Graceful – Lincoln Electric’s Wind Turbine

Barely 15 minutes east of downtown Cleveland on I-90, you see something white gracefully standing above the vertical noise of the cityscape.

No, not the car-wash sign, the wind turbine! That’s Lincoln Electric’s 450′ statement that Ohio has wind (No, not that kind! Sheesh.) and the drive to go after harnessing it.

You can read all about its details in my earlier posts on its arrival at the Port of Cleveland a few months ago and a second post with the first glimpse of it fully assembled. No need to rehash all that stuff. What I do have for you today is a bunch of photos that I took yesterday as I was coming home from the Cleveland Science Center.

I’m posting all of them so you can get a real sense of how big this thing is and how (Dare I say it? Dare! Dare!) beautiful it is.  I’ll take dozens of these over a coal fired power plant any day.  There’s even a bonus shot of the turbine at the Science Center thrown in for comparison.

So, next time you are heading east out of Cleveland on I-90, keep an eye open around 222th St.  You can’t miss it.  It’s our hopefully brighter future standing tall and staring you in the face.

Update (6/16/11 3:30p): Just found a time-lapse video of the turbine being assembled. Way cool!

Second Update (8/16/11): Lincoln Electric posted a great video detailing the construction of the turbine.