This is pretty cool (SE)

Noel Kelly_3

Steve,

My annual pilgrimage to the ould sod in '07 brought me to Arklow. Below are shots of the offshore wind farm taken from Arklow Golf Club - a very challenging links course.

Located about 10 Km offshore, the sight was mesmerizing. I like to think that the reason for my less than stellar play was the distraction of these behemoths. But as you can see (or barely see) they are a far cry from being an eyesore.

I am also including a link to some videos of the site.

http://ge.ecomagination.com/site/showcase/arklow.html

Noel K.

Steve Ebels_3

Wind generators

There are 2 of a planned 8, 2.5MW wind turbines going up about 10 miles from my house. The private company that's having them built actually has about 10,000 acres of land under lease and could erect as many as 22 from what I heard.

These things are the largest machines I have ever seen and the equipment used to construct them is just a s big. In the pictures I've attached and the video links shown, you'll see an absolutely enormous Manitowac crane. All I can say about the operator running the thing is very very good at what he does. According to one of the guys working on the site, there are only 5 of these in the world and they are the largest of their type. The boom is nearly 300 feet long and it can pick up and move 1,000 tons. The particular one here on this job was the first crane set up on the World Trade Center site. It costs $200,000 per month for the length of the contracted time and if they go over, which they now have by 10 days, the charge per day is $20,000. In one of the videos you'll see a stack of weights on the back of the crane. Each one of these counterweights weighs 18,500 pounds. Last time I counted them they had a total of 26 weights on it. The crane has a dual track on each corner but the drive system is capable only of positioning. It can not transport itself. It's too big. The whole thing has to be disassembled and moved on 42 semi's and then reassembled. On this job site the two wind turbines are only 1/4 mile apart but they tore the whole thing down and trucked it across the field to assemble it on the next site.

The towers, turbines and blades are staggering in size. Each of the three blades weighs about 11 tons and they are balanced to within ounces of each other. They feel smooth like the skin of a snake and are a bit over 140' long. At the base, they are large enough that I could park my F-250 inside them. The turbine, blade hub and gearbox assembly weighs another 45 tons for a total weight on the top of the tower around 78 tons. The elevator inside the tower can take up to 4 tons to the top. All that sits approximately 250' in the air. The blades incorporate a row of water jets to keep then clean during operation. I was told that they can accumulate so many bugs that they can lose a large percentage of their performance from the aerodynamic drag on the blade surface. Birds bounce off but bugs stick

The composite blades, hub, gearbox and turbine are made by Fuhrlander in Germany. The tower is fabbed up in British Columbia. There is not so much as a single bolt or nut on the thing that is made here in the USA which torques my jaw more than a little. We have all this idle manufacturing capability here in the US and especially here in Michigan and yet we have to import the whole D**n mess. What is wrong with made in the USA??? The three main assembly guys are from Fuhrlander and have lived here locally for the last 12 weeks.

The base of these things is on the same giant scale as the towers. Four 24x36" I beams, 125' long, were driven into the ground. Then a hole was excavated around them to a depth of about 16'. A template, for lack of a better word, was welded to the I-beams at a depth of about 14'. Then "threaded rod" 2" x 15' long was welded to the template and another plate was welded a couple feet below grade. After all that was in place, over 600 yards of cement was poured into the hole and finished about 12" above grade. Did I mention there are over 100 of those 2" diameter "threaded rods". The first section of the tower is bolted to the rods and everything else goes up from there.

Each of these turbines needs only 22mph wind to reach maximum output of 2.5 MegaWatts. That's enough power for 800 normal homes. According to the dude I spoke with at the job site, these units will still put out half their rated output in only a 13MPH breeze. The better half and I took a drive out there last week in the evening and I noticed that there was so little breeze at ground level the leaves on the field corn were barely rustling. The flags at the top of the crane, some 300' in the air however, were standing right straight out. I have a feeling those things will be turning a LOT. To give you an idea of the size of the crane, one of the flags at the top is 5'x 8'. Just look at it in the pictures. The guys on top of the tower during assembly of the blade and hub section looked like ants crawling around up there.

You can see these things for miles and miles. While I have encountered a few people that don't feel they "enhance" the beauty of the countryside here, not a single person has voiced an opinion indicating they are against the project. People around here are pretty practical and know this is the way things are going to be.

Hope you enjoy the pictures and the YouTube links to the video. We installed a Buderus boiler a few years ago in the house of the guy that did the first video. He told me the segment showing them raising the hub and blade assembly is over a half hour compressed to about 3 minutes on the video. That little vertical thing behind the blade hub in picture 017 is a guy. You should be able to zoom in on the picture to see him. It's one of the German dudes. The circular object in the foreground is a section of the second tower. In picture 013 and 018 you can see that they had the blades guy wired as they raised the assembly into position. They had a sock, for lack of a better word about 20' long over the end of the two top blades. A cable ran from the sock to a couple "small" cranes out in the field about 200 yards to keep the thing stabilized during the process. The small yellow and black crane in 013 is a 100 footer that can pick 300 tons. It's used to assemble the big crane and move stuff around on the job site for the big one to pick up. To give you an idea of the scale of things you're looking at, the woods you see next to the big crane in the videos is a mature stand of sugar maples that are between 60-75' tall. The jib section of the big crane is probably 30-40' over the top of the trees. In 017 you can see a guy standing on top of the nacelle that houses the gearcase and generator. It's about the size of a semi trailer, 45-40' long.

Copy and paste the links here to your browser to watch. The second two are a local news web broadcast.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hjsJhbtN3Gs&NR=1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hjsJhbtN3Gs&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7GjmMJ5GM8&feature=related

Wayco Wayne_2

Very cool indeed

When I was passing through Watertown NY this Summer I found several commercial Wind Turbines just East of town. It was early morning and they just loomed through the fog spinning silently. I get excited seeing them because we're finally doing something smart. I also saw some from a long distance coming through Western MD on my way home from RPA in Chicago. I could see 15 of them, but have been told they are in PA and extend for 30 miles along the mountain Ridge in Canaan Valley. While these are cool I'm personally more interested in residential sized Windmills. WW

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J.C.A._3

Amazing!

I love the fact that there has been little opposition to the project, but the reporters in the U-tube videos need to take the stick out of their butts....and give it some PIZZAZZZZ!

I've been working on a lot of old solar stuff lately, but wish that folks would see its worth, and start doing their part to cut the crap from our breathing air.

Steve, that is one BIG project. I've never seen cranes that big and having lived through the "big dig" in Boston....I THOUGHT I saw the largest!

Thanks for making us think. What more can I say?

How's things? Send Jerky! Chris

hot_rod

Impressive!

There actually are a lot of wind components being manufactured in the USA. Including the company you mentioned.

From renewableenergyworld.com


As domestic demand for wind turbines continues to surge, a growing number of foreign turbine and component manufacturers have begun to localize operations in the United States. Manufacturing by US-based companies is also starting to expand.

Among the list of wind turbine and component manufacturing facilities opened or announced in 2007 are three owned by major international turbine manufacturers: Vestas (blades in Colorado), Acciona (turbine assembly in Iowa), and Siemens (blades in Iowa). These plants are in addition to facilities recently opened by several other international turbine manufacturers in previous years, including: Gamesa (blades, towers, and nacelle assembly in Pennsylvania), Suzlon (blades and nose cones in Minnesota), and Mitsubishi (gearboxes in Florida). More recently, in 2008, Fuhrl

J.C.A._3

Thanks H.R.

The folks in my locality have been fighting the wind solution tooth and nail, but have really gotten the wind thrown at them recently.

The proposed "wind farm" will be built on the former "landfill", and the numbers are impressive enough to have the School Dept. looking to cash in on the prize....and THEY are! (with budget proposals so far approved by the whole town!)

We ALL have to be looking for ways to make power for US.....and the community in which we live.

If solar is a way to make it happen, then help keep your bills constant....and vote for the projects. A rise in local taxes is going to be a given. If you give the powers that be the DECISION to make something happen that is worth your money, and will pay for itself in time....DO IT !

I did...and am happy about it. Chris

Unknown

Atlantic City, NJ has some...

You just don't believe how large these things are until you get close to them! They power the sewage treatment plant, municipal complex and a couple casinos. They spin almost constantly in the ocean breeze. Don Quixote will need a bigger horse!