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.
Very cool, Josh. I had no idea this was going up.
(BTW, is the demographic for your blog people with bad vision? Why the huge font?)
Why not have a huge font it is super easy to read. I think the old people have it all figured out. I am tired of websites with tons of tiny words crammed on a page…of course my opinion changes all the time and by the time anyone reads this comment my font could be tiny again.
INSPIRATIONAL! THANK YOU!
Great stuff, thanks!
Regards,
Thomas O. Gray
American Wind Energy Association
http://www.powerofwind.org
http://www.awea.org
Happy to finally hear someone say something positive about this project. It is at least a weekly trip to the canyon to watch the progress, take some pictures, just stand in awe at the sheer size and scope of wind mills, and then head to Diamond Fork Rd. to enjoy the wildlife and nature. Did you have to get permission to go down there? (posted private property & we haven’t felt like testing if the police would come or not) Thanks for the great pictures and all the info! Really enjoyed it!
Have you been back since they are all up? It is totally awesome! Breathtaking! I can’t wait until they are working. Thanks for your research. Do you know where the power is going? I heard Rocky Mountain Power has bought it, but I have no idea where it’s going!
Hey Josh,
Thanks for the up close pictures. I wanted to go down and check them out first hand but couldn’t muster up the courage. I recently bought a house up buy the windmill project and have loved watching these things spring up. There are a total of 9 now and it looks like they all have the blades on. I have seen a couple of them turning very slowly. I’ll be shooting some aerial pictures of them in the next couple of days and posting them on my web site. I’ll update you when I have them posted. This is the page they will be posted on. http://www.planeinsanerc.com/PlaneInsane.php?PageID=20
Hey Josh,
I finaly got a picture posted of the Windmills from the air. It’s not the best shot. I took it flying from my house. I hope to get one from closer up here in the next few days.
I worked at Boeing for 20 years. Boeing actually designed windmill blades for General Electric back in the late 80’s but when the OPEC oil embargos ended and fuel prices dropped, those programs fizzled away.
I want to commend you on correctly guessing the purpose of those “little fins” on the blades.
There are called Vortex Generators and in aerodynamics they provide a simple way of maintaining a smooth laminar flow of air by “generating” a small swirl of air like a tiny tornado around and downward over the surface thereby forcing the vast majority of the air-flow to stick or reattach to the down-wind side or low pressure side of the blade.
Hate to break the news to everyone but these windmills are defective and have been recalled. http://www.wind-watch.org/news/2008/04/18/india-windmill-empire-begins-to-show-cracks/print/