Wind Power is Big II: The Proof

Not very good proof, but proof nonetheless. As I've mentioned before, wind turbine parts are HUGE. While I was travelling up and down the Columbia Gorge this week, I saw several of them heading east and several empty trailers heading west. According to the people I was working with, they've seen hundreds of these things. So those folks are jaded, but I still think big machines are cool. Although I saw lots of these things, I was taking pictures while I was driving, so I necessarily didn't put much effort into aiming. It was pure point and shoot. I mainly got photos of parts of my van including the dead bugs on the windshield, a few pics of blurry trees and an off ramp that was maybe 100 feet in front of the truck I was trying to get. Oh, well. I did however manage to capture a couple pics that give an idea of the size involved. Unfortunately, due to angles and such, the perspective distorts things a bit.

This is a truck I passed that was carrying two of the turbine blades. These things are about 150 feet long. I can't imagine what kind of planning has to go into transporting these things, since I'm pretty sure that wouldn't make it through most intersections.

To put the blades into perspective, this is a normal truck from about the same perspective and you can see how much closer the cab is. A typical trailer is a maximum of 53 feet long, so imagine three of these things strung together, and not those stubby ones that are actually strung together. It would take four or five of those.

This is a picture of the blades from the side. It's the best I could do passing the truck at a combined 120 mph or so.

I'm guessing the wind turbine business will only be picking up. Oregon Gov. Ted Kulongoski is waiting to sign Senate Bill 838, which will require 25% of Oregon's power to be generated from green sources like wind and geothermal by 2025, and apparently our existing hydropower doesn't count. It has passed our State Senate and is likely to pass the house soon. This probably means rate hikes in the short term, but the way things are going, we'll probably break even or better eventually.

This waterfall is not related to wind power at all, but I caught it by accident and I like it. It's from what is called a hanging valley. It is a remnant of the Missoula floods that shaped the Gorge during the last ice age. It was a normal valley at some point until half of Montana drained through it all at once (a bunch of times) and ripped out the end of it.

This is just a nice picture of the Gorge. I stopped at a rest stop/view point close to Portland just for fun since I had never done so and I liked the view. It was a beautiful day.

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.