Wind

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brian john

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Kilmarnock, Va
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Retired after 52 years in the trade.
I just came through Upstate NY south of Buffalo there are 100's of wind generators.

Any idea on the KW size of wind generators.
Do the generate at AC or DC and then convert to AC.
I saw no where where they tied to the grid And I drove all over the area just looking.
 
Bob the DC question was my thought based on wind speed and paralleling the units on line, Wish I could have found the DC to AC converter and connection to grid.
 
I was recently on a biogas generation project and the units were GE/Jenbacher a german company.

I am sure I read/saw somewhere that GE was supplying many of the wind projects.
 
brian john said:
I just came through Upstate NY south of Buffalo there are 100's of wind generators.
Click to expand...

Kinda like this?

energy_windmills_california.jpg


This is a huge setup of them in the Banning Pass in California. It's almost a surreal sight because there are so many of them. :cool:
 
The focus of the company I work for is expanding into all types of Green power. Supposedly the lead time for delivery on any brand of commercial wind turbine of is at least two years out because of all the installations being put in the Western US.
 
The site I saw was over several miles BUT NO WHERE NEAR THIS NUMBER.

I am told they are bird shredders? Or do the birds wise up. I mean how many times have you almost hit a bird only to see it pull an incredible escape maneuver.
 
Is their a door at the bottom of those things? Does it have a ladder inside to climb up? Do the cables start at the top or is their some sort of gear mechanism that runs a shaft all the way at the bottom?
These things will make a lot of work for electricians. :smile: Or will it be done by the Poco contractors ?
 
iwire said:
The focus of the company I work for is expanding into all types of Green power. Supposedly the lead time for delivery on any brand of commercial wind turbine of is at least two years out because of all the installations being put in the Western US.
Click to expand...



I have a friend working in this field and he said that the order placed by T. Boone Pickens is the cause of that.
 
It's a very quick moving industry. Some of the new ones going in out my way are 2.5MW and bigger. These dudes sit on 320' towers and have 230' blades. The towers have inside staircases and some even have an elevator inside. GE is currently working on developing a 5MW unit with a 420' tower.

The little one I'm putting up in my yard in about 6 weeks (or whenever it gets here) is a 20KW unit. It will sit on a 52.5' tower and has 16' blades. It produces 366volts 3 phase which we will convert then invert then feed into the grid. I'll post the pics when I get the thing up & on.
 
Good question Brian. There is a wind farm southeast of where I live that spans about 75 miles. There are thousands of wind turbines.

I heard the first installed units were one megawatt and the newer units were rated at 1.5 megawatt. Mitsubishi Power Systems is one name associated with this wind farm.

When construction started several years back the first thing that came to my mind was how in the heck do they phase all those things out. I thought they might be DC generators that feed an inverter station but couldn't find anything that resembled one plus the distances involved with this farm would make DC transmission impractical because of I2R losses. I actually got really close to some of the turbines and it looks like a typical pad mount transformer ( step up? ) sits next to each one. There are no overhead lines associated with them, everything is underground. I did find a newly constructed substation nearby and it looked like the overhead transmission lines leaving it were probably in the 230KV range.

An associate of mine told me the turbines generate three phase alternating current @ 575 volts and have some type of control mechanism to control them. I also heard they have optical fiber routed from each one back to a control house.

Fascinating stuff.
 
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