Danish wind turbine eats itself
You know how we love wind turbines around here, but we love carnage even more -- so we can't get enough of this 200-foot tall Danish wind turbine shearing itself to bits after its brakes failed during a recent storm. The 10-year old windmill is the one of two different Vestas windmills to fail in Denmark in the past week -- the company is launching an investigation, but might we suggest selling tickets instead?
[Via BoingBoing]
[Via BoingBoing]



















Dang, I was all like "whoa," and it was all like "bang," and then it was gone. (Almost) better than a monster truck rally.
Wow, ill give you $20 bucks to try and jump through the blades while in the beginning stages of the video.
Done.
pics or it didn't happen.
@AlexP
Here Ya Go
http://i245.photobucket.com/albums/gg55/thaelf/Haha.jpg
Fail.
Gotta love hot it bends after the blades fly away :-P
Err, typo, gotta love HOW it bends
looks more like it was blended
well at least that answers a lot of n00bs' "will it..." question.
OK, my fail joke is fail (AlexP's words, see below)... but you can't blame me, it's 3:50am here
PS. Exactly how is my avatar gay?
I don't want to sound like a homophobe, but calling people "hun" sounds pretty gay too. Assuming you're not female, but we all know there are no girls on the internet.
Let's not put up a hypocrite sign AutoTom.
The term 'gay' is ignorant and uncalled for.
Too bad you're not American, for you'd be classified under that most recent blog post of yours (just without the missiles and satellites, and intellect). Guess not only the Americans are bastard hypocrites ?
Hypocrisy and irony.
You like it when things bend, don't you?
It's the ultimate auto-blending machine.
Come on, I don't think the phrase "epic fail" has ever been more justified than it is as a reply to this video.
This one has more detail, for those who care: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u14tBwO5QVQ
Doh, didn't see you posted it. Sorry.
*RED CARD* Wind gets sent off
Noticed that truck just down the turbine ? Is anyone inside at that moment ? Youhou !! sound exciting ;)
"Danish wind turbine eats itself" - that has to be one of the best-written post titles by Engadget :p
We'll now be getting proclamations from nutters about how renewable energy is dangerous compared to fossil fuels....
Dangerous? I dunno about that,but it sure is a lot more fun
As Michael Bay Would Say "AWESOME WIND TURBINE!"
HAHA! I love FIOS, but I hate those commercials. Bay needs to blow himself up.
Wtf! I just lost power to my jacuzzi..
Fail joke is fail.
Danish dude AlexP eats himself out.
Are you trying to rival EFG's fail?
I just heard from an erlier post above that the term 'fail' is gay.
Just letting you know, sit down and think about it for a while.
Okay, this guy has to be EFG.
After observing his comment history, I can hereby confirm that this man or thing is indeed...
EPIC, FAIL, GUY.
Yeah whatever.. Now if you'll excuse me I have to go, this jacuzzi fucking freezing.
You don't have a jacuzzi.
I do so! I did all my posting in the jacuzzi, look at my picture if you doubt me: http://img260.imageshack.us/img260/5713/engadgetjacuzziak3.jpg
EFG is a tiger now?!
No silly.... I've always been a tiger. Now I suggest you call me by my proper name; Epic Fail Tiger. Thank you, rawr.
Sorry, but EFG can't be a furry.
WTF, where did you two come from? When are you going back?
The same uterus that conceived you, but I'm over 9000 times more awesome.
Oh but I'm not going anywhere Andir3.0, I've set up a tent and really settled down. I even got a bonfire thing going on here. Aprime, I welcome you to snuggle with me in my sleeping bag, I'm toight like a baby tiger.
When Engadget met 4chan...
totally awesome video, but what does it have to do with the apple store going down?
lolzors
I'd also like to point out that this video of the event (or another one, but they look the same) is superior:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u14tBwO5QVQ
And no, this isn't a marketing trap or anything, I don't make a living with spam and I denounce spammers everytime I see them on Blogsmith's websites.
Yeah, because I didn't post that one above
Yeah, the dude with the gay avatar is right.
Isn't this what you would call 'Fail', eh AlexP?
"Doh, didn't see..."
Holy shit I'm being followed by EFG, what an honor.
What the fuck is wrong with you guys? I just read all your comment, you all are so weird.
Don't worry, we're from the Internet.
Hey Abuzar, don't ruin our special moment.
I'm so gay for you.
Is this Engadget? Or did I get off at the wrong stop??
Still.. funny to read XD
Say what?
sup efg
yep, it's down again. the apple store i mean.
yep, it's down again. the apple store i mean.
Fuck wind power. I'm pro Nuclear from now on simply for safety's sake.
Ironic.
And probably sarcastic, but sarcasm is hard to translate into text.
How is that ironic? Nuclear's got a great safety record. Only problem it's ever had is Chernobyl, and that only happened because they didn't have any real safety measures. Personally, I do honestly think that nuclear is safer than wind.
You sound like Ron Paul.
Brush up on your history and the fact that hardware (an argument often used by fission advocates is that there cannot be another nuclear accident because computers are now doing most of the job, well guess what - they were conceived by humans) isn't infallible.
Anyway, nuclear accidents do more damage than isolated wind mills blowing up, and it's not like this kind of crap is common, and the waste from fission energy cannot be disposed of on a short period of time (cost argument goes poof).
The only thing good about fission is how efficient it is at producing raw energy and can "dur dur replace our dependence on middle-eastern oil (even though you're not even that dependent on them anymore, but Canada) with PURE BREED US OF A URANIUM, YEAH BABAY".
Oh yeah, and emissions.
Cough... three mile island
The military submarines (NATO and USSR), too.
Alex P... I hope your at work getting paid and not at home writing all this.
If your doing this in free time i salute you!.. but not in a gay way!.
No, I'm just another namefeg on SS Ebaumsworld.
Namefeg?
namefeg?
Lurk moar.
I bet it made a shitload of energy before it ate itself though.
Just another reason why wind turbines are superior to us humans.
:[:[
the art of lurking is a curious one. Take days and days collecting and collating.. spend hours and hours murking and muddling, givie all you minutes to the faceless masses to be finally given the time and space to vent and rage.
Spend your time well young sire!. spend it well!
Go back to e-school and lrn2rply
Thats fricken cool looking, reminds me of that episode of House in Antartica
I was wondering how many House viewers would have seen the connection. It was just on a few weeks back and I thought, "nah, that couldn't really happen, could it?" Strange seeing a real windmill disintegrate in real-time versus the slo-mo version on House.
There's a portion of the video that was cut off that shows this is the fan on an Xbox 360 right before it RRODs.
WILL RROD BLEND ITSELF IN A SEA OF DOOM PLAYS HORROFdfdofpjhsdfsdhfsjlhdslfhsdfsfhlsfh
FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF
How many Ozones will it take to replace all these stupid Wind Turbines.
Saving the environment my arse, we need saving from the Wind Turbines.
They're launching an investigation so they can determine why they fail and figure out what one will fail next, duh!
...then they can sell tickets, once they know where to sell the tickets for!
They're launching an investigation so they can determine why they failed? I thought they failed BECAUSE they launched.
made in china i'll bet on what came down
ROFLCOPTER !!!1!!11
soi soi soi soi soi soi soi
It blowed up good. It blowed up real good!
I can blow you up real good too, but it will cost.
+1 for ancient Saturday Night Live reference!
Close! It was SCTV.
Is anyone else curious why they were filming this? And, not only filming it, but filming it from two different locations?
Because it was doing more noise than usual and it was windy as hell outside, maybe?
Oh wait, you're trying to imply that there was a missile involved and it was all plotted by the government, right?
Windy as hell outside? Hmm, this was a wind turbine, wasn't it? Designed to be used in...um...windy situations? Perhaps even designed to, I don't know, work better (generate more electricity) the more windy it is? Or perhaps the designers only designed it for quiet sunny days and it comes with a warning label not to use it anywhere the wind is blowing more than 2 mph?
"doing more noise than usual"? Really?
Just so you guys know, I was reading your comments at work, and laughed my fool ass off. And I don't even care about the damn windmill.
And I don't blend. I have a maid for that.
It looks like Jodie Foster is gonna be going into space!
I'm not going to wade through the comments, but has anyone explained how this video was made; why was someone taping it when it failed? Or was it a planned thing?
Beats me. Maybe they keep cameras trained on these things so they can figure out what went wrong in cases like this?
They knew it was going to fail. Windmills are *always* remotely monitored. The company sent their team out to check up on things (after disconnecting the turbine from the grid), and one of them likely felt it'd be a good idea to film it.
I've seen, hands-on, the brake of a 55kW turbine. It's insanely powerful. This is probably a 3MW tower; I can't imagine what it'd take for the line to break.
Because it was very windy (read: hurricane/storm) and the guys/people who taped it live close to that windmill, and are therefore used to the windmills excact noise/sound and how fast it rotates. It had probably been rotating at various over-the-nomal-speeds in some time (read: minutes) and they therefore had time to take the viderecorder out of the bag and start taping it.
Look, it was in the news and everything, it's for real. ok? the spokesman from Vestas (the windmills producer) was interviewed about the incident. It happens very very rarely.
It blends!
Shouldn't the blades automatically feather themselves off in that situation?
It had talked about killing itself for months, but I always thought he was kidding or just going through a hard time, and now I see this.
I don't get why they can't make a wind turbine made for high winds, makes sense. They have a small wind turbine at the science center in Cleveland. The only problem is that it is shut down all the time because of high winds. The turbine really can't be used to make effective power.
A few hours of turning in 40mph winds should equal a few days turning in 5mph winds.
Now that is a great video, good reason to stay away from these things in high wind!
Shameful comments. Not happy about reading them, either.
Shameful comments are shameful ;)
But seriously, they're pretty appalling.