Monday, June 8, 2009

We DO import wind turbine blades

Last night at a dinner party a friend--whose uncle used to be harbormaster for the Port of Galveston--said he sees the blades stacked on the wharf often on visits to Galveston. Yes, huge.
And then a blade gets on a truck and heads up I-45. A few loads of those really snarls traffic.
photo by tigone
"Bulker [bulk freighter] CATHRIN OLDENDORFF with a deck cargo of wind turbine blades, estimated to be 33m (108 feet) each in length. Galveston, Texas, January 27, 2007."

I'd estimate I agree with the length. Because they were longer than two rail cars, which are 40ft [to accommodate a 40'container] when I saw them on Saturday.

My f/Friend Fred tells me that the world-beater wind farm project T. Boone Pickens is building up by Pampa features blades from a Danish company that sources the manufacturing in Vietnam. Good money, Vietnam!

So I went looking to see where these things are made. Answer: everywhere! Whoa, talk about helping the developing world. That's good. What could be easier? Got breeze? Got power!

Thank goodness people like T. Boone got money to put the wind farms on the grid.
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4 comments:

  1. C SwanJune 8, 2009 at 5:21 PM

    OK, here is something I've been curious about, and maybe someone can educate me: Do the vibrations from the wind turbines disturb the things that live and grow in the earth where the turbines are planted?

    Or have they figured that out already?

    cath

    ReplyDelete
  2. Claudia WilsonJune 10, 2009 at 12:44 PM

    Cath, I'm sure--just like global warming--there are diverse opinions waiting for the facts to become clear.

    The only turbines I've seen are the biggest wind "farmland" near Sweetwater TX, then the booming area along US Hwy 384 northward from there. Not much grows there in plenty of wide open spaces.

    Actually I'm hoping that somehow nature will find a way to use the intrusion and blossom because of it, kinda like the teeming sea life in the offshore rigs on the Louisiana coast.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Claudia WilsonJune 10, 2009 at 12:49 PM

    Oh ooops. Memory failed. It's US Hwy 84 that goes from Sweetwater toward Lubbock.

    To go to New Mexico you take it to Post TX and go west on US Hwy 380.

    I conflated them. Post, Texas--now that's a story.

    ReplyDelete
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