Windmill go boom

[RicodJour]

Posted in another newsgroup. You don't get an idea of the scale of the thing until it goes over.

R

[David Nebenzahl]

On 11/14/2009 11:26 AM RicodJour spake thus:

Haven't seen that (got dialup, slow speed connection, dontcha know), but I'm assuming that's a windmill for electric generation, right? The newer ones are bigger and better, which would no doubt make a much bigger "boom" should they fall over. Much better for the birds, though, as they operate at lower speeds.

[Lp1331 1p1331]

I also cannot view stuff like that either, but I remember seeing something like this on "Destroyed In Seconds" on Dicovery, or whatever they called the almost identical show on History Channel. Larry

[mm]

One comment says a goose hit it, but it looks like all three blades broke at once. I put my cursor just before it happened and watched several times. There is no way to watch in slo-mo afaik??

And how did a goose breaking a blade bread the whole mast?

It's a pain but if a video is important, with youtube and most of them, you can still watch. Start it playing and right away press pause**. Then depending on how long it is, go to another window and leave it alone for 10, 20 minutes, an hour, 10 hours, and the red bar or some other indicator will show how much as been dl'd. When all or enough has, click play and it will play what has been dl'd. It stores the file on the harddrive as a temp file. The temp file will be no larger because you have dial-up and it takes a long time than it would be with highspeed, so if you have temp space on your harddrive, that's not a problem. Good playback has something to do with CPU speed. Mine is 800 but I did fine with 200. And you probably have to have a video card with sufficient RAM, but I think everyone does, and NIB, new but prior models of cards are available cheaply. Even new mdoels unless they have special features aren't more than 30 dollars iirc. **You don't even have to press pause, but then you'll hear snatches of sound when it has enough new stuff to play a bit. And you'll have to move the progress ball back to the beginning to see it in one piece.

Even with lo-speed dsl, even though the download indicator was always ahead of amount-played ball, this one didn't show video for me until 5 or 10 seconds in, but on Replay that they offer at the end, it showed video from the start, and the windmill blades spun more realistically, instead of like watching under a strobe light.

I think that's because downloading and storing on the harddrive takes CPU cycles, that compete with playing. When replaying, the computer might have nothing else to do but play the video.

[David Nebenzahl]

On 11/14/2009 12:04 PM mm spake thus:

Yeah, yeah, know all about those tricks. Just not worth it.

[dpb]

David Nebenzahl wrote: ...

Not really; while they look like they're just spinning pretty lazily, given the rotor length the tip speed is roughly 200 mph.

[Oren]

Maybe it needed an oil change :-)

How they knew this would happen and caught it on video is be beyond me.

For those with dial-up, the video is only 40 seconds long....

[dpb]

mm wrote: ...

... Like another, w/ dialup I don't even try video, but if it were the initiating event one would presume it would be the resulting imbalanced load caused the other failures.

Until the operating utility/vendor has/have done detailed analysis it's probably premature to project what was the root cause.

--

[RicodJour]

...not worth it to view something I posted....?!

You wound me, sir!

R

[Ed Pawlowski]

I was wondering the same thing. It is evident that the support was struck by something, either shot into it or flung by the blade. I have to wonder if this was to be replaced and they did a destructive test on it.

[mm]

Well it was interesting, since all the blades seemed to break and fly off at once, within a second or two. I would have expected some flexing rather than breaking in the second or two. The mast, you know about two or three feet by one foot, with rounded sides, broke off a little over half way up.

I wasn't there either, so I can only guess.

[mm]

I thought about that too.

How does Funniest Home Videos have all those pictures of people doing nothing special and then falling down?

So iirc about 10 minutes to dl with dial-up. But watching it won't answer these questions.

[mm]

Good point, but anything flung by the blade should hit the mast at a very shallow angle.

Maybe so.

[Oren]

I was thinking "test", but the sound and power of the wind makes me think otherwise. It looked like a powerful storm.

The title of the video indicates "turbine going wild".

This video is a "smoker"

[David Nebenzahl]

On 11/14/2009 12:45 PM RicodJour spake thus:

I am deeply sorry, and meant to throw no disparaging words your way. The first chance I get on a high-speed connection (or a big block of spare time with the computah dialed up), I'll look at that video.

[David Nebenzahl]

On 11/14/2009 12:21 PM dpb spake thus:

Well, supposedly they kill fewer birds.

Apparently birds do learn to avoid windmill blades to some extent. Was a report on the local teevee news a night or two ago about all the bird kills at the large windmill "farm" out here in eastern Alameda County (SF Bay area), where lots of older windmills have resulted in waaaay too many bird kills.

Then there are those exotic spirally ones that spin on a vertical axis. Anyone ever seen those?

[Oren]

Actually the birds die from fright. One of those "ooh shit" moments.

In Alameda County you still have dial up?

What's the world coming too.

[Neill Massello]

Not in person, but I think they're only used for fairly small installations near ground level, where space or height or aesthetic considerations rule out one of the larger and (I'm guessing) more efficient propeller-style units.

[George]

But that might have been the test. Normally the blades feather after a certain wind velocity to protect the machine. Maybe the test was to see the result if they didn't feather which would be pretty much "turbine going wild"

[Oren]

They need to shoot more geese?!