Wind Power is BIG

Yesterday on the highway headed north for work, I got to see most of a new wind turbine being delivered somewhere. I guess is was made somewhere in Washington and was headed into Oregon to take I-84 out to the empty windy parts of the Northwest.

Every few minutes during my drive, another truck passed with another part of the tower. There were five or six total carrying the tower. There were three or four huge cylinders, maybe 70-80 feet long and at least 15 feet wide. Each was essentially made into a trailer with huge sets of wheels clamped to each end. The whole contraption was about twice the length of a normal semi-trailer. Following those were two tapered sections, just about as long, but with the smaller ends sitting on top of wheels. The last part I saw was the actual wind turbine. This fit on top of a flatbed trailer, but from what I hear, it is by far the heaviest part of this convoy. Last year, one of these rolled over on the ramp from I-205 onto I-84 East and was stuck there for two days while workers tried to figure out how to drag it out from under the bridge without destroying millions of dollars worth of hardware.

I didn't get to see the propeller blades this time, but I have seen them on the move before. That's a sight. Each blade is well over 100 feet long, so it makes for quite a trailer. The end by the turbine is huge, so the whole thing is sitting at diagonal to make it possible to carry it at all. I had a hard time identifying the giant wing the first time I saw one of these things.

It was fun to see the whole tower over a short time. I've seen the turbines in place on top of ridges but you don't get a sense of how big they actually are until you see the parts up close. I think the blades span a circle about 250 or 300 feet across when running. The total height is something like 500 feet. Now imagine a couple hundred of these things at one place and imagine the convoy delivering giant windmill parts.