Dangerous Turbine Failure

[Ric Murphy]

We have a local fellow here who's been flying a "home grown" turbine for the last few years. It has lost blades in high winds on more than one occasion in the past (I think 3 times so far). This turbine is installed in a residential area with houses very close on 2 sides. I have no idea how he ever got approval for this installation. The turbine appears to be around a 12-15 footer and is on a short 3 or 4" diameter tower. We had very high winds here Wed night (gusting up to 50mph). A buddy emailed me yesterday morning to tell me the turbine had come down on a neighbors house and went thru the roof. Just had to go take a look. Here's a couple of pictures. I suspect this guy will not be allowed to put this thing back in the air after this event.
Ric
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[Ralph Day]

Hi Ric
Something tells me it might well be up again...after all, it was up in a residential area, obviously not properly, safely etc.

Makes you realize why there are municipal permits...engineered drawings (someone has done the math re: stresses and failure points), all that fun stuff.

I wonder what homeowners insurance would think about this occurance? Preventable...of course, liability...of course.

Ralph

[Rob Beckers]

This is unfortunate, in more ways than one. You'll see this example be used for years to come in the local area any time someone wants to install a wind turbine. Never mind that it was installed improperly. For one, simply putting a turbine at least the tower length away from buildings would prevent 99% of this type of damage (yeah, they can still come down, but people are generally not out and about when the wind is howling outside, making it unlikely to hit anything).

While I am as enthusiastic as the next guy about wind power, there are places where wind power is just not appropriate. Densely build-up areas for one.

-RoB-

[Nicolas Fournier]

This is a sad thing for everybody wanting a windmill in their yard built the proper way

but, learn from others experiments !

[Steven Fahey]

Ouch,:amazed:

I have a guess at why that tower failed. Maybe one guy wire let go, then the tower was flexible enough to "knee" over below the second set of guys. I won't presume something like that could never happen to me. I will check my tower design to see what happens to it in that condition (8-ft diameter windmill, 3" pipe, 45 feet tall). Seeing a picture like that does bring one's attention to these types of failure.

[Rob Beckers]

Even the pros sometimes have a bad day: I was involved in a tower failure of a 5" tilt-up tower, where the installer had forgotten to thread the end of the guy wire through one of the turnbuckles. Over the course of a few weeks that turnbuckle "unwound", until the guy wire came loose. This was one of the upper guy wires, so when it let go the others pulled the tower over and the wind turbine crashed to the ground. Bad stuff sometimes happens, even to good people. No building was near, so nothing was damaged other than the turbine and tower.

In this particular case the issue is that the turbine is too close to the building. Now if it was his/her own building that would be one thing, but it came down on the neighbor's house. Not good. :sick:

-RoB-