Saturday, January 18, 2014

Weatherford Wind Turbines

Photographers from every state can be seen stopped along Interstate 40 in Western Oklahoma snapping photos of the Wind Turbines on my way to or from work on a daily basis. I am rerunning this post about the wind turbines. We get more and more of them in Western Oklahoma all of the time.

As you travel around the Weatherford area you can see wind turbines in all directions.

This information display is across from the Weatherford City Hall. The wind turbines are huge, but work like a child's pinwheel. When you blow on a pinwheel, the blades spin around. It is the same with wind turbines. Western Oklahoma has enough wind to keep the blades of the wind turbines turning. The blades are connected to a drive shaft inside the large box on top of the towers. The drive shaft turns the generator, which makes electricity.

Next to the wind turbine information is a real wind turbine blade laying on the lot. As you can see it is very large. Each wind turbine has three blades. Each wind turbine operates independently of the others. Each is basically an individual power plant.
This is a look down the blade. It is quite amazing to think of this thing up in the air turning around and making electricity. The electricity is carried in cables from the generator down the inside o the tower, then underground to the site's substation. That power then goes into the off site transmission lines and is used by the local utility company to serve its customers. There are several wind farms across the state of Oklahoma.
This is the part of the blade that connects to the tower. My husband is six foot tall, you can tell the blade is huge!
We pulled off on a side road by one of the wind farms. My husband decided to walk out to the first turbine. See how tiny he looks walking out there!
The wind turbines are so strung out, I could not get a photo that captured the full view of a wind farm. Come to Western Oklahoma and see them for yourself. They are quite impressive.


2 comments:

  1. The turbines are awesome! Their simplicy makes them beautiful and to know they are generating energy from the wind ....

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  2. My last trip to Oklahoma I took at least 100 pictures of the wind farms. Totally amazing how they have popped up everywhere.

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