Allen and Dan discuss the massive new 15MW Siemens Gamesa 14-222 DD wind turbine, the pros and cons of direct drive vs gear drives in nacelles, and lightning strike deaths in India.

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Uptime Podcast EP12 Transcript - Siemens Gamesa 14-222 DD, Lightning Deaths in India, & Direct-Drive Nacelles

Dan: [00:00:00] I'm Dan Blewett and this is the uptime podcast where we talk about wind energy engineering, lightning protection, and ways to keep your wind turbines running.

All right. Welcome back to the uptime podcast. I'm your cohost Dan joined here by Allen Hall, our resident lighting protection expert, Allen, how you doing?

Allen Hall: [00:00:31] Great, Dan? How's it been down there?

Dan: [00:00:33] Hey, thanks. We're looking sunny. It is a DC in the summer. Now, a lot of sun and a lot of humidity. And, obviously there's still been a lot of turmoil in the country, but you know, things are.

Things are looking up it's, it's transitioning to summer. So you can't be too unhappy about that.

Allen Hall: [00:00:49] So Washington DC is actually built on a swamp,

Dan: [00:00:52] right? It's what I've heard. Very mosquito. Yeah.

Allen Hall: [00:00:56] That's what I wonder is, is it

Dan: [00:00:57] mosquito season yet? Not yet, but I've heard that that's, that's a common, so yeah, growing up, I mean, I grew up in Maryland an hour North, so it was always humid and hot in the summer, but.

and there's mosquitoes obviously everywhere, but I'm yet to experience full time residency of the DC mosquitoes. So we'll see. We'll see.

Allen Hall: [00:01:19] And have you, have you seen your murder horn at yet or they've invaded Washington, D C

Dan: [00:01:24] no. I don't want any Asian giant Hornets anywhere near me. Have you seen those?

They've had a sort of similar thing called Cicada killers. Have you seen those? They're very big. They're like the same. Three. They're like three inch long and they have those in Maryland. We had some like right near my house, like in my backyard, but they don't, they don't like have a stinger where they would ever attack a human.

They just, literally, their thing is they will paralyze a Cicada with their sting and drag it down to their whole. They live on it like a thumb sized hole in the ground and it'll drag us a K to back down to their children. but those, those are so big. And until I like looked them up and figured out that they weren't there weren't harm.

They're harmless. I would like see them outside and SWAT at them, then they come around. I'm like, I'm sorry. I'm sorry, sir. Like, don't spare spare me. I didn't mean it. I didn't mean it, but if that's a real thing with these Asian giant Hornets, like the same size, but they are vicious. I don't want any part of that.

No, no. Thanks.

Allen Hall: [00:02:20] Yeah. Well, you can keep them down South where it's warmer up here, where it snows a lot. I think they'll want to stay where that's a little

Dan: [00:02:26] more balmy. Yeah. I'm going to sleep. We're just too cold. I'm going to sneak onto the next space X launch and just leave this planet for good bugs are only getting bigger now it's terrifying.

So yeah, but speaking of things, getting bigger, GE has just, or now has a competitor. So their world's biggest Haliade-X, wind turbine with Siemens Gamesa. So what's the news there, Allen?

Allen Hall: [00:02:51] Well, everybody's trying to show how big they are. And Siemens Gamesa is coming out with a 222 meter diameter rotor.

Offshore wind turbine, which is what a meter or two longer than the, than the GE Haliade X

Dan: [00:03:10] system. So the Haliade X, which has a cool name is 220 meters rotor diameter with 107 meter blades and the Siemens Gamesa SG 1...