75 San Diego Wind Turbines Suffer "Catastrophic Damage" From, um, Wind.

[NNadir]

Workers are inspecting and repairing 75 wind turbine blades at a wind farm some 60 miles east of San Diego after a storm a month ago caused catastrophic damage to some of them.

“We’re mobilizing equipment and spare parts to the site,” said David Barnes, chief executive of Dallas-based Bluarc Management, which operates the Kumeyaay Wind project at the Campo Indian Reservation.

The last blade from the 25 turbines came down Monday.

The blades were damaged in a winter storm Dec. 7, when wind speeds topped 70 mph. The 20-story-high turbines, visible from Interstate 8, are designed to stop spinning at winds above 50 mph.

Initial reports that lightning struck the turbines were unfounded, Barnes said.

“The turbines were actually stopped,” he said. “There were extremely high winds on the site — that contributed to the blade cracking.”

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2010/jan/13/damaging-blow/">Wind farm: A damaging blow Inspections, repairs after last month's storm

I especially like the pictures of the cranes, not whooping cranes or sand hill cranes - the kind of cranes that get pureed by wind turbines - but the kind of cranes hauled around by giant dangerous fossil fuel waste belching trucks.

I would be willing to bet $1 for every one of the brazillion solar roofs that Governor Hydrogen Hummer got installed in California that nobody includes the externalites of these repair trucks in the cost of wind power.

How old was the wind farm when they had to send out huge cranes to remove all the blades?

The power project opened in 2005. When the wind is blowing, it produces 50 megawatts, enough power for 32,500 homes.

That would be 32,500 homes when the turbines aren't laying on the ground being inspected for cracks, and, um, when the wind isn't blowing, or apparently when it is blowing.

Not to worry. The Wind Association has it covered:

Taking all the blades off all the turbines on a single wind farm is unusual, said John Dunlop, an engineer with the American Wind Energy Association.

[thereismore]

1. It's a start. We should learn from failure, but you sound like you hate wind power. nt

[Berry Cool]

2. Bingo. This one hates wind power

and makes post after post of carefully cherry-picked news articles about how awful and evil it is. Wants to make us all think we risk decapitation by turbine. Tiresome, really.

[Dover]

5. He should be banished to Samso Island

where they have been living off the grid due primarily to having invested in wind.

[kestrel91316]

6. He hates EVERY form of electricity generation except the holy nukular.

[Warren Stupidity]

3. So what is your game here, Oil? Coal? Nukes?

You seem to have a serious problem with renewable wind power.

[kestrel91316]

7. He has an apparently irrational hatred of all forms of power generation except nuclear.

[mike_c]

4. hmmm, sounds like they did what they were supposed to do....

Conditions exceeded their design specs, they shut down as planned, suffered damage. Sounds to me like they were under-engineered for the site, unless the storm was completely unanticipated. That's not a systematic problem with wind-power-- it's a design and engineering problem at this installation. Cutting corners is rarely an effective long term means for reducing costs, regardless of the industry. At least here, the results were not catastrophic, unlike, say, the nuclear power industry....

[joshcryer]

8. We had major wind gusts here in CO this past week. Destroyed several construction projects.

Some winds were as high as 45 MPH sustained. It's been a headache for us at work.

[madokie]

9. Some more of that little man syndrome of yours

To be so insecure as to have to find fault with all things energy that's not nuclear powered. Must be a cruel world you live in what with all the torment and all, so sad. :cry:

-1