Reading the Plain Dealer over the last few weeks you've seen that our Cleveland Icebreaker Neah Bay and the Canadian icebreaker (5 times heavier than the US breaker) were both unable to get through the ice ridges at Fairport Harbor. The above photo is one of these ridges, I estimate it to be 20 feet high against the flank of Dike 14.
We can't put up turbines in the lake any time soon, because we don't have the engineering data on the pressures and problems that lake ice will pose to a turbine tower lake bottom foundations. Sure, we have the water intake crib - which has successfully withstood decades of ice, but is the Crib’s design commercially feasible under every wind turbine? How many winter seasons will a turbine prototype foundation be tested? Some winters the Lake doesn’t even ice up. Who's working on this engineering? The wind on the Lake is nice and steady, but I think the Cleveland Foundation, the Cuyahoga County Commissioners, and prosecutor Bill Mason are over their heads…what's wrong with installing land based turbines now, and beginning our lake engineering simultaneously?
By choosing a goal which is many years out of reach, are we looking for a way to put off advancing towards alterative energy?
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