7 ton turbine and somewhere between 250 and 300 feet tall just fell over yesterday after 13 years.

News story below from Pittburgh TV station.

http://m.wtae.com/news/huge-wind-tu...nty/-/16915058/23960988/-/7drktb/-/index.html

 

7 ton turbine and somewhere between 250 and 300 feet tall just fell over yesterday after 13 years.

News story below from Pittburgh TV station.

http://m.wtae.com/news/huge-wind-tu...nty/-/16915058/23960988/-/7drktb/-/index.html

Could be that the base failed? One of the pictures shows it uprooted.

For what I know, bases seem to be much wider than deeper.

7 tons only?

 

the only pictures I saw of the base showed stretched, bent bolts on only one side of the base. what happened to the bolts on the other side?

 

the only pictures I saw of the base showed stretched, bent bolts on only one side of the base. what happened to the bolts on the other side?

They likely achieved earth orbit shortly after they snapped...

 

This happened right next door to my house, 10 years ago...

http://www.31alumni.com/31towerfall.htm

 

everything has to be designed with a maximum load in mind. could it be the wind blew a bit harder than the design could handle? or is it just aging of the bolts that hold it to the base corroded or work hardened to failure? if you design something to handle all possible loads, it will be very expensive, and something will come along to break it anyway.

 

Could be that the base failed? One of the pictures shows it uprooted.

For what I know, bases seem to be much wider than deeper.

7 tons only?

The turbine alone as 7 tons according to an engineering that was interviewed on another news program. I don't know if it was an estimate or exact.

The blades, gearbox, nacelle and tower added to that weight. Likely between 80 and 100 mTons all together.

 

Well they have their weight numbers way off. I think each blade weighs about 7 tons.

It looks like the concrete base was made wrong and was way to shallow.

We have large wind farm that went in a few miles from my place a few years ago so a buddy of mine and I went out to see how they were built and the bases they were making here were about 16 - 18 feet in diameter and 40 - 50 feet deep!

The ones we have here have a inner and outer steel liner with reinforced concrete between them with the center filled with sand grout for added ballast.

Here's an outer liner with some of the steel work in place. Each one of those vertical rods is about 2" in diameter and 50 feet long.



Inner liner ready for sand grout ballast.



A 6'2" buddy of mine standing by one of the inner liners.

 

the blades act as a solid disk of the same diameter to the wind, lots of leverage with the tall mast too. if they knew as much as they do now, it might not have fallen.

 

After 13 fruitless years attempting to produce reliable and cost effective energy, it came to its senses and gave up.

 

It was actually well positioned at 3000 feet and the site is know to produce an average of 30% of max capacity each year. Not bad. Some wind farms are poorly located and funded by state governments and average only 10 to 15% of max capacity.

 

7 ton turbine and somewhere between 250 and 300 feet tall just fell over yesterday after 13 years.

News story below from Pittburgh TV station.

http://m.wtae.com/news/huge-wind-tu...nty/-/16915058/23960988/-/7drktb/-/index.html

Gopher a fellow Western PAer.


These turbines are not far from here. Right off a highway we call the Turnpike.

It is also very close to a bicycle trail called the Great Allegheny Passage which goes from Pittsburgh to Cumberland Maryland then on from there to Washington DC as the C&O Canal Trail.

Look it up. Both a feat of engineering that pass by these modern engineering marvels.

Here is a photo from one of my rides down the trail.

 

It seems a MUCH nicer disaster than a Chernobyl or a Fukushima...

Practically zero environmental impact? Just the cost to repair and replace one turbine, a very small part of the installation which is still 95+% operational?

 

Heard that insects and birds tend to disapear from the wind farms area. Not verified by me anyway.

 

From the pictures there appeared to be very little ground disturbance around the base.

This suggests that the ground did not fail and that insufficient anchorage was provided into the ground.
Were the holding down bolts corroded or loose?

More to the point if the other turbines are of the same design they will all be vulnerable to the same failure mode and need immediate checking and strengthening.

 

From the pictures there appeared to be very little ground disturbance around the base.

This suggests that the ground did not fail and that insufficient anchorage was provided into the ground.
Were the holding down bolts corroded or loose?

More to the point if the other turbines are of the same design they will all be vulnerable to the same failure mode and need immediate checking and strengthening.

Or someone came along and remove the bolts on one side of the tower...

As mentioned above, they are either in a low-earth orbit or in a nice pile next to the base.

 

Heard that insects and birds tend to disapear from the wind farms area. Not verified by me anyway.

You heard wrong. Feel free to come visit me and we will go out to my local wind farm and you can collect all the live bugs and birds you want! Unless it's winter time of course.

All of our bugs disappear everywhere and most of our birds go south for that half of the year.

 

You heard wrong. Feel free to come visit me and we will go out to my local wind farm and you can collect all the live bugs and birds you want! Unless it's winter time of course.

All of our bugs disappear everywhere and most of our birds go south for that half of the year.

It depends on who you believe. I have read articles that say the whole bird strike thing is over blown.

But then again companies like Duke Energy don't pay out fines for nothing.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/22/duke-energy-bird-fine_n_4326596.html

It very well could be they were negligent in construction. I understand some of the newer designs have a very low bird kill rate.

 

I wouldn't call 149 bird a massive kill off and the fines are for deaths of protected or endangered species only.

Heck between my vehicles and my two cats we probably killed that many last summer. Granted they weren't protected species birds as I know of.

FWIW I had a flock of blackbirds moved into my area last summer for about two weeks that more than likely measured at over a million plus birds. Now if they found all of those dead at one wind farm I would consider it a valid concern.

For comparisons.

http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2010/07/dead-birds.html

 

FWIW I had a flock of blackbirds moved into my area last summer for about two weeks that more than likely measured at over a million plus birds. Now if they found all of those dead at one wind farm I would consider it a valid concern.

I would consider it a blessing.