While on the Island the last few days I got to see the site of the 3 tower wind project that will generate all their electricity plus some to sell .
Pretty amazing being this close up to materials of such size .
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No kidding! Those things look a lot scrawnier when you are on the ground. What's the tower made of, steel, aluminum?
The tower is steel whose sections are bolted together , with an internal ladder that takes you up to the generator level .
Blades are 120' I believe with the tower being 280 ' or so .
They encourage the townsfolk to visit on weekends when no work is being conducted .
I've been watching those parts cruise up rt.88
for a year or two.
BIG.
These had to be transported to an Island 12 miles or more off the coast .
Quite a feat to get everything out there .
Here's one going berserk.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICnq4oHxcrk&feature=related
do you reckon that one actually had a chance to make any money?
I hear they are super expensive
I've heard figures of 5 years to payoff.
That figure is with us rate payers paying premiums for the power.
I would like to see some numbers where they had to justify them without subsidies!
Henley, where are the new ones going?? Are they being made in Albany now?
I've know idea. There have been shipments going East and west.Mostly West though.
I was wondering if maybe they were made in Schene(sp).
I haven't seen many new parts coming this way.
They must generate a TON of electricity to produce a return on invenstment in five years.
what's your cost per Kwh out that way?
Ours is about 7.5 cents for the power and the same for delivery.
Welcome to the Taunton University of Knowledge FHB Campus at Breaktime. where ... Excellence is its own reward!
Ours is currently .0655 KWH, but I keep hearing it's heading upward.
BC Hydro has introduced a sliding scale to encourage conservation. The first 1352 kWh are 5.91 cents. After that it jumps to 8.27 cents.
There was been some discussion that it unfairly penalizes houses heating with electricity and larger houses with more occupants. I think either rate is an amazing bargain.
>>>BC Hydro has introduced a sliding scale to encourage conservation.Dang! I didn't know that. I'll have to check my bill.
Edited 9/21/2009 12:55 pm by Scott
Or rates are based on relative production cost.So in the summer 4 month, after a base amount the rate goes up a little.The other 8 months the rates go down. And a little more if you have primary electric heat, so that includes my dual fuel heat pump system.I belive that it gets down to 4.5..
William the Geezer, the sequel to Billy the Kid - Shoe
Yeah the bill now comes with this little graphic showing the jump up to scare you into cutting down. I still only use about three dollars a day including heat so no real incentive to scale back use.
While doing touristy things up your way I saw a new hydo project from the peak top peak tram. Will that run all of Whistler?
>>>a new hydo project from the peak top peak tram.I dunno. Do you remember which direction you were looking? I haven't heard of anything new.Oh, wait a minute, you were looking down in the valley that the Peak2Peak runs across, right? I don't know what that is. They worked on it all last winter. Looks like it heads to the the olypmic sliding center, so it might have something to do with water supply. I don't think it's hydro-oriented. The pipes looked too wimpy to be penstock tubes. I'll look into it.Scott.
GE has a 3.6Mw turbine.
http://www.workingwaterfront.com/articles/Construction-to-start-on-Fox-Islands-wind-project/13163/More info about this project
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That's interesting. It's a great place for wind power, but I do admit to finding them unattractive. They didn't mention the payback period, but I calculate 15 years at current rates, disregarding maintenance, financing costs, profit from excess electric sales, and other costs.
Paul ,
Heres a picture of the bench slab I brought back from the quarry just down the road from the wind farm .
The sawn face is down . These guys have an old wire saw that does nice work .
Walter
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My wife says she'll be happy if you can float a few of those over here for our dooryard, LOLI've never seen granite being cut or quarried. Have seen the masons do some heat flaking/shaping tho. I think they called it thermal chipping
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The current thorn in people's sides out here is the noise created by those monster turbines, to the point where laws are being drafted to ensure minimum distance to residences. Do you guys have the same issues?
Vinalhaven and Northhaven are more working communities of practical people. I tend to think that the power genration on island appeals to their sense of independence to help overcome that sort of complaint. Walter can say more about that. Folks here on my island are more 'refined' and we have more enviros so I doubt you'd get to build them here, but if it ever did happen, I would want to know about the noise, since the most likely site is less than a mile from my house. I don't mind the looks of them at all, but from what I read, the noise is an issue. I think a lot is going on with blade design to alleviate some of that, but still experimental. One concept is the puckers like in a golf ball surface to reduce air resistance.
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Hopefully this will operate just fine !
Saw one of those videos of one coming apart in Germany I believe.
They are suppose to lock themselves out when the wind speed exceed a cetin velocity or have some type of megat govenor on them to keed them from spinning up like that.
The article and video said that the depris was scattered up to a mile+ away from the actual site, exceeding the buffer zone around them.
Scarey stuff if they are in your back yard.
way cool. thanks for posting that!
"When the spirits are low, when the day appears dark, when work becomes monotonous, when hope hardly seems worth having, just mount a bicycle and go out for a spin down the road, without thought on anything but the ride you are taking." — Sherlock Holmes, 1896
My pleasure Eric .
Was happy to see this stuff as it was being erected .
The future for sure .
You can see those towers from the water around here., not sure, but probably from on that roof I was talking to you about.That manlift is definitely not there for about another week now. I'll try to keep you updated when it is coming back again. Folks near me are building a post and beam and had it booked for this period two months ago now, so mine was playing second fiddle and I didn't get the word up front.
Welcome to the Taunton University of Knowledge FHB Campus at Breaktime. where ... Excellence is its own reward!
We have one nearby, way up on a hill on private property, although it is owned by the utility.
I don't think it is as large as yours but I may be misjudging it.
"When the spirits are low, when the day appears dark, when work becomes monotonous, when hope hardly seems worth having, just mount a bicycle and go out for a spin down the road, without thought on anything but the ride you are taking." — Sherlock Holmes, 1896
Demark has the largest array of electric producing windmills in the world... and they have the highest electric rates in the world...
they sell off their excess but peak wind producing electric does not line up with peak needs... so it can only be sold at market rates for that time of day... which is less than cost... so low it's less than the cost of debt service on the windmills... Obama claimed in a speech that "we should be like Denmark where they get 20% of their power free from the wind" (not try'n to make this political) but what he should have said is if the wind is blowing very hard for a few minutes they have they could generate 20% of their needs... but since that all but never happens... they get about 3-4% of their power from the wind at a cost 60% higher than any country around them...
the good part is they only charge the households the high rates and not businesses... because people can't leave... businesses can...
wind... ain't the answer
p
A new one here in NB caught fire about a month ago, they don't seem to know why. They just brought in the replacement nacelle assembly by rail from Alberta, where the same company had another array being constructed.
Those things look small from a distance, but they sure are big when you see them on a truck.
Nice to see that aluminum plank next to the granite bench. Used the mate to that working with Alfred today. Best $50 I ever spent. Thanks for the photos Walt. I think we pay around 15 cents per kilowatt.
John,
Thanks for looking in . Glad we were able to score those extenda planks that day in Orono !
Walter
Walter
We had some wind turbine blades come by our jobsite on Thurs. 1st 3 blades went south. Then the next day 3 blades went north.
We have an older and smaller wind farm about 30 miles east of us near Alta IA.
Between Sibley and Spirit Lake they have built newer, bigger turbines similar to the towers that you have posted.
I have no idea where these are going.
The blades on the road are a pretty common sight around here, but I thought I would post them for fellow BTers who don't see them very often.
Rich
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Saw a lot of those blades on the highways when we lived in the Netherlands. They are HUGE....
crash
I just thought I would post pics for some of our city bound BTers.
Rich
Rich ,
Very similar to the ones I saw .
Next trip out I'll get some pictures of those 3 turbines in action .
Walter
http://freepressonline.com/main.asp?SectionID=52&SubSectionID=78&ArticleID=3834&TM=28876.3
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Piffin
Good for them.
I dod not find the turbines to be unattractive. In IA we have had tall grain silos for years. It's all part of the landscape and what you have to have to work the land.
We see them as beuatiful because we know their function.
Akron IA (owned by the school) and Spirit Lake IA both put up wind turbines about 10 years ago to provide power. The Akron turbine just came down for maintiance.
Rich