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| Science & Technology |
| Diesel Powered Wind Turbines |
| 2023-02-07 |
| [HotAir] Scottish Power has been accused of "environmental madness" after it was revealed more than 70 of its wind turbines had been hooked up to diesel generators. The Sunday Mail revealed via a whistleblower that diesel generators were used on 71 turbines in order to prevent them freezing during cold weather in December. Imagine that. Freezing weather in December. Won't wonders never cease? Scottish Power told the publication that this took place after a fault developed on the grid. Sixty wind turbines at Arecleoch windfarm and 11 at Glen App, both in South Ayrshire, were affected. Other technical issues• Turbines left operating on half power for long periods due to faulty convertor modules. • Others in "test mode" where they take rather than contribute electricity to the grid. • Over 4000 litres of oil leaked from hydraulic units on turbines and sprayed over the countryside. Dirty hydraulic oil is also regularly being sprayed out across the Scottish countryside due to cracks in mechanisms. Safety standards have not improved since a worker was killed in 2017 at Kilgallioch wind farm. |
| Posted by:Deacon Blues |
| #6 Large wind turbines require an incoming source of electricity from the grid to keep all their 'innards' operating properly (like phase/frequency synchronization, system controls...and heaters). This separate incoming source is normally not in the same power cabling overhead/underground scheme as the turbine outputs and often doesn't follow the same routing. Loss of this power source does require auxiliary power to keep the above big fans running, so I'm not really surprised by that. Leaving the turbines running with bad convertors or sketchy hydraulic units is very bad, and can lead to further damage. There are abundant internal monitoring systems within these turbine towers that would alert the operators to these problems and failure to respond is just nuts, especially for the hydraulics. Over here, the companies would immediately take those units completely offline (via remote control, hence the secondary source of electricity noted above) and shut them completely down until they're repaired. You've seen some turbines completely stopped while others are going full tilt, haven't you? That's usually what's happening. |
| Posted by: Mullah Richard 2023-02-07 11:13 |
| #5 I get (but disagree with) the urge to "save money" by ignoring winterization in a once-in-a-hundred-years scenario (though Texas seems to have gotten that two years in a row!) I don't think a company operating in Scotland can claim that excuse. |
| Posted by: M. Murcek 2023-02-07 08:37 |
#4 Freezing, eh? No way to, um, winterize them, is there? That's some slick engineeringSame comment applies to the measures shown to be useless during the recent Texas freezes. One would have thought at the minimum that Texas building managers would have understood that water pipes in unheated buildings tend to burst and damage the buildings, but apparently this wasn't the case in Texas. |
| Posted by: Gromble Dribble4342 2023-02-07 08:31 |
| #3 Freezing, eh? No way to, um, winterize them, is there? That's some slick engineering for something that has to be outdoors its entire operational life. |
| Posted by: M. Murcek 2023-02-07 07:16 |
| #2 |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2023-02-07 07:09 |
| #1 UK Once Again Brings Coal Power Plants Online as, Foreseeably, It Gets Cold in Winter |
| Posted by: Skidmark 2023-02-07 06:56 |