CBC;
Six of 10 turbines at P.E.I.’s East Point Wind Plant have been shut down to avoid further damage after problems with their gearboxes were discovered during routine inspections.
The three-megawatt, 90-metre turbines are the largest wind turbines in commercial operation in North America, said Vestas Americas, suppliers of the turbines, in a news release Tuesday.
So the wind was blowing too hard and wore out the turbines? On a related note:
Al Gore Calls Myanmar Cyclone a ‘Consequence’ of Global Warming (via Drudge)
A nice clean steady supply of power. Yup.
Out of commission for almost two months…good thing no one is relying on them.
Years ago Newfoundland hydro – during the last big spike in oil costs – built a wind turbine on Bell Island, just northwest of St. John’s. During a windy freezing-rain ‘storm’ (it wasn’t that stormy relative to how bad it can really get) the tips of the blades cooled enough to cause the rain to freeze onto the them. The increased mass at the tips combined with the rotation speed caused the blades to literally rip themselves from the turbine hub.
I wonder if Vestas – a danish company – has any experience with those kind of conditions, which are hardly uncommon in PEI. If they underengineered the gearboxes for the windspeeds experienced in PEI, then I am not optomistic that they will have anticipated conditions simislar to those described above.
Hmmmm six of them for two months……. well at least that amounts to about two less dead birds……
We have to keep turning the windmills down; we’re afraid if they get any stronger, PEI will sail away.
The Bird Blenders are down, eh ~~ Good, maybe our enviro-nuts can power their electric cars with that.
Boom Boom out go the lights!
Replacement cost?
Taxpayers will be zapped with equalization payments.
Hey I thought they had variable pitch props on those things so that they slowed down when wind blew too hard.
Otherwise, if it’s just weak bearings give Cat or John Deer a call. heh.
Seldom happens to gas turbines.
The gearbox has to be built to withstand forces far greater than just transmitting smooth rotational torque from the blade hub to the armature.
The armature has a horrendous amount of rotational kinetic energy – think massive flywheel. A flywheel does not think kindly to sudden changes in RPM.
But the propellers are trying to do just that in gusty conditions.
The blades can adjust angle of attack to try and maintain a constant RPM but they cannot adjust instantly or predict gust to come.
To be able to handle these shock loads, the gearboxes have to be massively overbuilt, otherwise they will fail prematurely.
The cost of maintainence on huge components that are hundreds of feet in the air — lots !
More probs with WP; Bugs contaminating the blades and destroying the airfoil shape (lost efficiency) and dust/sand doing the same and not being able to maintain 60hz (critical) and too little wind and too much wind and ice build up and dead birds and electricity output that is far too costly and ….
All mechanical devices have their vices – and someday WP’s probs may be overcome.
So why was all this overlooked ? It wasn’t, by most. It is just that the Politicians and Green consultants obtain too much of their knowledge from Popular Mechanics and perpetual motion magazines.
Same goes for biofuels. I, mere Engineering Graduate, knew biofuels were not feasible years ago – 1981 to be exact. A small, simple experiment – a diesel generator operating on Canola Oil and a knowledge of Canola Crop fossil fuel requirements revealed the folly.
But with Global Warming Religion obscuring all science the last ten years, we are now all left holding the perverbial bag.
If the founder of The Weather Channel is successful in suing Al Gore, we may recover a $hundred million of it.
Nice post Ron.
Thats the trouble with most leftist ideas and policies; they do not stand on their own merits, nor stand up to any kind of scientific scrutiny.
As you well demonstrated, individuals with a conservative bent (read common sense based on reality) rejected these kind of inefficient “solutions” early on since it was apparent that they could not deliver their promised potential.
The left has embraced them, not because they are the solution to anything, but because conservatives reject them (based on facts), which has been the lefts modus operendi (anti common sense) for the last 40 years.
Sad part is that the media is happy to trumpet anything that can hamstring conservatives, so they are more than happy to validate bad leftist ideas and ideologies without question.
So these bad policies (ie. biofuels, windfarms) are promoted as solutions, when they are really nothing more than anti conservative,reactionary rejectionist leftist screeds dressed up as solutions to problems that don’t exist (AGW), that actually create more problems than they were created to solve.
largest wind turbines formerly in commercial operation in North America
“Under its agreement with the P.E.I. Energy Corporation, the Crown corporation that owns and operates the wind farm, Vestas, will be responsible for repairs and lost revenue during the outage, including payments to landowners where the turbines are situated.”
Meanwhile, on the nuclear front:
“Hanging over the proceedings is an invisible presence: the ghost of the disastrous restart of the Unit 4 reactor. By the time it came into service in September 2003, it was years behind schedule and $1 billion over budget.”
http://www.electricityforum.com/news/mar05/OPGpickeringrestart.html
2 Pickering reactors out for the summer
“The lengthy outage means the province will be short 1,000 megawatts of domestic power generation just as southern Ontario enters its hottest weekend of the year so far, with little relief expected as we pass through the muggy months of July and August – typically a period of high electricity demand because of increased dependence on air conditioning.”
http://www.thestar.com/Business/article/233368
“At the Pickering nuclear plant, two CANDU reactors that had recently been refurbished – at a cost of more than $2 billion – have been down for maintenance all summer. And last week a third Pickering reactor was taken offline for repairs.”
http://www.thestar.com/comment/columnists/article/238741
“Critics of nuclear expansion say it’s too expensive and unsafe. Past projects went billions of dollars over budget, including Darlington. Its $4-billion cost eventually swelled to $15 billion.”
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20051211/nuclear_power_051211?s_name=&no_ads=
Overhaul of Bruce Power over budget by $300 million
“Ratepayers still have bad memories of two reactor restarts at Pickering A, which cost three times more than their initial $800 million price tag.”
http://news.therecord.com/article/307855
I’m with John B – we should just stick to coal.
I guess the Ont gov’t is going to be a little behind on their plan to close down all the coal power plants.
Last summer I visited the turbines at North Cape PEI north of Tignish.
Not a place where migratory birds would congregate I think, but the possibilities of wind power seemed promising. As with any NEW technology, I am willing to allow time, for the inevitable bugs to be ironed out.
Nova Scotia has a few on mountain(?)tops, or high ridges near Wood Island, where the PEI ferry lands.
There is a learning/developement curve with ALL new ideas. No, they sure as hell don’t burst on the scene and IMMEDIATELY solve the worlds problems, but EVENTUALLY new ideas collectively offer relief to the worlds concerns.How much you ask?
Well history will know that a lot better then you or I.
New technology? Wind power electrical generation has been around for decades. If they have not figured out the basics of the gearbox by now, not much odds that they ever will.
wind is not practical for generating power. one sentence in the article amused me. load restrictions prevented the movement of the equipment necessary to repair the turbines. well, gee whiz lift the damn restrictions to move the equipment. are pei islanders braindead?
john B:
don’t tar all Nuclear tech with the CANDU brush. Most nuke systems used in the western world have a far better track record than the dud Candu – the vega of nuclear.
Gord: Good point but in Ontario (and Canada generally) we have been stuck with CANDU and I’m paying for the mistakes the bozos at former Ontario Hydro made. I’m not against nuclear power in principle, and countries like France seem have it sorted out, but the nuclear division at Ontario Hydro couldn’t bring a project in on time and budget to save its life. I’ve had a similar discussion with someone on another blog (a sailing one) who has worked in the industry and knows personally the people operating Bruce Power. He’s stated that, unlike Ontario Hydro, they actually know what they are doing. We’ll see, I hope so.
Cheers
well between the polluting batteries and bird blending wouldn’t the phrase…
Fan of Green Fables be more appropriate?
SQUAWK SQUAWK DADGUM WIND TURBINES I DONT LIKE WIND TURBINES THEIR BIRD KILLERS THEIR NOT ENVIROMENTALY FREINDLY AND SCREW THE GREENS WHO SUPPORTS THEM SQUAWK SQUAWK AND LOOK OUT GREENS WE BIRDS ARE COMMING TO GET YOU SQUAWK SQUAWK SQUAWK
The failure of the transmissions in the larger wind turbines is becomming an epidemic all over Europe. The high rate of early failure has resulted in insurance for failures becomming very expensive, if available at all. In addition, due to the high demand and booked orders for new units, replacements and or parts for repair are in short supply with long (12 months or more) delivery times. It’s rather a good thing that these installations depend on their tax credits and other subsidies for their ROI.
” It’s rather a good thing that these installations depend on their tax credits and other subsidies for their ROI. ”
Good for the few in on the scam, that is – bad for all the other taxpayers.
I’m sorry but the absolute ignorance being displayed by some posters here are simply too much.
I myself am a huge fan of Nuclear Power as a primary source of power generation, but wind power exhibits a great opportunity to supplement that power generation. Now, the reason I accuse posts above is that CANDU reactors, notorious for reliability, have an uptime of 90%.
So these turbines are down for 2 months because of poor design…and their lifespan is supposed to be what, 30 years? CANDU reactors (the majority of Nuc plants in Canada are CANDU) are down for 5 weeks every year on average anyway (actually every 3 years on their maintenance cycle).
Time for people to become educated instead of working on their ass groove on the living room couch.
Hmmm … you mean wind turbines actually fail … gosh who knew !
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3FZtmlHwcA&eurl
jebus:
Nuke other than Candu has a lower maintenance interval than 90%, and coal does as well. Wind turbines also have maintenance outgages – probably of similar length 5 to 10%. Coal and non-candu nuke very rarely have unscheduled shut-downs such as the one noted here in PEI – that is symptomatic of new technology like wind turbines.
But due to the fact that wind turbines are by definition completely exposed to the natural elements and nuke and coal generators are not they will probably never get to within even an order of magnitude of the reliability of coal and nuke.
And even in the very best locations they generate power only 38% of the time – i.e. when the wind is blowing.
Unless we run out of uranium or coal, wind never get anywhere close to being as cheap as nuke and coal and thus it will never be a “a great opportunity to supplement that power generation” but rather a great political opportunity to look like one is being GREEN.
All I’m saying is that Alberta should not let anybody from Ontario near the nuke plants for the oil sands.
I followed that sordid story of mismanaged billions of Ontario Hydro munney for years.
Now with the Chalk River nuke technical fiasco, all I’m saying again, is don’t let Ontario any where near the oil sands.
The French and the Japanese seem to have the nuke industry leadership right now.
The Alberta govt has also signed a research agreement with the US nuke people across the border in Idaho where they have over 40 test reactors at their disposal.
There is a time for patriotism, but this is a time for sanity.
In addition to their mechanical problems wind farms require a good deal of space. To equal the output of one 1000 watt coal-fired plant would require a wind farm covering 75 square miles.
With all due respect to graduate engineer Ron, there is no stopping the shake down cruise of new wave, [ Large ], wind gen design.
Vistas Americas, [Denmark],
** No. 1 in Modern Energy
With a 23 per cent market share, and 35,000 wind turbines installed, Vestas is the world’s leading supplier of wind power solutions. Experience our views on modern energy – and learn why we’re No. 1.
Vistas.com
=============
One suspects Vestas will correct the tech and continue forward.
The admitted impracticality of Bio-fuels seems to have done nothing to retard it*s exponential growth either.
Looks like the impractical electric car and truck [Smith and Peterbilt], industries are booming ahead regardless of protests coming from engineers who know better. = TG