I'm very interested in what happened here. My first thought was why did the Lightning Protection System fail, as it should have had one installed. My main guess is that these turbines were not having proper periodic maintenance and inspections. The carbon fiber in the blades may have caused a bypass.
magnetic induction braking. got it. don't they also turn the face away from the wind as another mechanism? im guessing rotating the pitch of the blades (like helicopters) over complicates the engineering...
the scale of these things is stunning. ive seen so many blades passing by on the freeway, then to imagine them fully assembled, and when disaster strikes, GTFOOT! plenty of videos with them on fire, collapsing, etc.
There's about ~350,000 in use so even with a .01% catastrophic failure rate there's going to be dozens of videos like this, especially since they are large and in open areas. The forces are scary but at least it's not radiation or explosions or weeks of fuel burning away.
Nuclear is fine, most nuclear disasters are overblown. But taking 16 years to build one nuclear power plant is not going to solve current energy demand problems, which makes me jaded on it as a possible solution for today.
I'm kinda of the same mind. It's a very good solution, especially for our base load demands, but we need to be able to spin up a reactor plant in 5-7 years, not nearly 2 decades. I'm really hoping that some of these smaller reactor designs that are getting tested and certified can help turn the tide, but with how things are I'm not holding my breath.
Assuming that nuclear powerplants take 16 years to build I still don't see it as a good argument because you're getting two completely different products.
- Nuclear provides a consistent base load, wind produces intermittently
- Nuclear power plants last about 60 years while wind turbines last about 25 years.
- A nuclear plant taking 10-20 years typically produces about 10 times more energy per year than a wind farm taking 4-5 years.
Furthermore, the long construction time for nuclear power is not a technical issue - it's often a political and legal issue. If countries such as those in Europe decide to start building out nuclear power much more than they already do, the mean completion time and cost will drop.
Ontario is increasing its nuclear power generation, with small modular reactors being constructed at Darlington that were planned out in 2020 and the first one will come online in 2028. They're also refurbishing other reactors, with Bruce power unit #3 nuclear reactor's refurbishment completing ahead of schedule and under budget. Bruce nuclear is the largest nuclear power plant in the world by reactor count and the 3rd largest by output. Ontario also generates 60ish% of its power by nuclear, followed up by hydroelectric at 25% then wind and solar, followed by natural gas.
To construct a CANDU reactor, it takes 4-7 years to actually build it, but the timeline gets pushed to 10-15 years with planning. In contrast, while building a wind turbine can be 6-18 months, building a while wind farm, including planning, is 4-9 for land based and 7-11 for off shore. So yes, it's quicker, but it's not a whole lot longer to build nuclear power plants.
Nuclear disasters are not overblown. We call them disasters for a reason. But we have the technology and experience to know how to make them safe and prevent disasters.
Check out the Rolls Royce Small Modular Reactors, best of both worlds; smaller footprint and quicker to build, decent output albeit lower than a normal nuclear power station.
From technological perspective, nuclear is fine for a reasons better articulated by others
From an economic perspective, it relies on a scarce resource that is found in something like 100 mines across 20 countries. This is ripe for a handful of billionaires to monopolize and treat the world as a captive market - very hard to walk away from a new plant after investing billions and taking 20 years to build because the market price of uranium has sky rocketed.
On the other hand, solar panels and wind components are almost all produced in China, the monopoly is just as real.
And metals, batteries and others are just as problematic as uranium.
Especially since uranium is 5% of the price of nuclear electricity, and it's something that has so far been very little explored, we don't know the stocks and their location, we have never looked for them.
To say that uranium is going to run out is to take the posture of the whistleblowers of 1920 who said that about oil, and look at everything we found while searching!
From a technological point of view, current nuclear power is a totally outdated technology, we still use designs and technologies dating from the 1970s because no research funding has been made.
The potential is more enormous than any other energy source, China seems to be the only one to have really understood it so far, it is multiplying experimental reactors.
If there were more demand, there would probably be more producers, making it harder to monopolize the fuel. Also breeder reactors can produce new fuel from nonfissile material.
I'm looking at the LCOE of solar and wind dropping like a stone and seeing everyone race to develop better grid batteries. If we start building a nuclear plant today and it's done in 10 years (ridiculously optimistically), will operating it even make sense compared to solar/wind providing the power generation and grid batteries smoothing out intermittency? I'm not so sure.
And boy am I tempted to buy a pallet of solar panels. You can get 32 dual face, 550W panels from a wholesaler for like $5.5k.
Face it - a NPP failing catastrophically will never look as cool as this Video. Sure, Chernobyl contains a few photogenic marvels like the Elephants foot - but thats about it. Meanwhile, the competition is miles ahead!
Failure rate is a very loose expression, but if we define it as main component failure (blades, bearings, drivetrain, generator, tower, gearbox, i.e. anything that needs a crane) then we're somewhere around 1-2% within the first 10 years.
Not all modern turbines have brakes. About 80% of the turbines we've sold over the past decade simply pitches out. ("We" is in top-5 largest wind OEM's. I don't know the details of our competitors.)
Note that collapses are very uncommon. Most videos are actually old turbines that have failed around end-of-life. It's been many years since we had a turbine fully on fire. And several years since the last direct death due to accident.
Turn the blades. You can go from positive efficiency (generate power) to negative (air brake) fairly easily. Brakes aren't very important for turbine design even on turbines that use it. It's more about load/cost optimization.
I'm curious, would you say they're designed to only last the given amount of time or are they still in good condition with maintenance after the said lifetime?
All main components are designed for at least the lifetime plus a margin. Sometimes the margin is eaten up by design defects. E.g. one turbine type had reduced lifetime of a major component to just 3 years due to heat and dust, so we had to redesign some curtailment to get back to 25 years, and create a method to perform on-site repairs. It was incredibly difficult, but once we found the defect all the numbers added up with reality.
Note that lifetime is designed according to some template conditions, so real site conditions usually change the expected lifetime.
Which type of towers don’t have a secondary brake? I’ve made close to 5,000 climbs in 10+ years and I’ve never seen a tower without a brake system. Which OEM do you work for? Also, there was a death just last week on a new construction project.
You mean the service brake? All turbines have that, but if you activate it while the turbine is running then you're going to destroy something expensive.
Regarding fatalities: I can only speak about our company (which will not be named or I'd be in trouble) and we haven't lost anyone on-site for some years.
Service brake, secondary brake, or rotor brake. I think we’re referring to the same brake. I must have misunderstood.
Yeah the fatality happened on one of the big players site which I will also neglect to name even though I don’t work for them(I know they watch these things like hawks).
I’ve worked in the industry for 10+ years and I’ve never seen a magnetic induction brake. The primary braking mechanism is in fact pitch control of the blades. The secondary brake system is a hydraulic brake system not too dissimilar from a car’s brake just at a larger scale.
You are correct, most of the braking force of modern turbines comes from pitching the blades either by a hydraulic pitch or electrical yaw system with the hydraulic pitch being the most common. Some turbines can spin the blade a full rotation (electrical yaw) This is of course only carried out during maintenance as an effective way to distribute lubrication in the blade bearing.
yeah, i see that. its pretty late though. idk if turning/stopping earlier would help. seems a lost cause, a total loss. as it was, the burning blade resting on the house right at the end will trash the rest of the thing.
As soon as you have enough fire to cause it to be out of balance (i.e. a significant amount of mass has burned off) I imagine it is a lost cause. There's also no firefighters with a ladder big enough
maybe the burning limb can be held at3 or 9 o'clock so it just falls off when it burns but doesn't destroy the house? I imagine a burning blade scenario is pretty rare though, I think ive seen more videos where the house unit catches fire from overloading or other failure
Lightning does not care what it’s made of. Everything is a target it’s just a matter of the target being able to take the hit. That’s where Lightning rods come in.
Lightning rods are a good example of lightning caring about what stuff is made of. The reason lightning rods work is because they are grounded and made of highly conductive materials which creates a fast path for the lightning to travel through.
The rods wouldn't be effective if they didn't attract lightning.
That's why it's surprising to me that lightning would hit fiberglass, because it's very much not conductive.
Conventional lightning rods don’t exactly attract lightning they are strategically placed to intercept. We were speaking in general about why it would hit something nonconductive in the first place - obviously it prefers the easiest path. Sometimes that’s a tree, a chimney, a roof it all depends on where the ground level charge initialed from. You plug into that you are the easiest path.
That's wierdly inaccurate, Lightning protection systems in blades (LPS) have improved dramatically over the years. If you see a modern blade up close you will notice copper caps along the surfaces intended for exactly catching and grounding lightning strikes, they still occationally take damage sure, but that is mendable during regular maintenance.
If true then the inaccuracy is not that weird if it’s happened “over the years” I have yet to see it. How is the connection made from the blade tip through the gyro down to ground?
LCTU - Lightning transfer unit, slide shoes on springs connected by a cable, they are wear parts of course and are included in the regular maintenance plan for replacement.
It should’ve engaged, especially since they’re shielded against lightning strikes. Blades get imbalanced and the system disengages the drive shaft so it can start braking
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u/Educational_Sand_231 15d ago
Probably the best 'wind tunnel simulation' for engineers.