OK so this is not the one in Scotland. I tried youtube first and I couldn’t even get their search engine to respond. They gave me things like Bruce Springsteen singing Fire. So then I googled it and got boat loads of text, mainly borrowings from the article below and one video on youtube. Let us see, google’s search engine is smarter than youtube’s?? The article itself doesn’t have a picture either. Their picture is of an aircraft jetliner’s wobbly landing in the same winds. The pilot should be shot. First the video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOfHxINzGeo
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Then the text.
Blown away: gales wreck wind turbines as Scottish storm wreck havoc
Fears over the safety of wind turbines in high winds have been raised after one burst into flames and another crashed to the ground.
By Donna Bowater, and Rowena Mason
10:02AM GMT 09 Dec 2011
Gusts of up to 165mph were recorded in the Cairngorms in Aberdeenshire as gales brought travel chaos to Scotland and the North.
A 100-metre tall wind turbine burst into flames in North Ayrshire, and in Coldingham in the Scottish Borders, a turbine crashed to the ground yards from a road.
The £2 million turbine in North Ayrshire was not believed to have been spinning at the time. Fires can occur if extreme wind loosens or breaks electrical connections, whether turbines are rotating or not.
Fraser McLachlan, the chief executive of GCube, a wind turbine insurer, said he was expecting a rise in turbine failures due to the “exceptional” weather in Scotland.
“We see turbine fires around the world when it gets very, very windy,” he said. “They usually shut themselves off as a safety feature if the wind gets too much. But sometimes there is another failure.
dot dot dot as they say
Modern turbines usually have a safety braking mechanism that turns the blades off if wind speeds reach 56mph.
The turbine in North Ayrshire was believed to belong to the renewable power company Infinis. It was one of 15 built to supply 20,000 homes.
In a statement, Infinis said: “Infinis confirms that a nacelle on a turbine at its Ardrossan wind farm, Ayrshire, Scotland, caught fire this afternoon in extreme stormy weather conditions. The fire had extinguished itself before the fire services arrived and did not result in personal injury.
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More next week.
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