NV Energy's One Nevada Transmission Line project. Image via NV Energy.
I grew up along tornado alley. I lived on the hurricane coast. But Nevada’s winds are nothing to sneeze at.
While the wind may be attractive for those who wish to harvest its power and pipe it into our homes, it can be humbling. Just ask the engineers who designed the cranes used to construct the Hoover Dam bypass bridge. Ask the designers of the tall signs for Vegas World and Las Vegas Hilton. All toppled in the wind.
Just ask the engineers who designed the V-shaped towers for the $500 million, 235-mile One Nevada electrical transmission line for NV Energy. According to Dave Maxwell, senior staff writer at the Lincoln County Record, several of those towers were damaged in high winds in December.
Cory Lytle, Lincoln County Building Department director, told Maxwell that several of the towers developed cracks in some welds due to vibration caused by the high wind. Lytle said wind tunnel and other tests will be conducted so the towers’ design can be modified without having to completely revamp the design.
Collapsed cranes at Hoover Dam. (Federal Highway Administration photo)
Mark Severts, NV Energy public communications director, told Maxwell in an email that one structure actually fell down in Lincoln County during a windstorm before Christmas. Severts said other damaged towers are being laid down until the situation can be assessed.
According to NV Energy, the towers are a new design, which uses a unique tubular structure for most of the 164-foot-tall towers. They are supported by four main guy wires and workers “attach four additional smaller diameter guys at a different point on the tower to provide stability in wind conditions. The guy wires are attached to one of four anchors at each tower site. The structure’s legs are also tapered at the top and bottom to reduce weight and provide strength where it’s needed.” There are to be 766 such towers.
The structures were tested for more than a year in a variety of strong wind conditions, NV Energy said. “To inhibit wind-induced vibration, Power Engineers added cross-braces and smaller-diameter guy wires that attach to the same anchors as the main guys.”
The laboratory, apparently, could not duplicate all that nature could deliver.
Perhaps, those who want to harvest the wind should study their designs a little closer to see if they will withstand the hurricane-force gales Nevada weather can deliver every spring and year-round.
4TH ST8 
They have a design in place that works and has been working for the better part of the last century. I truly hope the intent was to spend less money on these towers but I bet it wasn’t.
If it is not broken whay do we have to fix it?
NV Energy’s experts said, “The installed cost of the tapered steel pole guyed-V structure was similar to the installed cost of the least expensive guyed steel lattice structures.”
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Now they have to do some modifying, effecting the cost comparison.
NV Energy is recieving some federal subsidy this, right? So we end up paying. Hope they get it right soon, so the cost remains as planned.
Should have gone with what they know works here.
[…] and their engineers and their lawyers figure out what to do about those power line towers damaged by high winds in Lincoln County in December. This is according to an 8-K form filed with the Securities and […]
[…] resources — wind — has slowed the project by at least six months, if not longer. In December, a windstorm in Lincoln County caused harmonic vibrations that cracked welds in V-shaped transmission line […]