Green Wind Power comes to little Spanish Fork Utah
some of you may know this already but wind turbines are currently being installed in the mouth of Spanish Fork Canyon. I went up there last week with my son Ashton, he is 2.5 and LOVES windmills. I am 29.5 and I love windmills too so it was perfect.
I heard there were going to be 9 total - I only counted 8 but there could be one more that I missed. As you can see in the picture only two are finished but don’t appear to be spinning yet. I loved this picture, strip mine the land and then once it has been sufficiently abused throw up something green. Utah has to be the only place this would ever happen, well truthfully this would probably happen everywhere but Oregon. I am hoping the City or the power company turns this land under the windmills into some kind of park it could be a really beautiful location with the river flowing right through the middle.
This is a good shot of all of the poles the one closest to the camera has the generator sitting on the ground next to it. Just to give you some scale that is about the size of an average camping trailer.
Here is a picture of Ashton standing in the base of one of the blades. He is about 3 feet tall. I don’t know if he thought this was cool, but I sure did. Growing up White Trash I have a similar picture but I am sitting in the wheel of Big Foot at a Monster Truck Rally. I thought it was the coolest thing in the world when I was little.
I wanted you too see how big the bolts are. These are used to hold the blades to the Generator.
Each blade has a long row of these tiny fins. I am not sure what they do but this is my geeky guess. In the morning the wind blows very hard out of this Canyon. They have been experimenting with smaller windmills for years at the mouth of the canyon and they always break because the wind is consistently too strong. These larger windmills have Rotor Hubs at the base of the blades so they can be rotated to reduce drag. I think these fins help reduce the drag as well. They should also help reduce the noise which is good because there are houses about 1/4 mile away. If somebody actually knows why they are there and can debunk this guess go for it. Your actual knowledge would be appreciated.
I thought these would be made from aluminum but when I looked closely it looked like sandwiched layers of fiberglass or something, I looked up what it really is and this is what Wikipedia said:
Modern rotor blades (up to 126 m (413 ft) diameter) are made of lightweight glass-reinforced plastic (GRP) with an epoxy or polyester resin matrix
Here is the Wikipedia Article on Wind Turbine Design
I threw this picture in because I thought it was cool that the deer didn’t care are all that I was there.
Google Maps Satellite View Of Wind Turbine Location
Google Maps Street View Of Wind Turbine Location This is the view from highway 6 as you are going toward Denver through Spanish Fork Canyon.
