Have you ever wondered what the inside of one of those large wind turbines you see on wind farms looks like? Well I just watched this video that was shot at Crystal Rig Wind Farm which you is located in the village of Lammermuir Hills which is about about 50 km south east of Scotland’s capital Edinburgh. The wind farm has 25 Nordex N80 Turbines and about 60 Siemens 2.3 VS. These machines have a power capacity of 200MW which is sufficient to provide power to more than 100,000 homes.
In the video below the Technical Manager Stuart Naylor, takes on an tour inside turbine 9 at the wind farm which is a Siemens 2.3VS. He stresses the importance of wearing adequate safety gear which includes the helmet, a light and various other harnesses and clips which will be used to progress through different stages within the tower. He enters through a door at the base of the tower and the first order of business is to stop the blades from rotating. This involves switching to local control and then inputting an access code for the computer to shut down that particular
turbine.
From the base of the wind tower is a ladder that leads to a stage which has an elevator. The elevator then takes him up to within 10 meters of the top. I always assumed that they climbed the whole way up but it is good to know that there is an elevator in there. The middle section of the tower is pretty much as you imagined, that is hollow with a ladder running through it. The elevator is attached to the ladder but it also looks like it is possible to manually go up and down that ladder without using it. This would take hours and the technicians would probably be way to tired to do an maintenance or repair work by the time they get to the top.
To access the top, he has to go up another ladder using his slider. Pushing a grater at the top gives you access to the very top section, where the gearbox and generator are located. The two hatches that open to expose this area to to the elements are a pretty cool feature too. He also shows us the wind instruments that gather the vital information used by they computer to guide the turbine into the wind. They are obviously located outside right at the top of the tower. In all this video will give you a new outlook on wind turbines, and hopefully now it will make a lot more sense why these installations cost millions of dollars each. This is a really great tour of the inside of a wind turbine, you will learn a lot from it.
You can follow Stuart inside the wind turbine, watch the video below…