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."
Dirigible. (Score:5, Insightful)
or blimp.
Newsflash (Score:5, Insightful)
Trucks carrying "oversized loads" are more likely to have difficulties than other trucks.
Same as it's always been.
So.... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:You want omelets, you break eggs. (Score:5, Insightful)
People from the 1920s and 30s would have LAUGHED at us for making these arguments if we made them back then.
Folks today don't want to make investments for the future. THey don't want to take any risks. It's like society has had its balls collectively cut off.
Look at the space program! We've been in limbo for decades and now that they finally want to do something INTERESTING again people are like "it's too expensive!" or "it's too risky!"
Let the people who take on the challenge accept the risk, as it's always been. Let's invest in our future. Let's stop being pansies. PLEASE.
My -2 cents observation better transport design (Score:4, Insightful)
Observations,
These are very special hauling requirements, so they require a much more specialized design. I am uneasy about that generic hauling truck trailer shown in the picture.
1. If the blades are 50 yards long, then designing a hauling truck like an old fire engine ladder truck might be better. Those had a rear cab and movable wheel carriages in the back.
2. Also the trailer design in the picture is horrible regarding height. Design a trailer with lengthwise side support that allows blades to travel four or five feet lower. This could also incorporate hydraulic lifting to raise the trailer over bumps and low spots. Think lowrider cars that jump up.
3. Additional tires on the truck and trailers to distribute weight and save the roadways. Heavy equipment haulers here in TX once in a while have as many as 50 wheels per tractor\trailer(s). For max wheels see this site (the bottom picture).
http://www.goodtransportationinc.com/ [goodtransp...ioninc.com]
4. I hope for low interstate overpasses that trucks could exit, then take the service road up, over (and adjacent) to the interstate then return to the interstate.
5. And a lead car with laser height and side measurement device to alert the hauling convoy of incorrect, changed, or terrain shifted height/side measurements.
I know this is blitheringly obvious. But plan and triple check. Just yesterday in Dallas a large fork lift plowed into a 14 foot 5 inch clearance underpass and thoroughly shattered the first cement beam.
http://www.wfaa.com/sharedcontent/dws/wfaa/latestnews/stories/wfaa090722_wz_tootall.6696c458.html [wfaa.com]
Thanks,
Jim
Trains (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Alternative designs don't have that problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Dirigible. (Score:5, Insightful)
Hate? WTF are you babbling about, man? I'd pay to see one that was capable of moving 10 tons because it'd be a damn cool feat of engineering.
You, OTOH, with a name like ArsonSmith, should stay the fuck away. ;)
And Distillation Columns are Small? (Score:3, Insightful)
Why not post about the damage oil trucks make? (Score:5, Insightful)
Living in Texas, with oil and gas, wells I can personally attest to damage done by service trucks to our road. This is due to to constant need to move the product to market, or service the water that comes from the wells (yes gas and oil wells produce water too).
I have seen these trucks that carry the crude oil from gas wells get into accidents. I have seen bridges totally destroyed from burning oil under them (concrete breaks down under the extreme heat).
Do we write about the millions of dollars in damage our oil trucks create yearly? Or do we single out a few accidents in trucking, carrying oversize loads instead.
Do we even hear about the oversize building moments that tie up traffic? Do we hear about the daily fatal accidents from truck accidents? Or do we single out a few trucks that just happened to be carrying wind turbine parts?
Re:Oh boo hoo (Score:4, Insightful)
This type of story strikes me as particularly stupid: "big objects hard to move around" doesn't equate to "wind power worse than other types of power" as the summary seems to imply.
Maybe you're reading a different summary than I did. Maybe you're reading the summary differently. What I read was simply that wind power was not all sweetness and light like some in the eco movement would have us believe. Those that slam on minute amounts of radioactive waste from a nuclear power plant don't bat an eye on the primary (making the thing) or secondary (transporting) or even tertiary (road damage requiring massive amounts of oil to repair) costs of wind power. Heck, these aren't mentioned at all, as if turbines appear out of nothingness in their desired positions, with all the required power-grid infrastructure also magically appearing. I didn't read it to say this is worse than other forms of generating energy, merely that we need this information to have a factual, objective discussion about energy production on this planet.
Yes, "big objects: hard to move around" is obvious when you stop and think about it. The problem is, too many people don't stop and think about the repercussions of their ideology. We all need to, both eco-whackos and global-warming-deniers, and everyone in between, if we're going to have a chance at survival on this planet.
Wind Farm implies Wind (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Oh boo hoo (Score:3, Insightful)
Eventually, wind tower construction companies are going to have to mobilize. Contract for several years here, and several years there, and it makes more sense to actually relocate the manufacturing facility for large products to save costs.
Which means they will have to transport the very large equipment required to build these towers and such, so I am not so sure that is the answer. Most are already built relatively close to where they are being installed to begin with.
The problem seems to be that this is simply a new logigicial challenge, and like most logistical challenges, we will fuck up a few times along the way while learning. (bridge building, sky scrapers, etc. are other examples) A more likely scenario is that we will end up learning some cool new engineering methods for transporting extremely large machines over time. (and the military will benefit, in the long run or perhaps even participate) The problem is being overstated, and our ability to figure out the solution in a reasonable amount of time is being underestimated.
Re:And Distillation Columns are Small? (Score:3, Insightful)
If it was driving down an American interstate, it certainly can't be "private"
Solution: Come build your turbines in Oregon (Score:2, Insightful)
In Oregon we actively work with companies installing turbines to make it as easy as possible to transport & install them. We work with the manufactured housing builders as well, but that's another story. Unlike Texas with its oil, or other states and their coal, we don't have locally buried hydrocarbons adding to our economy, so we are happy for the economic benefit from these installations. We've had one wind turbine generator fall of around a corner, while inside a tunnel, which did wedged things up. But you know; it doesn't matter. Truck lines carry insurance. Oregon has had many more cases of cherry pickers slamming into bridges, sometime going right through the bridge. We had a large concrete drain pipe fall off a truck and bust a hole completely thought the deck of another bridge. We had a bunch of lead paint which had been carefully removed to reduce contamination of water and soil and loaded on a barge for shipment. The barge sunk before leaving dock. Oops. The moral of the story is, any industry has its share of shipment issues. If wind turbines are too much of an issue for your state, they are welcome here.
Re:So.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:So.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, not every bridge posts its clearance. Pay attention sometime, you'll see quite a few that don't.
Add to the the fact that the signs are rarely accurate. Overpass says 13'9"? Better go slow - if they've put another layer of asphalt on since they put up the sign, it's probably more like 13'6", which is the height of a standard box trailer.
Where was the escort driver? You know, the guy driving the little crappy car with the pole strapped to its bumper? The guy that's supposed to be warning the trucker of low bridges? The guy the trucker has to trust implicitly in order to go down the road?
And while yes, trucker quality did go down somewhat a few years back when the big carriers started putting people through two week trucking schools, the reason we hang out in the passing lane is because of all the slow assholes in cars in the other lanes. They can accelerate from 55 to 65 in a couple seconds. It takes us up to a minute or so, depending on conditions. Get rid of the people who think 40mph is an appropriate freeway driving speed and we'll be more than happy to return to the righthand lane - all we want to do is maintain a constant speed.
Re:So.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe you need to learn basic geometry and reading comprehension.
Underpasses are often at a dip in the road - when you have a long vehicle, you won't have both front and rear tires in the dip at the same time. When the bus is halfway through the bridge, the distance between the dip and the bridge is irrelevant.
And no, they don't necessarily measure the bridge from the lowest point, or highest point, or any point. They measure it wherever they feel like measuring it that particular day. There's no standard. You can't trust the signs, period.
Re:Dirigible. (Score:2, Insightful)
Hmm...last I checked the Goodyear Blimp was still flying, isn't it?
Re:Why not post about the damage oil trucks make? (Score:2, Insightful)
It's really any kind of truck that hauls heavy and/or oversized loads that do damage to our roads, daily.
The small concrete plant up the street from me, which is built right off a highway has destroyed the local 2-lane roads leading to it, not to mention all those around it, just because they wanted to catch a piece of the housing boom and be in a locale to do so.
The business a few miles on down the highway that offers roll-away dumpsters and flatbed equipment hauling, the same thing, for the same reason.
The fuel distribution center nearby, etc.. the list goes on and on.
Re:So.... (Score:5, Insightful)
And while yes, trucker quality did go down somewhat a few years back when the big carriers started putting people through two week trucking schools, the reason we hang out in the passing lane is because of all the slow assholes in cars in the other lanes. They can accelerate from 55 to 65 in a couple seconds. It takes us up to a minute or so, depending on conditions.
It's been my observation as a non-trucker that the majority of the non-truckers on the road treat you guys like shit. Pulling in front of 18 wheelers and forcing them to slow down, riding in your blind spots, pulling alongside when you need to swing wide to make a right-turn, etc, etc. It drives me nuts when people pull this crap and I've never even driven an 18-wheeler. It just seems pretty damn rude and inconsiderate.
For what it's worth I always stay out of your way and am happy to flash my lights to signal that the lane is clear when you are trying to change lanes. I don't think your profession gets the respect it deserves.