Gone with the Wind

If you’ve been outside recently, you might have noticed that the UK is suffering from a spot of windy weather once again. In fact areas of the country have been encountering exceptionally strong winds over the last few days.

 The Daily Mail is currently running a story about three wind turbines in Yorkshire that caught fire due to the exceptionally strong winds over the last few days. So far we don’t know what exactly caused the fire, but we’re sure there will be a full investigation into what happened, to make sure that it doesn’t become a problem.

Turbine faults like these are very rare, and it’s really a measure of the freak conditions that we’ve been having recently. Wind turbines are designed to be as light and efficient as possible in order to make as much use of the different wind speeds as possible, whether that’s a steady breeze of 5mph or strong gusts of 40 to 50mph. This allows them to keep generating electricity around 70-85% of the time.

So while at first sight it may seem incongruous that a device that uses wind for energy can’t take advantage of these storms, it’s actually quite sensible; much like anything that uses the elements you have to consider the extremes. Pots and pans use heat to cook food, but introducing them to a kiln or blast furnace is likely to leave you feeling more than peckish come dinner time.