Turbines Creating Electricity

While it is well-known that wind turbines create electricity when the blades rotate in a wind and are connected to the grid, did you also know that they can have a talent for calling down electricity from the heavens?

Not a great deal of research has been conducted into the effects of electric storms on wind farms, as not many people want to be out in a storm near a turbine clicking away with their cameras.

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Joan Montayna of the Polytechnic University of Catalonia in Barcelona, Spain, together with his colleagues has captured the first known high-speed video film of wind turbines being struck by lightning. They also used a lightning detection network to map how the bolts are drawn and propagated in three dimensions. In the video, below, three of the turbines rotating together seems to create a “lightning nest” within a relatively small area:

Lightning Turbines

The team found that, under certain atmospheric conditions, rotating turbine blades can produce a bolt each time one of the blades is at its highest position. Strikes can be “called down” from up to 2 kilometers in the stormy sky.

People may recall the video of the UK wind turbine that caught fire- but that was not the result of a lightning strike; that was caused by very high winds causing the turbine’s blades to grate against their brakes creating friction and heat. But that was an unusual occurrence. And lightning striking turbine blades is believed too much more common.

Turbine blades are mostly made of carbon-reinforced plastic and in theory, should not attract lightning strikes. But they do and when they do, they are not as protected as when a plane in the sky is struck by lightning. Their aluminum fuselage conducts electricity around them. This is not an option for turbine blades because the extra weight would reduce their efficiency.

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Montanyà hopes to find ways to cut the number of lightning bolts generated by turbines and the (relatively small) number of turbines that are damaged by lightning bolts and require replacement/maintenance. The main challenge is to find out why they happen so often. He suspects that rotation creates friction in the air by the spinning blades and also that the blades themselves become charged through friction with the air.

No doubt turbine manufacturers would be interested in an answer to this issue, especially in those areas where electric storms occur regularly and wind farms are situated.