wind turbine fire

[Andy™]

too windy?

 

[mk-mike]

Oops looks expensive

I always thought these auto-feathered/braked in high winds.

 

[Doc Hudson]

Oops looks expensive I always thought these auto-feathered/braked in high winds.

It looks to me like it did break, in fact its totally broke!

Doc H.

 

[ProDave]

What are we seeing there?

Okay, flames from a turbine on fire.

But what's the flames below it in mid air from then? (and no I'm not referring to Santa)

 

[Andy™]

i would guess a failed part thats fell off... (click the pic for news story)

 

[ProDave]

i would guess a failed part thats fell off... (click the pic for news story)

Doh never thought to click the picture.

Note to OP, just for the benefit of people like me, put the link to the story as an obvious link separate to the picture. :z

 

[steptoe]

and me,

Brian never did get to that part of the lesson.

 

[Andy™]

and me,Brian never did get to that part of the lesson.

he did, you must have fallen asleep!

 

[Apache]

Bet that's the most energy a wind turbine has ever expended in such a short space of time! Best thing for them..............

 

[Andy™]

wind tubines.... dont work where there is no wind.... self destruct when there is wind....

 

[Terry W]

In the DM there one on fire + one blown over, both in Scotland

 

[Doc Hudson]

Doh never thought to click the picture.Note to OP, just for the benefit of people like me, put the link to the story as an obvious link separate to the picture. :z

I clicked the picture. But I may have been trying to enlarge the image to see it a bit better! However the mouse pointer over Andy's image does change to the hand pointer, rather than the arrow, implying there is something more behind it.

Doc H.

 

[Ian Speirs]

The turbine is facing the wrong way, must be going in reverse and sucking all the energy out the grid. :run

 

[Technician]

...Was once stood next to a gearbox between a steam turbine and

an alternator when the 'box was failing...one of the most frightening

experiences of my life. Thank God it was an epicyclic, the sun pinion

blew all its teeth off and it stopped, not before the turbine went into

overspeed and shot the overspeed bolt.

 

[Doc Hudson]

The turbine is facing the wrong way, must be going in reverse and sucking all the energy out the grid. :run

When going in reverse absorbing all this electricity, does it then become an enormously powerful magnet as the electrical energy and the movement is working in reverse with the magnetic fields?

What are we seeing there?Okay, flames from a turbine on fire.

But what's the flames below it in mid air from then? (and no I'm not referring to Santa)

The bit coming away from the turbine must be the Volt Drop I guess?

Doc H.

 

[Technician]

Doc... :^O

 

[binky]

saw this on the news last night, it's impressive!!

 

[ianmacd]

When going in reverse absorbing all this electricity, does it then become an enormously powerful magnet as the electrical energy and the movement is working in reverse with the magnetic fields?Doc H.

So will it act like the van allen belt and that light below is in fact aurora?

 

[PC Electrics]

On a serious note, I'm unimpressed by this event. As an engineer myself, I would have thought that these extremely expensive machines should have a "fail safe" system. It's fair enough that they have an upper limit for wind speed, above which they cannot work, but they should have a mechanism for ensuring the genny cannot overheat in such a dramatic fashion - perhaps some way for the gearbox to disconnect the blades from the genny and some mechanism for turning the blades side on to the wind.

 

[ProDave]

My next door neighbour used to work at our local windfarm.

Above a certain speed, they furl the blades (so they no longer catch the wind) and apply brakes to stop the turbines turning.

His most common fault he had to repair was a failure of the wind speed gauge, and if that fails, the system is fail safe and the turbine is stopped.

One can only speculate what happened here. Did the blades not furl but the brake was applied regardless causing the brake to overheat and catch fire?

And what exactly burned? I can't think there's that much combustible material up there, most of it is copper and iron.

One thing from the news item, it did a rapid rotation just before the fire. A sign the control system had gone awol perhaps?

It's not like a "normal" rotating machine, where if something goes wrong, you hit the estop and it powers down. With no active control, it could be left in a dangerous state (blades not furled and too much wind) so could physically self destruct. Perhaps these things need a high integrity control system along the lines of a nuclear plant, but that would push up the costs from flipping expensive to astronomical.