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Willmar Municipal Utilities Commission to decommission long-crippled wind turbines
Credit: By Jennifer Kotila | September 26, 2024 | wctrib.com ~~
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The Willmar Municipal Utilities Commission is ready to make the decision to decommission its two wind turbines following a wind turbine assessment report Monday.
The commission unanimously approved a motion to take the report under advisement, review the information and take final action at the Oct. 14 meeting.
Willmar Municipal Utilities Facilities and Maintenance Supervisor Kevin Marti opened the presentation by stating, “The DeWind wind turbines were put into service in 2009, with a projected life expectancy of 20 years. The existing mechanical and technological conditions have made repairs to the turbines cost prohibitive; it is no longer fiscally responsible to continue our wind program.”
During the lifespan of Willmar’s wind turbines, the cumulative cost to produce one kilowatt-hour of power was 14.3 cents. Willmar Municipal Utilities currently purchases power for an average of 7.6 cents per kilowatt-hour.
At the conclusion of his presentation on Monday, Marti stated, “Due to lack of resources – including vendors, human and technology – availability of replacement parts, financial considerations and existing projected life expectancy, it is not practical to continue the operation of the wind turbines.”
Willmar Municipal Utilities has $1 million budgeted to prepare for the decommissioning of the wind turbines, which was originally slated for 2028-29. However, due to the issues the turbines had, that money has been moved up in the budget to 2025-26.
“I actually am confident we’ll get it done for less than that,” Marti commented. “ … A lot has changed in the industry. Four or five years ago, the complaint from the general public was, ‘What do we do with these parts? You know, you can’t recycle them. We got blades and stuff everywhere. It’s an eyesore.’ That has all changed. There are actually companies that will come on site and take the turbines down and recycle every component right there.”
The Fiberglas components of a wind turbine can be ground and used in multiple ways and all the steel can also be recycled, Marti added. “They estimate that almost 90% of that wind turbine can be recycled. So that is good news.”
He noted that recycling the different parts of the wind turbine actually reduces the cost of decommissioning it, as selling the recycled material offsets the demolition costs.
Any components that can be salvaged and used elsewhere, such as the switchgear and transformers, will be reused, according to Marti.
The land on which the wind turbines sit is leased from the Willmar Public Schools for $8,000 per year and has to be restored to its original state prior to turning it back over the the school district.
Current condition of turbines
Both of Willmar’s wind turbines are located near Willmar Senior High School: No. 3 is the north tower, and No. 4 is the south tower closest to the school. They are currently inoperable.
Wind turbine No. 3 had a blade pitch fault that stopped it from working in April of 2024 and the wind turbine technicians, Matt Krupa and Nick Hillenbrand, discovered that there was structural damage to the Fiberglas nacelle. The nacelle houses all of the generating components in a wind turbine, including the generator, gear box, drivetrain and brake assembly.
The brackets that attach the nacelle to the wind turbine were broken and cracked. “It’s unsafe to be in that turbine because of the brackets, and therefore we have not been able to further diagnose the blade pitch concern,” Marti said.
The chain hoist located in this turbine is also inoperable at this time and there are concerns about tower vibration, which has caused recurring damage to the turbine. For instance, the tower has elevator alignment issues, the meteorology equipment on the top of the turbine has shook and rattled apart numerous times and ladders used to access certain areas of the turbine have been broken due to the vibrations.
As for wind turbine No. 4, Marti stated it has a “plethora of problems” that have kept it from being operable, mostly due to control system failures.
Along with control system failures, when the turbine is operating, it has either a wind drive or generator issue that allows it to operate only at 37% of its maximum output, according to Marti.
Another issue with turbine No. 4 is that the wind drive assembly is overheating, causing internal damage to the components and debris in the fluids. It also has a cracked blade bearing and internal bearing damage in the main gearbox.
Early demise
There are several factors that have determined the early demise of the wind turbines, including that the manufacturer, DeWind, was liquidated in 2018, the engineering support from Go To Zero of Germany retired in 2022 and replacement parts for the turbines are no longer manufactured.
According to Marti, DeWind was started by a group of wind engineers in Germany in the early 2000s to make smaller wind turbines. After investors became involved, ownership of the company changed hands several times, being owned at one time by Daewoo of South Korea.
The wind turbines designed by DeWind were assembled in Texas and the goal was to manufacture 500 a year by 2009, but “that just never really materialized.”
The DeWind D8.2 wind turbines owned by Willmar Municipal Utilities were purchased and manufactured around 2008 and installed in 2009.
As he has referenced many times in his wind turbine presentations, Marti reiterated that each wind turbine is unique in its components.
“It’s almost like – I would liken it to a company that’s maybe hurting a little bit, and they’re taking whatever parts they had that day and making wind turbines,” Marti said of the difference between the parts in the turbines that were manufactured at the same time.
He noted that only about 50 to 60 of the DeWind D8.2 wind turbine models were ever manufactured, with a majority of them being installed at a wind farm in Oklahoma.
A gold mine in Argentina acquired DeWind D8.2 turbines to be the main source of power for the gold mine and set a world record for height installed at 12,000 to 14,000 feet above sea level, according to Marti.
Of the remaining DeWind D8.2 wind turbines, two were installed in Willmar, one was installed in Texas and one in southwest Minnesota on the Buffalo Ridge.
All of the Oklahoma DeWind D8.2 turbines were decommissioned several years ago. The ones in Argentina have also been shut down and overhead power brought in to provide power. The one in Texas is now just a shell used for training purposes.
“To my knowledge, there’s one D8.2 on Earth still operating,” Marti said.
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