Cool sighting [RE-wrenches]

[matthew tritt]

Brad,

Your tax dollars at work! Back in those days the guv'mint was handing out
funding for the development of large scale wind turbines. Oddly (ho ho ho),
the only recipients of these funds just happened to be Boeing and
Westinghouse. I watched them "take down" the big Westinghouse piece of junk,
by blowing it up! It was deemed "too expensive" to dismantle the
monstrosity, so Ka-Boom! There were many of us at the time who felt that
these giganto machines were a bad idea, preferring, instead, the concept of
more small turbines to reduce the environmental impact and totalitarian
stupidity of a small problem being capable of shutting down 100% of your
plant instead of just a part of it.

Thank heavens those companies don't make airplanes or nuclear reactors!

The new generation of big turbines are really great. It sure took a long
time to perfect appropriate technology though, didn't it?

Matt T
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Brad Bassett" <bsbassett at earthlink.net>
To: <RE-wrenches at topica.com>
Sent: Tuesday, April 29, 2003 3:18 PM
Subject: RE: Cool sighting [RE-wrenches]


> Back in the 80's Boeing made a few really humongeous wind turbines
> installed in the Columbia Gorge. I think the blades were well over 300
> ft long each. I saw one of the blades going down the freeway through
> Olympia with a truck tractor in front, and the back end of the blade had
> it's own little manned steerable trailer under it. It looked really
> cramped in that trailer for the 4 hour ride it must have been from the
> factory to the site.
>
> I think there were three of these monstrosities installed and I remember
> that none of them was ever taken to full power because the main shaft
> cracked on them at partial power. They must have been taken down at some
> point, and I'll bet they didn't show up at the Boeing Surplus retail
> store! (Which you must go to if you're ever in Seattle).
>
> Brad
>
>
> matthew tritt wrote:
> >
> > What's also interesting about the new 1.5 megawatt turbines is that
> > their
> > wings (blades) are so big (120' plus) that they can't be transported
> > except
> > on a very few major highways by special, middle of the night, permit.
> > The
> > REALLY big ones (3 mW) that are being installed offshore in Europe, are
> > so
> > big they can only be moved by sea and air.
> >
>
>
> Brad Bassett
> Schott Applied Power
> Tumwater, WA office
> bsbassett at earthlink.net
>
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