The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast

The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast


EP45 – Vestas V150 Blade Problems Plus The Physics of Blade Transport

January 25, 2021

Vestas V150 wind turbines have had failures and blade quality control issues lately, and we chat about what this means for the company, including their recent shut down of 150 wind turbines with suspected quality control issues. We also discus blade transport physics - how in the world do some of these massive blades not tip trucks over as they're hauled through the mountains pointing into the sky at a 45 degree angle?! This and more on this week's Uptime Wind Energy Podcast.

This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning tech. Learn more about Weather Guard's StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! 

Transcript: EP45 Vestas V150 Blade Problems Plus the Physics of Blade Transport

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.

welcome back to the uptime podcast. On today's episode, we're going to get down the rabbit hole on. Vestas a V one 50 blades. They've had to stop 150 turbines. They've had some quality control issues where a chat through some of that. We're also going to talk more about the logistics of blade transport.

Some really interesting photos have come out recently of a blade, pitched up in the air at about a 45 degree angle. It seems, uh, not only gravity to find, but just, it almost seems like they're fake. So we're going to chat a little more about that, even though we've talked some about that in the past and our tech segment, we're gonna talk about floating hydrogen.

There's, uh, a generation plant concept for out in the middle of the ocean. And it's got some interesting, uh, some interesting ideas there. And then lastly, we're talking more about checklists, which we've also covered in the past. Um, a man wrote a great article about. Checklists as far as a drone safety and all this other stuff.

And we'll talk about how that can apply to other areas in the industry. So, Alan, uh, let's, let's first talk about blade transport. So some of these photos, um, floating around the web or blowing people's minds, they, it, it legitimately blows my mind as well. I mean, in this blade, it's, it's a two piece blade and you can see like the root of it is, you know, bolted to this special truck and the truck can't be more than.

40 feet long, I guess. And the blade itself, this, this half of the blade is probably what 50 meters. You know, this is probably a hundred meter blade. And it's just pitched up in the air at about, uh, maybe a 30, 40 degree angle. How did the, how does the physics work on this?

Well, they didn't have to have lot, a lot of weight in the bottom, which the blade does and at the top slider than the bottom, and otherwise this thing would tip over, but essentially they got to try to keep the cente...