Wednesday, September 9, 2009

Trip to the wind farm.

My family took a trip to Storm Lake, Iowa. My Uncle Philip works on wind turbines and he was working on a farm in Storm Lake. We stayed at the same hotel he was staying.
Uncle Philip took us out to his wind farm. The farm is in the middle of a corn and soy bean field. The company sets up temporary buildings for workshops to fix the blades when they are damaged or broken. Uncle Philip told us that most blades are damaged from lightening strikes.
The towers on this farm are only 60 meters tall. He usually workls on towers that are 90 meters tall. He told us that they are working on building new towers that will be 120 meters tall. Sometimes he has to climb the towers to do the repairs and sometimes they have to take the blades down and work on them on the ground.
When they do the repairs it takes several days. First they have to remove the skin, then they sand it down and patch the damaged place or hole, next they put on a new skin and finally they paint. Sometimes they have to do several layers of repair before the new skin can be put on.
We saw blades that were broken and waiting to be fixed, blades that were in the middle of being fixed and some that were done.
The pictures that Uncle Philip is holding Zephan are when Zephan had gotten into the end of a blade and he got grease all over his hands then it got all over his face.
My favorite part of the trip to the farm was seeing all the broken blades because they looked cool and it was interesting to see what happens when they get damaged and what they look like when they are getting fixed.
Thank you Uncle Philip I had a lot of fun!

1 comment:

Angela said...

I like that you wrote that story. you should write more.