skywords
Donation Time
Wind power is a good soarce of energy and does not take a huge amount of maintenance. Myself and another fella used to maintain a wind farm at the Altimont pass just east of Livermore Calif. These machines were 50KW computerized upwind machines made in Belguim. They were in a bad location being on the back side (down wind) of the hills near the pass. They were subject to a lot of turbulence and faired well considering. Blade pitch was hydraulically controlled with a yaw motor coupled to a ring gear to keep the nacelle pointed into the wind. the towers are 75' high with ladders for the assent. Oily ladders I might add. The computers kept the output at the proper cycles and would shut down if needed with the props feathering. We had only one unit shed a blade resulting in the entire nacelle crashing to the ground. If these machines were placed in clean smooth air they would have done even better. My picture was in Popular mechanics in the 1980's standing on top of a nacelle, a helecopter showed up oneday and snaps some pics. I had no idea what for until someone showed me the issue. Lately I have been seeing the components for some very large wind mills on trucks heading east on I-10.
I flew my ultralight down the backside of a row of them oneday to see what the turbulance was like. Very Very Very Bad Idea Almost did not make it, The stick and pedals were going from stop to stop just to keep it upright using full power. Dumb Dumb Dumb. I was young.
I flew my ultralight down the backside of a row of them oneday to see what the turbulance was like. Very Very Very Bad Idea Almost did not make it, The stick and pedals were going from stop to stop just to keep it upright using full power. Dumb Dumb Dumb. I was young.