Thousands of Old Wind Turbine Blades Pile Up in West Texas

[Lee]

Officials in Sweetwater say an out-of-state company has made their town a dump for the seldom-seen trash created by renewable energy.

Every year since 1958, the West Texas town of Sweetwater has hosted the World’s Largest Rattlesnake Roundup, which is exactly what it sounds like. Thousands of the venomous ophidians are rooted out of their dens and brought to the Nolan County Coliseum to be gawked at, “milked,” and often beheaded and skinned. It started as a way for the region to rid itself of some of its least-welcome residents. Now community leaders wish they could do the same with several giant piles of scrap that have for too long been left to bake in the sun. But that’s proving to be much trickier than wrangling reptiles.

About forty miles west of Abilene on Interstate 20, Sweetwater has unwittingly become home to what is possibly the world’s largest collection of unwanted wind turbine blades. When forklifts deposited the first of these in a field behind the apartment complex where Pamala Meyer lives, on the west side of town, in 2017, she wasn’t initially bothered. But then the blades—between 150 and 200 feet in length and mostly made of composite materials such as fiberglass with a binding resin—kept coming. Each was cut into thirds, with each segment longer than a school bus. Thousands arrived over several years, eventually blanketing more than thirty acres, in stacks rising as high as basketball backboards. Every few dozen feet, a break among the stacks leads into an industrial hedge maze.

“It’s just a hazard all the way around,” Meyer said. She worries about neighborhood children exploring the unfenced piles and says that stagnant pools of water inside the blades breed swarms of mosquitos. Matt Jackson, who works in a nearby warehouse, has other concerns. The piles create shaded nooks and crannies, perfect for Sweetwater’s unofficial mascot. “It’s just a big rattlesnake farm,” he said.

https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/sweetwater-wind-turbine-blades-dump/

 

[Guy F.]

Every wind turbine blade I've seen in the past 20 or so years has been 60 feet long. I don't believe there is wind turbine blade anywhere that is 150 or more feet long. That said, disposal of old blades is a problem.

[OnMyWay]

47 minutes ago, Guy F. said:

Every wind turbine blade I've seen in the past 20 or so years has been 60 feet long. I don't believe there is wind turbine blade anywhere that is 150 or more feet long. That said, disposal of old blades is a problem.

Rotor Diameter
A turbine’s rotor diameter, or the width of the circle swept by the rotating blades (the dotted circles in the second illustration), has also grown over the years. Back in 2010, no turbines in the United States employed rotors that were 115 meters (380 feet) in diameter or larger. In 2022, the average rotor diameter of newly-installed wind turbines was over 130 meters (~430 feet)—longer than a football field, and almost twice the wingspan of a 747.

https://www.energy.gov/eere/articles/wind-turbines-bigger-better

There are graphs showing the growth of these over the years.

[Possum]

Sweetwater Texas seems to have local government problem if this is a major issue. If they are mosquito breeding grounds which I have no doubt they are there should be a local ordinance to take care of that not to mention an ordinance or permit that allowed them to be stored should be questioned. The government in Texas reminds me at times of the Philippines only things are bigger in Texas as my cousins there remind me.

[Guy F.]

4 hours ago, OnMyWay said:

Rotor Diameter
A turbine’s rotor diameter, or the width of the circle swept by the rotating blades (the dotted circles in the second illustration), has also grown over the years. Back in 2010, no turbines in the United States employed rotors that were 115 meters (380 feet) in diameter or larger. In 2022, the average rotor diameter of newly-installed wind turbines was over 130 meters (~430 feet)—longer than a football field, and almost twice the wingspan of a 747.

https://www.energy.gov/eere/articles/wind-turbines-bigger-better

There are graphs showing the growth of these over the years.

I see that longer blades are found offshore.

In southeast Wyoming you can't drive very far without seeing a wind farm. The newspaper stories all say the blades are 60 feet long. The blades are 60 feet long.

Edited August 29, 2023 by Guy F.

[intrepid]

For those interested in these mills, attached below is a part 1 video of them being decommissioned and part two is the falling of the mills and a closer look at them.

Part 2

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGLwUHn8MnE