Lighting hits Texas wind turbine

 Fox News:

A North Texas wind farm is one turbine down thanks to what officials believe was a devastating lightning strike to one of the massive structures on Friday afternoon.

Videos from witnesses and firefighters showed the wind turbine generator ablaze and disintegrate in the sky over Crowell, Texas.

Doppler radar indicated there was plenty of lightning strikes around the Foard City wind facility before firefighters received the call about the high-altitude fire.
...

The fire chief estimated there were 800 gallons of oil in the gearbox and around 1,300 gallons of mineral oil in the ground-level transformer, which caused the smoke to appear dark black in the sky.
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"We’ve done training with the wind farm company, and they are not safe to approach during that scenario. There weren’t any people in danger of being hurt, so we let the fire do what it is going to do," Shaw said.

Texas produces more power from wind than any other state, and the U.S. Energy Information Administration reports the Lone Star State is home to more than 13,000 turbines.
...

It is ironic how much oil is needed to operate the wind turbines.  Multiply 13,000 turbines gallons of oil in the gear box and in the ground level transformer and you find that it takes a huge amount of oil to operate them.  Texas is also planning a huge wind farm off the coast of Galvest which has a steady flow of wind.

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