Last Friday we had strong winds, just the right day for a blade to cone loose and fly away, well not far it just lodged in the top of the tower (not seen in any pics as it had been removed by the time I arrived home).
One would be forgiven for thinking this arrangement would not be conducive for rotating, but it did, changing from a wind turbine to a rock and roll turbine. I was away at my spring/summer job, as you do, when resident blond rang "er Windy has lost two blades (later revised down to one, they are sheet metal blades with an insert that looked like two) and is shaking herself to pieces what do I do".
Pull the plug and wrap some bare wire around all three terminal I told her, "I wont get a shock will I?" not much I told her, this unit spinning free reaches 60 volts DC, she walked out to the unit to see what I was talking about and the noise over the phone was deafening (not that I could get much deafer), I told her to leave it alone and get away from the tower...... but wait there is more.
She went down to the local pub and pulled two blokes away from their brickies lunch ( an extended lunch washed down with a beer, a Friday ritual with building contractors), after conveying them to site they bravely tied off the wires (the wind was between gusts so not output). Now this unit is a shunt wound generator and shorting the output is not as dramatic as with a duel rotor, but my hope was that loading it down would be enough to stop it starting again after the next lull, well it didn't. That cost a six pack.
Several phone calls later we decided it had to be tied off, so resident blond drove back into the hills to collect the publicans son (a strapping 22 year old) to complete this task. I am told it was quite something to watch him just short of the top of this wobbling tower rope in hand waiting for a lull in the wind, he knew when a gust was coming as it (the wind) was loud, anyway he achieved.
Somewhere in the middle of all this the tail fell off which I hoped would bring a holt to all this chaos, but it still rotated.
When I arrived home to survey this carnage, I found it not all that bad, resident blond had done very well in limiting the damage, where one leg "was" welded to the pivot bolt it was no longer, the tower shaking had broken the weld.
I secured that with a chain and went up to add more rope to the blade..
The blade that had lodged in the tower landing was somewhat damaged.
Of course through out all of this the supervisor was taking care of safety issues, writing a JSA and all the other things such a position demands.
Stern looking little fellow isn't he, well I guess there was a lot of responsibility on this job.
Tomorrow we will lower it and effect repairs, I will update after that.
allan
