One of the clips linked to on googletube explains that this was in Aarhus, Denmark, and involved failure of the safety mechanisms, known far enough in advance for an evacuation to be set up (not that it looks like a 400 meter radius is more than 2 maintenance technicians and a cow).
Normally windmills are put on the parking brake and furled (blade pitch adjusted) for heavy winds. They don't typically explode like that with any heavy storm. Presumably it was the furling mechanism that broke on this windmill, and the parking brake wasn't able to stop the turbine from turning when the blades were still in action.
By the way, this looks like a fairly smallish turbine, as such things go. Maybe blade length 20, 30 meters. They go bigger.
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Date: 2008-03-01 09:09 pm (UTC)Normally windmills are put on the parking brake and furled (blade pitch adjusted) for heavy winds. They don't typically explode like that with any heavy storm. Presumably it was the furling mechanism that broke on this windmill, and the parking brake wasn't able to stop the turbine from turning when the blades were still in action.
By the way, this looks like a fairly smallish turbine, as such things go. Maybe blade length 20, 30 meters. They go bigger.