This isn’t a joke, believe it or not. It’s a crucial topic that isn’t asked nearly enough, since it demonstrates how green energy may benefit some of the country’s older, faltering businesses as well.
According to the American Wind Energy Association, a single wind turbine requires between 200 and 230 tons of steel. Of course, it takes a lot more turbines to make a wind farm, and a lot of wind farms to get wind power to the point where it can contribute meaningfully to the country’s energy demands. When you do the arithmetic, it’s a substantial sum for a sector that was once a symbol of American industrial might but now needs some support.
Indeed, some of the country’s most active wind power firms and turbine manufacturers are leveraging this synergy in both practical and symbolic ways. Steel Winds is constructing a massive wind farm on the site of a former Bethlehem Steel plant in New York, with the goal of transforming the country’s rust belt into a “wind belt.” And, as this piece points out, several newly laid-off steel workers have already found new work making wind turbines using their talents.
It’s not only that wind power requires steel, or that some workers’ skills appear to be fairly transferrable from one old industry to another that is on the rise. On a larger scale, once you realize how massive those wind turbines towering gracefully in the sky are, you realize how erroneous much of the debate over conventional vs. new industry, or electricity sources is. When a country decides to invest in new energy sources, it does not have to mean that traditional energy sources will be abandoned.
Although so-called green energy sources generate electricity in novel ways, they are nonetheless reliant on typical industrial products like steel, which are also employed in the country’s oil refineries and production facilities. In terms of power, CEA has long advocated for a holistic approach that considers all of the many sources that are required to build a robust domestic energy economy.
We should not be misled by distinctions between old and new, green and traditional, at a time when the country is struggling to reestablish its manufacturing base. Many of these industries, from steel to wind, have a lot more in common than you may imagine.
How much steel does a wind turbine contain?
Steel alone accounts for 150 metric tons for reinforced concrete foundations, 250 metric tons for rotor hubs and nacelles (which house the gearbox and generator), and 500 metric tons for the towers in a 5-megawatt turbine.
A wind turbine has how many tons of concrete?
Democrats envision a civilization powered entirely by wind and solar farms, as well as large batteries. Realizing this dream would necessitate the world’s largest mining expansion, as well as massive amounts of waste.
“The term “renewable energy” is misleading. Nonrenewable resources are used to construct wind and solar machines and batteries. They also wear out. Decommissioning old equipment generates millions of tons of garbage. According to the International Renewable Energy Agency, solar goals set for 2050 in accordance with the Paris Accords will result in old-panel disposal accounting for more than double the current worldwide plastic waste volume. Consider the following depressing figures:
A single battery for an electric vehicle weights around 1,000 pounds. To make one, more than 500,000 pounds of raw materials must be dug up, moved, and processed somewhere on the earth. What’s the alternative? To deliver the same amount of vehicle miles over the battery’s seven-year life, use gasoline and extract one-tenth as much overall weight.
When electricity is generated by wind or solar machines, each unit of energy produced, or mile traveled, necessitates significantly more materials and area than when it is generated by fossil fuels. That physical reality is plain to see: A wind or solar farm that stretches to the horizon can be substituted by a few gas-fired turbines the size of a tractor-trailer.
A wind turbine requires 900 tons of steel, 2,500 tons of concrete, and 45 tons of non-recyclable plastic to construct. Solar energy necessitates an even greater amount of cement, steel, and glass, not to mention other metals. According to the International Energy Agency, global silver and indium mining will increase by 250 percent and 1,200 percent over the next two decades, respectively, to produce the materials needed to build the required number of solar panels. To fulfill the Paris green objectives, global demand for rare-earth minerals, which aren’t unusual but are rarely mined in America, would climb 300 percent to 1,000 percent by 2050. Demand for cobalt and lithium will more than 20-fold if electric vehicles replace conventional cars. This does not include backup batteries for wind and solar grids.
A study commissioned by the Dutch government last year indicated that the Netherlands’ green goals would absorb a significant portion of world minerals on their own. “It was found that with current technology and annual metal production, exponential development in renewable energy generation capacity is not achievable.
Mines in Europe and the United States are unlikely to meet the demand for minerals. Instead, much of the mining will be done in countries with harsh labor laws. 70% of the world’s raw cobalt is produced in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, while China controls 90% of cobalt refining. The Institute for a Sustainable Future, located in Sydney, warns that a global “gold rush for minerals” could lead to miners entering “certain distant wilderness areas that have retained high biodiversity because they haven’t been disturbed.”
To manufacture enough wind turbines to supply half of the world’s electricity, almost two billion tons of coal and two billion barrels of oil would be needed to make the concrete and steel, as well as two billion barrels of oil to make the composite blades.
What is the weight of a wind turbine blade?
Around 1980, wind turbine farms began to appear. Wind farms can now be found all throughout the country. When driving alongside a wind farm on a highway, the magnitude of the “windmills” is not immediately apparent. The nacelle, which stands atop the tower or pedestal, can weigh up to 75 tons, and the three-blade assembly, which weighs 36 tons or around 12 tons per blade, can weigh up to 36 tons. The nacelle’s pedestal, or tower, is estimated to weigh around 24 tons.
What are the Advantages of Wind Energy?
Wind energy has numerous advantages, necessitating the need for wind turbine transportation. The following are some of the benefits of wind energy:
- a low-cost energy source
- a clean home energy source
- Energy that is long-lasting
- The ability to build wind turbines on existing farms and ranches, which benefits the property owner through leases and provides a cheaper and more reliable electricity source to the surrounding area.
Transporting Wind Turbines
Wind turbine blades measuring 116 feet in length constitute a significantly large burden. They are still manageable for truck transportation at this length. The truck transportation system, however, is being challenged by the development toward larger, taller wind generators with blades approaching 200 feet long. Trains have been used to transport wind generator assemblies in the past. The longer generator blades may not fit on standard 89-foot rail flat carriages. Cars that are longer and more specifically designed may be required. In addition, some structures are taller than railroad underpasses and tunnels.
Finally, moving the pieces from the train depot closest to the wind farm remains a challenge, and the travel from the depot to the wind farm may be the most difficult part of the journey. The national transportation system is being tested by the size and weight of the cargo. Many wind farms are placed outside of major highways, necessitating the use of minor roads, which can be narrow and meandering. These highways frequently pass through tiny communities. Navigating these roads, as well as the barriers and roadblocks that arise along the way, is difficult, time-consuming, and costly.
Transport operators must get the proper permissions and surveys for each state through which the load will travel, just as they must for any other Superload. Permitting typically necessitates:
- An engineering route survey of the route is conducted to look for bridges, grade crossings, overhead obstructions, and other obstacles.
- Examining the local traffic trends
- Provisions to ensure that emergency vehicle routes are not obstructed
- The load’s dimensions are depicted in this diagram.
- Why isn’t there any other mode of transportation available?
- A walk-through of the route
- Escort services that are compliant (private and/or police escorts)
- State and local travel plans that are compliant
- Ice and snow, spring thaw, and other seasonal factors
Finding the right Carrier
You’ll need to identify flatbed carriers who have access to trucks with flatbed trailers that can handle the enormous equipment’s size and weight. It takes a lot of planning on the side of your logistics company to transport one big wind turbine blade. One blade may need the use of a multi-axle trailer to transport the long, hefty blades.
One commercial wind turbine can take up to seven rigs to deliver, which is divided down into:
- The turbine’s generator is housed in a nacelle.
- Electrical components and a gearbox
- 3 long blades for a wind turbine
What is the weight of a wind turbine in tons?
What is the weight of a wind turbine? The nacelle alone weighs more than 56 tons, the blade assembly more than 36 tons, and the tower itself weighs roughly 71 tons in the GE 1.5-megawatt variant, for a total weight of 164 tons.
A 2 megawatt wind turbine has how much steel?
A meme misquotes a sentence from an essay written by scientist David Hughes, claiming that wind turbines will never yield as much energy as was required to build them.
The meme’s text goes as follows: “A two-megawatt windmill requires 260 tons of steel, 300 tons of iron ore, and 170 tons of coking coal, all of which are mined, transported, and manufactured using hydrocarbons. A windmill can spin till it breaks down, but it will never create as much energy as it took to build it. If you agree, “You’re an idiot for supporting the Green New Deal. Please accept my apologies.
Viewable examples of deceptive statements include (here), (here), and (here) ( here ).
The meme is based on a passage from ‘Climate Shift,’ a book of articles written by Thomas Homer-Dixon and Nick Garrison in 2009 concerning how Canada will adapt to climate change ( here ).
How much iron does a wind turbine contain?
Wind turbines are generally constructed of steel (66-79 percent of total turbine mass), fiberglass, resin, or plastic (11-16 percent), iron or cast iron (5-17 percent), copper (1 percent), and aluminum, according to a report from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (Table 30). (0-2 percent ).
Many turbine components are made in the United States and are sourced domestically. Wind turbine towers are 60-75 percent domestically supplied, blade and hub components are 30-50 percent domestic, and nacelle assemblies are over 85 percent domestically obtained, according to the Office of Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy’s Land-Based Wind Market Report. Internal parts such as pitch and yaw systems, bearings, bolts, and controllers, on the other hand, are frequently imported.
How much concrete is there at a wind turbine’s base?
For a 1 MW turbine, a typical slab foundation would be 15 meters in diameter and 1.5 to 3.5 meters deep. The foundation for turbines in the 1 to 2 MW range typically uses 130 to 240 m3 of concrete.
What is the copper content of a wind turbine?
Renewable energy enthusiasts believe that the United States should generate power using renewable energy sources such as wind and solar rather than fossil fuels such as coal and natural gas.
Many of the same folks oppose copper and nickel mines in Northern Minnesota.
There is only one issue:
Copper is used extensively in windmills. A single wind turbine, for example, can be made up of 335 tons of steel, 4.7 tons of copper, 3 tons of aluminum, and 700 pounds or more of rare earth materials.
Wind and solar energy, in fact, consume more copper than traditional energy sources like coal, natural gas, and nuclear power plants. To create one megawatt of electricity, conventional power plants require roughly one ton of copper, whereas wind and solar can require three to five tons per megawatt.
Furthermore, these figures only account for the copper required to construct wind turbines or solar panels, and do not account for the copper required to deliver the electricity generated by wind and solar facilities to the people who use it.
Without a doubt, switching from reliable sources of electricity such as coal, natural gas, hydroelectric, and nuclear power plants to intermittent sources such as wind and solar is a bad idea, but those who support renewable energy but oppose copper mining in Minnesota should reconcile their positions.
What percentage of coal is used in a wind turbine?
The image is topped with a dramatic photo of a wind turbine on fire (from a fire in Texas in March 2020) and some information.
“A two-megawatt windmill is made up of 260 tons of steel, which required 300 tons of iron ore and 170 tons of coking coal, all of which were mined, transported, and produced using hydrocarbons,” according to the post. (We fixed a few typos in the text.)
The information in the post is incorrect. A windmill’s energy payback can be less than a year from construction to destruction. We found the maximum estimate to be little under six years.
What is the value of a wind turbine blade?
A typical rotor blade for a 0.75-MW turbine has a length of 80 ft to 85 ft (24m to 25m) and weighs around 5,200 lb/2,360 kg, according to some of the metrics provided for this market assessment. Blades are expected to cost around $55,000 each at this size, or $165,000 for a three-blade set. The amount of reinforcing grows in a logarithmic progression as the blades grow larger. Typical blades for a 1.5-MW turbine should be 110 ft to 124 ft (34m to 38m) long, weigh 11,500 lb/5,216 kg, and cost between $100,000 and $125,000 each. A turbine’s blades are around 155 ft/47m long, weigh about 27,000 lb/12,474 kg, and cost between $250,000 and $300,000 apiece when rated at 3.0 MW.
Using the aforementioned guidelines, wind turbine manufacturers produced around 441 million lb or slightly more than 200,000 metric tonnes of final blade structures in 2007. This makes wind turbine blade manufacturing one of the world’s largest single applications of engineered composites. Surprisingly, the astonishing volume in 2007 is about 38 percent more than in 2006 and nearly double that of 2005.
The total is roughly broken out as follows:
- 221 million pound of glass fiber (100,240 metric tonnes)
- 4.6 million pound of carbon fiber (2,090 metric tonnes)
- Thermoset resins are a type of thermoset resin (primarily epoxy and vinyl ester)
- a total of 182 million pound (82,550 metric tonnes)
- 18 million pound core (balsa and foam) (8,160 metric tonnes)
- Metallurgy (fittings and bolts)
- 15 million pound (6,800 metric tonnes)
The value of the blade market is sometimes calculated as a percentage of the market for turbines. Blades are thought to account for 15 to 20% of the total cost of a wind turbine. During 2007, the market for entire wind turbine systems was estimated to be somewhat more than $26 billion. Based on this, the composite blade market is anticipated to be worth between $3.9 and $5.2 billion. We believe that a more precise estimate of the composite blade market is $4.3 billion, based on current material prices and our estimates of production and overhead expenses (as previously mentioned). This represents a 43 percent increase over expected 2006 blade sales and a 114 percent increase over 2005. Blade producers should ship more than $5.9 billion worth of gear this year, based on predicted industry growth. This is a 38 percent increase in monetary value, while new installed capacity (MW) is predicted to increase by 26 percent. Although rising raw material prices (as petroleum and other chemical feedstocks become more expensive) can account for some of the disproportionate growth in blade value, product availability/shortages and the trend toward larger turbines with more expensive rotor systems are more relevant considerations.