June 21, 2010: Flaming Fans
 

Someone emailed me a whole bunch of pictures of burning wind turbines.
At first thought was lightning strikes, but the more I thought about it, I would think they would be built to handle that. After all, they stick way up in the air, out in the open. But snooping around the web, it seems to be the gear box oil, from malfunctioning drivetrains, catching fire.

http://cellar.org/2010/burningturbinesop.jpg

I didn't find any frequency of failure statistics, but seeing what can happen when they do fail makes me wonder. Is it safe to be plonking these things down in flammable forests and grasslands, out in the middle of nowhere?:unsure:

Not to worry, FEMA will clean up the oil spills.

Awesome! The birds are hitting back!

That looks like it is going to be expensive to repair.

LOL! It's funny because they exist to use cleaner energy.

I think I posted this before - or someone else did.
At least this one didn't catch fire. Dunno where those blades flew off to though :eek

I read something about them having difficulty with high winds. They have brake systems which overheat or something??? Maybe its the gearboxes to which Bruce is referring.

found this one also . . .

I thought this thread was going to be about the audience at a Bette Midler show.

Haggis!

About a month ago I saw one of these turbines en route to who-knows-where. The things can be huge. The three turbine blades/props stopped at a local truck stop, I went back and waited around for a little while, I thought the hub might be travelling with the props, no such luck.

Safe?! Lets ask the folks on the Gulf Coast right now if they would rather deal with one of these things catching on fire and falling over, or the huge mess they currently have.

Sorry, I apologize for my momentary trip to the soap box.

Holy crap Grav! that thing is much bigger than I imagined.

lol - No problem.

Ugly turban accidents
 

The horror!!!