First Time on a Nacelle

As our car was approaching Kao Koh Wind Farm, the turbines were getting bigger and bigger. As we were getting closer, one of my dreams was coming truer and truer.

A 4-YEAR LONG DREAM

Helping my mentor with wind farm micro-siting for a month, my mentor, P'Tom, asked if I wanted to go visit a real wind farm – and real wind turbines – with her sometime in July. Without thinking, I said yes out loudly and enthusiastically. Throughout my college years at Virginia Tech, I’d never gotten to see any real and fully-assembled turbine. I saw real ones on the way to Chicago but never once that I got to stand up close. And I’d been dreaming of it. Getting on the top of the nacelle sounded like a dream that I wanted it to come true so bad.

The first time I worked with wind turbines was when I did undergraduate research with Dr. Bayandor in the Fall semester of my senior year at Virginia Tech. I created 3D CAD models simulating flows through turbines to study downstream wakes. I got excited every time I saw that Fluent would take 6 hours, and sometimes more, to solve my fluid flow problems.

In the last semester of college, I worked with Dr. Paterson in theoretically accessing the accuracy of the Virginia Tech Stability Wind Tunnel in measuring airfoil lift and drag. I got to go inside the tunnel multiple times and see real airfoils – it doesn’t matter whether they were for turbine blades or airplane wings, they were just amazing. More than that, I also got to volunteer with the Virginia Tech Wind Turbine Team (VT WTT). We were the first team at Virginia Tech. Together with my other 20+ teammates, we built a small wind turbine. I was in the tower sub-team, and we designed a tower, of course, as well as the nacelle and 3D printed it out. The first time our prototype was tested in the Open Jet Wind Tunnel, everything flew apart. It was rather fun than disappointing though. It was such a great experience to be on the team. They even took us to a GE wind farm, but I missed it. Up to this point, I still hadn’t get to lay my finger on any real wind turbine tower.

SUMMER INTERNSHIP

This summer, I came back to Thailand for summer break before heading back to the States for graduate school. I asked my dad to connect me to a company with wind energy business. And this summer, I got to intern at B.Grimm, a foreign company with over 100 years history in Thailand. It’s such a shame to get an internship this way. I hated it, but I could not deny that because of my father’s connection, I was provided with great opportunities to be involved with many cool projects a normal student intern wouldn’t be able to.

I first got to do some site-survey for the company’s first wind farm project. We went to check the progress on met mast construction at the site, and that when I realized that rolling out a wind farm is not as easy as I thought. I did a research on wind potential in Thailand, so I would say that I have a good amount of knowledge of Thailand’s wind. However, as soon as we stepped on the site, I knew immediately that the knowledge I had was purely on the technical side.

Building a wind farm requires a lot of work not only on wind potential assessment but also on community relation. Everything is not as clear or simple as it seems to be even though you already have permits and legal contracts, especially in Thailand.

We signed a contract with the government to rent the land, but it doesn’t mean that we can do whatever we want on the land we have the right to. As soon as the villagers knew we were going to build a wind farm on the top of the mountains, they came in the area and started to plant some seeds and grow some potatoes. When we tried to ask them to leave our land, they asked for compensation – and that’s why they came in the first place. I understood now why many of the seniors told me that the hardest parts in project development are community relation and working with officials who always ask for red envelopes.

KAO KOH WIND FARM

And the time had come, after spending days working on MATLAB codes to calculate wake effects for wind farm micro-siting based on Jensen’s model, on the last Monday of my internship at B.Grimm, P'Tom told me that we were leaving for Kao Koh on Thursday. I got so excited I’d been looking forward to it for days.

On Thursday, my mentor and I got on a 6AM flight headed to Phitsanulok Province; and I hardly got any sleep. Honestly, I wasn’t so excited I couldn’t fall asleep; I was just addicted to a K-drama, “Six Flying Dragons”, and I stayed up late not being able to get my eyes off the TV screen. #Life

I actually had never been to Phitsanulok Province before. It’s not too crowded and reminded me of Blacksburg, Virginia. It’s a little less developed, to be honest…

I like it though. Every direction I turned my eyes to, I saw trees. I love trees, and I miss forest soaking. When I was in Virginia, I always went hiking. Even though I had an exam in a couple hours that I didn’t study for, I decided to spend the rest of my time in the wood instead.

It took us about an hour and a half driving from Phitsanulok to Kao Koh which is in another province, Phetchabul. I never knew before that people called Kao Koh, “Switzerland of Thailand”. I don’t think they are that similar, but I know for certain that this place is incredibly beautiful.

I also never knew it was this foggy here. Even it was already 10AM-ish, it still felt like 6 in the morning. The farm we visited is owned by the company called CEWA. The project was currently managed by GE during the turbine installation. None of the turbines were spinning yet since the farm was still under commissioning. For non-technicians, the turbines were not in operation and required some more set-ups. Therefore, it wasn’t open for public access (I’m also not too sure if they are planning to do so in the future or not). The only reason, we were allowed to go inside was because our company’s wind farm project was in the technology selection phase, so we visited as GE’s client.

We first went to their temporary office where the engineers were working on their paperwork at. Surrounding the office were many tall turbines, and they were huge. I knew on the top of my head that turbines are normally really big since I had been working with those numbers for a pretty amount of time, but I never got to vision the numbers physically with my own eyes. I couldn’t help but smile as I was looking at one of these beauties in the front of the office and taking pictures. I was truly amazed by how gorgeous these turbines are. Sounds like a nerd, but yes, I am.

We were waiting for someone to be free enough to take us around and, with our fingers crossed, hoping that the weather would be nice enough for us to up. For wind engineers, the weather must be taken very seriously. With a single lighting warning, all the work in progress must stop within 30 minutes. Everyone on the tower must come down and wait for another 30 minutes to make sure that the environment is safe enough to go up and work again. Lightning was probably the main factor that delayed the turbine installation from 3 months to 6 months. Thank God (I mean it), regardless of the rain, it was safe enough for us to go up.

As I said before, it was really foggy. Even though the wind wasn’t blowing fast, the fog seemed to swirl around and consume everything very quickly. I went inside the office for a few minutes, and by the time we came out, the turbine I saw earlier almost disappeared into the dense fog.

One of the GE engineers, P’Kem, took us around the farm. He drove us to the last turbine in the farm which is the best location to visit since from there, we could see the entire farm and all the other turbines.

INSIDE THE TURBINE

P’Kem was really nice and helpful. He explained to us everything about the control room in the base of the turbine.

I should have paid attention to the electrical parts he was explaining, but you know, I am a mechanical engineer; I have no idea what he was talking about. Instead, I fell in love with the bolt caps around the tower base. This solution is genius. The weather in Thailand is pretty humid, and we have one season deserving its name of “rainy season”. To protect the metal bolts and nuts from corrosion, they covered the components with plastics caps. Maybe, I should do this with my project in the future. #TEEHEE

I don't know how many to stress this, but safety is very important to engineers. A single mistake could mean life or death. To go up top, we were required to wear fall protection gears, which means full-body harnesses plus carabiners plus a heavy cable grabber and more, and that took us almost half an hour to wear.

We first climbed up to the second floor where the elevator is. Thinking about a regular elevator? Nope. It was just a tiny little-better-than construction elevator that can hardly fit two people inside. P’Kem had to make two trips up because he had to control the elevator. To be honest, it was a little awkward standing inside a tiny space facing a guy for almost 10 minutes.

I was left alone on the top floor while P’Kem was going down to pick up P’Tom. Just looking down gave me chills. I even asked myself how could I want to be a wind engineer if I’m afraid of heights. Well, I still want to be one, and hopefully, I will get used to this soon.

And because I had nothing to do and I was too scared to look down any longer, I tried to study the components resting on the top of me. The red ring is the turbine yaw bearing where the nacelle was resting at. The yaw is the component that turns the turbine nacelle to face the prevailing wind direction. Cool stuff.

After everyone arrived, we climbed up to another floor since the elevator stops here. And suddenly, the turbine started to make some alarming sound, swayed a little and the yaw bearing turned. That's when I found out that P'Kem had just manually controlled the nacelle to turn. It was scary and cool at the same time. My heart almost stopped beating.

The climbing didn’t stop on that floor, we had to climb up a little more to get inside the nacelle. Climbing up was not physically tiring at all, but mentally, I was exhausted.

When we were inside the nacelle, P’Kem showed us more cool stuff and explained us about the generator and the gearbox components. I’m not too sure if I’m allowed to post the pictures here, so I will leave you in wonder. I’m pretty sure you can just google wind turbine gearbox up. P’Kem explained to me about the crane on the top that is used to take heavy parts up for maintenance, and he showed me a small door on the nacelle floor that if you fall down, you’re getting a one way ticket to the ground.

I was so afraid I would drop my phone into that big hole, but luckily, I was not that clumsy at the time.

And now, it’s time to go up!

ON THE TOP OF THE NACELLE

I stuck me head out, and the wind was subtly blowing against my face. I had already fell in love with blades I made in Solidworks, but looking at the real ones with my own eyes, these turbine blades just got all of my heart.

My eyes were probably glittering while I was looking around. The view was just breathtaking. P’Kem and P’Tom already went up, but I insisted on just sticking my head out.

P’Kem finally succeeded at convincing me to go up. It wasn’t that dangerous since I had to secure the carabiners to the rail on the nacelle, but still, my heart was pounding with fright. My legs felt weak, and I could not do anything but sitting there. But honestly, it’s totally worth coming up here – worth the risks and the fight against my own fright.

From there, I could see the entire farm. I could see the layers of valleys and mountains slowly revealed as the fog was leaving the farm. There was light rain, so the weather was just perfect. I wish I could stay up there the whole day.

Staying up there for almost half an hour, it’s time for us to say goodbye. I didn’t want to go down at all, but we took a lot of time from P’Kem already.

We stopped by the office again to meet some GE engineers from America. One of them was from Virginia, and another went to the University of Maryland. After talking with them, I think I really want to work with GE, if they accept me.

One of the challenges the engineers faced during the wind farm construction at Kao Koh was turbine component transportation. Since each 60+ m long turbine blade came in one piece, they had to build the road with enough space for the truck to make a sharp turn. Another challenge they told me was working with Thai people and officers who always ask for red envelopes. That’s such a shame. I wonder if there would be a day, that my country would there be less of these people.

PHITSANULOK

We drove back to Phitsanulok, so we would have enough time to catch the morning flight back to Bangkok on the next day. Since we had a pretty big late lunch after the wind farm tour, we decided to skip dinner and went straight for ice-cream #lol

P'Tom told me about a must-get ice-cream here in Phitsanulok. We hunted it down and finally came to an area that looked like a mini-market. We walked further inside and saw an empty quite shop with no sign or anything. I wasn't sure if it was the place we were looking for or not, but from the ingredients in the front, I could tell that this place sells some kind of Thai desserts. I asked the lady if this is the "Cha Reun Pol Ice-cream Shop" or not, and she said yes.

They sell coconut ice-cream here which is very typical in Thailand, but what unique about this place is that you can add raw egg yolk on the top of the ice-cream. I was about to add rainbow noodles and sweetened lotus root as toppings in addition to the egg yolk, but the owner suggested that only the lotus root is enough. I believed him and got only the lotus root and the egg yolk. And P'Tom got sweetened potato cubes and egg yolk for toppings.

Once the ice-cream arrives, make sure you take pictures quickly because you will have to stir the egg yolk as soon as possible, so it got frozen by the ice-cream underneath. The frozen egg yolk tasted exactly like hard-boiled ones. It was kind of disappointing that it didn't taste a little salty as I expected, but it surely did add an interesting and subtle eggy taste to the ice-cream. The ice-cream itself was mediocre to me and a little too sweet, but it seemed like this place was loved by the locals. Local people came to market, walked straight to the ice-cream shop, ate ice-cream, and left the market without buying anything else.

This trip really made my summer. Honestly, after some reflection, I would love to be a wind engineer, despite my fear of heights.