Fall Down/Go Boom

[SuperBuickGuy]

Looking around...here's another one, from Nova Scotia in August.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/wind-turbine-collapse-investigation-1.3733050

Unbelievably lame, after all the petroleum energy it takes to construct one of these things (mine the iron, melt the steel, all the fabrication energy, transport and erection -I use the term in acknowledgement to Stiney- plus workers driving back and forth in their cars, etc., etc.) to then have these upon completion just fold over like a soda straw and now they have to be torn down and hauled off to scrap, using a bunch more petroleum energy. It was only one tower here, but...there are over a hundred in the installation, all built the same as far as I know...

whaaa?!!! you mean that media is manipulating those with soft, video-game-built minds to do something harmful rather then practical? shirley, you jest.

[silver_bullet]

and stop calling me Shirley....

[nesabo]

Local school system white elephant

http://www.starbeacon.com/news/local_news/conneaut-school-seeks-energy-upgrade-as-wind-power-bombs/article_ba6d6154-0d9d-59b1-8cd1-78c0d9c1e302.html

[Huskinhano]

This is one of the solar panel structures that failed during a snow storm. There were 2 other schools in the same district that has the same structures fail that day.

[Deaf Bob]

Brilliant minds fawk up brilliantly.....

[SuperBuickGuy]

and stop calling me Shirley....

I called Loren - shirley... you, well, I'm not quite sure what to call you

[Deaf Bob]

I called Loren - shirley... you, well, I'm not quite sure what to call you

Seems you called him Jest

[Scott Liggett]

They are installing tons of these somewhere north of here in Central Nebraska. See them all the time on the highway. They used to drive through town, but changed their route last year.

There are literally 100's of them in different areas around California. By I-10 in the pass between Riverside and Palm Springs. They have all sizes out there. Where my mother lives in Rio Vista, there are tons of them. I drove out to see some of them while exploring that area. They seemed to be owned by a lot of different people from local utilities to colleges, even DARPA. The cattle ranchers out there are making lots of money off them, and now from natural gas wells on their properties.

As for this one, I don't think I would jump conclusions on this failure. It could be as simple as a metallurgic fault in the steel of the tower that was missed in manufacturing.

[Deaf Bob]

The towers I put together were out of A-36 or A-572...
Kind of hard for someone aware not to notice differences in punching, shearing and forming the 2 grades.
A-36 kind of "cush" whn punched or sheared (shorn? Not wool). A-572 punches with a bang.

I suspect Scott has it right as to it being metallurgy failure..
If the masts are tapered, they likely get rolled then welded, otherwise they are pipe if they are straight
I'm thinking somebody tried to save $$$, cut corners and it failed...

[oletrux4evr]

Chinese steel?

[Deaf Bob]

Chinese steel?

Good point... Probably...

[Loren]

They make as good of steel in China as they do here...after all, it's more easily done where labor is cheap and regulation is light. In any event we have no idea where the material used in these is from.

I had thought it pretty odd that at Ocotillo the whole installation was shut down, then started back up and some hours later there was the failure. My theory, and a theory only, is there might have been some kind of resonance problem in the blades in the wind conditions at the time (we notice this in the wing-shaped keel in the sailboat at certain speeds) which sensors were catching and led to the shutdown...there is a manned monitoring station on the hillside, looks sorta like an airport control tower, where they can do those sort of things. Later, under pressure to produce they took their chances and started back up again. This particular tower had a problematic blade either come loose or somehow get fluttering around enough to contact the tower (there was a skid mark) which was built using the lightest-possible-thickness steel and the whole thing folded up forward from the point of the dent.

If this all were the case, the solution would be ballasting the ends of the blades to tune out the resonance/fluttering, and bolstering up the inside of the tower structures to prevent a kink in the middle from turning into a bend. If they go and start doing that we'll know what the deal was.

Up until now, when just cruising/poking around in the desert, it's been possible to drive right up and get pretty close to these things. Maybe not now...

I'm not really the jesting type. Well...maybe at times. I have a cousin named Shirley though...

[Eagle Kammback]

Bent just like a straw. What are those made out of?

[Loren]

Bent just like a straw. What are those made out of?

This:

the lightest-possible-thickness steel ..

The blades are fiberglass, at-least partly.

There you are, Eagle...we never did take the Chall out this summer, due to various issues. Are you still in S.D.?