What do you do if you know a storm is coming?

[imsmooth]

Let's say you know that a strong storm is coming with +50-60mph winds.  Does anyone take their tower down, or do you leave it up?  If your answer is you leave it up, is there any windspeed when you would feel better cranking it down?

[Electron Pump]

  When they say there expecting winds over 40 MPH., I take mine down. Mine is easy to get down. Or it was anyway. I been welding a new pole together today that is going to put me another 18' in the air and give me some more regidity. The thing is now that it's logner it might be a bit more difficult to negociate. I'll find out bout all that tomorrow.

  I am pretty confident it will survive 55er 60ish MPH. But why chance it. That little dude is important to me. I like being able to tell people,"Yeah man, I got a wind turbine and I built it myself." And I want to keep on being able to say that.

  This all revolves around how difficult it is to take down. And about tower, or in my case, pole design.

  Have you got a tower that is difficult to take down?

 

[Flux]

If you know there is a big storm coming and you can easily take it down then it is obviously safer to do so. This is all wonderful if you know for sure it is coming, you are there at the time and you are young and agile and are prepared to brave the weather to take it down.

If there are reports of a hurricane then certainly it would be wise to take it down. In this part of the world we don't have hurricanes and the general wind forecasting is pretty hit and miss and you would have it down when many big storms turn out more modest and you may have it up when a freak squall comes along when nothing has been forecast.

Beyond 70 mph things do get rather violent and if you have good warning then it may pay to heed it but for winds below that there should be no big deal. If you can effectively stop the turbine you reduce much of the tower loading and much of the stress on the machine from violent yawing and gyroscopics but if you use a brake switch be sure that it will stay braked or you will burn it out if it gets away from stall.

Flux

[wpowokal]

The higher one goes the more important it is to understand the ability of a tower to double over while lowering or raising. You probably know this but just in case, the need is to provide a tension on the mid point guy wire to keep the tower pipe straight.

allan down under

[DanB]

I do tend to watch weather reports if I plan to be away these days.

After we first built our 20' dia wind turbine I just left it on and it survived fine for about 8 months till we had freak gusts in June (2 years ago) over 100 mph (the blades struck the tower).  Till then I never shut it down and it survived plenty of days with gusts 70-80mph.

I am more careful now and tend to shut down when things get really nasty or when its predicted and I know I'll be gone.

I would never consider lowering the tower though...  if that sort of thing is necessary I should think the tower has serious problems, the tower should be like a building that can stay put through anything.  (hopefully mine is)

As flux has said, shutting down the wind turbine does go a long ways towards protecting the tower.  If the alternator is powerful enough electrical shutdown should be sufficient.  Mine will shut down safely in any wind I've experience by shorting only a single phase.  This gives me some comfort knowing that if any 1 wire should break.. I can still shut down even in high winds.  A mechanical break, or some way to mechanically furl the tail is surely not a bad idea either.. so long as it's reliable and doesn't lead to other problems.