CFP: Wind is normally good news for wind turbines, but the recent high winds brought by Storm Carmen was too much for one 260-tonne machine in western France.
There is only so much wind a wind turbine can take it seems.
At least that was the case for one in the Vendée, western France where a 62-metre high turbine was blown over by in fierce winds on January 1st.
The 260 tonne turbine was toppled in a field near the town of Bouin, where it had stood firmly for 13 years and survived numerous other storms.
The other turbines on the wind farm survived Storm Carmen, and specialists believe a mini-tornado may have been responsible for blowing over the unlucky turbine. Video here
Those are very comforting to me, kind of like a bike wreck for BFH
13 years? The piece of junk was probably about to fail, anyway…
“The analysis of almost 3,000 onshore wind turbines — the biggest study of its kind —warns that they will continue to generate electricity effectively for just 12 to 15 years…The wind energy industry and the Government base all their calculations on turbines enjoying a lifespan of 20 to 25 years.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/energy/windpower/9770837/Wind-farm-turbines-wear-sooner-than-expected-says-study.html
Look for the rest of the wind farm to collapse fairly soon, from bad weather, which will be blamed on climate change. Maybe they’ll start allowing muslims to go directly to the source and blow up the windmills which power the cars they like to burn.
Apparently it’s hard to provide safe shutdown of a spinning element if you can’t control the prime driving force. Kudos to the manufacturers for constructing the nacelles of fiberglass… they burn up REAL good!
I give the first blade only a 7.4. Good height and form but didn’t stick the landing.
Toilets were designed to take only so much too. 💩
A couple months ago I drove by a wind patch and noticed a broken turbine. One of the blades was crumpled over by the root, near the hub. It was ominous looking and I wondered how the rest of the structure was intact. It had to go out of balance, but I saw no other outside damage to it.
Wow! Look at all that zero emissions smoke billowing from it!
Gone with the wind.
All due to global warming, uhhh no global cooling, uhhh no climate change.
Oh, Never mind, it was never meant to produce much anyway.
Well blow me down!
It must take a tremendous amount of fuel to get those things fired up and spinning fast enough to push the air around – much more proportionally than a ceiling fan, for instance. Still, we have to keep them running or we won’t be able to generate enough breeze to counteract the effects of man-made global warming. I mean, think of how many people would be dead of heat prostration today without them.
Props can’be feathered?
@Judge, I think they tried that but they couldn’t get them to stick.
I learned an interesting fact about wind turbines from someone who built them. They’re geared to a 16:1 ratio so for each revolution the inside mechanism turns sixteen times.
@Billy: the faster the generator rotor turns, the fewer poles are needed to maintain system frequency, hence a smaller generator size.
Pro tip: Don’t stand underneath one of these things.
NIMBY
Wasn’t the wind, it got hit by a Sparrow.
@Burner: Yes, Sparrows can be very dangerous:
http://tinyurl.com/ycwactzm
Jack Sparrow would cause damage as well….
Where is Don Quixote when we need him? He’ll always tilt at windmills. Hope he brings his sidekick along, Sancho Panzer.
There are many of those ugly windmills in my windy part of the country. They are supposed to have a brake to stop them in high winds but after 13 years that obviously failed. Wonderful-ugly windmills and prairie fires when they fail.
Imagine one of these burning up in CA causing wildfires.
The problem is that the blades and hubs
have no counterbalance so there is EXTREME
pressure on the bearings which are cooled
by a forced oil bath.Any of the electronic
systems that operate & control the oil bath fail.
Well you have extreme friction, heat and then fire…
‘Round and ’round and ’round she goes, and where she stops, nobody knows.