Wind Turbine Gearboxes

The viability of the concept has been proven throughout the world many times over, in many paces, without the incentives given to fossil fuel producers, such as relief from environmental damage, public and private real estate exploitation, tax breaks for exploration. etc.

Answers 1-3 are very good.

Now to the question.

A great analogy is jet engine technology. You must have sufficient cash flow and infrastructure to provide intense maintenance. That is why the vast majority of small planes are not jets. It is too expensive to offset the increased performance with the increased demand for maintenance. But a few people have small jets, because economic viability is not a priority.

An individual small mill is very tough to deal with, because it has to deal with very large issues on a very small budget. People have been led to believe that with a small investment, they will have a reliable generator that requires no maintenance. The output is almost always vastly over estimated, so for real power versus cost plus maintenance, PV is much more reliable on a small scale. As scale grows, I think wind become more effective..

Are you referring to the wind turbines in Tehachappi, CA. Those are owned by GE. My sister used to work for that division and my brother in law still does.

Yes, they are too explensive to maintain and you'll see a lot of them down for a long time just because they aren't cost effective enough to keep them in good repair.

I'm referring to about 150 Gigawatts of worldwide generating capacity deployed in mills rated over 1MW. I don't know how old or large the mills you are referring to are.

You take HWY 152 from Bakersfield to Mojave you drive right through them. They are big. One blade takes up two Semi trailers.

Is this an offer to debate whether these particular mills are a feasible project? I have no idea. The comment made was that wind is not a feasible fuel for economical power generation. (see first response) It is.

Are there plants like the one you mentioned that do not make money? Is that what you mean? I'm guessing there are.

No PFR, I'm not here to debate with you. I noticed you're in California too so I was asking if you were referring to the ones in Tehachappi. My sister and Brother in law both worked for GE that deals with those wind turbines. From them, they commented that the wind turbines were too costly to maintain. The reason that comment was made was because one time conversation came up and it was mentioned that so many of them weren't operating. My sister actually got to climb up into one of the turbines, she was excited about that experience.

They may not be making much money. Many of those turbines have been there over 20 years, so maybe new technology might be making newer ones more cost effective.

looks to me like they shouldn't even be there for quite a few reasons. make an alternator/generator that has a large enough diameter so that it can run at 1 to 1 ratio with the rotor.

Can you imagine how large the alternator/generator would have to be to get anything worthwhile out of it? Probably almost as large as the blades. Very inefficient and totally impractical at such a height. Better to use a hydraulic system, with the pump driven by the rotor at the top, through hydraulic lines feeding a hydraulic motor at the bottom driving the generator. The speed can be increased via the hydraulic pump/motor system, thus gearbox not required.

An important german Manufacturer makes these "No gear" windmills. The generator is only slightly larger than a geared generator. The trick is in the number of poles

Chorete

I've been against MW-plus wind power from the start because of economics, dispatchability, and reliability. Costs: capital costs for the towers, etc.; operating costs (minimal, I believe); maintenance costs (so-so right now, but higher than for ground-based power .. but what about 150-zillion turbines all starting to get old in 20 years?); replacement costs (when the things will be clapped out, will they be replaced by new towers, etc.? by new turboprops?). In brief, lots of capital is being tied down for zillions of (relatively) small-capacity turbines that will need lots of manpower to repair and replace when they'll get old. Dispatchability: until we'll have come up with a practical, economic way to store power for release when it's actually needed (as opposed to when the wind blows), wind power makes no strategic sense on its own. It does to some degree in places like Europe, which is short of power (as reflected by the high cost of it) and the less-than-unquestioned reliability of energy supplies (e.g., that of Russian oil and gas), but elsewhere there are better way available to generate power. Reliability: too much risk from this for my taste. Think of it: the materials have to be right (e.g., salt-resistant near oceans; repetitive-stress resistant because of towers et al bending in the wind; crack- and fatigue resistant enough to ensure towers et al not failing under overload and resonance conditions (wind resonance .. has that even been designed for?)); the basic design is less than optimal (a big rotating head mounted on a horzontal bearing, and in the head a big rotating prop whose weight puts a perpendicular (lots of shear) load on a vertical bearing); plus, how many people can be sent up at a time into a given tower when fixing it? On the broader-scale strategic side of things: because of lack of useful power storage technology right now, wind power has to be 100% backed up by power-generation capacity available for rapid ramp-up when wind dies down. In other words, setting up wind towers amounts to using capital to substitute free wind for other power sources. A company I'm working with is developing a biomass-fired power-generation project in the Western US. The company's been asked to design a wood-waste-fired station whose output will have to ramp up and down to smooth out rises and drops in wind power. In this case, building wind towers proves to be an expensive way to substitute 'free' wind for wood-waste. Given that The World's already wasted plenty of time, effort, and capital in pointless stuff, should we really be doing this? DZ

I don't get you. You are implying that you don't believe in wind energy because they wear out in 20 years? That's pretty weak. Would you mind telling us what industry you retired from?