blades

A giant plane for giant wind turbines

May 22, 2025 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Wind turbines have been getting bigger all the time. Larger turbines have real advantages. They can operate at lower speeds so they can be deployed in more places. They capture more wind, so they make more power. Large wind turbines can have blades more than 200 feet long and even larger ones are on the way. An offshore wind farm in China has turbines with 400-foot blades.

Giant wind turbines face a thorny problem: getting the blades to where they are to be installed. The enormous blades can’t be easily shipped across aging roads and bridges. Tunnels are too narrow, bridges are too low, and roads can be too tight to allow turns when transporting these massive turbine parts. Some developers have actually had to build special roads for wind projects.

For nearly a decade, a Boulder Colorado company called Radia has been working on what would be the world’s largest plane. The WindRunner aircraft would have a dozen times the cargo volume of a Boeing 747. The WindRunner will be 356 feet long and 79 feet tall. While its primary purpose would be transporting wind turbine blades, the plane could also be used to aid the military or businesses that are thinking really big. Product developers often don’t even try to invent really big things because there is no way to transport them. Radia expects the WindRunner to be rolled out before the end of the decade.

The wind industry is currently facing strong opposition from the Trump administration, but wind energy is not going away and bigger and better wind turbines will ultimately be built and will have to be transported.

**********

Web Links

Building the World’s Biggest Plane to Help Catch the Wind

Photo, October 10, 2013, courtesy of Allan Der via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Vertical-axis wind turbines

February 19, 2025 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Nearly all wind turbines in use today are horizonal axis wind turbines. They are a familiar sight with their three giant rotor blades spinning about an axis high above the ground attached to a nacelle containing the gearbox and generator.

A vertical-axis wind turbine has its rotor shaft transverse to the wind; that is, the shaft rises up from the ground and the gearbox and generator are located close to the ground.

This type of wind turbine does not need to be pointed into the wind, which eliminates the need for wind-sensing and orienting mechanisms. It is also considerably quieter in operation than horizontal axis wind turbines. Vertical-axis wind turbines have enjoyed minimal success to date because of a variety of problems including reliability issues and complications related to how they respond to changing wind conditions.

A next-generation vertical wind turbine is going on trial in Australia as part of a research collaboration between Flinders University in South Australia and the start-up company VAWT-X Energy. The 6KW prototype will be installed at a field site in Australia’s Fleurieu Peninsula.

According to the developers, the new turbine design will be as efficient, or even more efficient, as existing horizontal turbines and will be able to thrive across diverse environments including being part of urban infrastructure where their relative quiet is a real advantage. Such turbines would be more accessible for applications like off-grid power and sustainable energy solutions for small businesses and farms. The developers claim the technology can also be scaled up for large-scale windfarms.

**********

Web Links

Progress with new-look wind turbine

Photo courtesy of VAWT-X Energy.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Making wind turbines safer for birds

September 18, 2024 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

There are people who oppose the installation of wind turbines for a variety of reasons. It is true that wind turbines can be dangerous to birds. Estimates are that about 250,000 birds are killed flying into wind turbines each year in the U.S.

However, this data needs to be looked at in comparison to bird deaths from flying into electrical lines (25 million), vehicles (214 million), and building glass (at least 600 million). And even these figures pale in comparison to the more than 2 billion birds killed by domestic cats each year.

Despite these facts, it would still be great if fewer birds died from flying into wind turbines. Researchers at Oregon State University are part of a team looking at reducing bird collision risks from wind turbines by painting a single blade of the turbine black.

Recent research in Norway found that painting a single turbine blade black reduced the number of bird collisions by nearly 72%. Why should this work? The hypothesis is that the black-painted blades disrupt the visual uniformity of the airspace around the turbines and makes them more noticeable to birds, which prompts avoidance behavior.

The Norwegian data is based on a relatively small sample size and the Oregon State researchers as well as others in Spain, Sweden, and South Africa are working on more rigorous and comprehensive studies.

The hope is that this rather simple strategy could make windfarms safer for birds. Unfortunately, this approach is not likely to be very effective with bats, which rely more on auditory cues rather than visual cues.

**********

Web Links

Scientists studying impact of painting wind turbine blade black to reduce bird collisions

Photo, posted May 21, 2024, courtesy of Roy Harryman via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

The carbon cost of wind farms

July 31, 2024 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Opponents of electric vehicles and renewable energy often try to make arguments to the effect that the carbon footprint associated with producing electric cars, solar panels, and wind turbines negates their advantages over legacy technologies that involve burning fossil fuels. These arguments have been soundly refuted for the case of electric vehicles but there have been fewer studies related to other green technologies.

A new peer-reviewed study by engineers at the Te Herenga Waka Victoria University in Wellington, New Zealand, has analyzed the carbon emissions associated with wind farm operation.

The main result is that after operating for less than two years, a wind farm can offset the carbon emissions generated across its entire 30-year lifespan. The study takes into account everything from the manufacturing of individual turbine parts, to transporting them and installing them into place, to decommissioning the entire wind farm at its life’s end. The environmental impacts of the installation and transportation phases are important, accounting for about 10% of the overall emissions.

The decommissioning phase is also important. The study recommended the development of a recycling process for end-of-life turbine blades. Currently, such blades are disposed of in landfills, but a recycling process could reduce emissions.

The manufacturing of wind turbines is the primary contributor to the carbon and energy consumption footprints and continues to be the subject of efforts to be improved.

There are other aspects of wind farms that are subject to criticism including physical impacts on the local environment and various social, wildlife and economic impacts. But with respect to carbon emissions, wind farms are a winning strategy.

**********

Web Links

Wind Farms can Offset Their Emissions Within Two Years, New Study Shows

Photo, posted April 2, 2017, courtesy of Ian Dick via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Wind turbines and bats

October 31, 2023 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Collisions with wind turbines are one of the leading causes of bat mortality in North America and Europe. Most bat fatalities are caused by bats colliding with the rotating blades of wind turbines. Fatalities are highest during autumn migration and on nights with low wind speeds.

According to a recent study, land-based wind turbines kill as many as 880,000 bats a year and are wiping out so many threatened bats that some species may become endangered unless preventative action is taken.

The big challenge is that bat conservation experts and scientists don’t know how to stop or reduce turbine collisions. They don’t really know why bats are interacting with turbines to the extent that they are. Do turbines attract bats? Do turbines’ bright lights or just their silhouettes stimulate an attraction response?

The U.S. Department of Energy has awarded $8 million to five research centers to develop strategies for deterring bats from wind turbines.

One of these is Bat Conservation International, which is an organization whose mission is to accelerate research to address knowledge gaps in bat ecology and behavior and develop technologies and industry methods to reduce fatality of bats at wind farms. Among the approaches to be tested is limiting the use of nighttime lighting on wind farms to make migrating bats less likely to fly through blades.

Another team at Boise State University is designing ultrasonic noisemakers to scare off bats.

In announcing the new program, the Department of Energy states that wind energy must be appropriately and responsibly sited, which includes the protection of wildlife and their habitats.

**********

Web Links

Experts Seek to Spare Bats From Wind Turbine Collisions

Photo, posted January 10, 2013, courtesy of Tom Shockey via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Giant Wind Turbines | Earth Wise

October 19, 2021 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Wind turbines keep getting bigger and bigger. The reason is that the power a wind turbine can theoretically generate is proportional to the disk-shaped area swept out by its blades. So, the bigger the blades, the more power can be produced by a single turbine.

That being said, real-world turbines don’t achieve their theoretical power output because they have limitations on efficiency. Things like rotor blade friction and drag, gearbox losses, and generator losses limit the actual power output of a turbine.

Despite all of these things, the latest and greatest wind turbines are absolutely enormous and produce almost unbelievable amounts of power. Chinese manufacturer MingYang Smart Energy has recently unveiled an 866-foot tall, 16-megawatt capacity offshore wind turbine. This narrowly exceeds both the Vestas V236 Turbine announced earlier this year and GE’s Haliade-X Turbine, rated at 15 megawatts and 14 megawatts respectively.

The rotor diameter of the giant Chinese turbine is nearly 800 feet, set by its 387-foot blades that sweep out an area of nearly 50,000 square feet. A single one of these turbines can generate 80,000 MWh of electricity in a year, enough to power more than 20,000 households. (It boggles the mind to consider that just one rotation of the blades of such a turbine can power a couple of homes for an entire day).

Offshore wind farms choose the largest wind turbines in part because of the high cost of installing turbines and transporting the electricity. It is preferable to build fewer turbines because fewer towers, cables, and ground anchoring systems need to be constructed, making the project less complicated.

**********

Web Links

This 264-meter tall offshore wind turbine is now the largest of its kind

Photo, posted November 19, 2015, courtesy of Scott Flaherty / USFWS via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Recyclable Wind Turbines | Earth Wise

January 1, 2021 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

The blades of modern wind turbines can be longer than the wing of a Boeing 747. Their useful lifetime is perhaps 20 years and after that, they can’t just be hauled away. They end up being cut up with special industrial saws to create pieces small enough to be strapped to a tractor-trailer. Then, they end up in landfills. There are thousands of blades being removed each year and those numbers are growing.

Wind turbine blades are currently manufactured using thermoset resin, which cannot be recycled. It is also energy-intensive and manpower-intensive to produce.

Researchers at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in partnership with Arkema Inc of Pennsylvania have demonstrated the feasibility of using thermoplastic resin instead to make wind turbine blades. That material can be recycled and can also enable longer, lighter-weight, and lower-cost blades. Using thermoplastic could also allow manufacturers to build blades on site, alleviating the problems of transporting ever larger turbine blades.

Current blades are made primarily of composite materials like fiberglass infused with thermoset resin. The manufacturing process requires additional heat to cure the resin, which adds cost and time. Thermoplastic resin cures at room temperature and requires less labor. With regard to recycling, thermoplastic resin, when heated above a certain temperature, melts into its original liquid resin and can be reused.

NREL has demonstrated the feasibility of the thermoplastic resin system by manufacturing nearly identical blades using both the standard materials and the thermoplastics. NREL has also developed a technoeconomic model to evaluate the cost benefits of using thermoplastic resin.

**********

Web Links

News Release: NREL Advanced Manufacturing Research Moves Wind Turbine Blades Toward Recyclability

Photo, posted June 28, 2008, courtesy of Patrick Finnegan via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

The Toughest Beetle Of Them All | Earth Wise

December 3, 2020 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

In 2015, UC Riverside materials scientists placed a mottled black beetle in a parking lot and ran it over with a Toyota Camry. Twice. Crushed beneath the wheels of a 3,500-pound sedan, the inch-long insect made it through without a scratch.

For the past five years, a group of scientists have been studying this remarkable bug, which has the splendid name of the diabolical ironclad beetle. Using a combination of advanced microscopy, mechanical testing, and computer simulations, the researchers have figured out the secret of this beetle’s crush resistance.

The beetle’s super-toughness lies in two armorlike structures called elytra that meet in a line, called a suture, running the length of the abdomen. The suture acts like a jigsaw puzzle. It connects various exoskeletal blades – the puzzle pieces – in the abdomen under the elytra. These structural components can act in different ways. The interconnecting blades lock to prevent themselves from pulling out of the suture. The suture and blades delaminate, leading to a graceful deformation rather than catastrophic failure. These strategies dissipate energy to circumvent fracturing.

The researchers found that the diabolical ironclad beetle – just had to say that name again – can take on an applied force of about 150 newtons, a load at least 39,000 times its body weight. (That’s the equivalent of a 150-pound person resisting the crush of about 25 blue whales).

An ongoing challenge for structural engineering is how to join together different materials without limiting their ability to support loads. The strategies evolved in these beetles may be applicable in gas turbines of aircraft, for example, where metals and composite materials are joined together with mechanical fasteners. We can learn things from the toughest beetle of them all.

**********

Web Links

Diabolical ironclad beetles inspire tougher joints for engineering applications

Photo, posted April 9, 2017, courtesy of Vahe Martirosyan via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

The Largest Turbines In The Largest Offshore Wind Farm | Earth Wise

November 11, 2020 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

The world’s largest planned offshore wind farm is going to make use of the world’s largest installed offshore wind turbines. The Dogger Bank Wind Farm in the North Sea off the Yorkshire coast of England will ultimately generate electricity for more than 4.5 million homes in the United Kingdom.

The 3.6 GW project will cost $10 billion and will be developed in three phases, the first two of which will use 13-MW wind turbines built by General Electric. The turbine’s blades measure 351 feet – longer than a soccer field. The turbines stand more than 850 feet tall, which is five times the size of the Arc de Triomphe. GE claims that a single rotation of one of these huge turbines can supply enough electricity to power the average British household for two days. When the project is completed in 2026, it will generate 5% of the United Kingdom’s electricity.

The previous version of GE’s Haliade-X turbines, rated at 12 MW, were ordered by the energy company Orsted for installation in two forthcoming U.S. windfarm: the Skipjack Farm off the coast of Maryland, and the Ocean Wind farm off the coast of New Jersey. The new version will be the largest turbines to reach operation in a commercial project. Meanwhile, Siemens Gamesa has a 14 MW turbine under development.

The order for 190 of the 13 MW giant turbines for the Dogger Bank farm arrived at GE on the same day that the company announced that it will no longer supply power equipment to new coal plants. Work on the Dogger Bank project started in January in an area of the North Sea that was previously dominated by oil and gas development.

**********

Web Links

World’s Biggest Offshore Wind Farm Will Boast World’s Largest Installed Turbines

Photo, posted February 22, 2014, courtesy of Jonny Longrigg via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

New Jersey And Offshore Wind | Earth Wise

July 28, 2020 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

New Jersey intends to become a major hub for offshore wind in the United States. The state recently announced a plan to build a 30-acre port along the Delaware River for assembling and deploying wind turbines, as well as an additional 25 acres for manufacturing facilities. The new port is expected to cost as much as $400 million and create 1,500 jobs in southern New Jersey.

The port will be located on an artificial island that was built by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers early in the 20th century. The island is already home to three nuclear reactors. No bridges exist between the island and the Atlantic Ocean, so turbines that are built at the staging facility could be hoisted upright and towed out to sea without obstruction. Some components are as tall as 500 feet and when fully constructed on the ocean, the turbines selected for New Jersey’s first offshore wind project will be more than 850 feet tall.

A second phase of the program would add over 150 acres to accommodate extensive manufacturing facilities for turbine components like blades and nacelles.

Construction on the port is expected to start next year. New Jersey has pledged to produce 7,500 megawatts of offshore wind energy by 2035 and to generate 100% of its electricity from renewables by 2050. Apart from deploying offshore wind, New Jersey wants to have a significant piece of the supply chain for what is likely to be a growing industry along the northeast coast. The state views offshore wind as a once-in-a-generation opportunity to not only protect the environment but also greatly expand its economy in a way that has immediate impacts and long-term growth.

**********