I commissioned 70 wind turbines a few years back. Climbed 5 a day minimum with no climb assist. Looking down the ladder from the top when the E Stop goes off is terrifying. Being on the top ladder section when the E Stop goes is worse. Standing next to the generator wiggling wire looms trying to find an intermittent fault, trip E Stop, and the entire structure moves about 2.5m under your feet in a split second. It's like trying to stand on the back of a truck during an accident only over 100m in the air mounted to the top of a flexible pole. E Stop triggers fore aft swinging, with a rotational component. I ended up using a harness with 2 double lanyards, and I'd strap myself in like a spider in the middle of a web. Checking wiring until "BOOM" you hear the main 3000Amp contactor trip, or at least you feel it resonate through the tower, and then you brace as there's a cascade of contactors. The E Stop on the little baby 2.2MW units would stop the blades within one rotation. 8 tonne per blade, plus the hub, and the gearbox, so over 40 tonne of rotating mass comes to a stop PDQ. That was the mildest level of E stop. Apparently there were 3 levels. The most extreme is so extreme they reckon the tower foundation is rated for about 20 in it's lifetime. The sparks off the 5 foot disc brake will set fire to the fibreglass nacelle. The next worst event to be inside one for is when a pitch motor VSD fails while under full load. One blade loses pitch and the whole structure tries to shake itself to pieces.
@@AlexanderGee Changing the pitch of the blades is necessary to keep them at an optimal angle to the wind. Wind direction on the blade changes relative to wind speed and speed of rotation.
@@JCrashB I think Alexander is asking why the angle is able to be changed by pressure on the blade. Gears can be designed to be not backwards driveable. Like on aircraft.
@@dr.jiIIaIicecooper2587 I'm going to make a suggestion that is going to go over like a lead balloon... Ready? It's probably a good idea that you get your information from someone other than Donald Trump. I believe this particular unit puts out 3.3 megawatts. And yes, while there is some impact to wildlife, the number of birds killed by wind turbines is much lower than the number killed by other threats, such as communication towers (5-6.8 million birds per year), automobiles (60-80 million birds per year), pesticides (67-90 million birds per year) or cats (365 million to 1 billion birds per year). But then again, MAGA folks typically tend to shy away from facts.
its the "pipe" end surfaces bolted together, scraping at eachother & rearranging just slightly to get rid of tension &co just healthy movement, so it doesnt break!
more like survival scene in a horror movie. i am actually amazed at how a wind turbine could be a candidate for a horror film. things like being stuck in the tower base because of a fire or over-speed or being trapped in the nacelle until the contorted woman with the open mouth finds you. things like that could be done with wind turbines. (cramped, cozy fluorescent lit structures always have a horror aspect to them)
@@georgewills-ek1gg My prediction: Something like this is going to come out around next Halloween, but we will have completely forgotten about this comment
@@UCCLdIk6R5ECGtaGm7oqO-TQ oh, it is indeed a specian kind of fun, up to a point where you can actually feel the tilt of the tower, it's like the devil sits on your shoulder and cheers with you 😄
Hum is result of gearing and generator under load. It can't slow down in few seconds. It slows down in a minute or two. What it does in few seconds is - it rotates blades parallel to wind to create least resistance. This unloads gearing and generator, as well as tower.
I know this is unpopular, but I love the cost to the taxpayer for trash that is unusable in the name of "green energy". More like brown energy, the likes of what a dog drops on the grass.
@@ClassicRockandRoll-i9x Agreed: Much better to poison our air and water and scrape the land for coal, and support dictatorships with military support (and American lives) in the Middle East so we can continue to enjoy reasonably priced oil. And all of that older stuff us supported with federal tax expenditures and tax avoidance at State and federal levels.
I once flew across Africa in a Super DC8, from near the back I could see all the way to the front. We hit a lot of turbulence, and had I not seen the torsional twisting of the fuselage with my own eyes I would not have thought it possible.
I was in a 737 during what most civilians would call a "hard landing"...pretty much slammed into the runway. I was near the back and watched the airframe ripple as if a stone were thrown into a still pond - it was quite stressed. A few moments went by, and the co-pilot came on the intercom and flatly stated "that landing courtesy the US Navy" and I horse laughed. Carrier landings into arresting cables are quite violent. My back was sore for days.
I remember flying a 727 back in '98 on a trip from San Jose to Minneapolis. We were in the last row and there was turbulence over the Rockies, and the whole fuselage would flex and bow up and down. Very memorable!
The amount of flexibility designed into these wind turbines is just amazing! I bet at the very top it typically moves probably 20ft or more from side to side, depending on the windspeed and the amount of resistance the turbine is providing. This reminds me of a video somewhere on youtube showing a huge freight vessel traveling across heavy seas, and someone recorded a video with the camera pointing down a LONGGGG hallway. It was amazing the amount of flexing that ship was doing in ALL directions!
There's a video showing the central corridor inside a freight ship, winding and bending even more in each direction constantly. The durability of modern constructions is amazing.
That was awesome, I used to work for a company building them and knew the forces had to be enormous, between wind load and the torque. This really shows the effects.
So true. I had a window seat behind the wing and we were flying thru a thunder storm . The movement of the wing and the twisting of the cabin was unbelievable. Also had a hard touchdown. My first time flying. 😳
The torque load imparted on that spindly little tower is truly incredible. It's crazy to see all the different ways and places it's loaded and how it all straightens up, and how the resonance moves through the structure.
Surely this is more a demonstration of a lateral loading, not torque. Ie, we're seeing the tower deflect against the pressure of the wind against the face of the rotor blades, rather than seeing the tower bend because of the resistance of the generator against the torque of the rotor blades.
@@noxious89123 It's both of course. That said, do not underestimate the generator torque. I found a wind turbine, 145m high, 3.9MW nominal power. At that power it has a rotor torque of ~3MNm going from available data. Its rotor diameter is 131m, so via Betz' law (assuming 100% efficiency), we can derive that it ought to be experiencing at least ~630 kN of force slowing the air passing over through it down. That means the drag torque is clearly dominant at the tower base, but generator torque actually dominates the first 5 meters under the axle.
This reminds me of drinking in a bar at the top of the Hancock Tower in Chicago during a gale. It was nothing like as extreme as this, but you could clearly feel the building moving beneath your feet.
So satisfying to watch. A triumph of engineering, precision and exact calculations. The work of thousands of people from various fields: mathematicians, physicists, chemists, engineers culminates in these seconds - you wanna have a bending 140m wind tower? Here you go.
@iliketoast-q9b And yet it takes fossil-fueled machinery to produce the components in nearly every aspect of this structure. The savings are what, now? Nevertheless, it's an interesting video.
@@glenncoody It's kinda impossible to not use old technology to replace it with the new, since it's an iterative process. The savings now are obviously all that oil and gas that you don't have to burn to supply thousands of people with eletricity.
Great video, watching those movements I wonder how long it takes until the structure fatigue reaches to critical point that would need an overhaul or somehting
I once climbed a V112 on 90m tower in 35m/s winds. It was running just below the shutdown threshold. I was going from side to side climbing the ladder, and the rush, when you popped the hatch of the nacelle and crawled outside, was absolutely amazing. I have ADHD and access to a few turbines, so that's probably why.
@@Isgolo It is a privately owned turbine. I have been warned by Vestas employees about getting fired for safety violations before. But you can't fire that who is not employed :-) I'm an engineer myself and know it's risky, and I would never recommend anyone to do it. But the experience I would never be without. Being inside the nacelle under those weather conditions, feeling the sheer amount of force being delivered to the construction, pushing it and yourself to it's safe limits. Watching the main axle while trying to comprehend the torque being delivered, right there, right now, while you are rocked from side to side with every gust of wind, engulfed in the powerful whine of the parallel gear and generator. It is an absolutely humbling experience, yet you feel so incredibly powerful as a species, taming nature to your will. It is those moments I live for. Moments where I am able to exit my mind for a while and just be present, living in the moment.
So cool seeing it in video. I spoke with a guy in Texas who mentioned how many inches some of those were moving normally vs under heavy winds, and it was pretty impressive the allowable flex..
honestly impressive to see it move this much, given how long these turbines operate that is some impressive engineering to make it not collapse from stresses
Gives me a new appreciation and apprehension of windmills ! There is a farm of 30 of them a half mile from my house near the beach ! We get 15- 30 mph winds almost daily and 40- 50 when fronts come through ! That’s a lot of bending and flexing !
On my first cruise with my not so soon-to-be wife, I could have sworn that the cabinway we were walking along flexed so much that the far end of the thing moved upwards out of sight. This was an over 270 meter long ship, Carnival Triumph. There were large swells from a distant hurricane and half the crew were ill, my girlfriend was seasick for the only time I've seen in19yrs. I loved it ! Grew up sailing every weekend in South Florida
With all the truckloads of steel rebar and concrete we put in the ground to support each one of these towers, ain't gotta worry about the base walking away or rockin' to the oldies. Each base is siting in the ground in a bowl shaped hole 12m wide by 3m thick. I've seen tornado's go through wind farms with no damage to the mills due to their ability to flex and move with the forces, and I've seen a few that flexed beyond design and snapped in half. What I can't imagine is how much flex is induced in the tower (as viewed from inside) when a blade falls off while in motion? That would be an interesting video to see. We've had that happen and somehow the mill came to a wobbly slowdown to idle and with a replacement blade installed, placed back into service. Also, I've seen video's of the tower snapping in half when a blade departed which is understandable with each blade 45m long.
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Thanks. If I ever would've gotten the idea that it would be fun to go up one of those things.. I now know better. That's a solid Never.
Althought they all have ladders many also have winches so engineeers don't need to climb up and down. I can just imagine climbing all the way up and forget the right sized spanner...
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@@cotochris I'd have an excuse!! ..and then I'd have to be winched all the way down. I do vertigo really well.
Kinda reminds me the time we were shown the insides of a ferry boat as we were bringing military vehicles to a garrison. Being mechanics, it was a given that we wanted to see the inner of the ferry and how it worked. We knew we were in for a treat when we passed beside something that looked like and upside down table end. It was a valve!!! It was about 24-30 inches wide and it held a door open. The shaft that powered the screw at the back was beyond our expectations. It was super long and at the middle of what we could see, it sagged about 3-4 feet compared to each ends. We asked why it didn't break and the engineer said it didn't sag, it would break in pieces. The metal used is purposely used to do just that, flex. It take a lot to impress me but that did it that day. A bit like this tube bending.
Ive been in earthquakes and seen the floor ripple like a wave passing through, big building, x-ray lab and equipment, no sign in the concrete floor, tile, or the walls- engineering is awesome!
I have these where I am. They are huge. Not sure how tall but easily 200 meter. You can hear by the pitch 'the audible hum of the tower' almost as if they are screaming, 'Make it stop!' just before they shut down.
I think the cacophony of noise with the clatters and bangs is the turbine blades turning to 'Feathered' so the wind rushes past them, not impinges upon them pushing the tube, and the big hum at the end is the brakes going on....that sounds like Paris Tube brakes going on, just a hum.
This reminds me of the time I was on a ship in the Tasman Sea heading into Sydney. There was a passage that ran the entire length of the ship. It was like 4am and the sea was rough before heading into Sydney Harbour, we looked down the passage from the stern end and the entire ship was bending, not just up and down but also side to side. It was very similar to the above video.
No, not as such - every modern turbine has an anemometer for reading average and peak wind speeds as well as wind direction. But there is an accelerometer in the nacelle which detects abnormally high vibrations/accelerations - and if tripped the turbine will perform an emergency shutdown. When I was in the business, it was a mechanical device, and it had to be reset by a human. I'm not sure if more modern turbines still use oldschool tech for this protection feature.
If everything is done right, there is no movement or loosening of bolds, because the pre-tightening exceeds the loads through such a test by far. I know some cases where strange things happen, but this is really rare and due to something terribly wrong😉
I experienced bending like this on a 120m stack at a cement works in high winds. It swayed quite worryingly but you got used to it after a while - they were designed to flex without failure ..... or so I prayed at the time ;
What could be the reason, is it vibrations due to aerodynamic torque effect of Rotor blades or metal fatigue. Usually all these are simulated during design before commissioning. Wonderful clipping and amazing as always.
@@saasch_baasch I'd say the bending is the result of the captured energy by the generator. The area doesn't quite capture the wind speed and blade attack angle 😉 Good vid. Reminds us in general about the differences of theory and practice (depending..). Thanks
Yes the tower leans to one side as the rotor shaft torque tries to twist the gearbox/generator off their anchor points. And when the force stops the tower straightens back to it's resting position. Emergency stops can be a lot more 'violent' than shown here. Still, it's a nice vid'.
Back in the days I was testing emergency stops on what at the time were the pinnacle of turbines, a 3MW beast. The tower on that thing was just shy of 80 meters. The stop actively used the gearbox and generator for breaking (by activating a crowbar circuit on the power converter DC-link) while waiting on the reaction time of the aero-brake to finally kick in after about two seconds. However, the view up though the tower disappeared completely, and the tower just stood there like a metronome for nearly a minute. Now you see the nacelle, now you don't! That was scary. Needless to say, occupying the nacelle during that test would be fatal, as the rocking back a fourth would smack you airborne. All the measuring equipment we had attached to various electrical systems had to be strapped down for the same reason. Still, seeing it was something else. Good times.
It reminds me of those big cargo ships at sea, the amount of flex seems alarming, but if they didn't allow that to happen it wouls snap in half like a carrot. 😄
that has nothing to do with the joining method. The strength of bolting or welding is the same when dimensioned correctly. It's just the fact that everything (even steel) is bendy when it is 140m long. Bendyness grows with the cube of the length of the object so a 140m steel tube is 14^3 bendyer than a 10m steel tube which is 19.600 times. So with the same force a section of the tube might bend 0.1 mm but the tower as a whole bends 2m.
@@casaxtreme2952 It's not really about the stiffness either. It's mostly for transportation and assembly. You can just-and-just get smaller pieces through normal roadways, but a full 140m tower, not really. And they're also optimized for minimum amount of work on-site, as welding a 140m self-standing structure on-site would be massively more expensive.
Not a problem as long as everything is designed for the static and dynamic loading/vibrations, and the unusual high wind situations. That said, it burns more than I would have thought from just looking at them at a distance.
Every structure has compliance. This point of view allows one to visualize it well. It’s very similar to videos showing massive 700 foot long Great Lakes bulk load ships flexing in heavy sea conditions.
That's only 30-40 mph, 50-60 km/h which is "gale" on the Beaufort scale. But winds can be much much more. It mentions that *this is shortly before the shutdown limit* I suppose they have to feather the turbine blades and let the wind pass - *what a waste of available energy!* I conclude it must be because of a limit on the *wind loading on the tower* which limits the max wind speed and not the rotational speed of the generator, because the angle of attack of the rotor blades could be controlled to be shallow, thereby limiting the rotational speed and providing lots of torque. All the best, Rob in Switzerland
So if the blades could be controlled, that would also reduce the main force bending the tower, which is working against the energy captured from the wind. This must be greater than the mere wind resistance of the mast. All the best from FI 😊
@@Hukkinen I think they can control the pitch of the blades (I would hope so anyway). Many light aircraft and all larger propeller aircraft can control the pitch of the propeller blades. It's an important mechanism in the relationship between thrust and engine power. When a propeller aircraft's engine fails, the pilot "feathers" the blades (aligns them with the airflow) to reduce drag, so that the aircraft stays easier to control and its range is not unduly shortened (important if he has to find an emergency landing place). It would make complete sense to stop rotation of the turbine rotor by feathering the blades in order to reduce wind resistance and rotational force. There may be some disk brakes in the nacelle (it would make sense too) but I hope it's not the only mechanism to stop the rotor. Greetings back to beautiful Finland!
@@doobybrother21 Based on an internet calculation for 14 - 18 m/sec (in the video description) approximating 30 mph - 40 mph to 50 to 60 km/h but for a stricter definition, WIkipedia has a better breakdown. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beaufort_scale
@@Hukkinen Its more complicated than that cos the blades are an aerofoil so even if you feather then you have a low pressure that is relative to the wind velocity and I believe that is a square of the wind speed, so there will come a point where the speed of the wind over a maximally feathered blade creates such a huge disparity between the high pressure and the low pressure side that it becomes unsafe. Remember you can lift a Beoing 747 off the ground with a wind speed of 150 mph over an aerofoil...!!! I did my sailing exams 25 years ago and i can't remember the actual calculations
I assume the blades were feathered to prevent structural overload under the wind force. In the first example, we can see some oscillation during the slowdown which I assume to be due to blade imbalance. Or possibly a blade angle misadjustment?
No it is just to abide by the power limit on the electrical systems - the blades and tower itself are rated at much higher workloads than the electrical system. Sometimes the gearbox is the weakest link (for longevity), but usually it is the electrical systems are the ones that dictate the "to here, and no further!"-limit.
I don't know what I'm looking at. Is this a video looking down the length of a turbine blade in operation with the camera attached to the blade, or is it looking down the tower?
@MrSummitville they are upside down, simply because the machine for tightening is quite heavy and easier to put on the nut on top, then from the bottom up.
Shockingly engaging-wow! This video truly highlights the incredible forces at play and the ingenuity of engineering. Any engineering student who didn’t fully appreciate their strength of materials, statics, or dynamics classes will after watching this. Thanks for sharing such an amazing perspective! • Statics: Provides the foundation for understanding how forces interact in structures and ensuring equilibrium, a crucial concept in analyzing loads on the turbine. • Strength of Materials (Mechanics of Materials): Teaches stress, strain, and deformation principles, which are vital for designing materials that can flex under load without failing. • Dynamics: Explores motion and forces in systems, helping engineers understand and predict the effects of wind forces and blade rotation on the structure. • Materials Science: Offers insights into the properties of materials, such as elasticity, fatigue, and fracture mechanics, enabling the selection of materials that withstand cyclic loading. • Introduction to Design and Manufacturing: Encourages practical application of engineering principles and creative problem-solving, foundational for creating innovative solutions like load-tolerant structures.
How do turbines after starting up, synchronising with the grid (generator turning on), keep a constant speed? They may slow down but I didn't hear one speed up. Thought about this after watching for the 100th time "Nordex N60 betreib auf"
Hey, with the N60, the system switches on during acceleration, i.e. without keeping the speed constant. Afterwards, it remains constant at this speed, as this is the mains frequency (50 Hz EU and 60 Hz US). In the case of systems with partial or full converters, the system switches on sooner and then accelerates significantly, which you can hear very well in one of my first videos, I think it was the "V112 startup" or something like that 😊
@@saasch_baasch Thank you very much, I remember the "V112 startup", heard the gen. synchronize with the grid, and after that it sped up. Btw some of these videos I use as ASMR's, hah great sounds. Great videos, keep them up :)))
@@eventhorizon7374 ASMR huh, more like dream fuel, or lucid dream fuel. the only thing i can compare closely to the wind turbines in my dreams are AI generated turbines. my dreams sometimes end up with me falling off of the side of the nacelle, sometimes while it's on fire!
@@KrikkitWarlord You need flex to absorb some of the inertia, so the flex is not just a cost consideration. If you made the tower so rigid that is didn't flex, the nacelle would most likely just break off and fly to the ground.
@@thomashenden71 Straight up, in both cases it also acts like a damper. But airplane wings and rotorblades can flex incredibly much. Next time you fly, if you haven't already, then pay attention to the wings from taxing to takeoff - it's incredible. Also try searching for turbine blade testing videos on UA-cam.
@@ZvendZved If you had funds and desire to make tower so rigid, you would also make joints more beefy, as appropriate. The truth is what @KrikkitWarlord said, yes you can have non-bendy non-breaking constructions, it was never anyhow against laws physics, it's just the expensive way to go so noone does it. How did this "bending is important" start to live a life of its own is magical... (Well "without any bending" is unobtainable anyway. There's no such thing as a 100% rigid object, strictly speaking; when people say "without any bending" they mean something like "so little bending that a layman won't notice".)
One of the 2 where I live has a spiral staircase and a viewing area at the top so you cant see up it like that, but you can certainly feel it when up there even when its only a bit windy.
The oil fields are kinda like this when you think of the properties of the steel drill pipe that is used(there are several very common grades and some NOT very common), and how it can be made to bend and be subjected to lots of torque and vibration and......and it comes out able to be re-used over and over and over again......and ive seen the same pipe bent like a matchstick in an instant......
So when you're standing at the base of one of these and it looks like it's falling over on you, that's because it's actually leaning quite a good bit, wow!
are they all configured with video capture for diagnostic (and possible long term, failure analysis) purposes - and if yes, what other non-power related data capture is involved - stress/strain gauge, harmonics etc ? Can they transmit that data via more than one path - like maybe starlink or other satellite system ? I'd imagine they could do it right on the power lines as well, you can do that with home wiring.
You should see a 285 m long ship how is bending and twisting in rough seas. You should hear the creak and squeak of the structure, and at the same time the booming sound of the 6-7 m wave knocking in the shell plate, only 30 mm away from you.
Thanks so much for sharing that !! (Still pretty cautious about wind power) BUT I am more impressed with the engineering (after seeing this) than ever!! (And the camera is not half bad either).
Fun fact: In Germany A big energy company tried to introduce a new type of wind turbine tower made partly out of reinforced concrete..then one failed badly and collapsed in high winds and this video explains very well why! The company had to dismantle several already built Wind turbines of the same type!
looking up. because you can see the bolt's head and not the nut. the nut is normaly on top of the flanche. at least this in normaly done at a Nordex turbine not sure what this brand is
I had the same question. Hopefully they'll publish real answer. My assumption is looking up. The hatch door goes up and away. I'm assuming they're shutting down to go up and inspect?
I was on the top of the Willis Tower in Chicago in high winds a few years back. It bends too. So do aircraft made of the same composite materials as these turbines. As an earlier commenter said, if it doesn’t bend, it breaks.
So if it spins too fast, it stops? But wouldn't it be easier to decouple the generator to reduce the air resistance? I suppose it takes a lot of energy to stop the spinning and also keep it stopped, so why do they do that?
If you unload the generator and don't feather the blades, the turbine will spin up too fast. This isn't my field, but I'm guessing too much speed would throw the blades.
Whenever I see things like this I'm reminded of the old engineering mantra - if she doesn't bend she'll break.
yea ships do the same thing. granted everything has a limit
It's like a Wheeble. It wobbles but it doesn't fall down.
These do both! :D
Trees bend, but trees can heal. How much extra strength has been designed in to account for these "normal operating conditions" stresses?
@@Romegyptian nope, they usually don't break.
I commissioned 70 wind turbines a few years back. Climbed 5 a day minimum with no climb assist. Looking down the ladder from the top when the E Stop goes off is terrifying. Being on the top ladder section when the E Stop goes is worse. Standing next to the generator wiggling wire looms trying to find an intermittent fault, trip E Stop, and the entire structure moves about 2.5m under your feet in a split second. It's like trying to stand on the back of a truck during an accident only over 100m in the air mounted to the top of a flexible pole. E Stop triggers fore aft swinging, with a rotational component. I ended up using a harness with 2 double lanyards, and I'd strap myself in like a spider in the middle of a web. Checking wiring until "BOOM" you hear the main 3000Amp contactor trip, or at least you feel it resonate through the tower, and then you brace as there's a cascade of contactors. The E Stop on the little baby 2.2MW units would stop the blades within one rotation. 8 tonne per blade, plus the hub, and the gearbox, so over 40 tonne of rotating mass comes to a stop PDQ. That was the mildest level of E stop. Apparently there were 3 levels. The most extreme is so extreme they reckon the tower foundation is rated for about 20 in it's lifetime. The sparks off the 5 foot disc brake will set fire to the fibreglass nacelle. The next worst event to be inside one for is when a pitch motor VSD fails while under full load. One blade loses pitch and the whole structure tries to shake itself to pieces.
The pitch is backdrivable? What's the design reason?
@@AlexanderGee Changing the pitch of the blades is necessary to keep them at an optimal angle to the wind. Wind direction on the blade changes relative to wind speed and speed of rotation.
@@JCrashB I think Alexander is asking why the angle is able to be changed by pressure on the blade. Gears can be designed to be not backwards driveable. Like on aircraft.
These mammoth machines challenge nature, and are very often right on the edge of failure. Nature doesn't like it, and always finds a way to win.
Perhaps safety procedures should dictate that people are not supposed to be in the nacelle when the WTG is operational?
What a strange and satisfying UA-cam algorithm recommendation.
absolutely!
Nothing satifying about wind turbines, they shouId never exist in 1st pIace.
@@dr.jiIIaIicecooper2587 Ok, I'll bite. Why?
@@mjasenn Because it's very insufficient power and beside that it destroys wiIdIife.
@@dr.jiIIaIicecooper2587 I'm going to make a suggestion that is going to go over like a lead balloon... Ready? It's probably a good idea that you get your information from someone other than Donald Trump. I believe this particular unit puts out 3.3 megawatts. And yes, while there is some impact to wildlife, the number of birds killed by wind turbines is much lower than the number killed by other threats, such as communication towers (5-6.8 million birds per year), automobiles (60-80 million birds per year), pesticides (67-90 million birds per year) or cats (365 million to 1 billion birds per year). But then again, MAGA folks typically tend to shy away from facts.
"Wow, that's swaying a lot. What's that cracking sound?"
"It's just the ladder, now get up there and do your job!"
No No, not my job. I've quit 5 min ago
its the "pipe" end surfaces bolted together, scraping at eachother & rearranging just slightly to get rid of tension &co just healthy movement, so it doesnt break!
😂
Nah thanks fam, I’m good
That was way more impressive than I thought it was going to be!
The fact the tower alone is 140 metres is insane to me. I imagine it's 'fun' in the nacelle in gusty winds.
more like survival scene in a horror movie. i am actually amazed at how a wind turbine could be a candidate for a horror film.
things like being stuck in the tower base because of a fire or over-speed or being trapped in the nacelle until the contorted woman with the open mouth finds you. things like that could be done with wind turbines. (cramped, cozy fluorescent lit structures always have a horror aspect to them)
@@georgewills-ek1gg My prediction: Something like this is going to come out around next Halloween, but we will have completely forgotten about this comment
Were these shots taken from the bottom?
@@snaplash Felt top to me but good question
@@UCCLdIk6R5ECGtaGm7oqO-TQ oh, it is indeed a specian kind of fun, up to a point where you can actually feel the tilt of the tower, it's like the devil sits on your shoulder and cheers with you 😄
I work on telecommunication towers up to 180m high, you can see the bend looking down when it's windy. Makes it a lot more fun!!!!😀
@@leooneill1693 so true, I did the same some years ago😄
Fun? I would rather move at 400klms p/h on 2 wheels than climb up those things fuck i hope they pay u well for that work
It's a good paying job, but does not pay as well as it should, considering the risk compared to other jobs.
I do not care for your idea of fun, not one little bit.. I peed a lil typing this.
Thank you very much sir for keeping the systems alive
I love the sound of the hum getting lower as it slows down.
It's like de-energizing a warp drive.
Hum is result of gearing and generator under load. It can't slow down in few seconds. It slows down in a minute or two. What it does in few seconds is - it rotates blades parallel to wind to create least resistance. This unloads gearing and generator, as well as tower.
I love the Hum sound of two lips on my Oscar Mayer .
I know this is unpopular, but I love the cost to the taxpayer for trash that is unusable in the name of "green energy". More like brown energy, the likes of what a dog drops on the grass.
@@ClassicRockandRoll-i9x Agreed: Much better to poison our air and water and scrape the land for coal, and support dictatorships with military support (and American lives) in the Middle East so we can continue to enjoy reasonably priced oil. And all of that older stuff us supported with federal tax expenditures and tax avoidance at State and federal levels.
Something that is so stiff when it is 1m long, is elastic when it is over 100m long.
Look up a similar video on a cargo ship in storm.
For static engineers, everything is pudding.
@sleeptyper Same goes with aircraft wings. They both bend rather then break.
Good observation sherlock!
Ah huh, ah huh huh huh huh. Huh huh huh. ah huh.
Wow, impressive ! This gives an idea of the material engineering it takes to make such wind turbines. Even though they might look simple from outside.
I once flew across Africa in a Super DC8, from near the back I could see all the way to the front. We hit a lot of turbulence, and had I not seen the torsional twisting of the fuselage with my own eyes I would not have thought it possible.
I was in a 737 during what most civilians would call a "hard landing"...pretty much slammed into the runway. I was near the back and watched the airframe ripple as if a stone were thrown into a still pond - it was quite stressed. A few moments went by, and the co-pilot came on the intercom and flatly stated "that landing courtesy the US Navy" and I horse laughed. Carrier landings into arresting cables are quite violent. My back was sore for days.
I remember flying a 727 back in '98 on a trip from San Jose to Minneapolis. We were in the last row and there was turbulence over the Rockies, and the whole fuselage would flex and bow up and down. Very memorable!
@@garybulwinkle82 I've seen the cabin walls right above the wings appear to be breathing as the wings caused the walls to flex about 6-8".
The amount of flexibility designed into these wind turbines is just amazing! I bet at the very top it typically moves probably 20ft or more from side to side, depending on the windspeed and the amount of resistance the turbine is providing. This reminds me of a video somewhere on youtube showing a huge freight vessel traveling across heavy seas, and someone recorded a video with the camera pointing down a LONGGGG hallway. It was amazing the amount of flexing that ship was doing in ALL directions!
There's a video showing the central corridor inside a freight ship, winding and bending even more in each direction constantly.
The durability of modern constructions is amazing.
yeah i've seen that too, crazy!
That was awesome, I used to work for a company building them and knew the forces had to be enormous, between wind load and the torque. This really shows the effects.
This is just like the inside of the wing of the airliner you just flew on. Thank an Engineer! 😊
So true. I had a window seat behind the wing and we were flying thru a thunder storm . The movement of the wing and the twisting of the cabin was unbelievable. Also had a hard touchdown. My first time flying. 😳
here is the 777 wing load ultimate load test until it breaks, pretty wild ua-cam.com/video/Ai2HmvAXcU0/v-deo.html
The torque load imparted on that spindly little tower is truly incredible. It's crazy to see all the different ways and places it's loaded and how it all straightens up, and how the resonance moves through the structure.
Little?
@andrewczski1969 Proportionally. Think about it; it's a windmill on the end of a matchstick!
Surely this is more a demonstration of a lateral loading, not torque. Ie, we're seeing the tower deflect against the pressure of the wind against the face of the rotor blades, rather than seeing the tower bend because of the resistance of the generator against the torque of the rotor blades.
@@noxious89123 It's both of course. That said, do not underestimate the generator torque. I found a wind turbine, 145m high, 3.9MW nominal power. At that power it has a rotor torque of ~3MNm going from available data. Its rotor diameter is 131m, so via Betz' law (assuming 100% efficiency), we can derive that it ought to be experiencing at least ~630 kN of force slowing the air passing over through it down.
That means the drag torque is clearly dominant at the tower base, but generator torque actually dominates the first 5 meters under the axle.
@@CensoredUsername_ Another stat: 3.9MW, equivalent to 5228HP.
This reminds me of drinking in a bar at the top of the Hancock Tower in Chicago during a gale. It was nothing like as extreme as this, but you could clearly feel the building moving beneath your feet.
@davidstewart4570 when you are up there all day and sit for dinner, you are moving unintentionally like the tower the whole meal 😄
Must be fun drunk
i once was part of a team of 5 climbing inside the antenna on top of the cn tower in toronto. yes you could feel it swaying.
basically the same as being on a ship!
Try pee'ing in a urinal on top of Stratosphere in vegas on a windy day
That is way more bend than I thought
So satisfying to watch. A triumph of engineering, precision and exact calculations. The work of thousands of people from various fields: mathematicians, physicists, chemists, engineers culminates in these seconds - you wanna have a bending 140m wind tower? Here you go.
Ya and they still suck !
@@wallybraveheart6896 A lot less than power plants using fossil fuels as a source of energy. The new generation even has recyclable blades.
@@wallybraveheart6896 ?
@iliketoast-q9b And yet it takes fossil-fueled machinery to produce the components in nearly every aspect of this structure. The savings are what, now? Nevertheless, it's an interesting video.
@@glenncoody It's kinda impossible to not use old technology to replace it with the new, since it's an iterative process. The savings now are obviously all that oil and gas that you don't have to burn to supply thousands of people with eletricity.
That is insane!!! I had estimated how much it would come back from deflection. Utterly underestimated.
Great video, watching those movements I wonder how long it takes until the structure fatigue reaches to critical point that would need an overhaul or somehting
I once climbed a V112 on 90m tower in 35m/s winds. It was running just below the shutdown threshold. I was going from side to side climbing the ladder, and the rush, when you popped the hatch of the nacelle and crawled outside, was absolutely amazing. I have ADHD and access to a few turbines, so that's probably why.
🍺🍺🍺
35m/s?? When i worked for Vestas we were not allowed to access the turbines with winds higher than 18m/s iirc.
@@Isgolo It is a privately owned turbine. I have been warned by Vestas employees about getting fired for safety violations before. But you can't fire that who is not employed :-) I'm an engineer myself and know it's risky, and I would never recommend anyone to do it. But the experience I would never be without. Being inside the nacelle under those weather conditions, feeling the sheer amount of force being delivered to the construction, pushing it and yourself to it's safe limits. Watching the main axle while trying to comprehend the torque being delivered, right there, right now, while you are rocked from side to side with every gust of wind, engulfed in the powerful whine of the parallel gear and generator. It is an absolutely humbling experience, yet you feel so incredibly powerful as a species, taming nature to your will. It is those moments I live for. Moments where I am able to exit my mind for a while and just be present, living in the moment.
So cool seeing it in video. I spoke with a guy in Texas who mentioned how many inches some of those were moving normally vs under heavy winds, and it was pretty impressive the allowable flex..
1:41 I like the little shimmy the tower makes when the rotor goes through the critical RPM.
What speed does critical r.p.m. come out ??
@@TurboHappyCar what speed does the critical r.p.m. come out on windmills
@@ruxoneto6560 I don't know. I work on other spinny things and rotor dynamics is not my specialty... but I've felt that shake before.
honestly impressive to see it move this much, given how long these turbines operate that is some impressive engineering to make it not collapse from stresses
Gives me a new appreciation and apprehension of windmills ! There is a farm of 30 of them a half mile from my house near the beach ! We get 15- 30 mph winds almost daily and 40- 50 when fronts come through ! That’s a lot of bending and flexing !
On my first cruise with my not so soon-to-be wife, I could have sworn that the cabinway we were walking along flexed so much that the far end of the thing moved upwards out of sight. This was an over 270 meter long ship, Carnival Triumph. There were large swells from a distant hurricane and half the crew were ill, my girlfriend was seasick for the only time I've seen in19yrs. I loved it ! Grew up sailing every weekend in South Florida
long ships do flex a lot too in heavy seas, so your eyes probably weren't deceiving you
With all the truckloads of steel rebar and concrete we put in the ground to support each one of these towers, ain't gotta worry about the base walking away or rockin' to the oldies. Each base is siting in the ground in a bowl shaped hole 12m wide by 3m thick. I've seen tornado's go through wind farms with no damage to the mills due to their ability to flex and move with the forces, and I've seen a few that flexed beyond design and snapped in half. What I can't imagine is how much flex is induced in the tower (as viewed from inside) when a blade falls off while in motion? That would be an interesting video to see. We've had that happen and somehow the mill came to a wobbly slowdown to idle and with a replacement blade installed, placed back into service. Also, I've seen video's of the tower snapping in half when a blade departed which is understandable with each blade 45m long.
Thanks. If I ever would've gotten the idea that it would be fun to go up one of those things.. I now know better. That's a solid Never.
We of the solid never never clan.
Althought they all have ladders many also have winches so engineeers don't need to climb up and down. I can just imagine climbing all the way up and forget the right sized spanner...
@@cotochris I'd have an excuse!!
..and then I'd have to be winched all the way down. I do vertigo really well.
Kinda reminds me the time we were shown the insides of a ferry boat as we were bringing military vehicles to a garrison. Being mechanics, it was a given that we wanted to see the inner of the ferry and how it worked. We knew we were in for a treat when we passed beside something that looked like and upside down table end. It was a valve!!! It was about 24-30 inches wide and it held a door open.
The shaft that powered the screw at the back was beyond our expectations. It was super long and at the middle of what we could see, it sagged about 3-4 feet compared to each ends.
We asked why it didn't break and the engineer said it didn't sag, it would break in pieces. The metal used is purposely used to do just that, flex.
It take a lot to impress me but that did it that day. A bit like this tube bending.
Woah that's pretty crazy perspective on how much even solid things have play in them.
I wonder if they are monitored for fatigue cracking.
A good example of how a weakness can create resilience.
Fantastic engineering!
HOLY SHIT!!! Insights nobody really sees from outside. THANKS MAN!!
And that's why steel is great for towers: plenty of elastic deformation.
And the fatigue life tending to infinity.
And steel is, I believe, the most recycled material in the US by weight. Reduce, reuse, reCHARGE, recycle!
And it has to be smelted with thermal coal and then transported and erected with diesel guzzling machines. ESG is such a scam.
Ive been in earthquakes and seen the floor ripple like a wave passing through, big building, x-ray lab and equipment, no sign in the concrete floor, tile, or the walls- engineering is awesome!
Not sure why or how I got here, but I'm glad I saw this. Cool stuff.
I remember flying to Germany in an Air Canada DC-8 (CF-TJA) back around 1966 or so. Sitting in the back, watching the fuselage do the same thing.
Does this eventually fatigue the tower aftera number of bends
I drive by these kinds of turbines all the time but I never realized how much the towers flex.
Wow, incredible, engineering at its best. Thanks for posting this.
This video is so succinct and satisfying. It does what is says on the tin.
I have these where I am. They are huge. Not sure how tall but easily 200 meter. You can hear by the pitch 'the audible hum of the tower' almost as if they are screaming, 'Make it stop!' just before they shut down.
thanks for sharing
those towers really flex
wow!
I think the cacophony of noise with the clatters and bangs is the turbine blades turning to 'Feathered' so the wind rushes past them, not impinges upon them pushing the tube, and the big hum at the end is the brakes going on....that sounds like Paris Tube brakes going on, just a hum.
Trying to figure out if this is looking down or looking up.
Up.
Must be surreal to climb one of these, get back down and return to the 'normal world'. With the enclosed space, the noises, it just feels eerie to me
like any job, you get used to it. Deep mines are a prime example
This reminds me of the time I was on a ship in the Tasman Sea heading into Sydney. There was a passage that ran the entire length of the ship. It was like 4am and the sea was rough before heading into Sydney Harbour, we looked down the passage from the stern end and the entire ship was bending, not just up and down but also side to side. It was very similar to the above video.
Does the turbine measure the sway at the nacelle so it knows when it is better to feather the blades?
No, not as such - every modern turbine has an anemometer for reading average and peak wind speeds as well as wind direction.
But there is an accelerometer in the nacelle which detects abnormally high vibrations/accelerations - and if tripped the turbine will perform an emergency shutdown. When I was in the business, it was a mechanical device, and it had to be reset by a human. I'm not sure if more modern turbines still use oldschool tech for this protection feature.
My son works on Vestas siemens and GE turbines all over the USA. Doing gear box changes and blade bearings any thing else up tower
I would like to to torque same bolts on flanges before and after over speed test is done to see is they any movement in bolt nut after test. ?
If everything is done right, there is no movement or loosening of bolds, because the pre-tightening exceeds the loads through such a test by far. I know some cases where strange things happen, but this is really rare and due to something terribly wrong😉
WOW is appropriate here. Very interesting and awesome. Thx for sharing.
Very interesting, engineering comments are excellent..Yes, bends like a wing..amazing..
I experienced bending like this on a 120m stack at a cement works in high winds. It swayed quite worryingly but you got used to it after a while - they were designed to flex without failure ..... or so I prayed at the time ;
What could be the reason, is it vibrations due to aerodynamic torque effect of Rotor blades or metal fatigue. Usually all these are simulated during design before commissioning. Wonderful clipping and amazing as always.
It is an overspeed test. They run the turbines at full power and pitch the blades to stop the turbine in seconds. This is an emergency feature.
I have to disappoint you, this is "just" a normal stop. Oberspeed is much worse 😉
The Bending is just the result of the aerodynamic forces of the large area, covered by the turning turbine.
@@saasch_baasch I'd say the bending is the result of the captured energy by the generator. The area doesn't quite capture the wind speed and blade attack angle 😉 Good vid. Reminds us in general about the differences of theory and practice (depending..). Thanks
Yes the tower leans to one side as the rotor shaft torque tries to twist the gearbox/generator off their anchor points. And when the force stops the tower straightens back to it's resting position.
Emergency stops can be a lot more 'violent' than shown here. Still, it's a nice vid'.
Reminds me of working on radio towers. AM towers were wild with the static.
Holy Crap. 👍, and subscribe. Awesome. Massive engineering and great photography!
Wait... so this is looking up the vertical shaft, from the ground up to the propeller?
That's a *lot* of flex!
It is just a meter or two, over 140 meter of length that is not much.
Back in the days I was testing emergency stops on what at the time were the pinnacle of turbines, a 3MW beast. The tower on that thing was just shy of 80 meters. The stop actively used the gearbox and generator for breaking (by activating a crowbar circuit on the power converter DC-link) while waiting on the reaction time of the aero-brake to finally kick in after about two seconds.
However, the view up though the tower disappeared completely, and the tower just stood there like a metronome for nearly a minute. Now you see the nacelle, now you don't!
That was scary. Needless to say, occupying the nacelle during that test would be fatal, as the rocking back a fourth would smack you airborne. All the measuring equipment we had attached to various electrical systems had to be strapped down for the same reason. Still, seeing it was something else.
Good times.
It reminds me of those big cargo ships at sea, the amount of flex seems alarming, but if they didn't allow that to happen it wouls snap in half like a carrot. 😄
carrots have orders of magnitude greater flex than cargo ships and towers
@@peppigue Ooh you're a cruel man! OK how about an icicle? 😇
@@peppigue, we should manufacture a cargo ship out of carrots!
I guess it uses separated bolted sections because if it was welded it'd be too stiff?
that has nothing to do with the joining method. The strength of bolting or welding is the same when dimensioned correctly.
It's just the fact that everything (even steel) is bendy when it is 140m long.
Bendyness grows with the cube of the length of the object so a 140m steel tube is 14^3 bendyer than a 10m steel tube which is 19.600 times. So with the same force a section of the tube might bend 0.1 mm but the tower as a whole bends 2m.
@@casaxtreme2952 I hadn’t seen the term before - bendyness - The Wiktionary site uses ‘bendiness’. Anyway, a new word for my collection. Thanks!
@@casaxtreme2952 It's not really about the stiffness either. It's mostly for transportation and assembly. You can just-and-just get smaller pieces through normal roadways, but a full 140m tower, not really. And they're also optimized for minimum amount of work on-site, as welding a 140m self-standing structure on-site would be massively more expensive.
its how its put tugether in the field. they stack the rounds and bolt them each. welded would be a pain for dissassembly which is a probabilty.
Yes the tower is split into sections for logistical reasons - transporting that sucker over land on twisty roads is a freaking nightmare.
Not a problem as long as everything is designed for the static and dynamic loading/vibrations, and the unusual high wind situations. That said, it burns more than I would have thought from just looking at them at a distance.
I haven't been this scared since I accidentally walked in on my grandma in the bathroom..
A great breathing beastie.
Every structure has compliance. This point of view allows one to visualize it well. It’s very similar to videos showing massive 700 foot long Great Lakes bulk load ships flexing in heavy sea conditions.
That's only 30-40 mph, 50-60 km/h which is "gale" on the Beaufort scale. But winds can be much much more. It mentions that *this is shortly before the shutdown limit*
I suppose they have to feather the turbine blades and let the wind pass - *what a waste of available energy!*
I conclude it must be because of a limit on the *wind loading on the tower* which limits the max wind speed and not the rotational speed of the generator, because the angle of attack of the rotor blades could be controlled to be shallow, thereby limiting the rotational speed and providing lots of torque.
All the best, Rob in Switzerland
So if the blades could be controlled, that would also reduce the main force bending the tower, which is working against the energy captured from the wind. This must be greater than the mere wind resistance of the mast. All the best from FI 😊
@@Hukkinen I think they can control the pitch of the blades (I would hope so anyway). Many light aircraft and all larger propeller aircraft can control the pitch of the propeller blades. It's an important mechanism in the relationship between thrust and engine power. When a propeller aircraft's engine fails, the pilot "feathers" the blades (aligns them with the airflow) to reduce drag, so that the aircraft stays easier to control and its range is not unduly shortened (important if he has to find an emergency landing place).
It would make complete sense to stop rotation of the turbine rotor by feathering the blades in order to reduce wind resistance and rotational force. There may be some disk brakes in the nacelle (it would make sense too) but I hope it's not the only mechanism to stop the rotor. Greetings back to beautiful Finland!
gale is 62-74 kmh
@@doobybrother21 Based on an internet calculation for 14 - 18 m/sec (in the video description) approximating 30 mph - 40 mph to 50 to 60 km/h but for a stricter definition, WIkipedia has a better breakdown. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beaufort_scale
@@Hukkinen Its more complicated than that cos the blades are an aerofoil so even if you feather then you have a low pressure that is relative to the wind velocity and I believe that is a square of the wind speed, so there will come a point where the speed of the wind over a maximally feathered blade creates such a huge disparity between the high pressure and the low pressure side that it becomes unsafe. Remember you can lift a Beoing 747 off the ground with a wind speed of 150 mph over an aerofoil...!!!
I did my sailing exams 25 years ago and i can't remember the actual calculations
Amazing! I wish the politicians had an appreciation for the incredible work you do!
Are we looking down? or looking up. ?
Up
is this deflection atitude compensated with some sort of actuation before the turbine shaft or use a cyclical like a helicopter to maintain azimuth?
The first one
@@purdyboi8078 thanks!
I assume the blades were feathered to prevent structural overload under the wind force. In the first example, we can see some oscillation during the slowdown which I assume to be due to blade imbalance. Or possibly a blade angle misadjustment?
No it is just to abide by the power limit on the electrical systems - the blades and tower itself are rated at much higher workloads than the electrical system. Sometimes the gearbox is the weakest link (for longevity), but usually it is the electrical systems are the ones that dictate the "to here, and no further!"-limit.
It’s so cool. I will admit I’d be freaking out at the top when the stop signal happened tho lol
I don't know what I'm looking at. Is this a video looking down the length of a turbine blade in operation with the camera attached to the blade, or is it looking down the tower?
@@danielgrayling5032 you are looking up a tower of a windturbine
@@saasch_baasch If we are looking UP the tower, then why do we see the TOPS of the bolts? Are the bolts installed upside down - ie Threaded side UP?
@@MrSummitville Looks like yes. Why wouldn't they be? Who defines what way bolts go?
@MrSummitville they are upside down, simply because the machine for tightening is quite heavy and easier to put on the nut on top, then from the bottom up.
This is a great example of why we build stuff with steel. It's strong and Ridgid but not so brittle that it cracks or shatters.
Shockingly engaging-wow! This video truly highlights the incredible forces at play and the ingenuity of engineering. Any engineering student who didn’t fully appreciate their strength of materials, statics, or dynamics classes will after watching this. Thanks for sharing such an amazing perspective!
• Statics: Provides the foundation for understanding how forces interact in structures and ensuring equilibrium, a crucial concept in analyzing loads on the turbine.
• Strength of Materials (Mechanics of Materials): Teaches stress, strain, and deformation principles, which are vital for designing materials that can flex under load without failing.
• Dynamics: Explores motion and forces in systems, helping engineers understand and predict the effects of wind forces and blade rotation on the structure.
• Materials Science: Offers insights into the properties of materials, such as elasticity, fatigue, and fracture mechanics, enabling the selection of materials that withstand cyclic loading.
• Introduction to Design and Manufacturing: Encourages practical application of engineering principles and creative problem-solving, foundational for creating innovative solutions like load-tolerant structures.
How do turbines after starting up, synchronising with the grid (generator turning on), keep a constant speed? They may slow down but I didn't hear one speed up. Thought about this after watching for the 100th time "Nordex N60 betreib auf"
Hey, with the N60, the system switches on during acceleration, i.e. without keeping the speed constant. Afterwards, it remains constant at this speed, as this is the mains frequency (50 Hz EU and 60 Hz US). In the case of systems with partial or full converters, the system switches on sooner and then accelerates significantly, which you can hear very well in one of my first videos, I think it was the "V112 startup" or something like that 😊
@@saasch_baasch Thank you very much, I remember the "V112 startup", heard the gen. synchronize with the grid, and after that it sped up. Btw some of these videos I use as ASMR's, hah great sounds. Great videos, keep them up :)))
@@eventhorizon7374 ASMR huh, more like dream fuel, or lucid dream fuel. the only thing i can compare closely to the wind turbines in my dreams are AI generated turbines. my dreams sometimes end up with me falling off of the side of the nacelle, sometimes while it's on fire!
Given the amount of energy stored in that bend, it seemed come out in a pretty smooth and orderly fashion.
There is a video somewhere of the huge ship deep down in the hull showing the warping and bending as the ship makes it's way through big waves.
The Bending is something important, right? Like if it's 100% without any bending, the structure would be more fragile, or better?
If you made the structure strong enough not to visibly bend under this load, it would be massive, hugely expensive and impractical to build
@@KrikkitWarlord You need flex to absorb some of the inertia, so the flex is not just a cost consideration. If you made the tower so rigid that is didn't flex, the nacelle would most likely just break off and fly to the ground.
Same as with airplane wings, actually.
@@thomashenden71 Straight up, in both cases it also acts like a damper. But airplane wings and rotorblades can flex incredibly much. Next time you fly, if you haven't already, then pay attention to the wings from taxing to takeoff - it's incredible. Also try searching for turbine blade testing videos on UA-cam.
@@ZvendZved If you had funds and desire to make tower so rigid, you would also make joints more beefy, as appropriate. The truth is what @KrikkitWarlord said, yes you can have non-bendy non-breaking constructions, it was never anyhow against laws physics, it's just the expensive way to go so noone does it. How did this "bending is important" start to live a life of its own is magical...
(Well "without any bending" is unobtainable anyway. There's no such thing as a 100% rigid object, strictly speaking; when people say "without any bending" they mean something like "so little bending that a layman won't notice".)
🙏🙏 great vid , shows that wind ain’t as simple as many like to make out.., they can stop for many reasons.. including being over powered..
One of the 2 where I live has a spiral staircase and a viewing area at the top so you cant see up it like that, but you can certainly feel it when up there even when its only a bit windy.
The oil fields are kinda like this when you think of the properties of the steel drill pipe that is used(there are several very common grades and some NOT very common), and how it can be made to bend and be subjected to lots of torque and vibration and......and it comes out able to be re-used over and over and over again......and ive seen the same pipe bent like a matchstick in an instant......
So when you're standing at the base of one of these and it looks like it's falling over on you, that's because it's actually leaning quite a good bit, wow!
Very interesting video. Thank you.
are they all configured with video capture for diagnostic (and possible long term, failure analysis) purposes - and if yes, what other non-power related data capture is involved - stress/strain gauge, harmonics etc ? Can they transmit that data via more than one path - like maybe starlink or other satellite system ? I'd imagine they could do it right on the power lines as well, you can do that with home wiring.
wow ! impressive and scary at the same time
What is the expected service life of the tower itself, as distinct from the nacelle equipment and blades?
They do not specify, the whole thing has a 25 year life span (with maintenace regularly supplied by the manufacturer)
True, but the safety-factor build in will allow for much longer operation - but no insurance company will sign on to eating into the safety margin.
That's very cool - in a very nerdy way!
This was wild! So cool!
You should see a 285 m long ship how is bending and twisting in rough seas. You should hear the creak and squeak of the structure, and at the same time the booming sound of the 6-7 m wave knocking in the shell plate, only 30 mm away from you.
Thanks so much for sharing that !! (Still pretty cautious about wind power) BUT I am more impressed with the engineering (after seeing this) than ever!! (And the camera is not half bad either).
Fun fact: In Germany A big energy company tried to introduce a new type of wind turbine tower made partly out of reinforced concrete..then one failed badly and collapsed in high winds and this video explains very well why! The company had to dismantle several already built Wind turbines of the same type!
rc's fine as long as the reinforcement is adequate for the job. Same for bridges and all rc beams.
Scary AF. Like standing on top of the Eiffel tower as a kid with you head planted against the structure realising you are wobbling in the wind.
Is this looking up or down?
looking up. because you can see the bolt's head and not the nut. the nut is normaly on top of the flanche. at least this in normaly done at a Nordex turbine not sure what this brand is
I had the same question. Hopefully they'll publish real answer.
My assumption is looking up. The hatch door goes up and away. I'm assuming they're shutting down to go up and inspect?
can't imagine the amount of engineering needed to make something like this reliable!!
I was on the top of the Willis Tower in Chicago in high winds a few years back. It bends too. So do aircraft made of the same composite materials as these turbines. As an earlier commenter said, if it doesn’t bend, it breaks.
Doesn't exactly fill ya with confidence does it? 😒
Thanks for showing us.
There's so much dynamic stress on them! No wonder they fail a lot.
Would love to see the calculations for stresses on the mast….🤓
So if it spins too fast, it stops? But wouldn't it be easier to decouple the generator to reduce the air resistance? I suppose it takes a lot of energy to stop the spinning and also keep it stopped, so why do they do that?
If you unload the generator and don't feather the blades, the turbine will spin up too fast. This isn't my field, but I'm guessing too much speed would throw the blades.
So that bending can be controlled to an extent by the pitch of the blades?