G.E. Wind Turbine Prototype: 853 Feet Tall, Can Generate 13 Megawatts (nytimes.com) 315
Long-time Slashdot reader fahrbot-bot shares a report from the New York Times:
Twirling above a strip of land at the mouth of Rotterdam's harbor [in the Netherlands] is a wind turbine so large it is difficult to photograph. The turning diameter of its rotor is longer than two American football fields end to end. Later models will be taller than any building on the mainland of Western Europe.
Packed with sensors gathering data on wind speeds, electricity output and stresses on its components, the giant whirling machine in the Netherlands is a test model for a new series of giant offshore wind turbines planned by General Electric. When assembled in arrays, the wind machines have the potential to power cities, supplanting the emissions-spewing coal- or natural gas-fired plants that form the backbones of many electric systems today... [A]lready the giant turbines have turned heads in the industry. A top executive at the world's leading wind farm developer called it a "bit of a leapfrog over the latest technology." And an analyst said the machine's size and advance sales had "shaken the industry."
The prototype is the first of a generation of new machines that are about a third more powerful than the largest already in commercial service. As such, it is changing the business calculations of wind equipment makers, developers and investors. The G.E. machines will have a generating capacity that would have been almost unimaginable a decade ago. A single one will be able to turn out 13 megawatts of power, enough to light up a town of roughly 12,000 homes.
Packed with sensors gathering data on wind speeds, electricity output and stresses on its components, the giant whirling machine in the Netherlands is a test model for a new series of giant offshore wind turbines planned by General Electric. When assembled in arrays, the wind machines have the potential to power cities, supplanting the emissions-spewing coal- or natural gas-fired plants that form the backbones of many electric systems today... [A]lready the giant turbines have turned heads in the industry. A top executive at the world's leading wind farm developer called it a "bit of a leapfrog over the latest technology." And an analyst said the machine's size and advance sales had "shaken the industry."
The prototype is the first of a generation of new machines that are about a third more powerful than the largest already in commercial service. As such, it is changing the business calculations of wind equipment makers, developers and investors. The G.E. machines will have a generating capacity that would have been almost unimaginable a decade ago. A single one will be able to turn out 13 megawatts of power, enough to light up a town of roughly 12,000 homes.
Units, sigh. (Score:5, Insightful)
The turning diameter of its rotor is longer than two American football fields end to end
How many damn meters?
Later models will be taller than any building on the mainland of Western Europe.
What is the tallest building on mainland Europe and how tall is it? METERS!
A single one will be able to turn out 13 megawatts of power, enough to light up a town of roughly 12,000 homes
Thank you.
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It's hard to photograph too!!! The author doesn't know how many football fields distance to get to make the big blades fit in the frame! Perhaps it should be expressed in cubits.
It's the 21st Century. You're not thinking of the hype and merchandising. We need a whole new word here. I'm thinking giga-twinches. Just imagine the ruler sales! That profit-less IPO could be worth zillions.
Re:Units, sigh. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Units, sigh. (Score:4, Insightful)
Meanwhile, the New York Times readers are still trying to figure out what the fuck a meter is, since most of them know a football field is 100 yards long, and measure every-fucking-thing in feet.
Yes, it is stupid that the world runs off different standards of measurement, but know your audience. You're welcome.
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Actually, the world is metric. There are just some backwaters that have not gotten the message yet. As in "We use an inferior system and we are proud to do so!"...
Re:Units, sigh. (Score:5, Informative)
>"Actually, the world is metric. There are just some backwaters that have not gotten the message yet. As in "We use an inferior system and we are proud to do so!"...
* Every school in the USA teaches every student metric in school, for well over 50 years.
* All of science and related fields here are metric.
* Almost all packaging and product specifications have both imperial (USC) and metric units.
* The Metric Act of 1866 declared the metric system to be "lawful throughout the United States of America" and in all business dealings and court proceedings.
* All USC units were redefined to base on metric in 1959.
* Most devices (car speedometers, tape measures, measuring cups, etc) have both USC and metric scales.
* The Metric Conversion Act of 1975 started a voluntary metrication process in the US
What seems to hold back a full dual system to the public eye is mostly transportation, since all the signs are still in miles and fuel is in US gallons (I have yet to see a pump that lists liters). And the main holdback seems to be based on "safety", primarily the confusion of dual MPH/KPH signs. I have given up on seeing them in my lifetime at this point.
https://usma.org/ [usma.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re:Units, sigh. (Score:4, Funny)
What seems to hold back a full dual system to the public eye is mostly transportation, since all the signs are still in miles and fuel is in US gallons
They really need to fix this, it’s a major problem. Everyone knows it’s far more sensible to measure fuel efficiency in leagues per hogshead.
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...which illustrates clearly why these systems of measurement should have died along with the British Empire to be replaced with the metric system a long time ago.
Sadly enough, the reason why we aren't metric might be down to pirates. We had a representative coming over with a set of metric measurements, the high quality ones that you used back in the day for setting up the system, the ship ended up attacked by pirates, the representative and set ended up never arriving, and by the time a second attempt was considered, it was "too late" as we'd already standardized on the imperial units.
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>"That is not accurate for tape measures. Metric rulers are common, but metric tape measures are difficult to find in a store in the US, although you can order them online. Although they exist, I don't think I've seen a combination tape measure in person. For now, anyway, I just ordered one."
I have two tape measures. One has only USC and the other is dual Metric/USC. I have had them for decades, I don't think I specifically sought the dual out one. All my rulers are dual.
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In carpentry, the main unit of interest is length, so you can use pretty much anything you want for that. My father always measured his woodwork in mm. Engineering problems involve mixtures of units, including time, mass, velocity, force, and so on. This is where a proper system of scientific units becomes useful.
I agree that base 12 numerical calculations has some merits for head calculations, compared to base 10, but this has little to do with choice of reference units. In metric units, there is just one
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That's not really the whole story either. The world is metric, and there are some places that think metric is too easy so they add in some inconvenient conversions to keep the plebes occupied.
A yard defined as precisely 0.9144 metres in the US and British Commonwealth, by the International Yard and Pound Agreement of 1959.
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>"Meanwhile, the New York Times readers are still trying to figure out what the fuck a meter is, since most of them know a football field is 100 yards long, and measure every-fucking-thing in feet."
First, most people here know a meter is almost a yard.
Second, metric is taught in every single school in the USA.
Third, an [American] football field is 120 yards, not 100. (Yes, I had to look it up).
>"but know your audience. You're welcome."
Indeed. Also, you're welcome, too...
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First, most people here know a meter is almost a yard
Shouldn't that be "First, most people here know a yard is almost a meter"? Although, if you are using "almost" to mean "very nearly but not exactly" then I guess you are technically correct.
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>"Shouldn't that be "First, most people here know a yard is almost a meter"? Although, if you are using "almost" to mean "very nearly but not exactly" then I guess you are technically correct."
Yes, the latter was my intent. It probably would have been better to say a yard is almost a meter. Perfect example of the ambiguity of English :)
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Meanwhile, the New York Times readers are still trying to figure out what the fuck a meter is, since most of them know a football field is 100 yards long, and measure every-fucking-thing in feet.
Serious exaggeration. Typically 6 inches. Unless you are pervert using thing not intended for that purpose was being used.
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Seems they're struggling to spell 'metre' too.
That's not misspelled according to Americans. It's just another prime example of fuckery in the English language.
The summary didn't give a measurement in every-fucking-thing feet either. Translating from feet to metres is inconvenient but easy; translating from "it's longer than a bus" is not.
I fully agree with you. When you provide an story that is highly reliant upon known measurements to convey size, you should remain consistent in the article and provide measurements that are easily conveyed to your audience. Adding "football field" measurements in, was pointless flair.
And yes, "longer than two football fields" is longer than a fucking bus. That's the only comparator you can use because a football field could be 40 yards long or 110 yards long - see https://www.thefa.com/-/media/... [thefa.com] for instance.
If you ask the average European football fan how long the "football pitch" is, they're not going to be confused
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>"Seems they're struggling to spell 'metre' too."
You are assuming there is a "correct" English and an "incorrect" English. And that is not really correct. Later English evolved in several places simultaneously. There are many differences between British English and American English, most of which occurred after separation, and many such changes and formalizations are perfectly rational.
In this regard, it makes no less sense to call "metre" "meter" than "centre" becoming "center."
https://www.learnengli [learnenglish.de]
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"The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary." -- James D. Nicoll
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It's about 68 micro library of Congress' (linear).
DUH.
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In less time it took you to write that post, you could have scrolled down half a screen and looked at the infographic that illustrates the machine and includes dimensions.
=Smidge=
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In less time it took you to write that post, you could have scrolled down half a screen and looked at the infographic that illustrates the machine and includes dimensions.
=Smidge=
But 1. it still in British Empire before 1775 units, 2. not everyone leaves slashdot to RTFA.
Re: Units, sigh. (Score:3)
853 feet, or 260 meters. It wasn't so difficult to include this in the summary!!
Btw, the tallest building in Europe [wikipedia.org] is 462 meters (if you consider Russia as part of Europe), or 309 meters (in the UK). The largest building in a European Union country (after Brexit) is the Commerzbank Tower in Germany, 258.7 meters, so this turbine is slightly taller.
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The UK is in "Europe" regardless of whether it is in the EU or not. There are plenty of countries in Europe that are not in the EU.
Re: Units, sigh. (Score:2)
Yes, that is why they specify "mainland western Europe". My comment pretended to put it in context.
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Well, the majority of countries in Europe are, in fact, in the EU. And most of the rest wants to join.
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How many damn meters?
Many educated Americans struggle with metric.
Many uneducated Americans struggle with any unit.
But all Americans understand things expressed as football fields, baseball pitches, libraries of Congress, number of cars or number of 747 jet engines.
If you run a generalist newspaper, no scientific or technical article is complete without a comparison to football fields, baseball pitches, libraries of Congress, number of cars or number of 747 jet engines.
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A single one will be able to turn out 13 megawatts of power, enough to light up a town of roughly 12,000 homes
OK to help out those on imperial units, that's enough for roughly 8,000 American homes
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>>"The turning diameter of its rotor is longer than two American football fields end to end
How many damn meters?"
Beats me. I am American and have no idea how large a football field is. Two seconds on Wikipedia- it is 120 yards. So it is about 120 meters (actual conversion is 110).
>"What is the tallest building on mainland Europe and how tall is it?"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
If you don't count Russia as "Europe", nor is Britain "mainland", "The Shard" in London at 1,016 feet (309.6 meters)
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Since the watt (and by extension, the megawatt) is, by definition, a unit of power, can we drop the "of power" redundancy? Or should we require "metres (or meters) of length"?
And can the Metric fans among us (I'm looking at the Europeans who always whinge about the USA not using their favorite system) stop using the kilogram as a unit of weight? The unit of weight in SI is the Newton, the kilogram is a unit of mass.
And no, "mass" is not a synonym of "weight"...
Okay, deep breath...got
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A single one will be able to turn out 13 megawatts of power, enough to light up a town of roughly 12,000 homes
Thank you.
American homes or European homes? That differs about a factor 2.
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Power generation of windmill in question (at optimum efficiency ?): 13 MW
Percentage of 'full capacity' days at sea (estimation): 50%. (To compare; on land, the windiest places in the Netherlands have strong breezes 45% of the year).
Projected production in GWh: 56.94
Average household electricity use in the Netherlands: 2,800 KWh.
Number of homes powered in that case: 20,034.
So I guess they measured in American homes? Of course if you'd play with the estimations in here it could go both ways.. a factor 2 is no
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Metric please ! (Score:2)
Metric please !
Re: Units, sigh. (Score:5, Insightful)
Why the fuck do I have to google something *while* I am reading what is supposed to be an article about that very fact??
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A yank football field is 91.44 meters. A meter is longer than a yard. 1 meter is roughly 1.093+ yards, about 39.37 inches.
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A yank football field is 91.44 meters. A meter is longer than a yard. 1 meter is roughly 1.093+ yards, about 39.37 inches.
You appear to have omitted the end zones.
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A yank football field is 91.44 meters. A meter is longer than a yard. 1 meter is roughly 1.093+ yards, about 39.37 inches.
You appear to have omitted the end zones.
You both have kind of overlooked the fact that no "yank" football field is measured in "meters" (which is ironically the "Americanized" spelling.) It's 120 yards long, including the end-zones. American measurements are in inches, feet, and yards. Pretty much all other measurements are foreign, and translate as such to the masses.
And before we label that as merely "ignorant", common standards in society is the reason Europeans do not use yards or gallons. Simply a matter of familiarity, much like a New Y
Re: Units, sigh. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: Units, sigh. (Score:5, Funny)
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"real American units like BTUs"
Surprised you haven't renamed that one, honestly. FTUs maybe?
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The Latin word for "thousand" is mille, so the Roman "mile" was 1000 paces (left foot to left foot, or two steps). Cent was the word for hundred, thus century and the Roman officer was a "centurion" (office over 100 men). So I guess those Romans were commies too.
I'll just sit here in my 5.7 liter Chevy Silverado, drinking my 2 liter soda and laughing at you silly people.
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So if I get you straight, you are extolling your inability to use anything other than 1 system is beyond your ability, even though tyour measurement system is 100 percent arbitrary. Got ya.
Meanwhile, the metre is 0.00000000000000003240779 parsecs.
Sorry, but I only work in standard measurements. What's that in Double Decker Busses? [theregister.com].
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How do you estimate the volume of a tank? Probably by size first, in feet or yards. How many gallons in a cubic yard, off the top of your head? It's just another conversion that's just not necessary in metric.
But if you really want to deal with gallons, might as well deal with litres. I have a litre of milk in my fridge, not a whole gallon, so I'm very familiar with that volume - and a litre of water weighs precisely 1 kilogram, couldn't be easier. 200 litre drum = 200 kg. 10 kl tank = 10 t of water = 10 m^
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Actually, all Yank things are measured in metric. Those "yards" you speak of are defined in terms of metres.
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A yank football field is 91.44 meters. A meter is longer than a yard. 1 meter is roughly 1.093+ yards, about 39.37 inches.
You appear to have omitted the end zones.
What is this website? ESPN?
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Which is about the same length as a European football pitch, for the purposes of giving someone a practical idea about how big this is... so... what's the problem again?
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A yank football field is 109 meters
Is that with end-zones or without?
Yeah. But it's in the North Sea (Score:2)
Let's see how durable the thing is.
The place where it's located is one of the most punishing marine environments on the planet.
And when things go wrong on devices that big, they can go REALLY REALLY WRONG.
Re: Yeah. But it's in the North Sea (Score:2)
Like what? A blade landing in the water somewhere betwen nowhere and Fuckall, Empty county?
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Yeah, but I would not like to have had a falling blade striking a CTV.
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Like what? A blade landing in the water somewhere betwen nowhere and Fuckall, Empty county?
Power outages create deaths, much like the fire that took two engineers lives before they could be saved. (They were only 19 and 21 years old.)
http://i.imgur.com/YHoiqz7.jpg [imgur.com]
Nothing massive that humans build, is simple to operate or maintain.
We have already seen it - save your breath (Score:5, Interesting)
1.) There are wind farms in the north sea for a certain amount of time now, starting with Danemark (NEG Micon/Vestas) smaller turbines
going through to the german part of the north sea with Alpha Ventus seeing "big"(big in 2010) turbines (5MW Class)
So to sum it up, we have had time to try, fail and learn from failures, this generation of wind turbines you are seeing there are a quantum leap away from what has existed in 2010.
But even those "relics" from the not so long ago past have proven to withstand those harsh conditions.
2.) Yes, engineers know: every technical systems can fail and the amount of power and energy will affect the outcome.
But I hope you don't want to give up modern medicine with the same argument, because these meds have been produced often in closed chemical process plants involving even such toxic and dangerous substances like Phosgen - some times neighbouring settlements.
In short, it is more dangerous when such a chemical plant blows up instead of a wind turbine crashing - because WTGs are mostly far away from humans.
But safety isn't taken lightly and duly maintenance is essential on all industrial installations, because humans do work in those turbines and CTVs (crew transfer vessels) are sailing under and along those wind turbines in a wind farm.
Also the control systems in wind turbines are very reliable and utilize the multiple redundant braking systems (three independent blades -> one blade out of wind = WTG stops) to safely control the WTGs
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Re:We have already seen it - save your breath (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't say "unsinkable" I admit that every technical installation dealing with high power and energy has its risks, but:
When you make less and less mistakes every iteration because you sit down and analyze, what went wrong and why, you might be on the right path, but you know that you are on the right path when grave mistakes are already rare.
And I say that with a "sales pitch" because I have proven confidence in WTGs and their development while not working as a sales guy :)
Starting from "cowboy methods" (yes early Windturbine building and maintaining was wild west) - but it worked - and go through a learning phase and then the former startups reach technical maturity and industry standard (also because the startups were bought by big industries Vestas+Mitsubishi HI, Siemens(AN Bonus)+Gamesa, Alstom+GE) those industries also implemented their structure and methods into the wind subs.
Moore's law for wind turbines (Score:5, Informative)
Notice that the power goes as area swept which is radius squared. So the radius is only multiplying with 1.5 per decade.
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Re: Moore's law for wind turbines (Score:4, Informative)
Before anyone asks "What if there is no wind?" (Score:5, Informative)
Then ... you've clearly never been to the canal or north sea. :)
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Then ... you've clearly never been to the canal or north sea. :)
Hopefully not. It's freezing cold, for one.
Re:Before anyone asks "What if there is no wind?" (Score:5, Insightful)
"What if there is no jobs?"
This is an old question, one that has been asked continually for some 250 years now, starting at the beginning of the industrial age. In the early 18th century, 98% of the population worked in agriculture. Today, in the developed world that has flipped and only about 2% of the population farms for a living. That is a truly massive shift, but our lives are much better for it.
I simply think that many are being quite dismissive of the massive societal pain created by industrial shifts like this.
Across the whole of society, the shifts aren't painful, and in fact they have proven to consistently improve our standard of living. That actually should be obvious, since freeing up labor in one area makes it available in other areas, making a wider variety of goods and services cheaper.
For individuals whose livelihoods depend on work that is no longer needed, of course, the shifts are very painful. And the faster the shifts occur, the larger the number of individuals who find themselves in the situation where they need to learn to do something new. In the past the shifts were mostly slow enough that it wasn't too bad. As the pace of technological change has increased, though, that's changing, and it is a problem that we need to figure out how to deal with. The good thing is that the shifts improve efficiency and create excess capacity, so it's a problem of allocation not production, which means we need to figure out how to reallocate resources to support those people while they retrain -- and perhaps continue helping them if the only thing they can retrain into is less remunerative.
What we should not do, however, is fight the efficiency improvements, because they are beneficial and lift all of us. We need to embrace and accelerate them, while also figuring out how to mitigate the pain of those whose livelihoods disappear.
Interesting background in the photo... (Score:5, Insightful)
In the background of the new Turbine is the 1800MW Energiecentrale Maasvlakte, a coal fired power station the most recent unit of which went into commission in 2016. That new power station was supposed to demonstrate how "clean coal" could work with a 250MW carbon capture and storage unit.
As you can imagine, after getting $300m in taxpayer funding there has been precisely zero development and the world is now stuck with another shitty dirty emitting coal plant built on the back of a broken promise. Better still they've been told to shut by 2030 and are now whining to the government for another $200m funding. If anyone ever asks me why the term "clean coal" makes me want to punch whoever said it, this is why.
The opening photo is a lovely contrast of *actual* green development against shitty broken promises from the coal industry.
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The obvious reality being that should they actually shut down as Dutch gas reserves are running out, i.e. if Netherlands follow in footsteps of Denmark, they'll become another de-industrialized nation with intermittent power grid fully dependent on foreign producers for stability. Something needs to back up that wind. And Netherlands are not going to be rich in natgas for much longer.
At which point, expect German grade electric bills for consumers as well, or even higher as government will likely make best
Behind every wind turbine there is gas generator (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Behind every wind turbine there is gas generato (Score:5, Informative)
Electricity production in Germany in 2010 from wind power was 38 TWh and from gas 89 TWh. In 2019 it was 126 TWh from wind and 91 TWh from gas. So electricity production from gas did not increase.
Re:Behind every wind turbine there is gas generato (Score:4, Interesting)
These peak powerplants were the cash cows for the generating companies. Enron artificially created crisis and over charged. But even without a malicious operator, there are enough crises and enough opportunities for enormous profits. All will be gone once these batteries come on line. Remaining gas plant operators will come to the government hat in hand to be bailed out. They will also engage in serious misinformation campaign scaring people saying, "you need us for the time when sun does not shine and the wind does not blow".
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PG & E 730 MWh, 185 MW x 4 hours [pge.com] In 2019 PG & E announced one large battery project 360 MW x 4 hours and one medium size, this one with Tesla, and two more small experimental technology batteries 10 MW x 4 hours. They also announce three gas powered power plants used for peak power generation will be retired and not rebuilt
I have seen such battery projects from Tennessee, Texas and Florida too. All these states with significant late afternoon evening demand pe
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The gas plant operators were whistling past the grave yard, "That's different, FCAS does not need much power just reaction, we got the duck curve by its neck, we are safe".. That's when CA announced its not going to rebuild three gas plants when they reach end of life. Batter
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I used to do blacksmithing with coal as a hobby in my younger days. There is no such thing as clean coal. It turns everything it touches black. The smoke it gives off as you burn off the impurities is toxic (sulfur and whatever else was mixed in with the 2/3 typical carbon content).
Please tell them (Score:2)
let me fix that for you (Score:2, Funny)
13 megawatts of power, enough to light up a town of roughly 12,000 homes only 10% of the time, when there's wind.
as for the other 90%, a russian gas burning boiler will be used...
#ThisIsBullshit
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It's near the shore in The Netherlands. There's almost always wind.
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He does not know where the Netherlands are, and most likely neither where Russia is.
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yes, this things you say is bullshit.
Yes it's intermittent, but more like 90% ON.
No, it will not be supplemented by gas, but rather by far away meteorologically decorrelated wind
NYT puff piece lies by omission (Score:3, Informative)
Okay, somebody tell me if I am wrong. From what I can tell, this is using misdirection and lying by omission. It compares an experimental unit to something ancient, while ignoring the world leader that already has something close in commercial operation, which is just an outright lie. Actually the outright size of the thing is not earth-shattering and the efficiency numbers appear to be awful.
I looked up Vestas who for a long time I thought was pretty cool with their wind turbines. Nothing to do with them personally though I have seen the Lillegrund turbines (by Siemens, 2006) from the Oresund bridge which was very cool but difficult to photograph (because of mist, not the height.) I'm not an expert. So this article quotes an unnamed figure saying it is a "leapfrog over the latest technology" and has "shaken the industry". Really? I would certainly like to know if that is true or not because it would be interesting. I mean they compare it to the London Eye, a Boeing 747, and the Empire State Building! And TFA tells us that "G.E.’s Haliade-X generates almost 30 times more electricity than the first offshore machines installed off Denmark in 1991." Breathlessly.
Wait, why are they comparing this to 1991 technology? Turns out Wikipedia knows all. The London Eye is 1998 technology. The 747 is 1969 technology. The Empire State Building is 1930 technology. And I could see comparing the Haliade-X to a ferris wheel since they both spin, but the Empire State Building? Why not a taller building? Or how about comparing it to a free standing tower? The CN Tower from 1976 is 1,815 feet high. Of course there are a lot taller ones now. Tokyo Skytree (2012) is 2,080 feet high, not the highest though pretty well known. London Eye is not the biggest ferris wheel actually. It is 443 feet high but the High Roller in Las Vegas is 550 ft. tall and the Ain Dubai when finished next year will be 689 ft. tall.
So it turns out according to Wikipedia, the biggest fully operational (not experimental) turbine is manufactured by Vestas, not G.E. It has been in operation since 2014 and since 2017 it has been rated at 9.5MW with a 538 ft. diameter. In 2018 they announced a 10MW model to be available in 2021. So the experimental GE turbine is not 30 times better or earth shaking, in metrics. It might have amazing technology, hope it does. Is it actually an advance? I don't know how experts compare these things so I tried 3 ways.
Rated power: GE 13MW, Vestas 10MW. So GE is 30% bigger. Or a bit more if you use the 9.5MW figure.
kW per foot in diameter: GE 18.006, Vestas 17.658. So GE is nearly 2% better.
W per foot^2: GE 99.754, Vestas 131.29. According to this metric, Vestas is over 31% better..
Another omission: Siemens Wind Power's Siemens SWT-8.0-154 is close to what Vestas has it seems. 8MW, 154m (505 ft) diameter. W per ft squared is 125.35. So the leading Vestas turbine is 4.7% more efficient than the leading Siemens turbine by this metric. Sure there are things like rated wind speed but we get the picture.
In terms of power per swept area, GE is far behind Vestas and Siemens Wind Power. I'd love if an expert here could give their own assessment.
According to the fteploring.com site below, wind turbine efficiency is calculated based on the square of the turbine blade diameter, so this means that actually GE totally sucks! That said, even the big Vestas turbine has gained in power between 2014 and 2017 so maybe GE's could scale higher too. Who knows. NYT isn't saying.
However you slice it, leaving out the current world's best turbines while comparing GE's product to ancient technology is just flat-out lying your pants off, and is very embarrassing for GE and the New York Times.
Reference:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org].
http://www.ftexploring.com/win... [ftexploring.com]
Re:NYT puff piece lies by omission (Score:4, Interesting)
The leapfrog is the fact that GE up-rated the unit to 13MW from its original 12MW nameplate. Same product, but they were able to squeeze an extra MW out of it.
When you get into these large turbines, reducing count becomes pretty important. A farm with 10MW turbines is going to be at a huge economic disadvantage compared to 13MW. I follow the industry from the periphery, and as far as I understand, Vestas does not have a plan for blades over their current ~107m limit within the next 5 years. They felt that it was an economic ceiling for single-piece blades.
Re:Incredibly huge (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
That is why you put them off-shore. Seriously.
Re: (Score:3)
If an entire city is powered by a mega-windmill positioned offshore, wouldn't it be an enormous target during wartime? Destroy one structure, cripple an entire city until it can build a new city-sized power facility, and do so *without existing power*, during a war. Just consider that entire city permanently offline, and a new source of crisis for the government to figure out how to feed, clothe, bathe, etc. the entire population without power.
This is a single point of catastrophic vulnerability, and thes
Re: (Score:3)
Yes, so? Any nuclear power station is a very nice target during a war. Any power distribution grid is. Oh, and before I forget, any large concentration of people (i.e. a "city") is. It is not really hard to, say, get a stealthy drone through the defenses and spray a large city with a few kilos of nuclear dust, making it uninhabitable for a long time. Attacking an off-shore power installation is _harder_ and more expensive.
That said, anybody doing a war on that scale these days is pretty much doomed.
Re: Incredibly huge (Score:4, Informative)
Never been to the north sea, have you?
Current prediction is that hell will freeze over first. Twice.
Re: Incredibly huge (Score:5, Interesting)
Direction matters? Do do realize that the towers are equally strong in all axes and the turbines turn to face the wind, right?
Also, I find it amazing how internet armchair quarterbacks want to insist to people who actually develop power grids that their development plans of high-renewable-penetration grids are impossible. I'm sorry, but the era of "baseload generators" is dying. Even 4 years of Trump couldn't save the US coal industry, and even now-cheap NG baseload is increasingly struggling to compete with renewables in locations that are far from wind / solar optimal (though it still gets some plant contracts). The world is rapidly transitioning to a "renewables + peaking" grid at present, and even new fossil peaking plants are likely to be going extinct a decade from now.
Some basic "formulas":
* Intermittent + Storage = Non-intermittent (for the storage period)
* Intermittent + Different Kind of Intermittent = Significantly less intermittent
* Intermittent + Far-Away Intermittent = Significantly less intermittent
Given what's in the pipeline, we also have what appears to be many years ahead of dramatic price declines for wind and especially solar and batteries.
When you put this all into models, what you come up with is not that your optimal situation is weeks worth of storage, but rather only a couple days worth of storage, a geographically distributed multi-source (such as wind + solar) grid, and overbuilding of wind and solar. E.g. if in a given area you'd need an annual 1TWh, you don't aim for producing "just over 1TWh per year", but rather, 3TWh or so. So even when your wind + solar over a broad geographical area is only producing at 1/3rd their average capacity (let alone their peak capacity), you're not even touching your battery storage; battery storage in such scenarios only deals with extreme low periods, a couple weeks of usage per year.
A side effect of such a structure is that for the vast majority of the year, there's an extreme excess of power produced, for exceedingly cheap for anyone who doesn't mind being curtailed. For example:
* Desalination (the vast majority of the cost is power, and since you're filling up a reservoir, being down for even weeks at a time doesn't matter)
* Vertical farming (lighting can be cut down to survival-levels or a single crop sacrificed, harvested early, or just not planted based on forecasts, in order to power lighting at dirt-cheap prices for the rest of the year.)
* Data-crunching compute tasks (wherever power costs are higher than hardware costs)
* Electricity-intensive industry (alumium refining, other electrolytic metal refining processes, hydrothermal reduction processes with hydrogen generated during excess-power periods, etc)
Re: (Score:3)
An interesting and insightful commentary. Since I cannot respond with an equally interesting comment, I'll have to go low:
Direction matters
That's what she said.
Re: (Score:3)
I find it amazing how internet armchair quarterbacks
Don't confuse armchair quarterbacks with outright ignorant trolls. Luckyo seems to have a hardon about some Dutch gas reserves which has nothing to do with anything being discussed.
Re: (Score:3)
The goal here is to try to increase rotor blade diameter to extract more force from existing wind. Bonus points from going higher up where wind blows more reliably due to lack of interference from the sea and getting main assembly away from the corroding salt spray. Unfortunately that also exposes the system to variable wind speed and even direction across different heights that blades travel through.
It will obviously require more spinning reserve to back it up when there's no wind.
Re: (Score:2)
I think you're partly missing the point. Any electricity produced substitutes the need to combust fossil fuels one-to-one. Current offshore wind power generates electricity at an annual capacity factor of ~40% [wikipedia.org] of their theoretical maximum. This turbine is purported to reach above 60% [ge.com], though location also plays a major factor.
However, there are indeed times when the wind is barely blowing [youtube.com], which means that a wind farm may not allow significant on-demand capacity (nuclear, gas, coal) to be decommissioned.
Re: (Score:2)
which means that a wind farm may not allow significant on-demand capacity (nuclear, gas, coal) to be decommissioned.
Note that nuclear is not on-demand, but permanent baseload. You can't (efficiently) switch off/on nuclear capacity on short notice. That's the main reason why it combines so badly with wind/solar, since there you do need capacity that can quickly (de)activate (unless you have a lot of storage capacity to which you can redirect the surplus energy, but then you could just as well use it directly with wind/solar).
Re:Incredibly huge (Score:4, Informative)
This is a bit of a myth. Nuclear plants, if designed to do so, can ramp reactors up and down about half as well as coal plants. See https://www.oecd-nea.org/jcms/... [oecd-nea.org] (page 16) for numbers. Mainly France has been using their plants for this, ramping reactors up and down once or twice per day to compensate for dips in electricity consumption or expected ramp-up from intermittent sources.
That said, nuclear is on-demand in that it can compensate for expected variations based on consumption patterns and weather forecasts. It can be a useful part of the zero-carbon electricity mix, but isn't a complete solution by itself.
Re: Incredibly huge (Score:2)
I would have thought that you could simply not bother to put the steam through the turbines at a nuclear plant and hence not generate power. Not terribly sensible on a fossil fuel power plant not such a problem on a nuclear plant.
Re: (Score:2)
Nuclear is hardly on-demand capacity. In a traditional power system you would have peaking power plants in addition to base load plants. But it is certainly true that the need for dispatchable power or storage increases with increased use of renewables. But it is not not insurmountable problem.
Re: (Score:2)
Nuclear is hardly on-demand capacity. In a traditional power system you would have peaking power plants in addition to base load plants.
It's all relative. See my full response in this thread: https://slashdot.org/comments.... [slashdot.org]
Re: Incredibly huge (Score:2)
It's by the coast in Rotterdam. That's not going to be much of a problem.
Metric please ! (Score:2)
Metric pleas e !
Re:Massive bird killing machine (Score:5, Interesting)
Half of all birds in the world die each year anyway, a storm can leave tens of thousands of them dead in a field. Don't worry about the wind turbines.
The energy required to make a windmill is tiny, 10 years ago was 1/20th to 1/25th the amount generated over lifetime. That's just a meme brought up by haters without foundation in engineering or science.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/... [sciencedirect.com]
Re: (Score:3)
So, these wind farms remove vast amounts of energy from the wind
No, they don't. It's a tiny percentage of the wind energy.
has anyone studied what the long term effects of this will be?
Yes. There is a localized heating effect downwind of the turbines due to turbulence, which is generally irrelevant.