Lowell Wind Towers
Today, Cole's 5th grade class took a field trip, along with the 3rd and 4th graders, to the Lowell wind towers. The turbines look huge from the road, but up close and personal, they are something else. When you stand under one and look up, it's difficult to keep your equilibrium.
From the ground to the tip of the blade the turbines are 443 feet tall. Each blade itself is 170 feet long and weighs 5 tons. The towers are designed to be flexible in the wind and can sway as much as 10 feet at the top.
Speaking of tall...
The kids played "jump the shadow" as the shadow of the blade came across the ground.
Those black bolts that you see around the base go 12 feet into a bed of concrete that is 40 ft deep.
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| Cole and his 5th grade class. |
(On a side note, here is the same group, more or less, on a field trip 5 years ago)
This particular wind farm produces 180,000 MWh per year, on average enough to power 24,000 homes in VT.
The view is amazing. I don't know if you can tell in this photo, but from up here we could even see the Sheffield wind towers.
The blades commonly get struck by lightening and are designed to withstand most strikes. This blade, however, had to be replaced. It now stays in the parking lot of the operations center for kids to explore.
Picnic lunch on a blade.
That sure was an interesting field trip! I learned just as much as the students, I think!
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That's pretty dang cool. I might like to take the girls there. Can anyone go or only organized school trips?
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