If you steal wild bird eggs in Scotland you will go to prison for years but if your company kills a million wild birds a year with your wind turbines absolutely nothing will happen to you and if you help kill a million Scots over the next few years condemning them to horrible deaths Scottish school children will be forced to draw pretty …
If you steal wild bird eggs in Scotland you will go to prison for years but if your company kills a million wild birds a year with your wind turbines absolutely nothing will happen to you and if you help kill a million Scots over the next few years condemning them to horrible deaths Scottish school children will be forced to draw pretty rainbow pictures for the NHS criminals thanking them for murdering their families. Scotland doesn't have a National Health Service now it has a National Hearse Service as does everywhere else in the West.
<any of those turbines have fallen to disrepair. Some have crashed and burned. As an electrician I can say that the design was very poor to begin with. why would you put tones of metal up at the end of a pole? the forces of the wind pushing against the blades is enough to crack the structure. putting that much weight up at the top just multiplies the forces on the structure. why didn't they put the generator at the bottom? drive a shaft to the bottom. then all that is needed is a braking system and a way to feather the bladed in high wind. I would have had vertical blades that are unidirectional with spoilers built in to interrupt wind flow in high winds. this way you need only a support at the top and bottom and could be made taller without all the Maintenace needed for people to climb up so high to maintain. also you dont need to run electric cables up the center. The cost of making and maintaining would be cut. who approved this design? Anyone with basic science knows about leverage and how weight can multiply leverage forces. I guess our politicians were asleep in class for that lesson.-----------------I, Grampa
The VAWT (Vertical axis) styles are not as efficient on the ground or as practical when they get large. One significant reason is that the wind is stronger at height. Another is the material strength needed to hold the blades in place at operating speed is higher because the full blade is at the periphery rather than just the blade tip.
Lots of choices out there including floating arrays of smaller turbines that pose less bird risk and single points of failure.
Running a shaft down to transmit the full power will be expensive, either it has to be very rigid for slow sped and high torque or very well balanced and supported if at high speed. I would guess (as an electrical engineer with a mechanical engineer father) that the numbers have been run and the electrical cable down the tower is cheaper in some calculation that is used to make the choice. Sure it might cost more over decades of maintenance or even during installation but not enough to be able to swing the bean counters.
Having the extra gearbox and alternator mass at the top will also reduce the resonant frequency of the tower vibration and reduce the effect of the blade mass on tower vibration.
My gut feel is that in spite of issues with the current system it is the best engineering choice from an investor point of view. There is probably room for improvement on many aspects but they would increase costs.
If you steal wild bird eggs in Scotland you will go to prison for years but if your company kills a million wild birds a year with your wind turbines absolutely nothing will happen to you and if you help kill a million Scots over the next few years condemning them to horrible deaths Scottish school children will be forced to draw pretty rainbow pictures for the NHS criminals thanking them for murdering their families. Scotland doesn't have a National Health Service now it has a National Hearse Service as does everywhere else in the West.
That's probably true for everyplace that has NHS...The bureaucrats and 3d rate doctors don't need you around....
<any of those turbines have fallen to disrepair. Some have crashed and burned. As an electrician I can say that the design was very poor to begin with. why would you put tones of metal up at the end of a pole? the forces of the wind pushing against the blades is enough to crack the structure. putting that much weight up at the top just multiplies the forces on the structure. why didn't they put the generator at the bottom? drive a shaft to the bottom. then all that is needed is a braking system and a way to feather the bladed in high wind. I would have had vertical blades that are unidirectional with spoilers built in to interrupt wind flow in high winds. this way you need only a support at the top and bottom and could be made taller without all the Maintenace needed for people to climb up so high to maintain. also you dont need to run electric cables up the center. The cost of making and maintaining would be cut. who approved this design? Anyone with basic science knows about leverage and how weight can multiply leverage forces. I guess our politicians were asleep in class for that lesson.-----------------I, Grampa
The VAWT (Vertical axis) styles are not as efficient on the ground or as practical when they get large. One significant reason is that the wind is stronger at height. Another is the material strength needed to hold the blades in place at operating speed is higher because the full blade is at the periphery rather than just the blade tip.
Lots of choices out there including floating arrays of smaller turbines that pose less bird risk and single points of failure.
Running a shaft down to transmit the full power will be expensive, either it has to be very rigid for slow sped and high torque or very well balanced and supported if at high speed. I would guess (as an electrical engineer with a mechanical engineer father) that the numbers have been run and the electrical cable down the tower is cheaper in some calculation that is used to make the choice. Sure it might cost more over decades of maintenance or even during installation but not enough to be able to swing the bean counters.
Having the extra gearbox and alternator mass at the top will also reduce the resonant frequency of the tower vibration and reduce the effect of the blade mass on tower vibration.
My gut feel is that in spite of issues with the current system it is the best engineering choice from an investor point of view. There is probably room for improvement on many aspects but they would increase costs.