During our recent cross-country trek, we encountered what would have been the bane of Don Quixote’s existence — ginormous windmills! In Miguel de Cervantes novel the word “tilt” comes from fighting; Don Quixote jousted with imaginary enemies (windmills) that he perceived to be giants, thinking the blades were their arms.
Like a grandmother’s fluffy quilt, wind turbines cover the plains. At one particular spot in Iowa, we got to have an up-close-and-personal look at a Siemens Energy blade and learned that:
- Each individual, joint-free, seamless blade is 148 feet long, 11.2 feet wide, and weighs 23,098 pounds!
- Standing over 400 feet tall, each complete wind turbine has three blades, with a rotor diameter of more than 300 feet — nearly the same length as a football field.
- One wind turbine can power up to 700 residential homes with environmentally friendly, carbon free electricity.
- A single wind turbine needs approximately one-half acre of land and uses 40 acres of wind space.
- Blades sweep an area of 75,000 square feet with each rotation.
What energizes you?
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This post was previously published on Tuesdays with Laurie and is republished here with permission from the author.
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Photo credit: Laurie Buchanan