Some wind farms have hundreds of turbines COOL STEM CAREERS WIND TURBINE SERVICES TECHNICIAN 2 1 S T C E N T U R Y S K I L L S L I B R A R Y CHAPTER ONE WONDERFUL WIND In the dead of night the cell phone on Josh’s nightstand lights up and begins to ring He throws the covers back and grabs it instantly awake He’s all but certain who it is and he’s
right It’s the manager of the energy company he works for calling to tell him one of the turbines has begun to malfunction Josh is one of their best wind turbine services technicians so he gets most of the emergency calls He jumps out of bed pulls some clothes on and heads to his truck All the tools he’ll need are already in there It takes him about an hour to reach the wind farm which was built in an open field in the middle of nowhere There are 20 turbines altogether standing in a neat row Each turbine looks like a giant pinwheel spinning in a slow almost lazy way The fifth unit from the left is the one with the problem Josh parks next to it His partner Sarah has already arrived They put on their tool belts open the door at the base of the turbine’s tower and check their harnesses and safety equipment After making sure that they’ll be safe when they reach the top of the tower Josh and Sarah step into the eleva tor As it goes up Josh thinks again about how nice it is to have elevators in these turbines At his last job there were no elevators just ladder steps attached to the tower’s inside wall It took about 20 minutes to climb them and he was always exhausted afterward He and his partner reach the top and step out aware that those lazily spinning blades are just a few feet away now One wrong move and Josh or Sarah could sustain a very seri ous injury The blades are on a rod called an axis and the
Wind techs ensure that each turbine on a wind farm works properly COOL STEM CAREERS WIND TURBINE SERVICES TECHNICIAN 2 1 S T C E N T U R Y S K I L L S L I B R A R Y axis runs into a large box called a nacelle Josh believes the nacelle is where the problem lies Crouching down he opens it to reveal a dizzying array of gears and electric modules Sure enough one of the modules has failed It is the one designed to receive wind speed information When it failed the turbine shut down Josh knows his employer is relying on him to fix it as soon as possible the longer it stays broken the more money the company loses But he’s replaced electric modules before and knows exactly what to do
Wind is an attractive form of energy for a variety of reasons First it is clean there are no dangerous by-products Second it is renewable which means it’s unlikely to ever run out Third it is very easy to acquire since the wind blows in many places and turbines can be built in almost any open unused area And fourth it is cost effective and rarely more expensive than other forms of energy Wind power provides only a fraction of the world’s electrical needs at the moment but more turbines are being built every day Many experts predict wind will one day become one of the most common sources of energy 21ST CENTURY CONTENT Josh and Sarah head back down to the truck to get the replacement part On the way Josh calls the manager and says the unit will be functioning again within the hour When he steps out of the tower a cool wind blows on his back That’s what keeps me in business he thinks with a smile Many people believe that using wind as energy is some thing relatively new But humans have been taking advantage
