Scientists Are Developing the World's Biggest Wind Turbine With 656-Ft. Long Blades (latimes.com) 129
An anonymous reader writes from an LATimes article: Efforts to increase wind power mean that turbine blades are getting bigger and bigger. But a new design in the works takes the idea to levels most people can barely imagine: Blades up to 656.2 feet long -- more than two football fields. Today's longest blades are 262.5 feet. The blades at Imperial County's Ocotillo wind farm, which sends electricity to San Diego, are 173.9 feet long. "We call it the extreme scale," Eric Loth, a University of Virginia professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, said of the planned mega-blades. "There's nothing like it." The blades would look much different look from today's wind turbines. They wouldn't face the wind but would go downwind, aligning the blades to flow with the wind instead of fighting it. And instead of a single stiff blade, each blade would be broken into segments, allowing it to be more easily fabricated. In addition, the concept would allow the blades to "morph" -- spread out when the wind is blowing lightly to capture as much power as possible.
Re:Powerlines, chimneys, now big wind turbines (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: Powerlines, chimneys, now big wind turbines (Score:5, Funny)
Fusion is about 8 and a half minutes away.
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Certainly not, it is better to construct them where other people live, who cannot to afford lawyers for fend them off. Instead of building gigantic ugly structures, it would be better to limit the size of a private house and a private car to sane figures, to produce energy by saving it.
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Have you ever seen a big modern wind turbine? They spin at such low RPM that it takes multiple seconds per rotation. It makes as much sound as a stationary object of the same size, and kills birds at the same rate. Also, they are never built anywhere near people's "yards" because real estate that could be used for habitation is expensive, and buildings interfere with the wind. They're off shore, or otherwise in the middle of nowhere with no obstruction. Aesthetically, they are rather prettier than a coal po
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The Sun has been using it for some years now...
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Personally I find windmills much more attractive than smog but that's just me.
I will start at the other end .. (Score:2)
That you can fly an RC-Aircraft or a manned aircraft made out of fiber compound, aluminium is only possible because of putting mineral resources & energy to work.
All the things you wear all the things you use are made with energy because for example aluminium processing takes huge amounts of energy.
Making of all kinds of plastic takes huge processing plants - that are lit up 24/7 for safety.
That you can have fun with your RC-Aircraft is the very product of a very long and sophisticated stream of enginee
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You could put them out to sea, but it costs more. Given the choice, I think I'll take turbines over large plants with cooling towers and chimneys etc.
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http://www.windparknoordoostpo... [windparkno...tpolder.nl]
Obviously some people want them so far offshore you won't see them from the beaches but with a 200 m. tip hight that's quite an added expense.
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Or do both :), a pic of our local windfarm, with 53 meter blades these are presently among the largest:
http://www.windparknoordoostpo... [windparkno...tpolder.nl]
Oh no. Oh no, no, no.
Your wind park looks to be in the Netherlands, where they've been a fixture for centuries. But over here, in America (i.e. USA), we absolutely cannot have the plebs capable of generating their own electricity, much less have them use corners between farm-fields to generate excess electricity!!!
That would completely disrupt the State-sponsored monopoly that the dinosaur-burning power plants currently enjoy. It would be chaos. Cats marrying dogs. People wearing hats on their feet. T
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The land to the right (=east) is reclaimed since 1943, a little south is the (very religious) historic island of Urk where some people complained this would irreparably damage the view of their village...
The life expectancy of windmills is 25 years.
I just read in a local paper that now the farm is ready people start to appreciate the advantages.
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Fixture for centuries indeed :)
Ugh. I meant the windmills used for centuries to turn grain-grinding stones.
You knew that though, didn't you? :-)
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I go one up, I bet that by the time these types of wind mills are getting obsolete some will ask for protection as monuments
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Could we find a way to keep this wonderful planet surface beautiful? Dig down power cables, make generators inconspicuous. And leave airspace free to birds, manned and RC aircraft.
It is hard to make a coal-fired generating plant inconspicuous. They are typically a square mile or two of blackened earth. And the garbage they spew into the air. . . Do you really want them to 'make it inconspicuous', or would you rather be able to see you major source of particulates, heavy metals, radioactive particulates (yes, on average, more than nuclear)?
In California, the wind-farms are primarily in the desert – usually in a pass between a couple of mountains. That is, they are far away,
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Power-lines are often buried already. It's the legacy ones that remainâ"Replacement costs money. Those 4 kV trunk lines? They are cut through forests and such, and are kept above ground for maintenance and security purposes.
I doubt it makes sense to burry a 1.1MV power line.
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Power-lines are often buried already. It's the legacy ones that remainâ"Replacement costs money. Those 4 kV trunk lines? They are cut through forests and such, and are kept above ground for maintenance and security purposes.
I doubt it makes sense to burry a 1.1MV power line.
Correct. Just space them several meters apart, high in the air, and use gigantic ceramic isolation-mounts of the lines to the gigantic long-distance power-grid structures cutting through the desert or forest.
FUN FACT: Maintenance or repair on such high-voltage lines is often done while they ate live. Yes, really. A helicopter brings up the linemen, who are careful to stay only an a single, particular line that they're inspecting, fixing, or whatever. (A flying helicopter is not grounded, and is thus at
Re: Powerlines, chimneys, now big wind turbines (Score:2)
. If you're complaining about birds dying then why don't you and your 11 kids disconnect from the grid and go live in a forest somewhere.
Where they'll likely... eat birds. Better rethink your suggestion. ;)
So, 200m vs the longest of today at 80m long (Score:5, Informative)
Back-converted units are funny.
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As a Canadian, we see this shit all the time. "Now add 454g of flour" .. that number is WAY too specific. Yep, 1 pound. A coke is 591ml or 355ml, a cup is 240ml .. argh.
Payback's a bitch. :)
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The UJW (units justice warrior) strikes again.
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What a waste of resources to back-convert.
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Really? So, how fast does a person drive in GB? 60 MPH or 90 KPH? And, what is the distance between London and Manchester? 208 miles or 334 KM?
Maybe GB has replaced all the road signs, but AFAIK they haven't. And if they haven't, they have not yet converted to metric. They may use metric in many situations (as we do in the US), but they haven't fully converted like Canada did in the '70s.
Also, remember, land in the US (especially in the Midwest) is broken into 1 mile grids... Won't it be fun when we do
Cue the morons (Score:5, Funny)
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Who, exactly, is saying this? You are.
Why is this +4 Insightful? Heaven knows.
It's some idiocy made up as a laughable strawman argument--- Hey, don't talk about yourself that way.
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Having worked on several planning consultations for wind farms, I have come across the following:
1) OH NO! It will reduce the amount of wind!
2) OH NO! It will increase the amount of wind!
3) OH NO! It will scare off birds!
4) OH NO! It will attract off birds!
5) OH NO! It will drive down property prices!
6) OH NO! It will drive up property prices!
7) OH NO! It will drive people out of the area!
8) OH NO! It will attract eco-warriors and hippies to the area!
9) OH NO! It will drive off tourists!
10) OH NO! The roads
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Who, exactly, is saying this? Why is this +4 Insightful? It's some idiocy made up as a laughable strawman argument and it's +4 Insightful?
It's currently rated +1 "Funny", which was the intention. If I hadn't already posted, I would have modded it up as "Funny", too.
Tune your BS- and sarcasm-meters. This isn't FARK, but "Funny" posts can be quite useful. The poster was mocking the paid shills that come in and mass-post when topics like this come up.
FARK's open mocking of Trolls and Shills has significantly reduced their numbers there... unless you click on the "Politics" tab. That is, they are stuck in the corner with their ilk.
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It seems like a moron was successfully cued as the subject said.
Take this whoooosh from me and treat it with care.
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It won't do that, but I'm pretty sure there's some environment impact to massive wind farms. It probably does change wind patterns to some extent. It might even impact the local climate somewhat.
We'll probably find these impacts as more development comes in.
Of course, this is not a reason to stop. Our current fossil burning also impacts things.
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The big problem with large bladed wind turbines is wing tip velocity and the subsequent noise. So the limit is that and nothing else and most certainly not appearance. So the trick is large blade but at a slow rotation. This is why there is a focus on engineering better vertical wind turbines rather that rather than large bladed horizontal axis wind turbines. The vertical wind turbines also have a huge advantage of having the generator at ground level, as well as being able to be placed much closer togethe
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That's the modern Trumpublican thinking!
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But we need to prepare for when the sun expands later in it's life so that the Earth isn't burnt to a crisp!
If you put this on the Eiffel Tower (Score:2)
You could put this on the Eiffel Tower, but it's kind of short. The Eiffel Tower is 1,063 ft tall, the towers they're planning for this are 1,574 ft.
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this is a nerd site. please use non-stupid units.
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this is a nerd site. please use non-stupid units.
The Eiffel Tower is 189 smoots tall, the towers they're planning for this are 282 smoots.
Re: If you put this on the Eiffel Tower (Score:1)
The Eiffel Tower is 2.00e+37 Planck lengths, the proposed tower is 2.97e+37 Planck lengths.
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Sorry. The Eiffel Tower is 3.543 football fields tall, the tower for the wind turbine is 5.246 football fields tall.
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Well, actually the size of a football field is not standardized. It has a min and max length.
PS I'm talking about real football of course
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How about KLOC's per kilogram?
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Should be a great view from the top if you don't mind the noise, vibrations, etc. You could build an amusement park around the tower. Zip lines, for-fee hiking trails up to the top, some ski runs etc.
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Considering that the thing has to be able to turn through at least 180 degrees (but more likely 360) to face the wind, hanging anything from it at an angle -- like zip lines or ski slopes -- seems like a bad idea unless you intend for the blades to hit it.
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How would you build a zip line from the top of a windmill tower and still allow the windmill to rotate into the wind?
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Probably a googleplex of ergs
Crowd-sourced wind energy (Score:2)
Make everyone wear beanies with propellers on top. Not only will it generate a lot of energy, but everyone will be too busy laughing at one another to start wars.
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If history has taught me anything it's that looking silly is no hindrance to starting wars.
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Technically, those aren't uniforms, they're cosplay.
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Yeah, the Hussars looked pretty silly. I guess they wanted to be seen from far-away when approaching.
And the British Re-coats. Standing in lines. And both sides have muskets... Silly silly silly. Stop that right now.
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Copy Edit: RED-coats
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Actually at that time battle fields where covered with smoke so thick, you could not see a Redcoat 20 yards away.
However Napoleon showed: stealth/hiding/crawling pays off.
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Actually at that time battle fields where covered with smoke so thick, you could not see a Redcoat 20 yards away.
However Napoleon showed: stealth/hiding/crawling pays off.
Wasn't the color RED chosen to hide any bleeding from fellow soldiers in the line? Y'know, that sight could be a bit demoralizing. Perhaps this (possibly apocryphal?) explanation could carry some weight?
And Napoleon, the cannoneer who somehow rose to be Emperor –twice. I hadn't heard of his tactics outside of barrage. I don't disbelieve it, as those are good tactics, but have never heard of them.
Napoleon DID take to canning food by putting boiling soup into empty wine bottles, then sealing them wi
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Wasn't the color RED chosen to hide any bleeding from fellow soldiers in the line?
Every country/king had different colours, e.g. Netherlands was Orange and Preusen/Prussia Blue.
I hadn't heard of his tactics outside of barrage.
He was the first ordering the soldiers to forget "heroics" and lay down flat on the stomach on the ground while fighting.
Someday, somewhere (Score:2)
If the technology works, Loth wants to avoid putting the big-blade facilities on land. Instead they would be put offshore — some 20 to 25 miles from the coast....
Even if the titanic turbines pass the subscale modeling tests in 2019, Loth said it would take "probably 10, 15 years" before the first facility would be up and running.
It's at least 15 years away and they know they'll never get approval to build them on land. But still a reasonable approach where the conditions are right. It's almost like they're trying to find a workable and cost effective solution, unlike other alternatives that depend on subsidies.
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Putting a wind turbine offshore is a huge undertaking and maintaining it is also not effortless.
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Re: Someday, somewhere (Score:2)
they know they'll never get approval to build them on land
I see you've never been out to West Texas.
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On land wind turbines make not much sense, except you are in a country with no coast or at a special windy position.
Considering the size of those things they would be a problem for air traffic, to.
And bottom line, considering how big the tower is on which the turbines need to be placed, I wonder if that energy wise and money wise makes any sense. But well, usually with "size" the energy/money cost-benefit relation becomes better.
Audubon (Score:2)
I just cringe, thinking of all of the Cesnas and Pipers that will be taken out when they try to land on this thing.
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OK, I'll bite. I know some kinda dodgy private pilots, but nobody even remotely insane enough to attempt to land on a rotating blade, no matter how long or flat.
Who the hell are you hanging out with?
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OK, I'll bite. I know some kinda dodgy private pilots, but nobody even remotely insane enough to attempt to land on a rotating blade, no matter how long or flat.
Who the hell are you hanging out with?
Hopefully with others who practice less-insane hobbies, like skydivers, who would jump out of that plane & quick-deploy before the dodgy pilot attempted this.
(I used to skydive.)
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If we all had some way to collect and store all the methane from farts, we'd be all set for fueling powerplants.
This is being done adjacent to garbage dumps all over the place. It's a good thing.
Historically, once a garbage dump was "full", it would be capped with a layer of soil, but not before installing several vent-stacks to let the methane out, keeping the dump from exploding. Why it is only now that we've realized that we can capture and use that methane (CNG), I have no idea.
In the USA's mid-west, some local "ski slopes" are capped-off garbage dumps. Why? They're the tallest hills around.
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650ft and 260ft would have been sensible approximations.
As for a more sensible comparison; the blades would rise above the Empire State building's observation deck. Much easier to visualise since people have a general idea of how tall famous skyscrape
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That would be 0.00000000000055 light-fortnights, of course.
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Well, 200m is one furlong. I'll leave it to you to make some other comparison to a fortnight.
A furlong is roughly 201.16m, actually.
not before we get rid of the sharks.... (Score:1)
From TFA:
The project raises concern among bird lovers, who have long decried the number of birds and bats killed by wind turbines. The proposition of humongous facilities makes conservation groups nervous.
"The higher you go, you start potentially impacting more migratory birds that otherwise would have flown over the tops of [smaller] turbines," said Michael Parr, vice president and chief conservation officer for the American Bird Conservancy.
Researchers acknowledge the anxiety over how 656.2-foot blades â" officially called Segmented Ultralight Morphing Rotors â" would affect the environment.
If the technology works, Loth wants to avoid putting the big-blade facilities on land. Instead they would be put offshore â" some 20 to 25 miles from the coast.
"I really want to focus on going far enough offshore that we're away from the migratory patterns of the birds," Loth said.
But Parr said an offshore wind farm might not be an improvement.
"The problem with offshore turbines is that it's virtually impossible to know and track over time what impact they're having [on bird deaths] because any birds that get struck will fall directly into the ocean and be washed away by the currents or get eaten by sharks," he said.
- seriously...
I wonder if these bird lovers ever considered what coal and diesel power plant pollution does to birds, migratory or otherwise? How many birds die, I wonder, because of the pollution that is spewed into the atmosphere by the billions of tons around the world?
This turbine is a fine concept I think, though I think nuclear is the way to go of-course, why not build more wind turbines, especially in the oceans. Do it if it works. The birds will learn to avoid the turbine blades but the
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Environmental concerns (Score:2)
Regarding dangers to wildlife, will dragons be safe from it?
Not two Canadian football fields! (Score:2)
But not longer than two Canadian football fields!
But the elephant in the room is (Score:2)
who will be the first BASE jumper to die jumping from the tower and how many days after its built will that take place?
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who will be the first BASE jumper to die jumping from the tower and how many days after its built will that take place?
I will not bet against you on this.
Ah, but how about a flying-suit crazy attempting to buzz close to one, between the slowly rotating blades? Wind farms are built in valleys between mountains, so this is a realistic scenario. Also realistic is that the flying-suit guy will not understand the flow of compressible fluids (he'll hit a low-pressure zone on one side or the other – one of the three blade-following zones that spirals).
American football fields are 360'x160' (Score:2)
Have people completely lost the ability to... (Score:2)
...describe a physical object?
They wouldn't face the wind but would go downwind, aligning the blades to flow with the wind instead of fighting it.
What the fuck does that mean? How does a blade "flow"? It is a rigid object. It sits in the wind flow. And if a wind turbine fights the wind, then it isn't really a turbine, is it? A blade has a length, width, and thickness. Which is aligned with the wind? Is the windflow axially aligned or radially aligned? What is aligned? If a typical wind turbine fa
At that extreme length, (Score:2)
wouldn't wind shear be a really big concern?
Article with picture (Score:3)
This article has a diagram of the proposed design:
http://www.sandiegouniontribun... [sandiegouniontribune.com]
lazy today: how many meters? (Score:2)
slashdot should have an automated Imperial to ISO converter...
Go Away this is news for N.E.R.D.S. (Score:2)
And being a N.E.R.D. means that the computer NERDS have a CRAY2 in their Backyard and that mech. NERDS have a wind turbine in their back yard! ;)
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No they're exactly the same thing, they just have different operating environments. Different airspeed. Wings are shaped differently to enhance efficiency at different airspeeds.