The wind turbine project continues here in Aruba. All the foundations have been built and now the towers, generating units, and blades have arrived. A team assembles them even as this post goes up. The first photo shows the truck that delivers the generating units arriving on site and being unloaded.
To grasp the scale of these units, consider them beside that Toyota Yaris parked along side the truck. The next photo shows the base into which fits the tower and the nacelle which houses the generating unit.
Finally, you can now see one wind turbine completely assembled and the next one in progress.
Let’s have one more look at that, shall we?
Reports indicate this facility will be producing energy in January 2010. I hope so. The wind blows strong in Aruba. No reason not to make some electricity. Why not built another ten or twenty or thirty?
Bon dia.
Then a cage of rebar is set up like this:
With the man standing on the left in the photo above, you get a sense of the scale of this structure. Finally, the concrete is poured around the rebar to complete the base, which looks like this:
Soon there will be towers standing atop these bases. Then will come the turbines themselves with their massive blades turning in the wind.
This unit is actually quite sophisticated. It has a flat collector plate that captures the sun’s rays, transferring the heat to water piped through the collector area. Then the hot water is stored in an insulated tank you see at the top left of the unit. This way, even after the sun goes down, you have hot water on demand. Here in Aruba, where the sun is very strong, this unit can deliver enough hot water for a typical family of four. The best part is, after the initial investment of purchasing and installing it, there are no additional costs. This one is mounted at ground level for easy maintenance but they can also be mounted on top of the roof.
Not much room to sit in this thing. Anyway, it was interesting to see the vehicle out on the street. As you can see from the photo, they allowed people to get rather close. The kids thought it was great. Here’s a plug for all the sponsors of the effort.
It’s good to know there are smart people out there working hard to solve various energy issues. While this vehicle may not seem practical, the knowledge gained from such ventures can be applied to any number of other projects. No doubt the future will bring things that we might never have expected.