Huge wind turbines sprout up near Ames

Tag : steel tower hardware

After that, workers will engage in a "commissioning" process totest the turbines, making sure they're all running properly, headded.

"From then on, it's a cleanup process, and we're out of here,"Pedroni said.

The goal of the cleanup campaign is "to return as much property tofarmland as we can," he said.

"We'll skim the gravel off the service roads we no longer want touse, and move it to the second phase, an area one to two milesnorth of Zearing."

There will be 76 turbines in Hardin County when that part of theprocess is done.

Except for the tower bases and a small buffer around them,landowners will be able to plant corn and beans again, he added.Florida Power and Light will lease what amounts to 100 smallhexagons of land for the life of the project.

Mary Wells, FPL's community outreach manager, said that the steeltowers are raised in three sections by one of the world's largestcranes.

Nacelles (the housings that cover the gears atop the towers), eachequipped with a 100,000-pound generator, are installed afterward,along with the blades.

"The blades are a composite of many layers of manmade materials,such as fiberglass," Wells said. "The nosecone covering of the hubis fiberglass. Inside the hub is a steel structure with threesockets in it. A blade is bolted into each of the sockets."

Hardware for the towers comes from a variety of locations, sheadded.

The nacelles are manufactured in Pensacola, Fla., and Greenville,S.C. Blades are made in Brazil and shipped into the United Statesthrough Houston, Tex. Towers may come from as many as threedifferent manufacturers in North Dakota, Texas and Canada.

Although there's electronic telemetry in each nacelle, which allowsworkers on the ground to monitor how the turbine functions, thedevices also require personal inspections.

That takes some doing, according to FPL business associate KristaHopwood.

"There's not a lot of floor space in the nacelles," she said."Space is tight up there because of the amount of equipment andgearing.

We've as many as five people inside one, but you have to stoop overor sit down. It takes an hour for a rookie like me to climb intoone."

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Information from: The Tribune, http://www.amestrib.com