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."

Comments

Big deal

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Nuclear not great either

[Punker22]

Yea, commissioned in 1985, I'm sure things haven't changed at all since the time of that build.

The last nuke commissioned was in 1995... New nukes produce the most power with no pollution and last for decades. Yet the "environmentalists" would prefer us building 30 new coal plants a year instead of 1 nuke... brilliant.