How Big Are These Turbines, Really?
The nineteen, 400-foot Gamesa 87 wind turbines Highland New Wind Developing is erecting on two 4,300 foot Allegheny ridges are among the tallest in the United States.
See the Specs.But how tall is 400 feet, really?
One reason it's difficult to get a feel for just how gigantic these turbines are is that there are few structures in this part of the country to point to for comparison.
Electrical transmission towers are about 125 feet tall.
See Size Comparison.The tallest building in West Virginia is the State Capitol in Charleston. It is 292 feet tall.
The wind turbines on Backbone Mountain in Tucker County are 345 feet tall. Photo by www.protectpendleton.com.
See Tucker County.The tallest structure in the state of West Virginia is the Robert C. Byrd Greenbank Telescope at the National Radio Astronomy Laboratory. It is 421 feet tall. Photo by Barry Sharp, NRAO/AUI.
See Telescope.The tallest building in western Virginia is the Wachovia (now Wells Fargo) Tower in Roanoke. It is 320 feet tall.
See Roanoke Skyline. The copper-topped building on the right is the 320-foot tall Wachovia Tower.The tallest building in Richmond is the James Monroe Office Building at 460 feet.
The tallest building in the state of Virginia is the Westin Hotel at Virginia Beach, which is 508 feet tall.
When opponents of ridgetop wind utilities describe the turbines as "skyscraper sized," this is no exaggeration.
Then there is the almost incomprehensible scale of the rotors, which weigh more than seven tons and spin at speeds up to 200 mph. The Gamesa specs indicate that these rotors are 285 feet in diameter. They sweep an approximately 1.47-acre area.
A football field is 300 feet long.
Anything nearly a football field in length and spinning in the air is simply colossal. There is no other way to describe it.
Arrayed in a line on a ridge top, spinning wind turbines topped with red strobes become the dominant visual aspect of the landscape day and night--from as much as 20 miles away.
These are not wind "farms." Wind utilities do not "farm" wind, any more than hydroelectric dams "farm" water. These are industrial installations of a size and scale previously unknown to human experience.
