A Word About Recycling with Ollie Maier
Guess I must be getting as bad as some politicians — I said there would not be any more Wind Turbine articles, at least for a while, but here’s another one.
While waiting in the dental office as Mary was having some dental work, I picked up a Time magazine. In it was an article on the 100 Best Inventions of 2019. One of those was a new larger offshore wind turbine they are already testing. When I say larger, I mean larger.
Whereas I was surprised before to find some of the current blades are now 150 feet long, this new wind turbine will have blades over twice as long — about 350 feet, more than the length of a football field. Can you imagine trying to recycle those blades? The tower these blades will be mounted on will need to be taller than the Washington Monument in D.C. — 555 feet tall. It will be over 800 feet tall.
Even this initial test of this huge wind turbine was no small effort. Over 500 women and men worked more than a year and a half to make it successful. And although these large units are intended to be installed offshore, the prototype unit was installed onshore to make it easier to get to during this testing phase.
Each of these huge wind turbines is expected to generate 12 Megawatts (MW) of electricity. Using such wind turbines, how much electricity is expected to be generated off-shore in the future? It’s quite a bit.
From Google, “The global offshore wind market is projected to grow from just over 20 Gigawatt (GW) today to 190 GW by 2030, according to the Global Wind Energy Council. The International Energy Agency has projected that the total investment in offshore wind could top $1 trillion by 2040.
I found out a GW is a billion watts or 1,000 MW. And of course, one MW is equal to 1,000 Kilowatts, normally measured in kilwatt hours (kWh). The average U.S. home uses about 10,972 kWh each year. So you can see, 190 GW of electricity is no small amount. If my math is correct, that would supply the electric needs to over 17 million U.S. homes. That’s more than all the homes in New York City and Houston combined.
In my research, I also discovered what I thought was a little more interesting info on the wind turbines. Why do they have only three blades? Many modern propeller driven aircraft have four or even six blades.
On a three-bladed turbine, when one blade is in the horizontal position, its resistance to the yaw force is counter-balanced by the two other blades. So, a three-bladed turbine represents the best combination of high rotational speed and minimum stress.
Additionally, two-bladed wind turbines are more prone to a phenomenon known as gyroscopic precession, resulting in a wobbling. Any number of blades greater than three would create greater wind resistance, slowing the generation of electricity and thus becoming less efficient than a three-blade turbine.
Now, this should be the last article on the wind turbines for some time.
Till next week, do have a great one...
Ollie is a local citizen concerned with the environment and helping others. A retired Air Force fighter and instructor pilot, he is a graduate of Leadership San Marcos and received his degrees at Texas State University where he worked on staff before totally retiring. For questions or comments, he invites you to call him at 512-353-7432.
