Wind Turbine Blade Failure Rates
Wind Turbine Blade Failure Rates
(OP)
Does anyone have any information or exmaple figures for wind turbine blade failure rates? I'm performing a risk assessment for siting a turbine near a gas pipeline and need some idea of failure frequency. Thanks





RE: Wind Turbine Blade Failure Rates
The chance of blade failure X chance of a slung blade coming down and hitting the pipeline must be really really really small.
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"Pumping accounts for 20% of the world's energy used by electric motors and 25-50% of the total electrical energy usage in certain industrial facilities."-DOE statistic (Note: Make that 99% for pipeline companies) http://virtualpipeline.spaces.live.com/
RE: Wind Turbine Blade Failure Rates
I would think the blade failure rate is very small, just judging from the lack of news paper stories on the subject.
RE: Wind Turbine Blade Failure Rates
RE: Wind Turbine Blade Failure Rates
Tower collapse is even a more rare event and I would bet that the extremely low catastrophic bade failure rate is higher than a tower collapse.
RE: Wind Turbine Blade Failure Rates
A catastrophic blade failure while the blades are turning can lead to a tower collapse on large wind turbines.
Try contacting Paul Gipe (www.wind-works.org). He's been working on large turbines for decades, and he's been a bit of a "watchdog", too.
Steven Fahey, CET