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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."
Pick your favorite large dirigible, and study how short its life was and what happened to it.
The heavy lifters all seem to have been struck by lightning or otherwise done in by weather.
Dirigibles are not a safe, reliable, or cost effective mode of transportation.
After being in the met life blimp, I have to say, the size required to lift a cabin 2 people and a bit of camera equipment is crazy. I'd hate to see the size of one made to lift a load of 10s of tons.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
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.
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.
"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?
A few weeks back, I watched an entire wind farm go by on a single train. Blimps are more maneuverable than trains and are better at accessing remote country, sure, but you just can't get the same sort of throughput.
"They redundantly repeated themselves over and over again incessantly without end ad infinitum" -- ibid.
It's not just common sense, in most states oversize loads are required to have scout and chase vehicles. When I was a teenager a few times I drove a scout car with a flexible fiberglass pole the height of the load being carried plus one inch ahead of an over-height load. Supposedly the route was clear but it was still a required precaution.
Since when is a lazy/incompetent trucking company the wind power industry's fault?
Coding with assembly is like playing with Legos. Coding an application in assembly is like building a car with Legos.
Train plus big heavy lifting helicopter (think Chinook or similar) for "last mile". Or to make OP happy, a dirigible.
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
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.
It still is, I just went through one of those for "retraining" because I hadn't driven in over 6 months. All they taught was enough to pass the DOT backing, safety inspection, and road test. The rest of safe driving we were supposed to learn while team driving with a "trainer" for 30 days. The trainer was most likely a driver who had six months driving experience or a little more. The training consisted of the trainer sleeping until his shift to drive while I drove, then doing a little workbook review with me, then driving out his shift while I drove. As you can imagine, not very helpful.
The other thing people forget about the truckers is that they are also their own secretary, maintenance man, planner, etc. In a ten hour day driving, there is usually 2-3 hours more of work to do after that. Trucking is not just about driving.
And then there's the four wheelers.
You can have it fast, accurate, or pretty. Pick any 2.
Actually, it's a good thing they're running into the overpasses that need repairs. It'll kick start the process. However, if they were to run into an overpass that was brand new, or that had just finished being repaired... Oh Boy! Somebody would be in trouble.
Yep. When I read about that my first thought was that I detected the scent of cooking pork. You send the driver down a road you know he can't manage, perhaps misreporting the height of his load to him. Turbine must be rebuilt, producing more revenues; bridge is damaged, leading to a repair job, more revenues.
Where I live the helicopter they use to run around and find plants was recently damaged during a training run by someone who regularly destroys vehicles. I suspect he's the designated vehicle-destroyer. When they need an insurance claim... And "remarkably" they got some sort of stimulus package to buy a new heli. Follow the money, friends...
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"