Reinvented wind turbine generates five times more energy than its competitors | Hacker News Reader

Reinvented wind turbine generates five times more energy than its competitors

fastcompany.com

> In ideal conditions, where the wind is at its strongest, one wind catcher unit could produce up to 400 gigawatt-hours of energy. By comparison, the largest, most powerful wind turbine on the market right now produces up to 80 gigawatt-hours.

Up to now, I was under the impression that wind turbines produced energy, but apparently they just store it. [eyeroll]

Seriously, looking up the specs on the turbine they're comparing against, the actual advertised units are 80GWh per year. I imagine that these units are chosen to reflect the cumulative result of a variable power source plus any required downtime.

If you wanted to compare these against continuous power sources (nuclear, natural gas, coal), then the 80GWh/y is equivalent to 9.1MW, and the 400GWh/y is equivalent to 45.6MW. So you'd need about 22 of these new units to have an annual output equivalent to a single 1GW nuclear plant.

Not that bad if 22 of these could replace a nuclear plant

I haven't done the math, and I could be way off, but probably 22 square miles of solar panels could replace a nuclear plant. At probably less cost, considering that the latest nuclear plant (perhaps the last to ever be built in the USA) is projected to cost over $27 Billion.[1] Billion with a B.

PV solar has, unfortunately, the same problem as windmills. How do you store the energy for a "rainy day" (heh heh)? Nuclear plants are pretty good at operating in rainy weather and at night.

[1] https://apnews.com/90bbe5cc8e3a1a6077b9e4318e2bbf7e

~14,000 acres of solar panels (plus maintenance and stuff) is no easy feat tho.

Coincidentally, that's the size of the largest solar park in the world -> https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhadla_Solar_Park

Nice link.

Loosely speaking, that park is about equal to a nuke (most nuke plants are in the range of 800 to 1000 MWe). At about 5% of the cost of the Southern Energy nuclear plant I mentioned. (pedantic note: I think of a "nuke" as a single reactor, the Southern plant actually has two. Many nuclear plants are twins).

Now if only we could get that pesky energy storage thing figured out. About 14,000 adjacent acres of Li batteries ought to do it, right? :-) Or maybe we just put the batteries under the solar cells?

I think these units are used because it gives a more favourable comparison to existing turbines. It demonstrates that a developer could make more money. Nameplate capacity alone is probably not comparable when the power curve is so different to a normal turbine.

A big factor could be how closely they can be spaced compared to traditional turbines. I guess wake effects would be very different.

> Heggheim explains that traditional turbines are 120 feet long and usually max out at a certain wind speed. By comparison, the Wind Catcher’s blades are 50 feet long and can perform more rotations per minute, therefore generating more energy.

Thats not how the energy equation works.

In addition to the concerns already raised here, one other thing stuck out to me: the whole system is easier to manufacture, build, and maintain. Heggheim says it has a design lifespan of 50 years

My naive feeling is that it's extraordinarily difficult to design for 50 year lifespan in an environment as hostile as the North Sea. This isn't a naval vessel. You can't just keep slapping fresh coats of paint over everything.

Am I wrong? Wouldn't salt ions, seawater, trace sea minerals, etc eventually just permeate everything?

https://images.fastcompany.net/image/upload/w_596,c_limit,q_...

It dwarfs land based high rise structures.. how stable it would be in gale force winds and storms of deep sea?

> "If you have one single turbine and you need to change the blade, you have to stop the whole operation,” says Ronny Karlsen, the company’s CFO. “We have 126 individual turbines, so if we need to change the blade, we can stop one turbine"

Sounds dangerous

Comparison is hard to judge, without knowing energy per what? Per dollar? Per pound? At the same wind speed?

It has like 100 times more moving parts that can break.

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