Urban wind farm helps revitalise the rust belt

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://www.engineerlive.com/features/19195/urban-wind-farm-helps-revitalise-the-rust-belt.thtml

Urban wind farm helps revitalise the rust belt

Wind farms are normally associated with mountainous areas and remote regions. But how about one planted in a city on the site of an old steel mill? Drew Robb reports.

Steel Winds Wind Farm takes up a 30-acre portion of the old Bethlehem Steel mill, located along the shores of Lake Erie in Lackawanna, NY, USA.

Steel Winds marks many firsts. It is the first urban wind farm in the country, the first to go up on a former industrial site, the first wind farm on the American great lakes and the first commercial deployment of Clipper Windpower’s 2.5 MW Liberty series wind turbines. Eight of these turbines (a total of 20 MW) are now feeding electricity to the grid, enough for over 6000 homes.

“Where Bethlehem Steel once supported an earlier industrial revolution, today the Steel Winds project is bringing new jobs and clean energy technology to the Lake Erie region,” says Paul Gaynor, President and CEO of UPC Wind, co-developer of the project. “We are pleased to be operating at full capacity and introducing this newest generation of wind turbines to the market.”

These turbines feature several innovative features. It includes, for example, a compact two-stage helical designed to reduce loads, minimise the likelihood of damage and increase gearbox lifespan. It accomplishes this by using multiple generators and a multiple path, distributed gearbox. These generators split the load by a factor of 16 – four times greater than in commercially available gearboxes. If one generator goes off line, the other three continue. To ease maintenance demands, a single 650 kW generator can be removed and lowered to the ground by an onboard crane. Further, high-speed gear sets can be replaced without removal of the gearbox.

While gearboxes in comparable turbines weigh 50 to 70 tons, the Clipper model weighs 36 tons. In addition, designers made several upgrades to variable speed technology. The turbine makes use of advanced feedback controls to optimise the blade pitch to reduce drive train loads and improve energy capture. A two-metric ton service crane installed in the Liberty reduces repair time and the costs normally caused by depending on a third-party crane.

...