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Floating Wind Turbine Platform
Sterling D. Allan writes "Inventor Tom Lee is nearly ready to strike a deal to install a flotilla of offshore wind turbines, combined with hydrogen-generating capability and battery storage, which he says will enable them to have the consistency needed to be a primary grid energy provider, and not just supplemental to the gird. The floating platform enables them to take the turbines to where the wind blows and birds are few, and people even fewer. His objective in commencing this project 12 years ago was to come up with a power solution for developing nations."
I know that the article summary took great pains to point out that few birds are out this far from land, but you just know that one or two will be killed by one of these turbines. It is inevitable.
That said, no matter how much alternative energy sources are promoted by one faction of the environmental movent there will always be the fringe who hates any energy source that benefits humans. It is as if humans are not part of nature and that we are just a fucking infection that is destroying the Mother Earth (Matrix Agentism). It is chilling how much the rhetoric of Earth First! and other enviro-whackos mirrors that of fundamentalist theologies.
I hope this project can get funded. We need energy and there is no reason for us to not develop these resources for human use.
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
According to this study reported by the BBC (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4072756.stm) windfarms pose a low risk to birds. I believe buildings in general are far more of a threat.
And even if windfarms did pose a danger to birds, the benefits of a clean, sustainable energy source so far outweigh the downside of a few dead pigeons here and there, that it's silly to even contemplate the matter.
"nearly ready to strike a deal to install"
in technology terms, you have got nothing.
I was ready to make a deal with a nice Nigerian fellow, but that doesn't mean a darn thing.
I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by. - Douglas Adams
More Expensive: Marine Goods.
Even More Expensive: Aero Goods.
Aero, electronic goods exposed to a marine environment ... Could we make that Monopoly Nuclear running NT too? Now that would be expensive.
Really, who knows, clever people can make anything work.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Ok first off in order to do this one would need some extremely long chains hooked up to extremely gigantic concrete anchors. They'd likely make ones that hold bouies down look like mere bricks. Secondly, how would the generated power get to land where it can be used? Third, who would maintain these? The Coast Guard (I'm a USCG vet btw) maintains aton currently with their many 180' bouy tenders but those don't go that deep and the vast majority are by the nature of aton relatively close to port not in the ocean deep where these would be. The chains and anchors which need regular maintenance would require an ocean going tender to maintain these at the cost of several million dollars to build and multi-millions to maintain the ships and her crew each year. I'm not saying its not worth the money I'm just pointing out that there's a lot more to it than a bunch of floating windmills. I don't think an oil-like platform to put them on would work due to the sheer size they'd have to be - and with potentially incredibly small returns.
Zip on Stanbury Resources.
If this is such a great technology, why isn't it covered under a patent?
When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.
Try to think about the size of a wind turbine in comparison to the SURFACE AREA OF ANY MAJOR OCEAN. Seriously, for a just a moment. Quick google facts:
Surface area of the Pacific:
166 million square kilometres, 64 million square miles
Typical size of a wind turbine:
Blade span (total diameter): 200 - 350 feet
Mast height: 150 - 300+ feet
Arranging 4 of these together on a platform the size of a (american) football field (360*160 = 57600 sq. ft.) would mean that you could cover the Pacific with these if you managed to produce a hair under 31 billion platforms...
Let's say you want to have a total of 1000 platforms, each with 4 turbines. This would require (approx) 0.00000322% of the surfacea area of the Pacific. It is unlikely that such turbines would have a measurable effect on global weather patterns.
I'm not trying to flame you here, just want to underscore that the amount of energy contained in global weather patterns and the size of the oceans (from which much of this energy flows from) completely dwarfs almost anything we can realistically throw at it right now. It has been estimated that it would require thousands to millions of times our current planetwide energy output to reach a level where weather patterns could be altered.
"Nokia is not a country, it's the capital of Finland!" -Moderated "Informative". Yeesh.
Guys, wake up.
This article is barely worth discussion. These are the same clowns who set off our collective bullshit alarms in a previous Slashdot article. It's a shame they ganked that domain name(opensourceenergy.org), it would have made a great name for a collaborative site for use by actually reputable people.
There must be a good reason it's not being done now.
I shudder to think what the world would be like if, to pick a random example, da Vinci thought the way you do.
(why the hell don't we reprocess [pbs.org] like France/Japan?)
You start by not mentioning that France and Japan do it.
Frighteningly, I'm quite serious.
"Yes, let's look at how many new refineries have been constructed in the US in the last 30 years. And how many nuclear plants have been constructed in the same timeframe."
Instead of blaming the relatively weak and powerless environmentalists (how many seats does the Green party have in our beloved Congress?), maybe you should consider that Texaco, Unocal, Chevron, etc, don't exactly want to see cheap and safe nuclear power crushing their sale of natural gas/coal. It's also more than likely that by keeping refining capacity at artifically low levels, that they can string along the public for a longer period of time on a dwindling supply of oil.
"Your sarcasm doesn't measure up to reality, does it? The fact is, if the US had been continuing to build out its nuclear power capacity we may not be discussing energy strains the way we are today."
It's far more likely that a paranoid public, feeding on information from hyped up reports from 3-Mile island, is taking a "not in my backyard" approach to this.
Think hard.
How much power does the environmental lobby really have in this country?
Facts:
1. No Kyoto Treaty
2. Current administration/party in power refuses to recognize global warming, and went as far as to hire a guy to CENSOR reports on this topic.
3. Scaled back clean air regulations.
4. Not a SINGLE Green Party Senator (check out the Bundestag for comparison)
5. Massive subsidies for an energy sector that's been posting record profits.
Part of the point of the idea is that it will cost much less than current offshore wind parks: you don't need to build rigid bases underwater on the seabed, you just need a sturdy mooring. Everything can be built on land and tugged out. Unlike those resting on the seabed, you can cheaply place it at depths (and distances from shore) where only a oilrig-sized cashflow would justify the cost of solid pylons up from the seabed.
sudo ergo sum
Firstly, it's quite possible for a high pressure system to drop wind speeds all over the UK (And bring in a very cold snap at the same time); not the best scenario for a blackout.
Secondly, the point that I raised about baseload generation was and has not even been addressed. Wind power still gets a 'free ride' at the moment - wheras a gas powered station, for example, can be switched on to provide backup for an unplanned outage elsewhere, a wind farm cannot. So you do indeed need installed nuclear/hydro/fossil capacity equal to total maximum demand+20%. Wind power cannot be counted into this.
Normal thermal power plants act as both contricutor and backup. Wind can only ever be a contributor, unless you implement the system in my first post, which makes it fantastically expensive. Switching NG plants on and off (especially newer combined-cycle ones, ironically), is also quite wasteful even if you can predict when you will do it.
Third, we don't usually try and balance electric grids over too huge a region, as it is very hard from a technical viewpoint. Doing this specifically to accomodate wind power should be chalked up as another extra cost. And in the UK, wind power will add to the existing imbalances - most generating facilities are in the North and West, which are also the best wind sites, and most usage is in the south east.
To summarise: Wind power does require more backup building, unless it only makes a trivial contribution. The article you quote tries to dodge issues more than address them.
The more individual turbines the more moving parts you have. The blades aren't what wear out. True larger blades cost a lot but the long term costs come from maintaining the machinery in the turbine. So fewer larger turbines is a more cost effective way of gathering wind power.
As far as stacking, you're already really high up. I know the turbines they are proposing to put in Vineyard Sound are 120m tall or so. I think that's just the tower too. The blades up higher. So the tower would have to be twice that and much stronger since you'd be applying force even further from the base. Maybe they do this with smaller turbines but I'm pretty sure costs get out of hand quickly.
To summarise: Wind power does require more backup building, unless it only makes a trivial contribution. The article you quote tries to dodge issues more than address them.
It depends what you consider trivial. The article I quoted is talking about wind as a source of 20% of our needs. I think most of the arguments against probably break down when you're only talking about 1/5 of the total supply, but organisations such as Porritt's renewables commission find themselves having to argue hard even for that.
Technology helped build the holocaust gas chambers. Technology allowed the East Germans to make automatic machine guns to fire at anyone attempting to escape to West Berlin. Technology allowed the Kamar Rouge to kill with ease and impunity.
It's what we do with the technology that makes the world better or worse.
Thus I could use technology to mail you a steaming pile of pooh (if I knew your snail mail address), or build a catapult to fling it at you, but I won't to that. I'll just explain that in this instance you're mistaken.
Have a nice day!
The world will not get better through technology. We must seek to be better people.
(Many miles of telephone and power line were torn down in Africa because the natives, who weren't using those services themselves, wanted the metal for other things...)
Well, let that be a lesson for all of us. An "infrastructure" devoted to the elite will simply be destroyed by the majority who are being starved by said elite.
[You have a stable society when some nut guns down a schoolyard and the law doesn't change.]
Who cares? Just keep a few backup gas plants around for when the wind doesn't blow.
There is only so much gas in the world. If the gas plant has to operate 1 day per year because there isn't enough wind, than is 364 extra years of gas supplie to run that plant.
Yes you need to maintain that gas plant even when idle, but even with that, I'd prefer to save gas where we can.
Can you imagine what the world would be like today if every inventive mind rationalized new concepts the way you just did?