This past weekend I went to the Palm Springs Wind Mill Farm with my Father and older sister….. it was amazing!
In general I love alternative energy more than the average bear. More accurately I’ve been obsessed with learning all that I can about how solar panels and wind mills work since as long as I can remember. At some point in my life I plan on owning large scale wind generators and possibly a large scale solar power plant (provided that I can figure out how to build a more efficient solar panel).
One thing that gets lost on most people (me included) is just how large these wind mills are:
As you can see from the image above these turbines are massive. Each blade weighs 8 metric tons (a metric tone is 240 pounds heaver than our version). With such a big blade they are able to turn an astonishingly large gear (average gear box weighs 45,000 pounds). Turning such a large gear allows the turbines to generate impressive amounts of power. The turbines at Palm Springs are some of the largest in the world, and currently the major limiting factor to their size is actually our interstate system. Our turbins have outgrown our interstate system, all of the parts must be small enough to be shipped under an overpass which limits them to under 14 feet 3 inches. There are plans to build even larger turbines at offshoar facilities like the the cap cod wind mill farm
Some Stats about the Palm Springs Farm and wind power in general:
-there are over 2,800 mills in operation at palm springs farm, with an average 98% up time. That stat is a little confusing though, it just means that the turbines are in service 98% of the time, not that they are generating power 98% of the time. In fact the wind is blowing hard enough for the turbines to generate power only 38% of the time.
-the new generation wind turbines can generate enough power to run 900 average house holds
-the obama administration commited the us to a goal of generating 20% of our nations power from wind by 2030 (a great goal that I think should be made even more ambitions)
-1 service technician services on average 10 wind mills per month (think there will be some job grown in this sector?? currently we generate less than 2% of our power from wind, upping this to 20% will create several hundred thousand jobs in this sector)
-1 wind mill can generate more power than 500 typical solar panels
-the largest GE turbines at palm springs cost 6 million dollars to build and assemble