Did a UFO Really Wreck the Wind Turbine in the UK?
New details have emerged that may dispel rumors of a tentacle-shaped UFO reportedly striking a wind turbine in England.
As we reported earlier this week, a broken wind turbine in the English county of Lincolnshire has officials completely baffled as to what may have caused one turbine blade to break-off and another to have a large, mysterious bend about half-way down its 20 meter length [not pictured here].
Some witnesses say they saw unusual flickering and cascading lights in the area a few hours before the turbine blades apparently broke at around 4 A.M. And that was all that British tabloid, The Sun, needed to publish Thursday’s front page headline: “UFO hits wind turbine.”
The Sun reports that one witness, John Harrison, looked out his window and saw a “massive ball of light with tentacles going right down to the ground” over the wind farm. “It was huge,” said Harrison, “with the tentacles it looked just like an octopus.”
But what broke one turbine clear off and bent the other in half, may not have been the huge-tentacled ball of light after all. According to Guardian blogger Jemima Kiss, the mysterious lights were actually the fireworks of The Guardian’s director of digital content, Emily Bell’s brother. Bell’s brother Tim had bought fireworks at a local store to set-off in celebration of their father’s birthday. “It was a medium-sized fireworks display with absolutely no ballistics,” said Bell. “The fireworks were mostly dropping over my parents’ house. But we were laughing that we could have broken the wind turbine,” she said.
Ecotricity, the turbine’s owners, have no explanation for the breakage. Dale Vince, founder of the renewable energy development company, said on the BBC’s Today program that, whatever hit the Lincolnshire wind turbine blades was “probably the size and weight of a cow.”
Another, perhaps, more likely theory is that material fatigue in the blades caused the failure, with perhaps one blade falling off and denting the other. But Ecotricity’s Vince said they have no reason to believe that the failure was fatigue-related. For that to have happened, Vince said the turbine would had to have suffered a “catastrophic failure.”
Ecotricity engineers continue to investigate the broken turbine. But for now, says Vince, “The UFO theory, kind of like, funny as it may sound, is the best one we’ve currently got.”
Image: ark via flickr under a Creative Commons License
That’s a great story. It sucks that they had a broken wind turbine from the ordeal, but it will be interesting if they actually find out what hit it.
If the blade shearing off was due to material fatigue and subsequent mechanical failure then the only force that could have effected the failure would have been the blade’s own weight while the turbine was not in motion (if centrifugal force had caused the shearing while the blades were in motion then the resulting imbalance would have destroyed the entire tower - there are YouTube videos showing this). I am shocked if wind turbines are really so poorly designed and constructed that such a thing could be possible. Also, if you see photographs of the actual turbine, it is obvious that the damage to the second blade cannot have been caused by the severed first blade.
I just hope that the physical evidence is examined forensically to try to find out what caused this damage.
Where is the blade? Given the known laws of physics-the blade should be relatively easy to find. Why can’t they find it? Because, something which defies the known laws of physics has taken place.
Given what I know of physics-a blade that size sheared off would have fallen straight to the ground. Also, if another known air vehicle had been involved given the nature of the blade and the damage to the other blade, along with the fact the other turbines were untouched-leaves more questions than answers.
It is time to think outside the box.
“a blade that size sheared off would have fallen straight to the ground”
not if it was rotating at the time, it wouldn’t - the inertia would cause it to be thrown, on axis with the rotation. that may mean up, down, or anywhere in between.
at any rate, they’ve uncovered the ‘missing’ blade, so no need to worry about that.
as for thinking outside the box, how about this:
water got into the rotor mechanism, then froze, expanding and pushing the prop from it’s intended position. this caused metal to grind against metal, creating noise and friction/heat. the heat melted the ice, upon which the rotor mechanism fell back into place (albeit, presumably, damaged). the inertia of the prop’s modulated position, coupled with the heat/malleability caused one or more blades to become off balance, leading to further grinding and most likely a good wobble in one or more blades, which created the “catastrophic” conditions necessary for a fatigue-related failure.
that’s an educated guess based on what I’ve heard of witness reports, what I’ve seen of the damage, and a decent understanding of physics. thinking outside the box, I’d venture to suggest the only reason a UFO explanation was so widely reported rather than a variant on my much more obvious theory is because Ecotricity and co would really rather not advertise the fact that their wind turbines are fundamentally ill-suited to icy conditions, in spite of the anti-icing system on most turbines’ blades.
another, equally simple explanation would be that the anti-icing failed on another turbine, causing ice build up which was eventually thrown from one turbine directly at the (now broken) other. this seems unlikely given how far away the blade was, but it’s entirely possible this started the process described in the first explanation, rather than ice interfering with the rotor mechanism.
however you look at it, it wasn’t little green men.
Unoffically, it was a unmanned aircraft test flying in that area ( a friend of mine works at rolls royce) and one of the test flights Unnoffically may have hit the turbine, but on the bright side there was no damage to the UAV
The blade can easily be analyzed for metal fatigue - I hope they have already done it.
Mechanical failures like this are easily checked out - there is no magic or aliens involved. I expect that if a little green guy could make it here from space they could surely avoid a slow moving turbine blade.
İf a UAV hit it then bye bye UAV - it would have been found near the turbine.
Be nice for some proper follow up by the turbine supplier to say what really happened in place of letting fools ramble on.