In the UK, objections to wind farms are often made on the grounds of "aestheticism", the twisting blades spoiling otherwise perfect countryside views. Hmmm. IMHO this is just NIMBY-ism in another guise...
However, wind turbines can be far from perfect, as this video darkly and dramatically demonstrates.
Thanks to the website GroovyGreen.com for this one: Exploding Wind Turbine Is Worthy Of Slow Motion Replay
The website writes:
"We're thinking that wind turbine manufacturers are less than thrilled with the above video circulating online. Apparently, this all went down in Denmark when a safety breaking system failed in strong winds. Reports say that two engineers were working on top of the turbine to repair the breaking system, but managed to get down before all hell broke loose. A 19 meter piece of the blade was thrown 20 metres away. Smaller pieces were sent more than 500 meters away."
"There a reason why these 1 MW turbines should be kept a safe distance from homes. Glad to see nobody was hurt."
The event happened in Denmark at the beginning of this year, and you can read online news coverage of the failure.
An interesting comment on the site outlines these details for safety improvement:
"According to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory's Chief Engineer, 'Modern wind turbines rely on three independently controlled pitch systems. Any one [of those systems] can save the machine from a [runaway] like that. They have their own battery supply systems, fault detection system and internal diagnostics. The master controller monitors all the subordinate control systems (back brake, lubrication system, yaw drive, anemometers, power system, as well as the pitch system). If any one of the sensors behaves abnormally it creates a fault and the machine shuts down.'"
The event happened in Denmark at the beginning of this year, and you can read online news coverage of the failure.
An interesting comment on the site outlines these details for safety improvement:
"According to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory's Chief Engineer, 'Modern wind turbines rely on three independently controlled pitch systems. Any one [of those systems] can save the machine from a [runaway] like that. They have their own battery supply systems, fault detection system and internal diagnostics. The master controller monitors all the subordinate control systems (back brake, lubrication system, yaw drive, anemometers, power system, as well as the pitch system). If any one of the sensors behaves abnormally it creates a fault and the machine shuts down.'"
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