“The summer wind came blowin’ in, from across the sea” 🎵🎵🎵

Today’s edition of Wind Views features a summery 🌞 reflecting pond at One Energy’s headquarters where five of the North Findlay Wind Campus turbines can be seen facing southwest, overlooking the Ball Corporation.

Did you know the size of a turbine determines its capacity for generating energy? Each one shown above is rated for 1.5 megawatts. That’s enough energy to power up to 400 homes! 🏘️

Here at One Energy, we challenge everything, which means we regularly test everything. In today’s episode, Juan explains how we maintain and prolong the life of our transformers through oil testing.  

The transformers One Energy uses come in two types: dry and liquid-filled. Liquid-filled transformers use FR3 (non-toxic, recyclable, non-petroleum) fluid to insulate, repress arc, and act as a coolant to keep them sending voltage up or down efficiently. One Energy employs a Dissolved Gas Analysis (DGA) to proactively check the health and functionality of each transformer through independent testing.

Check out today’s Technician Talk to hear Juan describe the DGA technique and explain how One Energy uses it to extend a transformer’s use-life.

Technician Talks can also be found on our LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter feeds– and be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel for more One Energy content!

In the past few weeks, you’ve seen us pour foundations, stack towers, and set a nacelle for our Wind for Industry® projects. In this week’s Wind View, we are showing part of the generator installation.

Our turbine generators weigh a ton, approximately 50. We use special rigging seen here, so that we can pivot the heavy generator in midair to line it up with the nacelle. This rigging allows One Energy’s construction team to easily unhook the crane from the generator once the installation is complete.  

It feels like spring! 🌤️ And here at One Energy, we’re ready for it.

In this week’s Wind View, you can see where we store our turbine blades at the laydown yard of the One Energy North Findlay Wind Campus.

Turbine blades are one of the most recognizable parts of our wind turbines. Blade size and shape can vary across turbines, with each of ours measuring ~140 feet in length. Eventually, we will transport them to their project site by specialized trucks 🚛. 

Until they’re ready to be shipped off to the next job site, they’ll remain in our laydown yard as a useful hands-on teaching tool for our educational tours 📚 to local students and community members.

In last week’s Wind View, we stacked a turbine tower. This week we’re moving upward to set a nacelle.

You might have noticed that the tops of wind turbines can vary in size and shape. Some are rounded like golf balls, and others are rectangular like school buses. That rounded or rectangular component on top is the nacelle: its purpose is yawing (rotating) into the wind so the turbine’s rotor can continue spinning and generating power. The nacelle’s shape is determined by the type of generator the wind turbine is using.

You can see in the video below that One Energy’s nacelles are rounded, that’s because we use direct drive generators, which means that they don’t require a gearbox.

Constructing a wind turbine tower can be a tall order. Let’s find out how tall!

One Energy’s turbine towers come in four sections: the base, the lower-mid, the upper-mid, and the top. The height of the turbine tower once all four sections are stacked is 257 feet. In this week’s Wind View, you can see One Energy’s Construction Team setting the lower-mid tower section on top of the base section.