Wolf Ridge Wind Farm

[slallen]

Took a little trip up to Muenster Tx and to see the wind farm and do a couple geocaches. Kind of difficult to show the scale. the closet we could get was about 500'. The attached images are unedited.

Copied from Geocaching.com (GC1H143 Wolf Ridge (Traditional Cache) in Texas, United States created by aeav8r).
Wolf Ridge Wind LLC, a subsidiary of FPL (Florida Power and Light), oversees this wind turbine operation located on ranch land that once was part of Camp Howze, a WWII artillery training base.

This site contains 75 towers, each of which are 262' tall. They are topped by a 40' long housing that contains the gearing, generators, and controllers that run the blades. Each of the 3 blades are 132' long, and when you add the hub, the entire blade assembly is about 300' in diameter. Imagine a football field spinning on its' side! Total height from the ground to the tip of the top blade is 393'.

The inside of the towers are hollow and contain the power transmission lines and a staircase. Quarterly, maintenance workers perform service on the turbine unit and blades by climbing up the vertical stairs inside. There is plenty of room to stand inside the main generator housing as well. Amazingly, these towers are mounted to a 14' thick concrete foundation weighing 167 tons, which can be sunk up to 28' deep.

Ideal wind speed is between 25 and 35 mph, and at max performance, each wind turbine is rated at 1.5 megawatts. This entire farm can produce 102 megawatts of electricity. The top of the housing has a miniture weather station that relays wind speed and direction to the computer controller which then modulates the angle of the blades to take full advantage of the available wind. If the steady state wind speed reaches 56 mph, the controller will automatically "feather" the blades to stop rotation of the turbine and prevent damage.

Link to the satellite view. N 33° 43.689 W 097° 22.669 - Google Maps

[Todd Lambert]

Very nice and awesome info! I didn't know the specifics of these but I've shot them many times.

You can get right up under them if you drive around a bit and keep your eyes open. Standing underneath one is an awesome experience. Big WHOOSH sound!

This is a shot, to give an idea of how big these things are... that's my car at the bottom right (next to the flash):

[slallen]

Todd that is excellent. We stayed on the main road 423, looking at the sat view some of the county roads may get a bit closer. Most had no fences for the cattle. After seeing that shot I want to make an evening trip for a star shot. We are talking about heading to Sweetwater for a day trip.

[Todd Lambert]

Steve, let me know... I'd love to tagalong.. I've been meaning to head back up to Muenster and shoot these again.. but I'm always up for shooting new places, so yeah!