No - not a post about Jerusalem artichokes and their ozone-busting side effects. Nor is this this a rant about how scenery is destroyed by putting a wind turbine in it - I'm actually rather a fan, having seen impressive sites in Spain, Blythe, France and Lanzarote.
But do you know how they get them to their home site? Do you know how big the individual blades are? And if you think about it, you can see why they have to be done in one piece!
There is a smallish wind farm being developed near Cholet, and the windmills are made on the Dutch border (where else?), and somehow, the various bits have to get to the Marais. Each windmill has three sails. The planners checked the routes for special convoys and decided that it would be no problem to take the sails through near us. What they didn't allow for was street furniture, street lights, trees and a partially demolished bridge, or the curvature of the sail on the lorry.
When they arrived at the Demi-Lune roundabout, they got stuck for about 19 hours, until a tree had been chopped down, street lights taken down and road signs dismantled. After that each sail took a mere 9 minutes to manoeuvre around the Demi-Lune, stopping the traffic in 5 directions. The wind farm is having 10 windmills, each with 3 sails - there were a lot of traffic jams around us for about a week.
This shows the size of the things (50 meters long excluding lorry cab) as they edge round onto the road out of town.
My friend is an engineer who tests wind turbine blades just North of Newcastle. You'll be dismayed to learn that they're working on even bigger ones! I think eventually they'll have to resort to helicopters or some sort of Ikea flat pack design!
Posted by: Linda Haywood | 18 August 2008 at 06:01 PM