Top of the turbine

I got really lucky this week - I managed to get in on a climb up the 270 foot GE 1.5 MW wind turbine that we installed at my work a couple years ago. My boss was taking our DOE client up and I managed to tag along.

If you can't see the video below, you can view it here - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zke3oCoaQ6k

This is the turbine that we climbed:

The three of us entering the tower. I'm the one on the left:

There is a very tall ladder that goes most of the way up, with floors separating the sections and little hatches that you close so that you don't drop stuff (or fall) on the guy below you. They had to train us on use of the protection equipment. The blue cable is a climbing assist. It takes 25, 50, 75 or 100 lbs off you so you can climb easily. Climbing up is a breeze as long as you don't look down, although my knees got bruised cause I kept hitting them on the rungs. Climbing down was a pain, because I had to hold onto the ladder all the way. The big guys could lean against the tower wall and just let themselves down the ladder pretty easily but I wasn't long enough to do that.

After you reach the top of the tower, you climb through the giant ring bearing to the nacelle where the gearbox and generator and all are. This the nacelle, looking at the generator:

Then we climbed out the top of the nacelle and stood on top. We clipped in to hooks on the top in case we fell. It was pretty windy up there. This turbine has no safety rail - the 0.4 MW turbines do. This is looking off the back:

This is looking off the front, toward the blade which is right behind me (I'm on the right):

From the blade, there is this metal pipe that you can clip into and swing yourself over the edge of the nacelle and drop yourself over the front hub of the rotor. You're dangling 270 ft in the air. You can open a hatch there and then do maintenance on the rotor. We did NOT do this.

The other turbines on the site include the 3 MW Alstom which is the big one closest to us and then the 2.3 MW Siemens which is behind and to the left. There are two little 0.4 MW in the background too. And smaller ones as well: