Peekin' into the Past
Cracked blade blamed for turbine collapse
STERLING JOURNAL-ADVOCATE, Aug. 31 — A crack in a blade on a Niyol Wind Farm turbine led to the June collapse of the turbine’s tower.
Tricia Hale, director of renewable development for NextEra Energy, which owns Niyol, told the Logan County commissioners Tuesday morning that the crack caused the blade to strike the tower, collapsing the tower and sending the turbine plummeting to the ground.
Hale said nearly all of the tower fell within the base zone, although some small debris was found as much as 500 feet away.
Chris Carmona, NextEra’s regional general manager, said it was the fourth such blade failure in the U.S., all of which are on turbines built by General Electric. Carmona said GE does 24-hour monitoring of all of its turbines and it has isolated certain data patterns from those four turbines in the minutes before the failure.
That data has since been fed into GE’s monitoring system, Carmona said, and if that same pattern begins to appear again, NextEra will be immediately notified so it can shut the turbine down.
The blades are manufactured by L M Wind Power, a subsidiary of GE.
Hale said the failed blades are being examined by GE to determine what caused the cracks so the problem can be prevented in future production.
Asked whether the tower is going to be replaced, Hale said that hasn’t been determined yet. If the decision is to not replace the turbine, she said, the top 4 feet of concrete pedestal will be removed and the land remediated to at least its former condition, if not better.
Tri-State Hot Rod Revival sets new record
JULESBURG ADVOCATE, Aug. 26 — The 2022 Tri-State Hot Rod Revival set a new all-time record of 535 cars, up five cars over the previous year. The three-day event continues to grow. There were so many cars coming and going at the Julesburg Dragstrip that Google was reporting a traffic jam.
Friday’s Cruise Night was a huge success with an estimated 400 cars cruising the streets of Julesburg. Families and friends who were not cruising the streets were lining the streets and watching from their lawns and driveways as the parade of antique cars and trucks, muscle cars, race cars and motorcycles circled the town. The cackle cars fired up just after dark so flames from their exhaust could be seen.
YHS graduate part of Artemis project
YUMA PIONEER, Sept. 1 — A Yuma High School graduate is playing a key role in the Artemis Rocket project. Ashley Miller, Class of 2015, majored in aerospace engineering at Iowa State University. She now works as an associate angineer at Aerojet Rocketdyne, which is a key contractor with the Artemis project.
The Artemis 1 Rocket will go around the moon without landing, setting the stage for eventually putting astronauts back on the moon for the first time since the Apollo program ended 50 years ago.
Miller explained that she works on the upper stage engines going on the Block 1B version of Artemis, which will be utilized on later missions.