These blades, which have reached the end of their year working lives, come from three wind farms in the north-western US state.
Each will be cut into three, then the pieces will be stacked and buried. Turbines from the first great s wave of wind power are reaching the end of their life expectancy today. About two gigawatts worth of turbines will be refitted in and And disposing of them in an environmentally-friendly way is a growing problem.
Burying them doesn't sound very green. Can they not be recycled? Wind power goes as far back at least as 9th Century BC Persia, where sails were used to grind grain and draw up water on the windy Sistan plains. Scottish professor James Blyth built the first windmill to make electricity in , powering his holiday home in Marykirk.
Instead of using cloth to catch the wind like Prof Blyth and the ancient Iranians, today's turbine blades are built from composite materials - older blades from glass fibre, newer ones from carbon fibre. Such composite materials might be light and strong, but they are also extremely hard to recycle.
That doesn't mean they have to go into landfill, according to Don Lilly, chief executive of Global Fiberglass Solutions in Bellevue, Washington. Mr Lilly has been transforming fibreglass composites into small pellets he calls EcoPoly. The pellets can then be turned into injectable plastics, or highly waterproof boards that can be used in construction, he says. Mr Lilly has received interest from "several manufacturers" for his pellets. He's also developed a programme to track blades throughout their life cycle, and make it easier to recycle them at the end.
If we "holistically think about the end of life, there are simple choices we could make now that could make fibreglass in the blade easier to recycle," says Richard Cochrane, professor of renewable energy at Exeter University. A second avenue for recycling turbine blades is called pyrolysis. This translation of aerodynamic force to rotation of a generator creates electricity. Most commonly, they have three blades and operate "upwind," with the turbine pivoting at the top of the tower so the blades face into the wind.
Vertical-axis wind turbines come in several varieties, including the eggbeater-style Darrieus model, named after its French inventor. Wind turbines can be built on land or offshore in large bodies of water like oceans and lakes.
The U. Department of Energy is currently funding projects to facilitate offshore wind deployment in U. Modern wind turbines can be categorized by where they are installed and how they are connected to the grid:.
Larger wind turbines are more cost effective and are grouped together into wind plants, which provide bulk power to the electrical grid.
They do not have the same transportation challenges of land-based wind installations, as the large components can be transported on ships instead of on roads. When wind turbines of any size are installed on the "customer" side of the electric meter, or are installed at or near the place where the energy they produce will be used, they're called "distributed wind.
Many turbines used in distributed applications are small wind turbines. Single small wind turbines—below kilowatts—are typically used for residential, agricultural, and small commercial and industrial applications. Small turbines can be used in hybrid energy systems with other distributed energy resources, such as microgrids powered by diesel generators, batteries, and photovoltaics.
These systems are called hybrid wind systems and are typically used in remote, off-grid locations where a connection to the utility grid is not available and are becoming more common in grid-connected applications for resiliency.
Learn more about distributed wind from the Distributed Wind Animation or read about what the Wind Energy Technologies Office is doing to support the deployment of distributed wind systems for homes, businesses, farms, and community wind projects.
Interested in wind energy? The Small Wind Guidebook helps homeowners, ranchers, and small businesses decide if wind energy can work for them. This video highlights the basic principles at work in wind turbines and illustrates how the various components work to capture and convert wind energy to electricity.
See the text version. Find out more about wind energy by visiting the Wind Energy Technologies Office web page or browsing the office's funded activities. To keep them stable, the diameter of the structures would be roughly 1,ft metres. The turbines wouldn't face the wind but would go downwind, aligning the blades to flow with the wind instead of fighting it.
Instead of a single stiff blade, each blade will be broken into segments, allowing it to be built and transported more easily. The concept would also allow the blades to spread out when the wind is blowing lightly to capture as much power as possible.
Parts of the turbine pictured on the A2 turbine installation vessel. The ship is designed to transport and install up to eight 3. A worker pictured inside the offshore giant. Using larger turbines can help keep energy production costs low, according to Dong's UK country manager for wind power. The giant turbines are built in Maade, Denmark, and shipped to countries across the world.
Belgium and the UK will be the first countries to make used of the technology. Britain is seeking new electricity generation to replace its ageing coal and nuclear power stations and has said around 10 gigawatts of offshore wind capacity could be installed by the end of the decade.
Cranes are used to lift and assemble parts of the turbine. Countries across Europe are seeking new electricity generation to replace ageing coal and nuclear power stations.
Wind turbines produce energy when the wind causes the three propellers to spin around a rotor. The rotor is linked to the main shaft, which turns a generator to create electricity. Britain's government has said its next round of CfD renewable funding will focus on offshore wind, but the subsidies will be dependent on the wind industry's ability to drive down its costs.
A worker is pictured looking out of the structure, which is the height of a sky scraper.
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