Physical Danger

Physical Danger

The Samsung 7MW (no, it's not a phone) wind turbine has the longest blade length: nearly 280 feet (source). But that's exceptional. The most common industrial wind turbines are more than 200 feet tall with blades more than 115 feet long (source).

Cool, huh? Totally—until it's your turn to climb it. Depending on your job on a wind farm, you may end up climbing a tiny little ladder up the side of a 400-foot turbine in order to repair its nacelle.

 
If this can happen to the fiberglass blades of a wind turbine, just imagine what can happen to you. (Source)

Things...very bad things, can happen from the ground, too. Perhaps you work on a wind farm whose construction was overseen by an engineer who's unfamiliar with U.S. safety standards (source). Maybe there's an electrical fire. During the winter, ice that has accumulated on the blades can fall and kill a person (source).

There's even a thing called blade throwing. And no, that doesn't mean when you throw knives against the wall in frustration. It means the wind turbine "throwing" blades at you (i.e. a blade literally falls on and lands on the ground, or on you). So...keep your head up and on a swivel at all times.

If that's not dangerous enough, beware "wind turbine syndrome," in which sub-sonic frequencies from the wind turbine cause headaches and vertigo and insomnia (source).