Single-bladed floating wind turbine promises half the cost, more power
October 28, 2023 7:27 PM Subscribe
The video does a good job of explaining it ChurchHatesTucker-- it's a blade that can be made in one piece, so easier manufacturing, looks like a double blade in action.
Neat that it works 'against' the wind (at low wind speeds it's almost fully 'fallen over' but the faster the wind the more lift it gets, so it pulls itself more horizontal, therefore getting less efficient) so it can keep working at higher speeds.
Looks like their demo is, at most, a 2m/6ft blade at the moment, hopefully they'll prove their concept enough to end up getting funded to build a bigger prototype.
posted by Static Vagabond at 9:45 PM on October 28, 2023 [4 favorites]
Neat that it works 'against' the wind (at low wind speeds it's almost fully 'fallen over' but the faster the wind the more lift it gets, so it pulls itself more horizontal, therefore getting less efficient) so it can keep working at higher speeds.
Looks like their demo is, at most, a 2m/6ft blade at the moment, hopefully they'll prove their concept enough to end up getting funded to build a bigger prototype.
posted by Static Vagabond at 9:45 PM on October 28, 2023 [4 favorites]
by combining the ocean, variable-geometry infractructure, and giant moving rotor blades, this viscerally scares the crap out of me
posted by glonous keming at 10:03 PM on October 28, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by glonous keming at 10:03 PM on October 28, 2023 [2 favorites]
What a surprising axis for it to be ?self-regulating? on! Cool!
posted by clew at 10:09 PM on October 28, 2023
posted by clew at 10:09 PM on October 28, 2023
This looks so cool if it works! I'm a bit worried about how it will react to wind gusts, e.g. pulling it down into the water. But if you don't need to anchor it to the sea-bed, it sounds like a great way to get quick and cheap wind power.
posted by TheophileEscargot at 12:12 AM on October 29, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by TheophileEscargot at 12:12 AM on October 29, 2023 [1 favorite]
Intriguing. I hope they can get this working with some haste, because If we don’t solve the climate catastrophe, literally nothing else matters.
posted by Devils Rancher at 4:07 AM on October 29, 2023
posted by Devils Rancher at 4:07 AM on October 29, 2023
But if you don't need to anchor it to the sea-bed, it sounds like a great way to get quick and cheap wind power.
It is anchored to the sea floor (there's even a picture of the chains) but it's not supported by the sea floor, as far as I can tell. So I don't know if it needs to be drilled or can be held in place by gravity and a very heavy, y'know, "anchor." Like just a big spiky piece of iron or whatever that you drop into the water?
The article says:
the design lends itself to easy manufacture at more or less any harbor facility capable of handling the 200-m (656-ft) blade required for a 12-MW turbine, and it's similarly easy to tow out to site and attach to a ground anchor and power export cable for installation.
So apparently "attaching to a ground anchor" is easy, but I don't know enough to know if "ground anchors" themselves are easy to come by.
Also...
Looks like their demo is, at most, a 2m/6ft blade at the moment
This image from the main link makes it seem like they've built something full scale, but looking at it more closely, maybe that's just a computer rendering?
posted by OnceUponATime at 5:31 AM on October 29, 2023
It is anchored to the sea floor (there's even a picture of the chains) but it's not supported by the sea floor, as far as I can tell. So I don't know if it needs to be drilled or can be held in place by gravity and a very heavy, y'know, "anchor." Like just a big spiky piece of iron or whatever that you drop into the water?
The article says:
the design lends itself to easy manufacture at more or less any harbor facility capable of handling the 200-m (656-ft) blade required for a 12-MW turbine, and it's similarly easy to tow out to site and attach to a ground anchor and power export cable for installation.
So apparently "attaching to a ground anchor" is easy, but I don't know enough to know if "ground anchors" themselves are easy to come by.
Also...
Looks like their demo is, at most, a 2m/6ft blade at the moment
This image from the main link makes it seem like they've built something full scale, but looking at it more closely, maybe that's just a computer rendering?
posted by OnceUponATime at 5:31 AM on October 29, 2023
Those gusty high winds will have big waves too. I think that's a very complicated simulation to do. What are the forces on the tower, blade and counterweight buoy with all those movements?
posted by jjj606 at 5:58 AM on October 29, 2023
posted by jjj606 at 5:58 AM on October 29, 2023
Just for the US alone, there is more than 50 GW of offshore wind in the pipeline (i.e., in planning, permitting, or construction). And, they will likely be opening up off-shore wind leases off the coast of Oregon in the coming year or two, adding that much more space for potential offshore wind farms. The east and gulf coasts mostly have shallow sea beds so the wind towers can usually be anchored directly, but on the west coast generally the seabed drops off quickly so they will need to install floating turbines.
All of that to say: there is a huge amount of offshore wind that is going to get built in the US and elsewhere in the coming years, and anyone who comes up with a genuinely better design is probably going to become very wealthy. This sounds like a promising design but there are a lot of engineering and regulatory hurdles between where they are now and having a big floating wind farm of these.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:16 AM on October 29, 2023 [3 favorites]
All of that to say: there is a huge amount of offshore wind that is going to get built in the US and elsewhere in the coming years, and anyone who comes up with a genuinely better design is probably going to become very wealthy. This sounds like a promising design but there are a lot of engineering and regulatory hurdles between where they are now and having a big floating wind farm of these.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:16 AM on October 29, 2023 [3 favorites]
Floating wind is widely seen as the next step in opening up new windy sites in locations where the seabed drops away making fixed wind too expensive or to difficult to install.
There are a bunch of people doing research and some generating deployed floating wind, I would guesstimate in the 10s of MWs globally. Most of the floating wind uses existing wind turbine designs, IE the 3 bladed horizontal axis Danish concept. They are basically using proven wind tech and investigating the best ballast and mooring systems.
So this system is facing two challenges. It's deploying an unproven blade set-up, which has been a graveyard for many wind turbines since we started getting serious about them in the 1970s and it's then putting the turbine on to a dynamic system which is intended to improve performance. Both are potentially, indeed likely, to fail.and if they do work and try to scale up they will be competing with established wind turbines which are already being rolled out. The more proven tech is thus already cheaper, has established supply chains and has the kind of access to investment that comes with those qualities. Basically if they work, they will struggle to compete.
I do think there is a lot of potential for floating wind. We are likely to see it where I live in the near future where we have excellent wind, deep seas and a government backed desire (this week anyway) to build the sector and develop more offshore capacity.
Any kind of floating wind will need to be tethered as they will need electrical offtake, plus you can't let 1000 tonne devices wander off into the ocean.
posted by biffa at 6:25 AM on October 29, 2023 [4 favorites]
There are a bunch of people doing research and some generating deployed floating wind, I would guesstimate in the 10s of MWs globally. Most of the floating wind uses existing wind turbine designs, IE the 3 bladed horizontal axis Danish concept. They are basically using proven wind tech and investigating the best ballast and mooring systems.
So this system is facing two challenges. It's deploying an unproven blade set-up, which has been a graveyard for many wind turbines since we started getting serious about them in the 1970s and it's then putting the turbine on to a dynamic system which is intended to improve performance. Both are potentially, indeed likely, to fail.and if they do work and try to scale up they will be competing with established wind turbines which are already being rolled out. The more proven tech is thus already cheaper, has established supply chains and has the kind of access to investment that comes with those qualities. Basically if they work, they will struggle to compete.
I do think there is a lot of potential for floating wind. We are likely to see it where I live in the near future where we have excellent wind, deep seas and a government backed desire (this week anyway) to build the sector and develop more offshore capacity.
Any kind of floating wind will need to be tethered as they will need electrical offtake, plus you can't let 1000 tonne devices wander off into the ocean.
posted by biffa at 6:25 AM on October 29, 2023 [4 favorites]
This actually a really neat take on the problem, and I hope it succeeds in real world testing.
Biffa, I think if they can prove it works at full scale, and has similar reliability to current systems, they should have no problem competing. It's self regulating and thus mechanically simpler, has fewer parts, and doesn't rely on any novel manufacturing processes. I do wonder about the scale though, as that blade is huge. While it can be made, it probably would need new dedicated facilities close to the launching port.
I wonder if they don't think it's efficient enough with a single ~150 foot blade relative to it's competitors with three that size?
posted by jellywerker at 7:51 AM on October 29, 2023
Biffa, I think if they can prove it works at full scale, and has similar reliability to current systems, they should have no problem competing. It's self regulating and thus mechanically simpler, has fewer parts, and doesn't rely on any novel manufacturing processes. I do wonder about the scale though, as that blade is huge. While it can be made, it probably would need new dedicated facilities close to the launching port.
I wonder if they don't think it's efficient enough with a single ~150 foot blade relative to it's competitors with three that size?
posted by jellywerker at 7:51 AM on October 29, 2023
It's a conventional three blade design, but Most of the world’s wind is over deep water. Floating machines can harvest it. has some good context on the current state of the art that's actually operating and generating power.
posted by Nelson at 7:58 AM on October 29, 2023 [1 favorite]
The machines, from afar, look like pinwheels. But up close, they’re enormous: each almost as tall as the Eiffel Tower, above and below the waterline, and weighing 12,000 tons, equal to 60 Boeing 747s.I like the idea of a single blade to manufacture. And the tilting of this design is interesting. But we're in such an urgent crisis right now I'd rather focus my attention on stuff that's actually deployable today. Not to say new designs are bad, just I'll be more interested in 5–10 years when they're proven and ready to install.
They are held in place by some of the heftiest chains ever crafted, attached to the sea floor by “suction anchors” that burrow into the sand — exhaling and inhaling air — like something out of a sci-fi novel. ...
Sophisticated software helps “pilot” the machines. It can adjust the pitch of the blades and how they face the wind, to keep the turbines upright and balanced — and fight the forces of sea and storm, the yaw, pitch, roll, sway, surge and heave.
When flying past the wind park — or with a good camera lens from the oil platform — one can see the floating turbines not only rise and fall in the waves but also tilt, leaning into the wind. Harder to see with the human eye, the machines can also drift a bit, like an anchored boat.
posted by Nelson at 7:58 AM on October 29, 2023 [1 favorite]
I really like that the blade can just be a one-piece construction because it doesn't need furling. That's super tidy.
As I understand it, the main reason three blades are preferred for mast-based turbines is to avoid extreme variations in the twisting forces applied to the mast as the turbine slews to track the wind.
When the blades of a two-blade turbine have spun to a position that puts them parallel to the mast, their centres of mass are both very close to the axis of rotation of the slew; spin them another quarter of a turn and now their centres of mass are both far from that axis. These extreme variations in moment of inertia around the slew axis make the slew want to proceed in a series of jerks, much like a figure skater spinning while continuously pumping their arms in and out, and that puts large stresses on both the slew drive and the tower itself.
Three-blade turbines maintain a much more nearly constant moment of inertia with respect to slew, so they're much less stressful to turn.
But this new design doesn't slew around an axis parallel to its support tower. The whole tower and its anchor cable slews along with the turbine, and whether the turbine blades are upright or horizontal doesn't change the slewing moment of inertia by very much. So not only do the blades not need to rotate relative to one another for furling, the design doesn't need three blades just to keep slewing stresses reasonable.
It will be interesting to find out how gyroscopic effects stress the assembly when waves get big and winds get whippy and gusty. But even so, on the face of it there's a lot to like about this design. I hope it gets up.
posted by flabdablet at 9:40 AM on October 29, 2023 [5 favorites]
As I understand it, the main reason three blades are preferred for mast-based turbines is to avoid extreme variations in the twisting forces applied to the mast as the turbine slews to track the wind.
When the blades of a two-blade turbine have spun to a position that puts them parallel to the mast, their centres of mass are both very close to the axis of rotation of the slew; spin them another quarter of a turn and now their centres of mass are both far from that axis. These extreme variations in moment of inertia around the slew axis make the slew want to proceed in a series of jerks, much like a figure skater spinning while continuously pumping their arms in and out, and that puts large stresses on both the slew drive and the tower itself.
Three-blade turbines maintain a much more nearly constant moment of inertia with respect to slew, so they're much less stressful to turn.
But this new design doesn't slew around an axis parallel to its support tower. The whole tower and its anchor cable slews along with the turbine, and whether the turbine blades are upright or horizontal doesn't change the slewing moment of inertia by very much. So not only do the blades not need to rotate relative to one another for furling, the design doesn't need three blades just to keep slewing stresses reasonable.
It will be interesting to find out how gyroscopic effects stress the assembly when waves get big and winds get whippy and gusty. But even so, on the face of it there's a lot to like about this design. I hope it gets up.
posted by flabdablet at 9:40 AM on October 29, 2023 [5 favorites]
I think if they can prove it works at full scale, and has similar reliability to current systems, they should have no problem competing.
Three bladed turbines are the sum to date of 4 decades of improvement. The result is that costs have come down continuously as installation gets to the 1 TW installed mark globally. Even if these
new turbines can operate efficiently at large scale, their unit costs are going to be higher than the established tech for a long time to come. They would need massive investment to catch up and that investment isn't going to come because all the wind gen operators who might buy one will buy the established paradigm as they are cheaper and established. Basically, you don't get fired for buying IBM.
posted by biffa at 9:59 AM on October 29, 2023 [3 favorites]
Three bladed turbines are the sum to date of 4 decades of improvement. The result is that costs have come down continuously as installation gets to the 1 TW installed mark globally. Even if these
new turbines can operate efficiently at large scale, their unit costs are going to be higher than the established tech for a long time to come. They would need massive investment to catch up and that investment isn't going to come because all the wind gen operators who might buy one will buy the established paradigm as they are cheaper and established. Basically, you don't get fired for buying IBM.
posted by biffa at 9:59 AM on October 29, 2023 [3 favorites]
My understanding was that the problem with two bladed designs was that in the presence of wind sheer the rotor would experience a pitch-up torque twice per cycle, and this is very hard on the rotor bearings. With a three-bladed rotor you still get the pitch-up torque but it's much more evenly spread over the cycle. Since the largest turbines are pitch-controlled there must be bearings for each blade as well, I'm not sure why the cyclic loading of those bearings wouldn't also be a problem, but it does seem to work for the industry. With the proposed design the whole structure is free to pitch (and also yaw - there are going to be gyroscopic forces), which will help reduce the loading on the rotor bearings.
But there is another problem with the proposed design: it puts the rotor in the dirty air downwind of the tower. That's going to result in vibration, and that's going to result in wear.
I would be surprised if this design goes anywhere.
posted by mscibing at 10:24 AM on October 29, 2023 [3 favorites]
But there is another problem with the proposed design: it puts the rotor in the dirty air downwind of the tower. That's going to result in vibration, and that's going to result in wear.
I would be surprised if this design goes anywhere.
posted by mscibing at 10:24 AM on October 29, 2023 [3 favorites]
I would be surprised if this design goes anywhere.
Instead of 1 blade Selsam was trying a floating turbine in the ocean.
It was long enough ago that it must have not worked out.
But he does sell turbines so the idea has moved forward a bit.
posted by rough ashlar at 4:28 PM on October 29, 2023
Instead of 1 blade Selsam was trying a floating turbine in the ocean.
It was long enough ago that it must have not worked out.
But he does sell turbines so the idea has moved forward a bit.
posted by rough ashlar at 4:28 PM on October 29, 2023
This looks really interesting - I love simple designs. I'm a little concerned, though, how they manage the transmission of power from a generator that spins about its own axis as well as moving up and down and all sorts of other maneuvers. Sure, there are slip-ring-style arrangements that allow circuits to remain connected through rotational motion, but the ocean is just about the harshest environment we have and the amount of movement of an anchored body in storms is quite astounding.
posted by dg at 5:07 PM on October 29, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by dg at 5:07 PM on October 29, 2023 [2 favorites]
→ …
A couple of the main problems with making very large offshore turbines are: a) being able to make a composite structure of that size, and b) moving it from land to sea once you've made it, since there are no roads big enough on which to move the thing. As this is a problem for blades for three-bladed turbines which are conveniently half the length of this thing's blade, this just became a twice-as-large problem.
Two-bladed turbines, apart from all the reasons given quite well before here, capture much less energy than three bladed turbines. While a machine with less surface area experiences less drag loss, it also generates far less starting torque. In some cases, two-bladed turbines don't self-start and need to be motored up to speed. If it has no pitch control, it's also going to miss out of the fun part of the power curve. Since it's a downwind design, it's likely going to be very very loud: but it's offshore, so who cares? I have my doubts that a massive floating structure can naturally yaw fast enough to follow the wind. Off-axis wind gusts (or worse, from-behind gusts) can do bad things to a wind turbine. Like blades-fell-off bad things.
I've seen lots of wind turbine designs come and go since I was hired by VAWT Ltd in the early 1990s. This one may work, it may not. But do you know what? They should try building it. It's only going to be their VC money they loose. It's not like this development will take so much money that it will hinder development of other energy solutions. Even if it fails very badly, little longterm harm will be caused.
(This offshore design isn't a single-bladed wind turbine. This Riva-Calzoni one is. I'm told it looked beyond fugly while operating.)
posted by scruss at 6:24 PM on October 29, 2023 [2 favorites]
it's a blade that can be made in one piece, so easier manufacturing, looks like a double blade in action.
A couple of the main problems with making very large offshore turbines are: a) being able to make a composite structure of that size, and b) moving it from land to sea once you've made it, since there are no roads big enough on which to move the thing. As this is a problem for blades for three-bladed turbines which are conveniently half the length of this thing's blade, this just became a twice-as-large problem.
Two-bladed turbines, apart from all the reasons given quite well before here, capture much less energy than three bladed turbines. While a machine with less surface area experiences less drag loss, it also generates far less starting torque. In some cases, two-bladed turbines don't self-start and need to be motored up to speed. If it has no pitch control, it's also going to miss out of the fun part of the power curve. Since it's a downwind design, it's likely going to be very very loud: but it's offshore, so who cares? I have my doubts that a massive floating structure can naturally yaw fast enough to follow the wind. Off-axis wind gusts (or worse, from-behind gusts) can do bad things to a wind turbine. Like blades-fell-off bad things.
I've seen lots of wind turbine designs come and go since I was hired by VAWT Ltd in the early 1990s. This one may work, it may not. But do you know what? They should try building it. It's only going to be their VC money they loose. It's not like this development will take so much money that it will hinder development of other energy solutions. Even if it fails very badly, little longterm harm will be caused.
(This offshore design isn't a single-bladed wind turbine. This Riva-Calzoni one is. I'm told it looked beyond fugly while operating.)
posted by scruss at 6:24 PM on October 29, 2023 [2 favorites]
A couple of the main problems with making very large offshore turbines are: a) being able to make a composite structure of that size, and b) moving it from land to sea once you've made it, since there are no roads big enough on which to move the thing.
Given that all the deployment locations are in the sea, the obvious place to manufacture these things would be at shipyards.
posted by flabdablet at 6:43 PM on October 29, 2023 [1 favorite]
Given that all the deployment locations are in the sea, the obvious place to manufacture these things would be at shipyards.
posted by flabdablet at 6:43 PM on October 29, 2023 [1 favorite]
Two-bladed turbines, apart from all the reasons given quite well before here, capture much less energy than three bladed turbines.
Why is that? I would have thought that the dominating factor there would be total wing area, and that a two-blade design with 50% more area per wing than a three-blade with equivalent total area would have a wing strength advantage.
posted by flabdablet at 6:47 PM on October 29, 2023 [1 favorite]
Why is that? I would have thought that the dominating factor there would be total wing area, and that a two-blade design with 50% more area per wing than a three-blade with equivalent total area would have a wing strength advantage.
posted by flabdablet at 6:47 PM on October 29, 2023 [1 favorite]
We should be putting billions of dollars of public funds towards all kinds of different turbine designs. We will be putting turbines in the water for centuries, let’s try all kinds of things.
Stop building dumb ships that the navy doesn’t want, there should be a liberty ship program for turbines. I wonder how fast you could crank out an offshore turbine and get it installed if you really were trying.
posted by rockindata at 7:45 PM on October 29, 2023
Stop building dumb ships that the navy doesn’t want, there should be a liberty ship program for turbines. I wonder how fast you could crank out an offshore turbine and get it installed if you really were trying.
posted by rockindata at 7:45 PM on October 29, 2023
As this is a problem for blades for three-bladed turbines which are conveniently half the length of this thing
While operationally this design has a single double ended blade that is twice as long as a tri-blade blade there isn't anything stopping manufacturers from using the exact same technology that bolts tri-blades to the hubs to just bolt two haves of the double ended blade together. Considering how much easier that would make every manufacturing step i can't see them not splitting it in half until final deployment.
Even if you wanted/needed them to be one piece there are lots of ships around that could handle the length without even hanging over the ends. The original 80s Panamax ship length was 250 meters and now after a few stepped upgrades to the canal it's at 366. And there are still ships that are too long to use that canal. If this setup became practical it's likely a dedicated ship of sufficient length would be either built or converted from something else to perform all the installation functions and that would be the only job it did. This sort of logistical specialization is pretty common in shipping.
posted by Mitheral at 11:28 PM on October 29, 2023 [1 favorite]
While operationally this design has a single double ended blade that is twice as long as a tri-blade blade there isn't anything stopping manufacturers from using the exact same technology that bolts tri-blades to the hubs to just bolt two haves of the double ended blade together. Considering how much easier that would make every manufacturing step i can't see them not splitting it in half until final deployment.
Even if you wanted/needed them to be one piece there are lots of ships around that could handle the length without even hanging over the ends. The original 80s Panamax ship length was 250 meters and now after a few stepped upgrades to the canal it's at 366. And there are still ships that are too long to use that canal. If this setup became practical it's likely a dedicated ship of sufficient length would be either built or converted from something else to perform all the installation functions and that would be the only job it did. This sort of logistical specialization is pretty common in shipping.
posted by Mitheral at 11:28 PM on October 29, 2023 [1 favorite]
the obvious place to manufacture these things would be at shipyards.
I had a Masters student look at routes to the UK developing capacity in the floating wind sector (using the standard 3 bladed rather than the turbine in the FPP) and one big problem identified by the experts interviewed was finding a port or shipyard that had the ground capacity to deal with the large number of blades and tower sections needed to deploy floating wind at scale, never mind the manufacturing capacity to be producing them on site. This is a real problem impacting the potential for growth. The SW UK is interested in deploying a GW of floating wind in the Celtic Sea but infrastructure will be a big issue. Bear in mind, growth is intended to be alongside continuous growth in fixed offshore wind, where the UK is a world leader in terms of capacity and where there is a commitment to grow UK capacity from 12GW to 50GW. This is not an insurmountable problem, but its likely to require some intervention and investment if the capacity is to be there.
posted by biffa at 3:45 AM on October 30, 2023 [2 favorites]
I had a Masters student look at routes to the UK developing capacity in the floating wind sector (using the standard 3 bladed rather than the turbine in the FPP) and one big problem identified by the experts interviewed was finding a port or shipyard that had the ground capacity to deal with the large number of blades and tower sections needed to deploy floating wind at scale, never mind the manufacturing capacity to be producing them on site. This is a real problem impacting the potential for growth. The SW UK is interested in deploying a GW of floating wind in the Celtic Sea but infrastructure will be a big issue. Bear in mind, growth is intended to be alongside continuous growth in fixed offshore wind, where the UK is a world leader in terms of capacity and where there is a commitment to grow UK capacity from 12GW to 50GW. This is not an insurmountable problem, but its likely to require some intervention and investment if the capacity is to be there.
posted by biffa at 3:45 AM on October 30, 2023 [2 favorites]
…helping to reduce stress on the sea floor anchors and prevent the whole thing from taking off and starting a new life where nobody knows its name.
I hope they didn’t learn this from past experience.
posted by waving at 6:55 AM on October 30, 2023 [1 favorite]
I hope they didn’t learn this from past experience.
posted by waving at 6:55 AM on October 30, 2023 [1 favorite]
→
Well, yeah, a bigger turbine is going to generate more, if it has a suitably matched generator. But that's not a like-for-like comparison.
The more blades a wind turbine has (roughly), the lower its starting speed but the sooner turbulence/drag limits its output as wind speed picks up. So a three-bladed turbine starts generating in lower wind speeds, and there are far more hours per year of low wind speeds than high wind speeds.
Without pitch control (which I don't think this design has) the power curve will drop once the wind speed forces the airfoil into stall. So you're likely to be losing power at both ends of the power curve.
(I didn't look at your video, sorry. Videos aren't useful for me.)
posted by scruss at 1:09 PM on October 30, 2023 [2 favorites]
a two-blade design with 50% more area…
Well, yeah, a bigger turbine is going to generate more, if it has a suitably matched generator. But that's not a like-for-like comparison.
The more blades a wind turbine has (roughly), the lower its starting speed but the sooner turbulence/drag limits its output as wind speed picks up. So a three-bladed turbine starts generating in lower wind speeds, and there are far more hours per year of low wind speeds than high wind speeds.
Without pitch control (which I don't think this design has) the power curve will drop once the wind speed forces the airfoil into stall. So you're likely to be losing power at both ends of the power curve.
(I didn't look at your video, sorry. Videos aren't useful for me.)
posted by scruss at 1:09 PM on October 30, 2023 [2 favorites]
[Oh, and since I missed the Painting Wind Turbine Blades Black thread: nope. Wind turbine blades must, by law, be white in most of the world. Aviation regulations require it. These regulations are immensely slow and hard to change.
Black blades have been tried in arctic zones to help with blade heating for deicing. They're quite common on very small turbines.]
posted by scruss at 1:13 PM on October 30, 2023
Black blades have been tried in arctic zones to help with blade heating for deicing. They're quite common on very small turbines.]
posted by scruss at 1:13 PM on October 30, 2023
I would like to believe.
But.
These machines are rated at 252 km/h or 157 mph which conforms safely(?) to the Saffir–Simpson hurricane wind scale at a category 5/>-157 mph.
At least 18 hurricanes have recorded speeds of 175 mph or more, most recently Katrina and Rita (2005), Dean and Irma (2017), and Dorian (2019).
Cyclone Olivia (1996) and hurricanes Patrica (2015) and Dorian (2019) exceeded wind speeds of 200 mph.
Climate change predictions are for higher windspeeds, and there are proposals for an added category 6.
These machines are designed to lift. It wants to lift. Starting a new life seems pretty well built in, given that chains degrade in sea water.
posted by BlueHorse at 3:54 PM on October 30, 2023
But.
These machines are rated at 252 km/h or 157 mph which conforms safely(?) to the Saffir–Simpson hurricane wind scale at a category 5/>-157 mph.
At least 18 hurricanes have recorded speeds of 175 mph or more, most recently Katrina and Rita (2005), Dean and Irma (2017), and Dorian (2019).
Cyclone Olivia (1996) and hurricanes Patrica (2015) and Dorian (2019) exceeded wind speeds of 200 mph.
Climate change predictions are for higher windspeeds, and there are proposals for an added category 6.
These machines are designed to lift. It wants to lift. Starting a new life seems pretty well built in, given that chains degrade in sea water.
posted by BlueHorse at 3:54 PM on October 30, 2023
Over and above the engineering questions, they'll need to convince the wind farm developers and regulatory agencies that the new design doesn't lead to unacceptable consequences. Like, just to pretend, if this design turned out to pivot down into prime bird migration elevations at certain wind speeds, causing much higher bird deaths. It's a complex set of parameters that they need to design to.
posted by Dip Flash at 4:45 PM on October 30, 2023
posted by Dip Flash at 4:45 PM on October 30, 2023
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This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments
First graph: Touchwind claims its innovative single-blade turbines will solve several problems to drive down cost and downtime, using a single, huge blade with no fancy active pitch controls.
Third graph: It's designed around a massive single-piece rotor, sitting on the end of a pole that's draped over a big barrel, with a large floating buoy hanging beneath it.
Fourth graph: This one huge double blade, says Touchwind...
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 9:13 PM on October 28, 2023 [1 favorite]