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The Rocky Road To Wind Power
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."
or blimp.
You can always expect problems when you're transporting large things along a windy road. I'm sure the initial issues will blow over, and they'll tackle the remainder with much gusto.
Ask me about repetitive DNA
A rocky road where the travellers eat baked beans but lentils are good too.
If we don't solve the size problem it will lead to an erection problem.
FTS: " In Idaho trucks laden with tall turbine parts have slammed into interstate overpasses requiring hundreds of thousands of dollars in repairs"
You're supposed to put them on the truck parallel to the ground.
Just saying.
No sig today...
...Green energy does create jobs.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
Trucks carrying "oversized loads" are more likely to have difficulties than other trucks.
Same as it's always been.
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
So wind power is doomed because a few truck drivers don't know their shit? Come on.
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?
Read Pynchon.
strap on batteries and wings and just fly them.
I often wonder why they build them with a single-stem trunk? Surely a triple- or quadruple-stem trunk could give added stability with a lower materials cost, and greater ease of transportation, if greater assembly time. For that matter, why not have two (or, of course, more) propellar sets one above the other? Harness not too much less than double the amount of power without needing larger individual propellar blades. I'm sure there are fundamental reasons why these wouldn't work, but I'm not an engineer.
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.
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.
... is what she said!
So it doesn't have to really go on the highway unless the tower factories are located in a place that doesn't have access to shipping. Of course rivers and waterways only go so far and sooner or later the towers have to hit the road.
You want omelets, you break eggs. How many "accidents" happen with/are caused by oil production?
"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?
This seems like a good use for blimps. These parts are heavy, say 30 tons, but there are companies designing such blimps (http://www.myairship.com/news/economist_may99.html). That would totally eliminate the awkward shape problem.
And the Diablo canyon nuclear power plant was part way finished before they realized they were putting it in backwards and had to start over.
Play Command HQ online
Trucks damage bridges now and then. Sue to fools for the damage and it will stop. Better yet, avoid contracting bozos to begin with.
Some back forty dirt road gets rutted? Big deal. That's why we build graders. Run up the props then grade the road.
We used to build stuff in the US without all this whining. I'm all for exposing green tyranny where it exists but this isn't it.
This is some pointless NYT filler to limit the space available for discussing Obama's stupid white cops dust up. He had the benefit of the doubt on race until yesterday when he proved he hadn't left that racialist crap back in chitown where it belongs. Good job Barry; you just alienated the same people you're trying to talk out of private health insurance; the white working class. Idiot.
The insurance policies should cover this damage - wait, they DID ship them with insurance, right?
The insurance companies, once they get fed up of paying for wrecked turbine parts and bridges, will start demanding competent drivers for the trucks, or they won't insure. Therefore the trucking companies will have a choice - deal with the union so they stop providing idiots who don't bother checking the height of their load and their maps, or they can pay the repairs out of their pockets.
This is how capitalism is SUPPOSED to work.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Observations,
These are very special hauling requirements, so they require a much more specialized design. I am uneasy about that generic hauling truck trailer shown in the picture.
1. If the blades are 50 yards long, then designing a hauling truck like an old fire engine ladder truck might be better. Those had a rear cab and movable wheel carriages in the back.
2. Also the trailer design in the picture is horrible regarding height. Design a trailer with lengthwise side support that allows blades to travel four or five feet lower. This could also incorporate hydraulic lifting to raise the trailer over bumps and low spots. Think lowrider cars that jump up.
3. Additional tires on the truck and trailers to distribute weight and save the roadways. Heavy equipment haulers here in TX once in a while have as many as 50 wheels per tractor\trailer(s). For max wheels see this site (the bottom picture).
http://www.goodtransportationinc.com/
4. I hope for low interstate overpasses that trucks could exit, then take the service road up, over (and adjacent) to the interstate then return to the interstate.
5. And a lead car with laser height and side measurement device to alert the hauling convoy of incorrect, changed, or terrain shifted height/side measurements.
I know this is blitheringly obvious. But plan and triple check. Just yesterday in Dallas a large fork lift plowed into a 14 foot 5 inch clearance underpass and thoroughly shattered the first cement beam.
http://www.wfaa.com/sharedcontent/dws/wfaa/latestnews/stories/wfaa090722_wz_tootall.6696c458.html
Thanks,
Jim
I know the technology isn't exactly cutting edge, but I'm surprised I didn't see railroads being mentioned as a possibility. Here's a flickr album showing them being moved without a problem http://www.flickr.com/photos/10372533@N06/2468920475/ Run them on trains to as close to where they're going to go as possible, then air lift them to their final destinations, simple as that.
Why lie when you can just make up stuff and claim it to be true?
Tally up how may tractor trailers carrying crates of canned garbonzo beans get into accidents in the US. I'll bet that garbonzo bean transport is far more prone to accident than wind turbine tower transport is.
Oh, just for fun, tally up fun statistics like nuclear fuel rods being involved in trailer accidents. I recall a good one in Springfield MA some years ago shutting down the local interstate and causing the local hazmat teams to soil their trousers. Wind turbines are unlikely to cause that much havoc, even in oversized loads.
Geesh...
This is just an engineering problem which will almost certainly get solved in fairly short order.
Though it does suggest that there may be a niche for some domestic manufacturers who can be more responsive to the odd end-use deployment issue.
"Trains better than trucks - film at 11."
Oh no, clumsy drivers! Well, that's it. Wind power is /doomed/.
I'd hate to get lost delivering one of those big turbines while navigating those back roads, you could get lost for days driving on...
Some winding little windy roads
Some little windy winding roads
Some windy little winding roads
Some winding windy little roads
Some little rocky windy roads
Some little windy rocky roads
Some rocky little windy roads
Some windy winding little roads
Some windy rocky little roads
Some windy little rocky roads
Some rocky windy little roads
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
The windy world of rock power
Winkey shortcut mapping for 64bit windows. WinKeyPlus
If I wasn't bound by privacy agreements, I could post a picture of a 120 foot long distillation column 15 foot in diameter getting trucked down the interstate. It is far larger than any of these wind turbines and took up 2 lanes of interstate while traveling 40 miles an hour. The types of things transported by industry in America are heavier and larger than wind turbine blades. This story is ridiculous. Maybe they should focus stimulus money towards already crumbling roads and bridges? There's no chance roads just started crumbling after a few loads of wind turbines.
The solution is a weight-mile tax, so that truckers pay the full cost of the damage they do to the roads. But good luck getting it enacted, because the national trucking industry hates the weight-mile tax system.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
Living in Texas, with oil and gas, wells I can personally attest to damage done by service trucks to our road. This is due to to constant need to move the product to market, or service the water that comes from the wells (yes gas and oil wells produce water too).
I have seen these trucks that carry the crude oil from gas wells get into accidents. I have seen bridges totally destroyed from burning oil under them (concrete breaks down under the extreme heat).
Do we write about the millions of dollars in damage our oil trucks create yearly? Or do we single out a few accidents in trucking, carrying oversize loads instead.
Do we even hear about the oversize building moments that tie up traffic? Do we hear about the daily fatal accidents from truck accidents? Or do we single out a few trucks that just happened to be carrying wind turbine parts?
I could be wrong, but isn't it likely to be really windy at the site of the wind farm? Couldn't that make airships impractical?
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/1248068.stm
Problem solved.
They're not far from Coburn Gore which has a border crossing, and they're putting the turbines in on the western edge of the mountains. Looking at the terrain and roads on Google Maps, it looks like the Canadian side of the border is much flatter and has much straighter roads (because it's not mountainous)You might even be able to bring them in closer on barges to cut down the truck distance, though that would depend on the port facilities.
fencepost
just a little off
Hire transportation firms experienced in hauling oversized loads. The photo in the NYT article of the long load is pretty pathetic. Here in timber country (before the spotted owls screwed it all up), long logs were moved with a steerable rear trailer.
Have gnu, will travel.
"In Idaho trucks laden with tall turbine parts have slammed into interstate overpasses requiring hundreds of thousands of dollars in repairs"
If only someone would come up with a way to measure the height of objects, they could then measure the height of overpasses and measure the truck loads.
Then they would not have this "logistical" problem.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
...or a tractor beam
It's only posted because it is novel. Trucks carrying oil rigs tip over. Semi-trucks hauling drilling equipment hit overpasses. Coal mines explode. Gas wells blow out. Pipelines explode. Trains hauling industrial equipment for refineries derail etc.
Do we cry "Oh the horror!"
No. We're picking on wind turbines because they are novel.
Next week it will be a story about the nasty glass splinters from solar panels.
BTW, if you are going to "do it yourself" and put in fiber glass insulation in your home, buy some *good* dust filters. Not the cheap kind. The fiberglass can lodge deep in your lungs.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
They'll keep on making the parts far away until it becomes cheaper to build them on site.
Soon, I hope.
---
Hypertext isn't what it's marked up to be.
In Oregon we actively work with companies installing turbines to make it as easy as possible to transport & install them. We work with the manufactured housing builders as well, but that's another story. Unlike Texas with its oil, or other states and their coal, we don't have locally buried hydrocarbons adding to our economy, so we are happy for the economic benefit from these installations. We've had one wind turbine generator fall of around a corner, while inside a tunnel, which did wedged things up. But you know; it doesn't matter. Truck lines carry insurance. Oregon has had many more cases of cherry pickers slamming into bridges, sometime going right through the bridge. We had a large concrete drain pipe fall off a truck and bust a hole completely thought the deck of another bridge. We had a bunch of lead paint which had been carefully removed to reduce contamination of water and soil and loaded on a barge for shipment. The barge sunk before leaving dock. Oops. The moral of the story is, any industry has its share of shipment issues. If wind turbines are too much of an issue for your state, they are welcome here.
I personally live just off a major highway intersection in North Iowa where a great many wind farms are going up.
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.
I understand what these truckers go through everyday. My company is currently hauling the largest I-beam bridge girders ever built in the midwest. The beam alone is 186 feet long which puts us at an overall length around 240-260 feet. The current issue is the routing provided by each states permitting offices. Some will have you scout the route and hand it in to them so they can authorize it with a permit. But, others will not do that and force you onto the worst roads you could ever be on. Another issue is the rest of traffic on the road. We have fools on a regular basis act like idiots around us especially when we are making a turn. But, we usually have police assistance for the bigger loads to stop the idiots out there.
Sounds to me like the problem is in the finished manufacturing. He!1, Just move the sub assemblies to the site, pour a slab, set up a temporary shell for assembly. It's done all the time. But the one d@#n thing I can't figure out is how does a trucker NOT know the height of his cargo. Sounds to me like someone is not paying for good truckin, and now their paying for better insurance. They should /. more, we'll solve all the worlds problems.
When was the last time a dam was built when the local population or the ecology didn't have to make any compromises. Why there is a noise with wind then?
Some of the world leaders played a bit too much of it, I'm afraid.
Why don't large trucks have brakes installed on the trailers to prevent jack-knifing? They could be hydraulic and/or compressed-air driven, and with a 12-volt circuit could even have ABS brakes.
Anybody who knows care to comment?
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
It's not a question of cherry-picking. Lightning does not ignite dirigibles because they're filled with hydrogen, which does not ignite unless mixed with oxygen. Most dirigibles of the time passed through thunderstorms and were hit by lightning repeatedly, without harm. The problem is that these ships vent hydrogen when landing. If struck then, the ships could ignite. Fortunately, modern blimps don't use hydrogen at all, so there's no chance of them being ignited by lightning.
This site is along a mountain ridge while this site is offshore.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
These are exactly the kind of problems that FloDesign set out to solve. Check out this video of how they get around the turbine size issue, as well as manufacturing and efficiency problems.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RagPPrHUMTY
So they found out the US infrastructure sucks?
Wow!
I believe there's a parallel here with the oil and gas industry. Here in Alberta, you can tell where oil and gas activity is prevalent by the nature of the roads. Forestry trunk roads that were only 1 vehicle width when I was a kid are now more than 4 vehicle widths, well-graded, and maintained throughout the year, especially in the winter when drilling takes advantage of frozen ground.
We have a good number of wind turbines in southern Alberta and I've never heard of any kind of transportation problem.
Basically, government will catch up with infrastructure (roads) if they really want to support this new industry. Of course, slapping a royalty on the resource (is wind like oil?) might help :-)
Oh, of course, the government can't prevent people from not planning ahead in their route selection or choice of truck driver educational/IQ standards...
Correlation != Causality.
That is all.
Whereas drilling for/mining, refining, and transporting coal and oil is cost free, right? Last summer on I-95 in the DC area, a tanker truck full of some kind of petroleum product turned over and caught fire. 95 was shutdown for hours just to cleanup the mess, with the ensuing traffic chaos. Then, it turned out the asphalt had been weakened, so they had to grind off an extensive area of the highway and repave it. And of course, there are significant "primary" and "secondary" costs involved in conventional energy production too. And then you have to burn it, leading to giant discharges of CO2 and other pollutants. So it's not like avoiding the use of wind power is going to lead us to the land of magical ponies and no consequences.
of AN-124 ( Antonov 124 )
flown by Antonov Airlines, Libyan Air Cargo, Maximus Air Cargo, Polet Airlines, Russlan,Volga-Dnepr.
Yours In Flight,
K. Trout
The lifting power of an airship goes up with it's volume (3 dimensional), while its weight only goes up with surface area (2 dimensional), as a consequence the ship doesn't need to get much bigger to substantialy increase its lifting capability.
So while this thing is just over 6 times longer than the blimp you were in, it's able to lift 160 tons of additional weight.
-- The reader anything less than completely failing to not misunderstand this sig is cursed.
A small highway interchange that is the main route from Peoria, IL to Chicago, IL gets shutdown several times a week by the towers for wind turbines for a wind farm north of Peoria that's coming online in a few weeks. I have to assume the closures are pretty well done now, though, since the project is complete. Sucks when I have to run from Peoria to Aurora for a meeting, though.
My Babylon
and one that's far more interesting: The transport to the building site is the constraining factor in building larger wind turbines. Taller turbines require a mast with bigger diameter than the ~4.5 m that can be transported via most roads. More powerful turbines run into trouble with the diameter of the generator casing.
The mast problem is being worked on: there's a company that supplies prefab concrete elements that can be assembled into, say, the bottom 50 meters of mast. A normal steel mast can then be put on top.
It would appear that article was written by someone with little knowledge of wind farming. Uneducated public statements like âoeFactories to the remote, windy destinations where the turbines are erectedâ do nothing to help the advance of this clean and renewable power, (perhaps that was the intention). The simple fact is sites with more than an avrg. of about 7knott winds are often too windy for sustained use. Think about it !!!
Excellent Idea ...
There isn't much in practical terms you can do about all this. I have a CDL and no matter what happens it is always your fault in terms of the law. What compounds it is that those height signs don't legally have to be accurate, current, or even measured from the lowest height over the road way. I would not take my 13.5 truck under a 13.7 bridge unless it looked 14 ft. (I'm a crane operator so I trust my depth perception)
If I hit the lottery big, I'm buying one of these guys...just because I want to do my whole garden in 1.5 seconds....