Danish Attack Windmills!

[giza]

Ever wonder what happens when a windmill gets caught up in a wind storm? This video from Denmark shows us:

Watch on YouTube

Just to give a sense of scale, that turbine is approximately 60m high. That's some serious kinetic energy!

I also saw a comment elsewhere on YouTube that pointed out that even the destruction of the turbine was rather eco friendly, as opposed to the worst case failure mode of say, a dam (flood) or a poorly designed nuclear plant[1] (radiation).

[1] Yeah, I'm fine with the light water reactors here in the US that have containment buildings. I'm talking about certain graphite core reactors with positive void coefficient tendencies that can build up power very quickly and um, explode.

Comments

[antimon.livejournal.com]

ouch, it almost looks like something hit the blade and it took out the rest of the windmil, could ajust been over torked, hard to say. thats a lot of wind, I wonder how much energy it created during that though hehe

but still, those things are dang expensive to replace

[rexxwolfe.livejournal.com]

Wow hum weve had some pretty strong windstorms here and the windmills never exploded like that. But still thats pretty neat anbd sad i think windmills look kinda cool.

[yappyfox.livejournal.com]

Holey shit that's impressive :> After being in Europe last yeah and actually seeing the size of theme mammoths.. What I didn't expect is the pole to be made of composite fiber or fiberglass. I thought they were steel poles.

On the other hand, I wonder if they were intentionally stress testing this thing.. seem cooincidental that someone happened to be there video taping one specific windmill in the thousands they have. Plus they have vanes they can adjust to completely stop the motion (I saw many windmills parked still, when facing the same directions as many spinning ones..)

[jedd-marten.livejournal.com]

Thems the breaks from old broken brakes. ;)

[firedhusky.livejournal.com]

I guess they didnt learn anything from centuries of windmills or wind water pumps, that break before they go in self destruction mode.

those things are expensive too !

[kellic.livejournal.com]

Gah....Imagine the power output if a farm of those could sustain that kind of speed for a length of time. Wow.

[giza.livejournal.com]

Actually, I don't recall the math involved, but apparently increasing the wind speed produces diminishing returns on current generated. So you won't get as much of a gain in a windstorm as you'd think.

[mrianti.livejournal.com]

don't forget the flying ice chunks in the winter ;)

[mapdark.livejournal.com]

o.o


WOW .. that's pretty scary!

So I guess it's not a good idea to put them in hurricane zones right? XD

[nbowa.livejournal.com]

Wow, that was quite catastrophic! :)

Most windturbines if there is a major windstorm coming through are turned off just for this reason and turned so the blades are in line with the wind direction.

Supposedly the optimal wind speed is 22-30MPH or so for maximum power output. Anything faster will not help out with power output.