Ohio High School Dismantles Wind Turbine After Collapse at Parking Lot Edge.

[NNadir]

One of the three 60-foot-tall wind turbines at the edge of the Perkins High School student parking lot lays on the ground. The pole was removed from the 4-foot deep, 60-ton concrete base.

Superintendent Jim Gunner said the manufacturer, ReDriven Power, of Iroquois, Ontario, is looking at all angles of the southernmost turbine's structure to determine what caused the fiberglass blades to break off Feb. 7.

"We have no updates," he said. "The manufacturer is finalizing the investigation as to the malfunction of the blades."

Gunner said he won't allow the remaining turbines -- which were installed in January to cut utility costs at the high school -- to run until they figure out what went wrong.

http://www.sanduskyregister.com/articles/2009/02/24/front/1177279.txt">Broken Perkins High School wind turbine ripped out

[Kolesar]

1. If you feed them, they will keep coming back...eom

[SocialistLez]

2. Green Schools

Love it.

I know a lot of schools don't have money to invest in wind turbines and solar panels but I always wanted my school district to invest in that. It cuts utility costs and it can be a great teaching tool.

It uses to piss me off when the teachers would run the heat yet have the windows open.:mad:

[customerserviceguy]

3. Not sure whether or not wind turbines are good ideas

but when my lady and I were driving through Pennsylvania this weekend, I reflected on the fact that when I was in the Northwest (they're in the Columbia River Gorge area) we referred to them as 'bird processors'.

[kristopher]

4. That's odd, the Audubon Society promotes wind power...

[joshcryer]

8. The Audubon Society doesn't like transmission lines.

[Berry Cool]

5. Have you ever seen how slowly they actually spin?

If a food processor's blades spun that slowly, it would never chop anything.

[XemaSab]

6. Try sticking your finger in there then

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9srPoOU6_Z4

[Nederland]

7. Yes I have

I also know that the speed at which they spin is irrelevant. What is relevant is the speed of the tip of a ~150ft long blade. Do the math. Even if it only rotates at 5 rpm you wouldn't want to be in the way.

[kristopher]

10. Average avian mortality is 2/year/turbine and most hit the tower, not the blades.

[joshcryer]

13. You dropped it from 4-5 a year.

Nice.

[Statistical]

15. The low speed is illusionary

Say blade is 150 ft long and spins at 10 rpm.

So circumfrence is 2 x Pi x r = 2 x Pi x 150 = 942 ft. Converting to miles 942/5280 = 0.17 miles.

10 rpm = 600 rph.

0.17 miles per rotation * 600 rph = 110 mph.

The tip of the blade impacts anything it strikes at 110mph. To a bird it is no different than slamming into a bullet train at 110mph.
When you consider the sheer amount of weight and momentum behind the blade any impact is instantaneous death.

Your food processor spins much faster because the radius of the blade is a magnitude shorter. If your food processor had 150ft blades it would chop just fine at a slow rpm.

[greenman3610]

9. You know, if Iran was developing a wind industry,

we wouldn't have an excuse to threaten them with war.

If Saddam had been building windmills, we would not have used "the mushroom cloud" as an
excuse to launch an illegal blunder.

Authoritarians hate wind and renewables, because they distribute electrical as well as economic
power - and hold the promise of empowering communities as well as individuals to control
their own destinies.

Militarists loved centralized power supplies, nuclear in particular, because it makes necessary a large
secretive bureaucracy and bolsters the rationale for military control and command.

[kristopher]

11. +1

[joshcryer]

12. I assume you're being facetious.

Iran and Iraq both are sitting on boatloads of oil. If neither Iran or Iraq had any sort of threatening capability (be it nuclear power or "weapons of mass destruction"), we would still be eying them for invasion.

Iran's desire to build a nuclear weapon is obvious because they could more effectively power their country via fossil fuels (like China is doing).

In any case, no signatory to the non-poliferation treaty has ever built a bomb (excluding of course those who already had built one when they signed).

[Dead_Parrot]

14. 2 minor corrections...

1 - Iraq were developing wind power:
MENA news agency web site, Cairo - December 30, 2001

Egyptian economic delegation leaves Iraq after signing agreements

Baghdad, 30 December: The Egyptian economic delegation, under Minister of Foreign Trade Yusuf Butrus Ghali, left Baghdad for Cairo on

Sunday <30 December>, winding up a two-day visit to Iraq, during which a number of joint cooperation agreements between Egypt and Iraq were signed.
...
The two countries also signed a bilateral cooperation agreement in the field of energy with the aim of benefiting from renewable energy to establish a wind-powered station by the Egyptian companies in Iraq early next year.

Unless we wade in and flatten the country, that is.

2 - Iran are developing wind power:

Iran, sole producer of wind turbine in Middle East

Ardebil, March 3, IRNA - Iran is the sole center producing wind turbines in the Middle East, said managing director of Iran's New Energies Organization.

In a meeting with the Ardebil province's governor general, Yousef Armoudli added that based on the latest studies, due to its geographical location, Ardebil province has the capacity for installing wind turbines to produce some 500 megawatts of electricity.


Wind Farm in Manjeel, Gilan province of Iran

But, apart from being wrong about wind in both Iran and Iraq, full marks! A really well-typed post, with no spelling mistakes.