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:Dirigible. (Score:2, Interesting)
Pick your favorite large dirigible, and study how short its life was and what happened to it.
The heavy lifters all seem to have been struck by lightning or otherwise done in by weather.
Dirigibles are not a safe, reliable, or cost effective mode of transportation.
Re:Dirigible. (Score:3, Interesting)
After being in the met life blimp, I have to say, the size required to lift a cabin 2 people and a bit of camera equipment is crazy. I'd hate to see the size of one made to lift a load of 10s of tons.
Oh boo hoo (Score:5, Interesting)
How much carnage does the average coal mine produce? Typically ripping apart a huge, huge chunk of the countriside (for open cut), innumerable trucks and other big machines trundling around, not to mention the massive construction required for the actual power generation plant itself.
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.
I also find it hard to believe that the truck traffic for installing windmills is coming through at such a huge volume that it is actually degrading any half-decent road. That would involve tens of thousands of trucks, surely?
Alternative designs don't have that problem (Score:3, Interesting)
There are alternative designs that do not have that sort of problem. For example, Windspire is a 30' tall wind turbine that can be erected even in densely populated areas.
... stuck for hours while trying to round a corner (Score:1, Interesting)
Reminds me of my favorite trucker song:
'Give Me Forty Acres to Turn This Rig Around' by the Willis Bros.
'Some guys can turn it on a dime or even right down town
but I need forty acres to turn this rig around.'
We haul big stuff all the time. Have you ever noticed the pickup trucks with the long pole sticking up behind. He's checking clearance on underpasses and power lines. We can get the power company to lift lines for us. We can get the cops to escort us. Of course it all costs money.
If guys are running into overpasses and not making it around corners; those guys aren't fully professional.
This sounds like a job for Homeland Security (Score:1, Interesting)
"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."
Wind turbines seem to fit the current definition of a terrorist. Now how do we ship them to Gitmo?
Re:Dirigible. (Score:4, Interesting)
A few weeks back, I watched an entire wind farm go by on a single train. Blimps are more maneuverable than trains and are better at accessing remote country, sure, but you just can't get the same sort of throughput.
Re:Oh boo hoo (Score:3, Interesting)
And how much carnage does oil produce? It's not as though trucks carrying gasoline never crash, and oil tankers never spill. Gas stations sometimes blow up, oil wells sometimes catch fire. All that stuff causes damage and costs money.
But now what's causing these problems? Truck drivers not paying attention to whether they have enough clearance? Infrastructure being unlabeled or mislabeled as to how much clearance is there is? Figure it what's causing the problem and try to fix it. This isn't really a problem with wind power. It sounds like you'll have the same problems transporting any large machinery.
Re:Oh boo hoo (Score:2, Interesting)
But this seems more of a planning and transportation issue with moving large, heavy objects as opposed to an issue specific to wind turbines themselves.
Re:Doing it wrong. (Score:5, Interesting)
Since when is a lazy/incompetent trucking company the wind power industry's fault?
Re:Oh boo hoo (Score:5, Interesting)
This is indeed a logistical problem, and not an inherent problem. It's also not a problem with weight.
Wind turbines and wind towers for those turbines are very different. Towers are large and bulky, built to be structurally sound. Interstate laws require that only so much weight can be put on any given set of wheels. Heavy, illegally-running trucks (liquid haulers, etc) can easily get much heavier, on fewer wheels. The weight problem is already managed, and oversize trucks are routinely checked, where other trucks aren't as much.
If smaller roads that happen to carry large amounts of truck traffic are getting torn up, then it's not surprising, given that trucks are trucks. This Texas road in specific is notorious for being undermaintained, and the Highway Department can whine, but they know they need to do something.
I seriously doubt that this remark about 'a big gouge in Route 1' was because of weight, but rather because of size. Perhaps it clipped an overpass. Perhaps (god forbid) it actually slid off the truck. Accidents are remembered, but gradual wear and tear on a road isn't an 'accident' that happens all at once.
Putting a truck laden with a section of tower can clog up a heavy construction area for hours. Can you plan around that? Yes, but only so much. Incidents will happen, and I distinctly remember one of these trucks knocking down all the cones in a construction area, because it was either the cones or the signs.
This is 'routine' logistical work for any oversize hauler. If someone's screwing up, fingers are easy to point. It may be the driver, or it may be that construction crew that was lazy with their cones, but it's manageable, up to a point. If you can't get it through no matter which route you take, it's too big to transport.
For states back east, it's messier still because the roads are smaller (you can't fit one of these around most of those corners) and the clearances are sized to match.
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.
Re:Dirigible. (Score:3, Interesting)
Train plus big heavy lifting helicopter (think Chinook or similar) for "last mile". Or to make OP happy, a dirigible.
Re:Oh boo hoo (Score:4, Interesting)
This is off the top of my head, but I think the wear on the road goes up with the cube of the weight.
The most common rule is that erosion is proportional to the fourth power of axle load. I like to crank that one out when truck advocates tell me not to ride my bicycle.
The problem with heavy loads on narrow country roads is that you can use a truck with lots of axles, but then turning becomes an issue. Makes me wonder if there is a market for something like a giant centipede. It could have 10 or 20 hydraulically actuated legs. Only one leg would move at a time. It could step right over a low fence and deliver heavy components directly to a construction site in the middle of a field.
Seen lots of great wind farm issues in iowa... (Score:2, Interesting)
It's always a bit of an ordeal when just one truck with tower parts of blades rolls through.
Lately I've been seeing them come through in convoys. (with a bunch of construction occering too!)
It creates a bit of a mess, but usually the drivers get through quite quickly.
The bigger problem to my mind is the semi-local dump trucks. (with trailers)
These guys get paid by the load, so they have little regard for road traffic & safety laws. Since they need in farm country to install roads to the tower site in the middle of the field the do need a lot of gravel, so they tend to make an incredible amount of runs. I've seen roads perfectly fine paved roads become a crumbling pile of garbage in the coarse of one construction season. The DOT knows when this is happening and seems to be able to respond quickly. If they are still using the road they tend to do some quick patches and wait to repave until the project is over.
Just up the road there is a rail transfer station that is getting all kinds of work from wind energy related projects. Currently the majority of it is receiving gear boxes & parts of tower masts.
Also I believe that in Southern Iowa there is a plant right on the Mississippi River that makes turbine blades. The site was chosen because of it's semi-central location, and access to multiple forms of shipping. (Water, Rail, Road) And this was a couple of yeas ago, so these guys are thinking about transportation issues.
Large loads... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Oh boo hoo (Score:4, Interesting)
Link:
http://www.ale-heavylift.com/equipment/index.asp?cid=%CEt%EA [ale-heavylift.com]
Re:So.... (Score:5, Interesting)
It still is, I just went through one of those for "retraining" because I hadn't driven in over 6 months. All they taught was enough to pass the DOT backing, safety inspection, and road test. The rest of safe driving we were supposed to learn while team driving with a "trainer" for 30 days. The trainer was most likely a driver who had six months driving experience or a little more. The training consisted of the trainer sleeping until his shift to drive while I drove, then doing a little workbook review with me, then driving out his shift while I drove. As you can imagine, not very helpful.
The other thing people forget about the truckers is that they are also their own secretary, maintenance man, planner, etc. In a ten hour day driving, there is usually 2-3 hours more of work to do after that. Trucking is not just about driving.
And then there's the four wheelers.
Re:Doing it wrong. (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, it's a good thing they're running into the overpasses that need repairs. It'll kick start the process. However, if they were to run into an overpass that was brand new, or that had just finished being repaired... Oh Boy! Somebody would be in trouble.
Yep. When I read about that my first thought was that I detected the scent of cooking pork. You send the driver down a road you know he can't manage, perhaps misreporting the height of his load to him. Turbine must be rebuilt, producing more revenues; bridge is damaged, leading to a repair job, more revenues.
Where I live the helicopter they use to run around and find plants was recently damaged during a training run by someone who regularly destroys vehicles. I suspect he's the designated vehicle-destroyer. When they need an insurance claim... And "remarkably" they got some sort of stimulus package to buy a new heli. Follow the money, friends...