Offshore "Hybrid" Wind Turbine Blade Extrapolation Test Methods
Nantucket Massachusetts July 13, 2024
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Fifteen years ago Massachusetts built a wind turbine testing facility for offshore wind blades up to 90 meters (300 feet). No one thought blades could ever be built longer than 300 feet. Tens of millions of dollars were used for the Wind Testing Technology Facility.
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Ten years after the MassCEC test center was built GE started building 107-meter (350-foot) "hybrid" blades in Cherbourg, France with less carbon fiber that was more inexpensive and faster to produce than the competition. One of the prototype blades was sent to Massachusetts for testing.
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No test sites in the world can test blades this large. Hence, Massachusetts engineers cut the blade into two parts testing them individually and then extrapolating the figures to test and certify. The certification results for the one blade tested in sections were used to produce 150 blades in Canada.
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Canadian blades are mass-produced based on the MassCEC test results on one blade from France
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From an engineering point of view if you can cut the blades in parts and test them individually, why did Massachusetts spend tens of millions to build a 300-foot test site in the first place?
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The pictures of the broken Vineyard Wind turbine blade show classical torsional failure.
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Stresses on 350-foot blades become enormous, as they sweep 800 ft circles through variable-speed, sometimes gusty, wind fields.
The wind speeds vary from top to bottom and side to side in each 800-ft circle.
That creates huge VARYING, TORSIONAL forces on the blades as they rotate, in addition to all other forces.
Extrapolating existing designs for 350-foot "hybrid" blades is not applicable.
The torsional failures of 350-foot blades require a complete redesign.
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Comment
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Comment by Willem Post on September 26, 2024 at 7:55am
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If such large rotors are on floating wind turbines, multiple additional forces would be imposed on the blades.
5 Hywind Norwegian floating wind turbines, 6 MW each, which much smaller rotors and blades, have been towed from Scotland back to Norway, a short distance, for major overhauls after only 6 years of operation
The cost of the overhauls and a to z towing operation is expected to exceed the cost of the original 5 units
I hope Maine wind folks are finally facing reality regarding the enormous cost imposed on Maine for each year for many decades, due to the boondoggle of 3000 MW of floaters. Sheer suicide!!
Maine as Third World Country:
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Maine Center For Public Interest Reporting – Three Part Series: A CRITICAL LOOK AT MAINE’S WIND ACT
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(excerpts) From Part 1 – On Maine’s Wind Law “Once the committee passed the wind energy bill on to the full House and Senate, lawmakers there didn’t even debate it. They passed it unanimously and with no discussion. House Majority Leader Hannah Pingree, a Democrat from North Haven, says legislators probably didn’t know how many turbines would be constructed in Maine if the law’s goals were met." . – Maine Center for Public Interest Reporting, August 2010 https://www.pinetreewatchdog.org/wind-power-bandwagon-hits-bumps-in-the-road-3/From Part 2 – On Wind and Oil Yet using wind energy doesn’t lower dependence on imported foreign oil. That’s because the majority of imported oil in Maine is used for heating and transportation. And switching our dependence from foreign oil to Maine-produced electricity isn’t likely to happen very soon, says Bartlett. “Right now, people can’t switch to electric cars and heating – if they did, we’d be in trouble.” So was one of the fundamental premises of the task force false, or at least misleading?" https://www.pinetreewatchdog.org/wind-swept-task-force-set-the-rules/From Part 3 – On Wind-Required New Transmission Lines Finally, the building of enormous, high-voltage transmission lines that the regional electricity system operator says are required to move substantial amounts of wind power to markets south of Maine was never even discussed by the task force – an omission that Mills said will come to haunt the state.“If you try to put 2,500 or 3,000 megawatts in northern or eastern Maine – oh, my god, try to build the transmission!” said Mills. “It’s not just the towers, it’s the lines – that’s when I begin to think that the goal is a little farfetched.” https://www.pinetreewatchdog.org/flaws-in-bill-like-skating-with-dull-skates/
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Hannah Pingree on the Maine expedited wind law
Hannah Pingree - Director of Maine's Office of Innovation and the Future
"Once the committee passed the wind energy bill on to the full House and Senate, lawmakers there didn’t even debate it. They passed it unanimously and with no discussion. House Majority Leader Hannah Pingree, a Democrat from North Haven, says legislators probably didn’t know how many turbines would be constructed in Maine."
https://pinetreewatch.org/wind-power-bandwagon-hits-bumps-in-the-road-3/
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