I’d give odds that the thing never turns again.
Any takers?
Realists in Newcastle (NSW Australia) had a bit of a laugh when they removed Newcastle’s only wind turbine..
…. to make way for a new COAL loader. 🙂
Is that true? Been a while since I was there. I have not heard a thing about that and I live in Sydney.
Perhaps a group of a half-dozen small, non-elevated, vertical-shaft wind turbines would have been a better choice down there. IIRC, some versions of them are simpler, lighter, cheaper, easier to install (no need to fasten to bedrock), automatically resistant to too-high wind speeds, and easier to maintain and repair. They wouldn’t be as efficient as what just fell down, but they would be efficient enough in a location where there is normally constant wind at ground level.
Antarctica is a good location for supplemental wind power—of the proper sort.
If they (vertical shaft winders) didn’t fall over (or off) then, all in all, they would likely be more efficient than the ones that do fall down.