Renewable Energy Is The Future

[oil pan 4]

[freebeard]

Deja Vu. It's like Permalink #251 all over again.

[oil pan 4]

Originally Posted by aerohead

No mention of them so far. If they parked themselves, I'd like to know what the leading edges look like. I've seen the blades on the ground up in Gainesville, Texas, at a trans-shipment storage facility along Interstate-35. They're extremely thick epoxy-composite. I can't imagine that 'any' hailstone, regardless of size could 'touch' them. Don't know.
The turbines at Jacksboro, Texas, that went through the tornado did nothing to the turbines there. Often, the height of the supercells that spawn tornadoes, also produce hail ( it's a hundred below zero F up there ).

There's no way they were hit with hail that big and suffered no damage especially if running. Just because they're still running Monday morning doesn't mean everything is fine. Some of the blades are likely cracked. Cracks will allow dirt and water in, small cracks turn into big cracks then before long the local land fill is up to their eyeballs in wind turbine blades.

[Piotrsko]

You can't inspect them well when they are on the turbine since the span requires either someone dangling on a rope, a really tall manlift system, or helicopters.

Won't see the cracks unless they get fairly large or pieces fall off. Typically the blades self destructed or the operators said they had an issue.

[oil pan 4]

Fiber composite especially with metal parts is exceptionally difficult to inspect.

[redpoint5]

Originally Posted by oil pan 4

Fiber composite especially with metal parts is exceptionally difficult to inspect.

It's super easy to inspect... after the implosion.

[oil pan 4]

Yeah just inspect it after it catastrophically fails.
My favorite is when a wind turbine blade breaks and takes out the transformer sitting next to it, the transformer with 1,200 gallons of oil it...

[freebeard]

An engineering problem. Lighted glass fibers embedded into the leading edges would act as telltales.

When the light goes out, something is broken.

[redpoint5]

If it were a common enough problem, I imagine some armor plating could protect the leading edge. I'm assuming the trailing edge retreats fast enough to not be damaged... curious if a stopped blade can still sustain enough damage to cause problems down the road?

Fiber optics is a good idea.

[freebeard]

The stopped blade would be [less] damaged on it's face, while the moving leading edge faces more.

Meanwhile VAWT have gone exotic: 1978 Unusual Wind Turbine - The 'C' Rotor