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There's a Wind Turbine On the Horizon With Blades the Size of Trump Tower
merbs writes: Imagine a stretch of open ocean, populated by a swath of wind turbines with skyscraper-sized blades, whipping into the gusts like enormous palm trees. The vision is partly terrifying, partly inspiring, and being taken entirely seriously by the federal government and one of our top research laboratories. [Sandia National Labs, in an effort led by the University of Virginia] has unveiled the preliminary design for a new offshore wind turbine with 650-foot turbine blades. That, as its announcement points out, is twice the size of an American football field. It's also roughly the size of Trump Tower in New York.
Nope. Not going there. Too easy.
Have gnu, will travel.
Is there nothing that doesn't somehow tie back to XKCD?
https://xkcd.com/556/
Seriously, this is cool - but the Trump name drop is as bad as apple-baiting.
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
Mega installation which require mega capital which allow power companies to centralize production, control distribution, and charge consumers.
It is more efficient and less prone to failure to have distributed production with small scale wind turbines, photovoltaic, etc. on peoples' homes. But then, well, where's the profit to the established interests?
Just how quickly can these blades be secured and protected if wind storms approach? In many areas wind spouts (tornados over the water) are common events. So can these blades survive a 200 mph. wind?
I need to know how big it is in terms of Libraries of Congresses. Use standard units! That is approximately 12 LoC. Or 15 in Canadian LoC.
are so CONservative that they keep promoting Trump.
And in standard units?
You see what you did there? You ruined a perfectly good article by using Trumps name. This is the kind of shit we don't like here. we had a looong discussion on it yesterday......Tall cliff over jagged rocks.
having to navigate through those without getting chopped up.
For example in orbit, or on the moon. Weight issues would go away. No storms to worry about, and little danger of over spinning or collateral damage when a blade breaks.
THINK BIG PEOPLE! Big problems aren't solved by small minds...
But is it as big as his hair?
Imagine a stretch of open ocean, populated by a swath of wind turbines with skyscraper-sized blades
Now imagine those wind turbines getting hit by a hurricane.
Generally, bigger is better in wind turbines. Power generated is proportional to swept area, more mass means cleaner power which leads to more efficiency, and yes, larger, heavier turbine blades are more survivable in weather events. Modern turbines automatically self-furl as required, in much the same way that modern helicopter blades will auto-gyro in the event of an engine failure, and the mechanisms that do this work better if they are bigger.
All that being said, weather can destroy literally anything less than planet-sized. But if weather brings down a modern windmill, the damage done by the weather event itself is likely to dwarf the damage done by the failure of the turbine and tower - unlike the failure of a large hydro dam, for example. And afterwards you can rebuild it with very few worries about the kind of large-scale, long-lasting contamination that other forms of power production (such as coal or fission) create during a weather event failure.
Really only solar has a comparably benign failure mode in weather events - basically if you get hit by a flying chunk of solar panel or wind turbine blade, that's how you can get hurt, which is why some people prefer such things to be set up well offshore or in deserts.
living life in peace
Can we use sane measuring units please?
How many stacked bananas is that?
This does sound like something with Trump's name on it.
"Listen folks, we'll build turbines, and get the wind to pay for them."
Hahaha ... oh, wait ...
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
That's yooooouuuuuuuge!!!
NASA Wind Turbines approached this scale in the '80's. Unfortunately, this was a previously-unexplored area of aerodynamics for NASA, and they had mechanical stress and noise problems (including subsonics) and were all demolished. I think there was one near Vallejo, CA being taken down when I got to Pixar in '87, and one in Boone, NC, which famously rattled windows and doors.
The art has since improved. I took a ride to the top of the turbine at Grouse Mountain, that was fun! That's the only one I have heard of where you can actually get to see it from the top.
Bruce Perens.
... if a blade were the size of Trump's ego.
The "preliminary design" I'm working on has 1000 ft BLADES and SIX of them!
vaporware is vaporware. Until I see a working full size design, I'm calling BS...
That way we can just bicker about retarded american politics and whatever our pet issues are.
The title is pretty solid clickbait, and it has nothing to do with modern technology according to any reasonable interpretation of the phrase. So far, so good. However, the summary is too short and wasn't nearly condescending enough - you should really prefer Bennett Haselton for these sorts of things. He's a frequent contributor! On the whole I'd give the new management a 7/10 - good effort with room for improvement. That is all.
P.S. Fuck you BIZX you bunch of soppy cunts.
What happened to these? Seems like they would scale up a bit easier.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
A browser plugin that randomly replaces words with Trump.
Please Trump your dollars this way, please!
The bigger these things get, especially out in a place where you can't exactly put a fence around it, the more attractive it's going to be as a Spectacular Wackadoo Assault Target. Sit in a fishing boat and lop a few dozen armor piercing RPGs at crucial structural points, and kerplop. Whether it falls apart or not, it's trashed until millions of dollars of work is done to rebuild it.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
This is really cool actually "They're supposed to behave like palm trees." Even if the naysayers are right and this tech is a pipe dream or at least 10s of years out, this kind of innovative thinking is amazing.
Why not trying millions of 2-meter tall mini-turbines? Sure, wind speed at ground level isn't great, but it exists, multiply by millions... And ruin the scenery less, easier to maintain? What happens when a giant turbine breaks?
Preferably by the neck.
A windmill on this scale would to me seem to affect the wind. I mean you can't turn this big windmill without slowing down the wind. We slow down the wind, we are affecting the climate. Isn't this the thing we were trying to prevent when we started using green energy.
I have a solution, that fits in with the liberal plan for the Americas. Mandatory Free Abortions. We will abort all children being born on the planet. This will rapidly kill off the population. Then people will stop affecting the climate. Yes once we get this man made climate change, we will finally make the world safe for Future Generations.
The greatest problem in scaling up is mechanical stress as it doesn't scale nicely. There is both the stress from operation and the wind pressure. The latter is particular problematic as the size increase. The foundation should be bigger and the pylon would have to be thicker, which makes it more expensive and cause more drag. Bigger is more efficient, but it kind of defeats the purpose if two "half production" units are more cost effective.
I wonder what the "turning blades" will do to the center of gravity. Moving it away from the pylon doesn't sound like a good idea to me. The article mentions light weight blades, but blades are designed to be exposed to drag from wind, which in turn will create a force, which is located far from the pylon. The drag from producing 50 MW sounds.... massive even on light weight blades.
They're also sited downwind, unlike conventional wind farm projects.
They make it sound like a good idea. The blades are usually placed upwind to minimize the effect of the wind hitting the pylon. On a downwind turbine, when the blade is behind the pylon, the wind effect is severely reduced. This makes it a 2 blade turbine, with the blades placed asymmetrical. The constant hammering of blades going out and then in of the wind causes severe stress and is something, which is really unwanted. The longer the blades, the higher the speed at the end, which in turn causes the uneven load to become even more stressful. This mean it is a problem which increase with size.
Downwind turbines exist and they are generally used for small low cost units. The blades in the rear can be made to automatically turn the turbine into the wind, which removes the need for active controllers to do this task, hence low cost. They are less efficient and are more restricted on size due to being a more stressful design.
Most conventional wind turbine blades measure over 100 feet, and can generate 1 or 2 megawatts of power.
It should be compared with current production and prototypes rather than already installed and outdated wind turbines.
http://ing.dk/galleri/vestas-8-mw-moelle-endelig-samlet-i-oesterild-165630 (Danish engineering magazine in Danish, plenty of pictures)
According to this 2014 article, the prototype 8 MW wind turbine is installed. Each blade measures 80 meters (263 feet). The gear and generator is an upscaled version of the mass produced 3 MW offshore wind turbine. I read about a 10 MW prototype planned for the same location, but I'm unsure if they built it.
"The 50 MW turbine design could enable a 10x increase in power compared to today’s largest production turbines,"
That would make production turbines at 5 MW. Why do the article state current turbines to be 1-2 MW in one line and 5 MW in another? Regardless of how you view it, 1-2 MW is outdated and only used today if special reasons recommends it, like power grid requirements, noise limits or political intervention.
Power grid is another interesting issue to mention. Wind turbines are somewhat noisy when affected by gusts of wind, which make them demand more of the power grid. This mean 8 units of 1 MW can be used at some locations where 2 units of 4 MW can't, simply because scaling up the turbine scales up the unevenness in the power production and as with other noise issues, placing 8 units evens out the noise as they aren't hit by the same gust of wind at the same millisecond. This problem can be countered by installing new high voltage cables, but those aren't cheap. The question is what a 50 MW turbine will do towards this problem.
Wind turbines has a bit of an issue keeping 50/60 Hz and the bigger the generator, the bigger the problem. It can be fixed by converting AC->DC->AC, which is often done at offshore windfarms anyway because DC is preferred for underwater cables (AC has problems with capacitance, pushing voltage and current out of phase). It's not technically difficult to counter t
This is going to trigger my wind turbine allergy like crazy!
I'm no opponent to wind power, but the blades aren't really the stumbling block with making wind turbines larger and better. We want to build our wind turbines larger as they will rotate slower and capture more energy. The problem is transferring that energy through the hub of the turbine. More energy and slower revolution means huge torque which has to be sped up to generate electricity. Wind turbine gear boxes are still the constraining factor for improvements. Do we have any idea how these designs plan on handling this problem?
If anybody wants to read about an actual attempt to address this, here is a thesis on a system which uses wind turbines to run gravitational pistons to directly generate compressed air.
That should have come over land = drought. How much of the produced power will have to go to power desalination plants to keep us in water when we get reduced groundwater?
Wonder if something of this size will have much affect on aquatic life that depends on electrical and magnetic fields. something of this size would have to have a pretty large affect on the surrounding environment in this area.
They forbid flying RC models with tiny propellers and instead install such monsters. There is more than enough generating capacity for decades to come, if we start producing electricity by saving it.
It could be further LED lamps research & development, limiting air-conditioned and heated areas in houses by the law, limiting weight of the cars, etc. We spoil our space for living by these ugly generators so that lazy people may continue to over-eat in luxury.
Seriously, a good place to put these up for testing is on the east side of Lake Michigan. Loads of wind there. And a great deal easier to deal with than coastal areas.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
It has to come from somewhere. So where does the energy comes from? The wind. So the wind is now 9 mph instead of 10. No biggie, but the wind where these things are not is still ten, creating vortices from the wind shear. Also shear between the artmosphere. the ocean will affect the currents, causinfg changes in the ocean ecology.
On a small scale windmils may work fine, but once you stqart ramping up to the point of provding electricity for a small town, then you are going to have a major effect on the weather
Oh let's do it! Let's harness the wind and crack the storage problem and lay thousands of miles of connecting feeders and create shell companies that live off of subsidies and hammer consumers for long term investments to build massive machines in the most hostile, corrosive environment amortized over 30 years that need major maintenance and replacement parts in 10! Let's Suck 'Em dry!
We really need to build one of these things, because we can, and the first one should be special. To showcase the idea that offshore wind can run a whole continent from miles away, let's run the wires all the way to Toad Suck, Arkansas in (Perry County). With a population of ~10,000 the turbine's peak 50MW should be able to handle the pumps in the water treatment and distribution plant and the sewer plant for a few hours a day, with maybe a thousand or so watts left over for each resident. They'll be able to run their whole houses on one outlet and one circuit breaker because there won't be much left over. They'd better have natural gas or plenty of firewood for Winter heating.
The residents of Toad Suck are hardy folk who'd gladly participate in this experiment. Maybe they could even put up fake 'charging stations' so yuppie tourists arriving in electric cars to catch a glimpse of the community of the future can have the juice sucked right out of them, so Toad Suck can run their pumps for a couple minutes more every day.
Oh wait--- you thought this megalith was going to power your own city or sprawling suburb and ensure a bright and prosperous energy future for your kinfolk? That's funny. Not this one, not so fast. There's maybe around ten thousand of them left to build out there in the ocean before the great project is scrapped, as the last vestige of this great country has been laid waste by famine, revolution and debt to foreign manufacturers. The next one we build will power neighboring Conway County Arkansas to the North of Toad Suck. It's a better fit for this experiment because with a population of ~20,000, double that of Perry, we can determine whether a modern community can get by with only half the energy capacity of Toad Suck. The folks in Conway will be casting envious eyes towards Perry, with their one house with Xmas lights per block. Conway will be almost entirely dark at night, gotta run those pumps! Good time to invest in sustainable whale-oil futures!
Or we could build small self contained buildings protected from the elements close to where the energy is needed, that just produce gigawatt-years of electricity from a few tons of barely-radioactive Thorium seed fuel that can be stored in a single room.
___
Please see Thorium Remix and my own letters on energy,
To The Honorable James M. Inhofe, United States Senate
To whom it may concern, Halliburton Corporate
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I'm always amazed that wind and solar get all that starry-eyed looking fans every time it pops up in the news. It never seems to dawn on those people that wind and solar are *inherently stochastic*, and thus, can NEVER replace more stable forms of energy-delivery. Some little know facts: when the power of a windturbine is mentioned, it does NOT mean that it actually delivers that power. For instance, if it says "This is a 8MW windmill that can support 100000 households...that is simply a lie, in a de facto way. The vast majority only deliver ONE THIRD of their pretended maximum power (a lot even less). Thus, you need *3 times* as many just to provide the same power of an actual coal/gas/nuclear plant of 8 MW. It would be reasonable to compare the costs with the ACTUAL power being delivered, thus... but you *never* see that happen on any pro-green website or fancamp.
Apart from that, stochastic systems are inherently bad for giving you a stable energy source. That's why - another little detail most of the pro-camp seem to forget - is that for every windmill park, there NEEDS to be a classical plant (on gas, oil or coal) to provide backup, for all those times the demand and what's been asked for is not in accordance with eachother. (aka, to level out the peaks and valleys of energy-demand and delivery). THIS in turn means, such plants need to be always on (since wind and solar are inherently stochastic) with all the consequences of CO2 pollution, since those plants pollute. Even worse: they pollute *more* than they usually do, because they're running inefficiently most of the time: they always have to keep 'running', because they need to be able to shift gears and provide energy on short notice, but at times when the wind is giving enough, they're just running idle, which gives very bad combustion/burning up, and thus their CO2 emissions are far worse than when they're burning at full power. That's also why research has demonstrated the actual gains of reducing CO2 thanks to windmills is *far* less than what is claimed, if one looks at reality, instead of theoretical computations that act as if these backups aren't there. And they never seem to be there in any calculation of claim I've seen on a green site.
Now, it's not that I have inherently something against 'green solutions', but only if they're viable and make economical sense, and DO give us stable energy which is needed for a modern society. You can't well say to companies in your country: "ah, sorry, wind is a bit down today, so no electricity". And yes, I know the theory the greens always come up with, aka the super-smart all-encompassing grid, where every windmill is connected to everything else, and electricity flows from one end of the continent to the other. But frankly, that's just a pipedream. And it also makes no economic sense, since it would mean that, if, say, a major part of Europe needed energy but the wind wasn't blowing strong enough, it would need to get the electricity from the other half of the EU where is *was* blowing. However, that would mean you'd need DOUBLE as much windmills, since you always need to be able to safeguard energy delivery for the other part of the EU, then. But most of the time, that would mean you have a HUGE surplus (when the wind is blowing hard enough in about the whole of the EU). So that means half of your windmill park would have to stand by idle (or at least, electricity would have to be sold very, very cheap) most of the time. That's economic suicide.
All those things, you never see mentioned anywhere in the pro-camp, and that's what I find the most annoying. It's not a realistic picture one portrays, but an ideologically coloured one, where reality has to step aside for dogmatic reasoning. I find it highly annoying. How can one make an informed decision, if one actually hides, ignores or outright lies about all these aspects?
The truth is, if one REALLY wants to get a stable alternative, one is better off with geothermal and water(dam) and maybe tidal-wave derived energy sources. At least t
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
Why are these turbines sticking up into the fickle air when they should be sticking down into continuous ocean currents like the Gulf stream?
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Bird population reduction
Spam to make the idiot software happier.
I wonder how much spam it demands.
More?
That's beginning to approach the size of Trump's ego.
Who the fuck cares about american fiiffball ?????? Length is measured in meters. Idiots.
I see you've gotten a 'Troll' for your seasoned GP remark. Around here that means you're on the right track. There's a lot of delusion around here.
The 'smart grid' argument is a 21st century phenomenon where smart takes on the meaning that robust used to have. And the term robust has slipped too --- it used to mean engineered well enough to be truly resilient to failure, now it is often used to describe a mere excess of something, usually taken to absurd limits.
Advocates of 'smart' things center their argument on waste and inefficiency, as if we had attained some optimum level of energy production years ago and have been just pissing it all away. They'll reach into thin air (and other places) for figures like 30-50% waste and when someone presents a study that identifies a specific loss in a certain place that is say, 3-5%, unacceptable only in some perfectionist sense of engineering, those who claimed the higher figure will cry "See? I told you so!" as if their error of magnitude is unworthy of note. They will then go on to propose changes that require everyone to manufacture and purchase and deploy centrally monitored smart widgets everywhere that are all watched over by machines of loving grace to nip that 50% (oops actually less than 10%) in the bud. They're actually just saying, "We like to think about complicated things and (fragile) intricate networks, so every time you speak of increasing capacity we'll derail the discussion to talk about smart widgets and waste because no one can stop us."
Advocates of 'robust' windsolarwhatever multipliers run smack into your stochastic wall, but even though you have expressed it well it will not faze them a bit. If you point out that even at 'optimum' efficiency the yield for wind is typically 30% they'll take that unimaginably ludicrous number of turbines that would need to be built and triple it, problem solved. Your stochastic point is completely lost. There is no way to counter the idea that the wind is always blowing somewhere and these people are actually imagining giant wind turbines hopping back and forth across the continent trailing transmission umbilici behind to gather in throngs where the wind is the strongest. Or easier still, simply imagine them as having been built there. They saw a wind map one day and imagined that's the way it 'is' and do not recall the continent ever being under a stable high pressure dome for weeks with generally light and variable winds. Not one of them would be willing to gamble their own lives on the bet that there will be wind on any day in any location, yet they'll do their small part to drive society, by small degrees, to a point where it is hanging on a desperate and stupid gamble.
When someone mentions 'storage' technology it should be whispered, with the eyes gazing heavenward to beg forgiveness. For these folks know or care little of the devastating ecological horrors they are proposing. By going with that gigajoule-level storage paradigm to somehow salvage what is an (already) ridiculous idea of replacing few 1-10GW plants with many intermittent geographically dispersed 3-50MW sources... the storage solution for this level of energy is freaklishly and chemically insane. Storage is where the most bizarre bedfellows emerge from the shadows. They imagine a few lithium batteries the size of skyscrapers that rendered large areas (in other countries) uninhabitable in their manufacture, or (if they're more practical) great lakes of acid and lead plates. Of course if you press them on the matter they won't admit to imagining any of those things. Instead they are thinking of the little safe and friendly batteries in their cellphones and cars gently and lovingly encased in plastic, maybe a little bigger, connected by enough copper wire to render large areas (in other countries) into desolate open pit mines. Or taking temporary refuge from reality altogether --- imagin
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CONFESSIONS OF A SLASHDOT ENERGY AND LFTR FANBOI
Updated for 2016! All original unless noted! Browse! Engage! Plagiarize!
It's fun to discuss nuclear energy on Slashdot... A brief history of nuclear energy fear in these United States... You should fear everything besides nuclear energy... Solar drives California towards cannibalism, or your money back... There's a fire, and people pushing intermittent sources are blocking the exits... Hiding wonders of the modern world from the kids...Some energy priorities... 2016: The Year in energy... Meet the folks of TBA, a city willing to store spent nuclear fuel... Nothing is as patriotic as mining... A move to LFTR may be the only way to preserve modern society in the face of disaster (volcanism, Maunder minimum)... Can the grid 'black-start' after a disaster?... Sometimes you just have to point things out... some confuse Weinberg's '300 year best-fit for waste' two fluid design for other single fluid designs... or using solid fuel Thorium, which is pointless so long as uranium is available... yes it's full of dangerous glop, but it is useful and happy glop... yes, I think a LFTR could be developed and built within $4B... every path to biofuels leads to scorched-earth disaster, Thorium energy gives us the surplus to generate synfuels... Decommissionining of nuclear plants promotes an ugly 'vulture culture'... One way to do it: ThorCon, a thorium burner not breeder... Aside from your own yard or roof, solar and wind are losers... With LFTR surplus we could begin making diesel and fertilizer... Do it for the children... No-Plan-Stan tries to derail another discussion about Thorium... EVOLUTIONARY DEAD END COOKIES (serves 7 billion)... AND YOU MY FRIEND -- you would look especially good in Space ... To summarize most energy threads on Slashdot... Finally! Someone who feels personally threatened by solar net-metering!...
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