Germany built the world's tallest wind turbine, which features a unique design--a combination of water tower and turbine. We dive into the Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy B108 blades, which are the largest ever produced, and discuss some of the technology involved in protecting the leading edges and blade tips from lightning. Also on the docket are vertical axis wind turbines being installed on the O2 arena in London, and a review of global wind power commissions from 2020. Watch this episode on YouTube here.



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EP52 Transcript - World's Tallest Turbine; SG B108 Blades; Digisec Bird Deterrent System & More



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welcome back i'm alan hall i'm dan blewitt and this is the uptime podcast where we talk about wind energy engineering lightning protection and ways to keep your wind turbines running



all right welcome back to the uptime podcast i'm your co-host Dan Blewett on today's show we've got a bunch of interesting trends from the news world this week number one uh the world's tallest turbine was built in germany so we'll talk a little bit about the engineering there um offshore blades are getting bigger we're going to talk a little bit about the Siemens Gamesa or about Siemens Gamesa's new 108 meter blade which has a couple interesting features that we want to talk through we'll talk about global wind turbine commissioning which was actually up by 59 in 2020 which is pretty crazy considering we had a pandemic it was a insane year for everyone in every industry but apparently wind energy did pretty well we'll also talk about a really interesting bird deterrent system from Digisec some interesting vertical axis wind turbines potentially being installed at the o2 arena in london and a couple other little items so al let's start with germany and this incredibly tall wind turbine so max bogle wind ag has installed the world's tallest turbine in stuttgart germany hub height of 178 meters total height of 246.5 meters that's really tall that's really tall yeah gosh hey get this out of my backyard like what are you guys doing it's really tall uh but the technology is sort of a combo between wind energy and and water storage like a water storage battery where the bottom of the wind turbine is actually a water tower so they're pumping water into this tower and then when they need energy they pump it out and create electricity so it's like a water storage battery which therefore increase the heights of the turbine so that the germans are they're ge turbines right they're ge turbines like three megawatt turbines on top of the this water tower structure which is a very interesting concept because you're kind of combining two technologies into one and and trying to utilize the best best out of both of them uh it just gotta wonder what the the mechanical stress loading is on something that tall which is being pumped full of water and then drained of water all the time you kind of think that's a really significant engineering project to accomplish i'm surprised that they could pull it off because this i haven't seen this anywhere else have you seen this anywhere else it's common this is the first one but it's interesting kind of in the same vein as the offshore platforms where they have you know there's a offshore wind turbine and then they have aquaculture lab like they've been talking about all these different ways to combine stuff right it seems like the sa...