Wind pictures that will blow you away!

A few more from the photo album out at PSE's Wild Horse Wind and Solar Facility.

These were just taken as the 22 new wind turbines are going up, with the last of the bunch now being completed.

Next up: completing the connection to the facility's collection system and testing the units.

It's expected they will be in service and producing power by this fall.

Together, the 22 new turbines will have the capacity to produce 44 megawatts of electricity, or what the American Wind Energy Association says is equal to the needs of some 10-13,000 average U.S. homes.

The top photo shows the 80-ton "nacelle" which contains the generator and weather data equipment being lifted to the top of the 20-story tower on which it will be mounted.

The lower photo shows the matched set of three 120-foot-long turbine blades waiting to be raised into position.

Stop on by our visitors center about 15 miles east of Ellensburg for a closer look. And bring your camera!

Wind turbine techno-talk

Considering the Puget Sound region is home to all manner of techno-businesses, from aerospace to computers to health science, it's no surprise that the subject of "How things work" is a pretty popular one.

Right now, PSE is expanding its Wild Horse Wind and Solar Facility, and that work has provided a great chance for some photos of what the turbines look like when they're disassembled and a few of the technical tidbits you can't see when everything is up and running.

The first shot is of one of the turbine blades being hosted into position so that it can be bolted into the bullet-shaped hub. This is a major undertaking, akin to threading a needle -- except that the thread is a 120-foot-long turbine blade and the eye of the needle is the opening in the turbine hub mounted about 220 feet in the air.

The next photo is a great "end-on" view of one of the blades. If you look carefully you can see the bolt holes that mate it to the hub, and also, on the left, the curved shape of the blade -- which resembles a giant whale fluke (to me, at least, you get your own Rohrshach moment on what you think it resembles). Advanced, composite fiber and resin materials are one key technology in making these blades possible. Before things like carbon-fibre, the blades were aluminum, which made them too heavy to be as large as they are today. And, in the wind power business, the longer the turbine blade the more efficient and powerful the wind generator. Some turbine blades are now even longer than the ones being installed at Wild Horse.


Interestingly, you can't just grab any three blades and put them together, either. Each turbine has a three bladed "propellor", and those blades must be carefully matched and balanced. If your an old-fashioned automotive gearhead you'll see the parallel to a hot rod motor being "balanced and blueprinted" for extra precise matching of parts. Here you can see a set of three balanced turbine blades awaiting their turn to be hoisted skyward.

At the bottom is the big kahuna in terms of what is lifted -- the 80 ton generator nacelle, which arrives pre-assembled at the site, ready for the hub to be attached and the unit lifted to the top of the steel tube tower. The nacelle contains the generator (capable of producing 2 megawatts -- or about the energy needed to meet the needs of roughly 500 average U.S. households).

This shot really shows the scale, with the workers all looking pretty small by contrast with the machine itself. One other note, if you look toward the back and top of the nacelle you can see the twin loops of the wind speed and direction gear, which gives each turbine its own weather data for its specific location. All 127 turbines at Wild Horse (soon to be 149 when the expansion is completed later this year) can turn independently to catch the wind best, maximizing their power generating ability.

If want to see more, please stop by the free visitors center. It's just off I-90 near Ellensburg, and is open everyday through November (except Thanksgiving Day).

Melting glaciers?

Phrases such as "like a glacier" or moving at a "glacial pace" typically conjure up images of things that go very slowly. Perhaps, though, these cliches may need to be revised thanks to a new report on some surprisingly rapid changes to glaciers across the western U.S., and in particular those in the Southern Cascades.

A new study found that some glaciers in our region may have lost as much as 50 percent of their volume since 1958, with even some Alaska glaciers shrinking as much as 15 percent. The study, conducted by U.S. Geologic Survey scientists in Tacoma, was conducted using five decades of measurements. Not surprisingly, global warming gets the nod as the likely culprit behind the rather dramatic change.

As a utility, news like this gets our attention on a couple of fronts, in part because the mountain snowpack is the fuel for our hydro system, and the receding glaciers are a possible sign that more of the precipitation in the mountains is falling as rain, and not snow. Rain may be helpful for greening up our area during the spring and summer, but it doesn't do much for us in the winter, as rain runs downhill and downriver and out to sea -- whereas mountain snow sticks around and slowly melts, giving our dams a power source right through the dry season.

One other key point for a utility is the spector that a changing climate may lead to changing demand for electricity, perhaps causing greater summer time energy use in a region that has traditionally seen its winter peaks be much larger than its warm weather peaks, a situation that could conceivably be reversed over time.

And, it means that we'll continue to look at new forms of renewable energy (such as the solar array seen above with Mt. Rainier in the background) and greater energy efficiency to get the most of out any future power resource.