I'm tired of ridding the unpredictable lows my job. So I've been job hunting. I got offered a position as a turbine technician by GE. The job description says I will be in charge of a certain area so my drive time is pretty much set which I like. Can anybody share their experience in that field? Both good and bad. And more importantly whats the room for growth like if any? I'm teachable and drive towards learning anything that pertains to any job I do no matter how big or small. I always carry a tally book with me to jot down notes and advice when I'm in the field.
They are not windmills bud, you’ll get a lot of slack in the field for calling them that. Wind turbines is the proper name. So my questions for you are, how old are you, do you have any electrical experience and can you read schematics. I’ve been doing it for a couple of years now, feel free to message me if you want and I’ll give you my phone number. By the way, we usually call GE good enough.
I have a friend of a friend in the field. He travels all over and works very long hours. The money is great but living out of a suitcase gets old fast.
Its got to be better than working on cell towers. Ha ha you calling it a windmill gives away your age a bit. Thats what I call them too. They look fun and fascinating to work on at least.
I am not a tech but have a son in the wind turbine business. He would suggest that the new administration will be better for the business as a whole. Since he got into it, solar has made gains and he tells me solar/wind turbines are now often lumped together at a new site. As far as the company you are about to join, he told me they recently introduced a super size turbine that utilizes a 2 piece blade. That company as a whole has gone through a lot of change and is far less diversified than it was say 8 years ago. Debt is an issue and of course the aviation side of the business is hurting badly at this point in time. My take away would be give it a try but keep your options open.
Had experience with them but that was many moons ago. Fairly simple construction. Thin foil blades light enough to where you could simply blow and it would spin but not for very long. But I see based on pics that things have changed so I'd assume that one would have to have one, a heck of a set of lungs and two, legs strong enough to run back and forth between a field full of these to keep them all spinning.
The problem with wind at least in CA the times the wind is the highest is at night. And since the power is not stored it dosent line up with peak usage. And a funny thing about solar. Now they are talking about spraying the atmosphere to block the suns radiation to fight global warming of the co2 in the atmosphere. Wont that affect solar panals and farming. Truly nuts. I would have to ask the dr fauchies of climate science spare us the stupidity.
I work on the front end of these projects developing, designing, and overseeing construction on them. Once our sites are built and operational, we typically hire on 4-10 FTE's to oversee the operations and maintenance needs of the project. It might be worth seeing if there are any wind farms operational or nearing construction in your area that you could see about applying to. Working directly for a turbine manufacturer can be a good option if there aren't any sites nearby or as a stepping stone into something else. Those spots are usually shorter term either during construction/setup of the wind farm or through the end of the warranty period in operations (5 - 10 years typically). It can be an extremely physically demanding job though - the inside of the turbines get warm during the summer and there is a lot of heavy lift and climbing around that has to happen. Most newer turbines have an "elevator" built in to make the climb a bit easier (it's more of a climb assist system), however they're also creeping up in height. There are now a handful of colleges offering a 2 year degree plan for turbine tech's you might look into if you're serious about this. Most of these guys are getting hired right out of those programs (some before they're even finished) and are seeing north of $55k/year + full benefits depending on the job, company, and other specifics.
Glsa72, Interesting. You mentioned the warranty period of 5-10 years... Do you know what the typical lifespan of one is? Also, what happens when one is no longer operative or retired based on the economics of rebuilding (if that is possible) vs replacing?
Warranty period means a little different in this field. You can sign a service agreement (warranty period) anywhere from 2 years all the way to 30 years or even more depending on what the customer wants/needs. After that agreement is up, the customer can decide to to the maintenance on the towers and buy their own parts. As far as the life span, if taken care of there are sites I was at during construction and they are still producing power. If inspections are kept up there are sites that I know of that has been running for a good 15 plus years. It all depends on if the techs keep up with maintenance, clean up after themselves when done troubleshooting issues and actually troubleshoot the issue correctly instead of making it work. there are times when main bearings, gearboxes and generators will go out, which like a car may have an issue in the first few year or may not have any issues for the next 10 years on major components. So those will get changed out. As far as completely rebuilding/ replacing, it would come down to how much it has been costing the customer to operate said site full of towers verse what it will cost to tear everything down and put up a brand new tower and get a service contract.
^ Adding to the above comments. We typically bundle the warranty into the overall financing of the project when it's built. Kind of like buying an extended warranty with a car at the dealership when it's new, it all comes down to what kind of deal the turbine OEM's are willing to cut and how risk averse you as an operator are. We have sites that use tier 1 (name brand) turbines where we took the bare minimum warranty and we have others that are using less common equipment where we stretched it out further. It can also come down to the requirements of whoever is buying our power as to what type of warranty coverage they require us to have. We model either a 25 or 30 year lifespan on all of our equipment. Wear and tear will happen and is factored in, however the overall project is designed to last at least that long. A solid portion of our sites aren't running the equipment for that full life span before undergoing what's known as a "repower" - this is where we remove the old equipment and reinstall brand new turbines. We recently completed a repower on a site that was about 12-13 years old as it made economic sense to do so. These repowers are what's taking place on > 95% of the older projects out there. Most of the infrastructure is already in place and the turbines themselves have gotten exponentially better in just the last 5-10 years. I'm seeing very few projects getting completely retired and torn down with nothing new going in their place. Our operations/maintenance crews are sticking with the sites when we undertake one of these repowers. They may need to get undergo some new training to familiarize themselves with the different equipment, however their jobs are secure. Should a site be completely shut down, we undergo a remediation that puts the property back into as close to the same condition as when we found it as humanly possible. We remove the transmission lines, turbines, and even dig out most of the foundation to a specified depth. Topsoil is replaced and grasses/crops/native vegetation is reseeded or replanted. Prior to construction we take full photographic documentation and LIDAR elevation profiles/contours to ensure we're able to restore things back to natural should we need to.
ha ha. yep what could possibly go wrong. I for got We are all to be saved now. The world has become a glowing flower ounce again. If you do go into the wind mill business. For a prank . Fix one of them noise makers the Germans put of the Stuka Dive Bomber to one of them windmill blades. That would be a blast.
