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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.
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.
People from the 1920s and 30s would have LAUGHED at us for making these arguments if we made them back then.
Folks today don't want to make investments for the future. THey don't want to take any risks. It's like society has had its balls collectively cut off.
Look at the space program! We've been in limbo for decades and now that they finally want to do something INTERESTING again people are like "it's too expensive!" or "it's too risky!"
Let the people who take on the challenge accept the risk, as it's always been. Let's invest in our future. Let's stop being pansies. PLEASE.
So let me make sure I have this right: you're comparing a 1.2kW 30' consumer grade single household turbine to a 200-250' 3-5MW commercial wind turbine? You're not serious are you? Let me do a little math.... The Windspire turbine is 2000 to 4000 times smaller than the commercial power plants the NYT article is discussing.
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?
And while yes, trucker quality did go down somewhat a few years back when the big carriers started putting people through two week trucking schools, the reason we hang out in the passing lane is because of all the slow assholes in cars in the other lanes. They can accelerate from 55 to 65 in a couple seconds. It takes us up to a minute or so, depending on conditions.
It's been my observation as a non-trucker that the majority of the non-truckers on the road treat you guys like shit. Pulling in front of 18 wheelers and forcing them to slow down, riding in your blind spots, pulling alongside when you need to swing wide to make a right-turn, etc, etc. It drives me nuts when people pull this crap and I've never even driven an 18-wheeler. It just seems pretty damn rude and inconsiderate.
For what it's worth I always stay out of your way and am happy to flash my lights to signal that the lane is clear when you are trying to change lanes. I don't think your profession gets the respect it deserves.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.