354 comments on Making the case for wind, again
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354 comments on Making the case for wind, again
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Bearings and things like that get replaced as part of normal maintenance. The generator would have to be rewound several times in a 25 year lifetime, again normal maintenance. There are gearboxes on compressors, handling 20,000 hp and operating at 1000's of rpm, that I've seen that have been running for 60 odd years. The big killers of rotating equipment are vibration and corrosion. I'd guess that a modern turbine blade that lasted 25 years without fatigue failure would probably go another 25 easily, as long as it was kept in balance. Unbalanced operation would kill it rapidly.
There are gearboxes on compressors, handling 20,000 hp and operating at 1000's of rpm, that I've seen that have been running for 60 odd years
Isn't it the fact that wind turbines turn so slowly which mean that the gearboxes have to be among the most powerful in the world to be able to handle the torque, even though wind turbines are "only" up to 5MW?