The Rocky Road To Wind Power 281
Hugh Pickens writes "The NY Times has an interesting story on the logistical problems involved in transporting disassembled towers that will reach more than 250 feet in height from ports or factories to the remote, windy destinations where the turbines are erected. In Idaho trucks laden with tall turbine parts have slammed into interstate overpasses requiring hundreds of thousands of dollars in repairs. In Texas the constant truck traffic is tearing up small roads in the western part of the state where the turbines are being rapidly erected. And in Maine a truck carrying a big piece of turbine got stuck for hours while trying to round a corner near Searsport."
"'It left a nice gouge in Route 1,' said Ben Tracy, who works nearby at a marine equipment store and saw the incident. On a per-turbine basis, the cost of transportation and logistics generally varies from around $100,000 to $150,000, said John Dunlop, an engineer with the American Wind Energy Association, and experts say that transportation logistics are starting to limit how large — and as a result how powerful — wind turbines can get. There is talk of breaking a blade up into multiple pieces, but 'that's a very significant structural concern,' says Peter Stricker, vice president at Clipper Windpower who added that tower bases were getting too large to squeeze through underpasses. But a partial solution may be at hand. While vast majority of turbine parts now travel by truck, in Texas and elsewhere, some wind companies are looking to move more turbine parts by train to save money. But even the train routes must avoid low overpasses when big pieces of wind turbines are aboard. 'It's not your typical rail-car shipments,' said Tom Lange, a Union Pacific spokesman."
Re:Alternative designs don't have that problem (Score:3, Informative)
Aerisyn Puts 'em on Barges. (Score:3, Informative)
So it doesn't have to really go on the highway unless the tower factories are located in a place that doesn't have access to shipping. Of course rivers and waterways only go so far and sooner or later the towers have to hit the road.
Re:Doing it wrong. (Score:5, Informative)
Someone want to calculate the minimum safe stopping distance of a wide-load truck laden with a 50-meter section of tower traveling at, let's say 45MPH without jackknifing or breaking the load restraints?
IMO, the problem isn't the truck drivers, it's either failure to properly plan the route by the companies, or else improper height measurements. Those signs on the overpasses are for surveying the route, and not really effective as a last-minute warning.
Re:I'm no engineer.. (Score:4, Informative)
I often wonder why they build them with a single-stem trunk? Surely a triple- or quadruple-stem trunk could give added stability with a lower materials cost, and greater ease of transportation, if greater assembly time.
For that matter, why not have two (or, of course, more) propellar sets one above the other? Harness not too much less than double the amount of power without needing larger individual propellar blades.
I'm sure there are fundamental reasons why these wouldn't work, but I'm not an engineer.
Tubes are extremely strong, so you don't really need multiples. Plus, all of these turbines have the capability to rotate, as far as I know, and rotating one turbine around one tube is a lot easier than rotating a gang of them around without their blades hitting something.
They're just keeping it simple. Some of the generator bodies are the size of a small bus, they just don't look like it from far away.
-Taylor
Re:President Obama was right... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:My -2 cents observation better transport design (Score:5, Informative)
At the end of the day the truck driver should know how high their load is.
Re:Dirigible. (Score:5, Informative)
I'll pick three: three of the last four airships built by Luftschiffbau Zeppelin
#1 LZ-127, the Graf Zeppelin [wikipedia.org]: 11 years of safe, reliable operation, including a flight around the world and a million miles of passenger service. Scrapped at the beginning of World War II.
#2 LZ-126/ZR-3, the USS Los Angeles [wikipedia.org]: 10 years of safe, reliable operation. Scrapped at the beginning of World War II.
#3 LZ-130, the Graf Zeppelin II [wikipedia.org]: two years of safe, reliable operation. Scrapped at the beginning of World War II.
The big threat to properly-designed rigid airships seems to be World War II. Now that it's over, new airships shouldn't have any trouble.
Weight-mile tax (Score:3, Informative)
The solution is a weight-mile tax, so that truckers pay the full cost of the damage they do to the roads. But good luck getting it enacted, because the national trucking industry hates the weight-mile tax system. [accessmylibrary.com]
Re:Newsflash (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I'm no engineer.. (Score:3, Informative)
The larger the turbine and the higher it gets, the more efficient they are, both in construction and operating costs and in electricity delivered. see : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_turbine_design#Turbine_size [wikipedia.org]
They are getting close now to maximum size because of materials science limitations (cost/benefit), and also because of the transportation limits mentioned in the article. Much larger ones could be built directly adjacent to a seaport dock then barged to a direct sea or coastal installation point, but once you have to transport them on land, it gets iffy. Notice the shuttle has to be flown back piggyback when it has to land at edwards-there's simply no reasonable way to move the thing on land, just too big.
Now there's some HUGEMONGOUS mining equipment out there, but it doesn't travel on the roads, and even to transport the things (excavators, dump trucks, crawlers, etc) they have to be partially disassembled and then reassembled on site and they use rail transport as much as they can to get to the site.
Just for fun if you like big land stuff
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bagger_288 [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liebherr_T_282B [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caterpillar_797B [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Komatsu_D575 [wikipedia.org] (we have two impressive big crawlers here on the farm, serious big oak pushing around brutes, smaller than this bad boy though, one is 114 tons and the other one I don't know, looks to be a scosh bigger)
and I always liked this one, I wanted one as soon as I heard about it when I was a kid ;)
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Alaskan_land_train [wikimedia.org]
What's neat about this stuff... real terraforming
Re:Dirigible. (Score:3, Informative)
It seems to me that most airplane crashes with fatalities have near 100% fatality rates.
2/3s of the people on the Hindenburg (62 out of 97) survived.
The Akron was a deadlier crash, with only 3 out of 86 surviving. That crash was deemed to be operator error. More might have survived if it hadn't been over ocean in a storm.
R101 was 6 out of 54 survivors. The R101 suffered from equipment failure, resulting in the loss of a gas bag. The crash may have been avoided (or less deadly) except for a design flaw. The airship itself also had many problems, which were covered up during construction.
Re:Dirigible. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Doing it wrong. (Score:3, Informative)
You don't have to lay them on extendable flat beds or standard low boys. Wind towers are very strong and can support themselves. Many times a wind tower trailer is nothing more then a goose neck and dolly designed to utilize the tower section as the trailer. Only air, hydraulic and electric lines are ran through the tower section for control. With this setup you can adjust the tower height so you can get it a few inches from the ground if necessary or raise it up to clear obstacles. Though some parts cant work like this most of them can
Another problem in North America is nobody seems to utilize the forced hydraulic steering for the trailer axles like they do in Europe. The trailer makers there use a system of hydraulic cylinders and tie rods to steer special axles so the trailer steers into the turn along with the tractor. Some trailers can also be manually steered if necessary. Makes maneuvering a much easier job for the truck driver.
facts (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Dirigible. (Score:3, Informative)
not strong enough. the weight of a small 2-MW turbine-nacelle : 60 tonnes.
http://ecogeneration.com.au/news/repowering_turbine_technology/00337/ [ecogeneration.com.au]
Re:So? (Score:2, Informative)
The insurance policies should cover this damage - wait, they DID ship them with insurance, right?
The insurance companies, once they get fed up of paying for wrecked turbine parts and bridges, will start demanding competent drivers for the trucks, or they won't insure. Therefore the trucking companies will have a choice - deal with the union so they stop providing idiots who don't bother checking the height of their load and their maps, or they can pay the repairs out of their pockets.
This is how capitalism is SUPPOSED to work.
No, 'Capitalism' is supposed to work like this: I have an idea. The idea is for something like a product. I get money from you to build the thing or disseminate the idea or otherwise turn my idea into a profit. Then I pay you back.
That's capitalism.
I don't know WTF you think capitalism is and I am sick to death of hearing low-watt right-wingers touting capitalism as a panacea for the world. It isn't.
Now go play with your blocks
Lift vs. volume (Score:2, Informative)
So while this thing [aerospace-technology.com] is just over 6 times longer than the blimp you were in, it's able to lift 160 tons of additional weight.