Logic: not found on other planets?

STT from time to time receives the “odd” comment (and we mean “really odd”) from people that seem to misunderstand STT’s objectives.  The name and make up of the site might have given it away to most.  “Stop” as in “put an end to” and “these things” which appears over the silhouette of a giant fan, might have signaled to someone of average intelligence that this site has a particular objective.

From some of these odd comments it is clear that we are not limiting our reach and seem to be picking up feedback from other planets.

A giveaway that extraterrestrials are at work appears in the emails we get when the addresses finish with .mars.

Unfamiliar with the particular Martian dialect employed, we usually don’t bother to translate these green epistles.  However, one recent effort from “Prowind” attracted our attention so we took the time and trouble of beaming the note off to Dr Spock on the USS Enterprise and asked him to run his universal translator over it.

The clever Vulcan returned Prowind’s comment, which reads:

I doubt this comment will get shown since only ppl that are against wind farms seem to b allowed to post on this, but that turbine in the video is not accident, they purposely let it self destruct.  That is NEVER going to happen at MacArthur.

Now, with the exception of “ppl”, which could be Martian for “people”, we were able to follow the drift of what Prowind was trying to say.  However, we are still struggling to apply Earthly logic to the argument proposed.

The comment related to our post: Life in the “throw zone”.  Which has a video showing a turbine self-destructing.

So we called on the ice cool logic of Spock, once again.

The Vulcan points out that “Prowind’s” comment was clearly misdirected, as delusional statements are never welcome at STT and, that given its inherent logical failings, the comment was clearly meant for a greentard blog site like yes2renewables.  Fair point.

Spock also noticed the very first premise of the comment is patently false, as the comment was posted and appears above.  Another good point.

But Spock was only warming up.  The main thrust of the comment is that the self-destruction of the turbine was “not [we think they meant to add “an”] accident, they purposely let it self destruct.”

Spock was a little troubled by this, but after a little intergalactic mind meld he was able to break “Prowind’s” insight into bite-size chunks and got to work.

Apparently, the owners of the turbine found themselves with nothing on TV and decided to deliberately destroy a $3 million piece of equipment.  This was, after all “not accident”.

Not content with the wanton destruction of a giant Vestas wind turbine, these callous monsters were quite prepared to destroy a perfectly good commercial vehicle, possibly worth some €50,000.

Take another look at the video and at the base of the turbine you will see what appears to be a large white commercial van.

But, as Spock points out, if you are prepared to destroy a $3 million wind turbine on purpose, why not destroy a perfectly good vehicle as well?

Spock drew our attention to those nuclear tests carried out by the US military in the 1950s when mock villages, complete with houses filled with mannequins, cars, trucks and military vehicles were subjected to nuclear blasts to see how they might fare.

OK, score 1 to Prowind.

On the Prowind case, what the video shows is a deliberate effort to destroy a wind turbine to identify how much destruction and havoc might flow.  And the motor vehicle placed right under the turbine was there to see whether it might survive having a 50 m blade weighing over 10 tonnes slammed into it at 200 km an hour.

STT gets it now, this was a military test: how dumb were we?

Ah, but the logic of a Vulcan never rests and Spock went on to point out that our post also contained a link to a learned paper prepared by some highly intelligent earthlings, which looked at the distances turbine blades and components can be expected to travel during a “blade throw” event.

Spock tried to raise a logical argument consistent with Prowind’s case and suggested that the modelling contained in the paper was all part of a military research programme.

Logically, if a turbine owner is looking to “purposely” cause death and destruction he will want to know just how many fatalities and injuries he can expect from each “blade throw” event.  Fair enough.

Remembering that, according to Prowind, this military experiment was conducted “purposely”, it appears that the next weapon of mass destruction will be giant industrial wind turbines.

There is clearly a lot of research going on into the effectiveness of this new weapon.

Google the following: “blade throw analysis”.  The number of hits should strike fear into your hearts.  These people are serious; they really want to know how far exploding blades from disintegrating wind turbines will fly.

And, as Prowind tells us this was “not accident”.

In the paper we have referred to there is a chilling statistic which heralds a new manner of warfare.

4.3  EXISTING DATA ON BLADE THROW

There is no comprehensive database containing details of real life occurrences of blade throw that include accurate measurement of throw distance, fragment size and turbine model.  (CWIF2006) provides a list of wind turbine related accidents, including 37 instances of blade throw where the distance was recorded.  The Caithness Windfarm Information Forum data is often based upon estimates from eyewitness testimony or unvalidated reports, rather than accurate measurement of distances.  Throws are often not distinguished between full blade throw and fragments, and fragment sizes are typically not given.  Consequently, the dataset cannot be considered reliable or in any way definitive.  However, it can provide validation to an order-of- magnitude accuracy for the model.

Nineteen of the throws were reported as 100m or less, including six cases where the blade dropped to the ground close to the turbine shaft.  In all but one of the remaining cases, the throw distance was reported as 600m or less.  A single incident at Burgos in Spain was reported as resulting in blade fragment throw of “almost 1000m”.

Sure, the authors use the euphemistic term “accident” and “incident” in an effort to mask the true evil of their genius.  But thanks to Prowind’s cutting insight, we know they mean “deliberate” because these were “not accidents”.

The authors refer to 37 of these so called “accidents” (meaning deliberately engineered self-destructive blade throw events).  No doubt, because the research is top secret, we won’t get to see the horrific destruction caused during these 37 monstrous experiments until the files are released to the public in 30 years time; or unless Wikileaks gets there first.

Spock was satisfied that he had done his absolute best to apply Vulkan logic to Prowind’s “explosive” insight.  But he still wasn’t happy.

He watched the video again, trained his sensors on an operating wind turbine and came back with this.

Large industrial wind turbines must face directly into the wind with their blades at 90° to the direction of the wind at all times – “yaw”.  The angle of the nacelle is controlled by a series of hydraulic motors which ensure that the “yaw” is maintained, constantly.

This is the reason you will hear the internals of a turbine whirring away, even though the blades may be stationary; and the reason that turbines consume a serious amount of electricity when they are not working.

In the event that a machine loses yaw control, the nacelle ends up at an angle oblique to the direction of the wind; or even with the blades spinning directly in line with the wind.  With the blades no longer at a 90° angle to the wind the air pressure on them increases and the blades will start to rotate at increasing speed under the force of the wind.  In moderate to high winds, the forces on the blades become so great that the turbine’s braking system overheats and eventually fails.  It’s at this point that “component liberation” occurs and the blade throw event follows.

Spock, having suppressed all meaningless human emotion, watched the video one more time, and then hit us fair and square with his perfect Vulcan logic.

What is depicted in the video is the point when a turbine, with failed yaw control, had blades spinning at speeds too fast for its braking system to control.

Quite apparently, the service technicians arrived in their van and parked next to the turbine.  When they realised that its braking system had failed and that there was no way of slowing the turbine, it was time for a little jog across the paddock to safety.

Oh, almost forgot, Spock tells us the 37 other turbine blade throw events recorded in the paper were nothing more than “harmless” accidents.  Phew – just accidents!  For a minute there Prowind had us really worried.