Falmouth Wind Turbine Parts Over 20 Years Old

The design life of a good quality older gear-driven wind turbine is 20 years.It is unlikely that a wind turbine would last longer than this unless you replace the gearbox and possibly the blades.

Wind turbine gearboxes are subjected to extreme loads throughout their lives. The key exterior elements (the blades and the tower) are only fixed at one end and subjected to the full force of the shifting wind. At the end of its life, it can simply be removed and replaced with a new one almost at the same cost of rebuilding the old one.

The Massachusetts Technology Collaborative now called the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center using money from the state’s ratepayer-funded renewable energy trust fund, ordered two Vestas turbines in December 2005 for $5.2 million.

Falmouth, Massachusetts ended up with three Vestas V-82 type 1.65 megawatt wind turbines. Two owned by the town and one privately owned all in the same general vicinity of the wastewater treatment plant. The installation dates of the town turbines are 2010 and 2012.

In 1997 NEG Micon was a Danish wind turbine manufacturer as a result of a merger between Nordtank Energy Group (NEG) and Moerup Industrial Windmill Construction Company (Micon).

NEG Micon in 1997 produced the NM 82 type 1.65 megawatt wind turbine. The NM stands for NEG Micon, 82 equals the size aka platform and 1.65 megawatt equals power.

NEG Micon turbine had 35 different models, and was very popular in the wind power industry, particularly the NM-82 type 1.65 megawatt turbines; and can be seen throughout major wind farms around the world.

In the 1990s wind turbine manufacturers outsourced many of the major components. Those components consist of blades, monopole, gear-box, generator, and electronics. The geared wind turbines were plagued by numerous gearbox failures. NEG Micon failed by 2004 in part due to gearbox failures.

The NEG Micon wind-turbine platform in 2004 was bought out by Vestas wind company. Vestas produced the V-82 type 1.65 megawatt turbines which also can be seen throughout the world. Three of them are in Falmouth, Massachusetts.

The NM-82 became the V-82.

It's difficult to determine the actual manufacture date of old gear-driven wind turbines as the major component parts sat in warehouses around the world for years waiting assembly.

One glaring example of how old wind turbines actually are is Falmouth, Massachusetts. The first town-owned wind turbine sat in a warehouse after being assembled from 2005 until 2010 when it was installed as the first town-owned wind turbine. The component parts and engineering dates remain unknown.

The major component parts to the Falmouth turbine were more than likely assembled in 2004 but the components may have been back from 1997 when NEG Micon originally designed the platform. In other words, you have to look at the manufacturer date of the components, not the assembly dates.

The privately-owned Vestas V-82 type 1.65 megawatt Falmouth wind turbine built on the NEG Micon platform has already had gears replaced.

Falmouth town officials use the construction dates of 2010 and 2012 as the age of their wind turbines while the major outsourced components could stretch back to 1997.

The town-owned wind turbines both Vestas V-82 type 1.65 megawatt wind turbines were designed back in 1997 as the NEG Micon NM-82 type 1.65 megawatt wind turbine.

By 2018, for example, Vestas has outsourced about a fifth of blade production. There is also a cottage industry replacing old wind turbine gearboxes, generators and blades today.

The United States Wind Turbine Database (USWTDB) starting in 2016 provides the locations of land-based wind turbines in the United States, corresponding wind project information, and turbine technical specifications. The database only shows the two Falmouth town-owned wind turbines were installed in 2010 and 2012 not the manufactured dates.

In the United States today Wind turbine towers are 70-90% domestically sourced, blade and hub components are 50-70% domestic, and nacelle assemblies are over 85% domestically sourced. However, many internal parts such as pitch and yaw systems, bearings, bolts, and controllers are typically imported.

Gearboxes have been replaced in modern wind turbines by direct drive assembles.

Falmouth Town Meeting voted 2.5 million in November of 2019 to take down the town-owned wind turbines and put them in storage again? The town will later attempt to relocate the turbines out of town through a lease or sell them.

Outsourcing is a major component of wind turbine manufacturing.

Some of the Falmouth wind parts could have been in storage for over twenty years or since 1997.

Gear Box Replacement Vestas V 80