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Power

Wildly Reinvented Wind Turbine Generates Five Times More Energy Than Its Competitors (fastcompany.com) 217

Posted by BeauHD from the new-and-improved dept.
Norwegian company Wind Catching Systems is developing a floating, multi-turbine technology for wind farms that could generate five times the annual energy of the world's largest, single wind turbine. This increased efficiency is due to an innovative design that reinvents the way wind farms look and perform. Fast Company reports: Unlike traditional wind turbines, which consist of one pole and three gargantuan blades, the so-called Wind Catcher is articulated in a square grid with over 100 small blades. At 1,000 feet high, the system is over three times as tall as an average wind turbine, and it stands on a floating platform that's anchored to the ocean floor. The company is planning to build a prototype next year. If it succeeds, the Wind Catcher could revolutionize the way we harness wind power. The world's first floating wind farm, Hywind, opened in 2017, almost 25 miles off the coast of Aberdeen in Scotland. The wind farm counts six floating wind turbines that are slotted in a buoyant cylinder filled with heavy ballast to make it float vertically. Because they're only tethered to the seabed with thick mooring lines, they can operate in waters more than 3,000 feet deep. Hywind is powering around 36,000 British homes, and it has already broken U.K. records for energy output. Wind Catching Systems launched the same year Hywind opened. It claims that one unit could power up between 80,000 and 100,000 European households. In ideal conditions, where the wind is at its strongest, one wind catcher unit could produce up to 400 gigawatt-hours of energy. By comparison, the largest, most powerful wind turbine on the market right now produces up to 80 gigawatt-hours.

There are several reasons for this substantial difference. First, the Wind Catcher is tallerâ"approaching the height of the Eiffel Tower -- which exposes the rotor blades to higher wind speeds. Second, smaller blades perform better. [Ole Heggheim, CEO of Wind Catching Systems] explains that traditional turbines are 120 feet long and usually max out at a certain wind speed. By comparison, the Wind Catcher's blades are 50 feet long and can perform more rotations per minute, therefore generating more energy. And because the blades are smaller, the whole system is easier to manufacture, build, and maintain. Heggheim says it has a design lifespan of 50 years, which is twice as much as traditional wind turbines, and when some parts need to be replaced (or during annual inspections), an integrated elevator system will offer easy maintenance. "If you have one single turbine and you need to change the blade, you have to stop the whole operation," says Ronny Karlsen, the company's CFO. "We have 126 individual turbines, so if we need to change the blade, we can stop one turbine."

When the system reaches the end of its life, much of it can be recycled. After the first significant wave of wind power in the 1990s, many traditional wind turbines have reached their design lifespan; blades the size of a Boeing 747 wing are piling up in landfills. Not only are the Wind Catcher blades smaller, but they're also made of aluminum, which, unlike the fiberglass used for larger turbines, is entirely recyclable. "You melt it down and produce new ones," says Heggheim. A prototype will likely be built in the North Sea (in Norway or the U.K.). After that, the company is looking at California and Japan.
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Wildly Reinvented Wind Turbine Generates Five Times More Energy Than Its Competitors More

Wildly Reinvented Wind Turbine Generates Five Times More Energy Than Its Competitors

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  • Not "reinvents", optimizes (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mykepredko ( 40154 ) on Friday September 03, 2021 @09:11PM (#61761565) Homepage

    When I RFTA, it looks like Wind Catching Systems really just looked at the issues encountered by off shore wind systems and put together different pieces (none of them revolutionary) to come up with what is an optimized system for it's environment.

    Good on them and I hope they succeed but thinking they've done something completely different just isn't the case.

    • they havenâ(TM)t even built a prototype. This is just trying to scam dumb investors.
      • If it performed as advertised then that will be savvy investors.

        • If it performed as advertised then that will be savvy investors.

          Absolutely. There's massive potential in renewable energy. I find it a bit dubious, though, that they are comparing with 100M turbines when 250 M turbines are now starting to be built and, by the time this is ready, a reasonable number to plan for would be 300M, especially in offshore turbines. It's also strange that they make a big deal about the ability to switch off bits of the system when a standard wind turbine would probably sit together with tens or hundreds of identical ones already, so switching o

        • This could be tested with a high degree of accuracy with 3D modeling & simulation.

      • they havenÃ(TM)t even built a prototype. This is just trying to scam dumb investors.

        I'm thinking this is more about government money than private investment. Offshore wind and solar power are quite expensive and so survive on government money, without government incentives I suspect both industries would collapse.

        We need energy that is as low in cost as coal and natural gas, without government incentives, to have a sustainable energy supply. That means hydro, onshore wind, nuclear fission, and maybe geothermal. We need a diverse supply of energy and this focus on offshore wind and solar

        • We need energy that is as low in cost as coal and natural gas, without government incentives, to have a sustainable energy supply. That means hydro, onshore wind, nuclear fission, and maybe geothermal.

          At this point you are no longer simply ignorant. You have been shown the levelised costs of electricity [wikipedia.org] several times - that is the costs which account for any level of intermittency and capacity factors - and these clearly show that wind and solar are the cheapest forms of energy supply we have ever had and, most importantly, that the cost of these sources is continually falling. You never address it, just saying "I want different numbers", as if you could wish it out of existence. Geothermal is great, b

          • At this point you are no longer simply ignorant. You have been shown the levelised costs of electricity several times - that is the costs which account for any level of intermittency and capacity factors - and these clearly show that wind and solar are the cheapest forms of energy supply we have ever had and, most importantly, that the cost of these sources is continually falling. You never address it, just saying "I want different numbers", as if you could wish it out of existence.

            The full report from which those number came warn about direct comparisons of intermittent sources like wind and solar to dispatchable sources like hydro and nuclear. The LCOE does not factor in intermittency and capacity factor, and you'd know this if you read the report.

            Currently available nuclear designs, on the other hand is something we just can't afford.

            The same thing was said about solar power decades ago, then the government dumped billions of dollars into research and development, as well as enforcing preferential treatment for solar power, which brought lower costs. Just imagine if

          • I largely agree with you, but your link shows once again that one shouldn't trust any statistics one hasn't faked oneself.

            I'm pretty sure that the wind prices don't contain blade decommissioning. The wear on those is humongous (I have something like 6-12 months in the back of my head but I may be wrong), and they're made of materials that need to be incinerated at extremely high temperatures, lest they fill landfills forever.

            I still think that renewables are the way to go - the price evolution is still noth

        • No, wind is not very expensive. It's now coming in cheaper than nuclear. Nuclear has a niche role to play, of which I am supportive, but you don't seem to be look at things holistically. Time and again, I have pointed out factual errors you have made and you shift goalposts or ignore them. You also seem to have some sort of misplaced political obsession which is not factually-based.

          • Re: Not "reinvents", optimizes (Score:5, Insightful)

            by MacMann ( 7518492 ) on Saturday September 04, 2021 @08:45AM (#61762685)

            No, wind is not very expensive. It's now coming in cheaper than nuclear.

            Onshore wind is low cost, offshore wind costs plenty. We will see nuclear power costs come down with experience, economy of scale, and technological development, just like we did with solar power. The difference is that nuclear power does not have near the same land and material requirements of solar power, and it not dependent on the weather to produce power, which means we can rely upon it when power is needed and we can deploy it where it is needed.

            Nuclear has a niche role to play, of which I am supportive, but you don't seem to be look at things holistically. Time and again, I have pointed out factual errors you have made and you shift goalposts or ignore them.

            What did you point out to me? You may remember me but I don't remember you. Refresh my memory, I run into plenty of people that believe so much that is not true.

            You also seem to have some sort of misplaced political obsession which is not factually-based.

            My "obsession" is to solve the problem of rising energy costs, dependence on foreign energy, and only tangentially concerned about CO2 emissions. I look at the data and I see that there is one path to solve this problem, and that path includes nuclear fission power. Lots and lots of nuclear fission power. I've read some history and I've seen politicians bring up energy prices, pollution, and more recently CO2 emissions again and again. History shows that the only nations that have succeeded in achieving their goals of lowering pollution, lowering energy costs, and lowering CO2 emissions did so with a combination of hydro, geothermal, and nuclear fission. I see onshore wind joined in on that too in the last decade or two. So, "looking at things holistically" there is our path to solving our energy problems. There isn't much resistance to onshore wind so I don't see a need to bring it up much. There appears to be a growing resistance to hydroelectric power but not too much just yet. The big problem, where there is the most resistance, is in nuclear fission power. I've read a number of studies now where it has become quite clear that we will not solve our energy problems until we take nuclear power seriously as a solution. It's become clear that this is slowly sinking in to people's heads on just how vital nuclear power is to our economy. Polls show that a slim majority of voters in the USA support nuclear power. All it will take to push that over into a large majority is another nuclear power plant shutting down, maybe three or four, and then it will start to really hurt. Energy prices will start to climb. Nuclear engineers and technicians will be looking for work. And then nuclear power will become a major issue in an election.

            When that happens we will see Democrats and Republicans fighting to say just how much more they support nuclear power than the other candidates. We will be building nuclear power reactors by the dozens. We will have to because we built them by the dozens decades ago. We have nothing to replace these aging nuclear power reactors but new nuclear power reactors. Once we start building them then it's simply not going to stop.

            We will build more nuclear power reactors in the USA. We will build more nuclear power reactors all over the world. We will do so soon, and we will do so by the dozens. We can start now and avoid an energy crisis or we can wait for the crisis and start then.

    • The proposed setup seems to me to be prone to tipping over once it starts catching wind. Two extra "floaters" on each side, attached to the main construction at an angle might prevent tipping over, but that makes the whole construction bob a lot more, so none of the fans will be at good angle. Or remain in a good position for proper functioning. I expect these units to require much more maintenance because of the bobbing.

      Perhaps I see too much bears on the road, but by showing me these rendered images of th

      • The proposed setup seems to me to be prone to tipping over

        The mooring lines will prevent tipping. They are also designed to dampen the resonant frequencies that can lead to tipping.

        Two extra "floaters" on each side

        Outriggers.

        You should only need one. It will provide buoyancy in one direction and ballast in the other.

        I think you way overestimate the "bobbing" problem. Avoiding resonance is standard engineering practice, and there are many techniques that can be applied.

      • Re:Not "reinvents", optimizes (Score:5, Insightful)

        by MrL0G1C ( 867445 ) on Saturday September 04, 2021 @02:10AM (#61762023) Journal

        The proposed setup seems to me to be prone to tipping over once it starts catching wind. Two extra "floaters" on each side, attached to the main construction at an angle might prevent tipping over, but that makes the whole construction bob a lot more, so none of the fans will be at good angle. Or remain in a good position for proper functioning. I expect these units to require much more maintenance because of the bobbing.

        Yeah, I bet they never though of that, a good job you noticed the flaw, better tell them quick.

    • Not even optimized. Pure marketing fluff (Score:5, Insightful)

      by raymorris ( 2726007 ) on Saturday September 04, 2021 @12:44AM (#61761897) Journal

      I don't know that they even really optimized anything.

      The headline says it produces three times as much power.
      The summary points out it's three times as high as the one they compared it to. So yeah - they made one bigger than the other one.

      The pitch from the company then goes on to imply that smaller rotors are more efficient. No, no, no. There's a reason average turbine six has increased 600%. Same reason airplanes use the biggest props they can without having it strike the ground on landing, and quads the biggest they can without the props hitting each other.

      The power from a rotor (turbine or prop) is proportional to the swept area. In the case of a turbine, that's multiplied by the square of the wind speed. There's no "turning faster for more power" bullshit - the AoA is adjusted for the RPM vs torque you want, the power stays the same. (Power being torque times RPM).

      Assuming your generator (or motor) can handle the torque, the SLOWER spinning blade is more efficient because of lower parasitic drag and tip vortexes. That just makes sense intuitively that something moving through the air fast is going to make a lot of turbulence, chaos, as opposed to smooth flow.

      Further, many small rotors have lower swept area than a single rotor covering the same size area because by having many you lose swept area to the packing factor.

      • I wrote "the square of the wind speed"; that should be cube. Power of wind is proportional to wind speed CUBED.

        Which creates a fundamental problem.
        Wind turbines need to be beefy enough to handle wind speeds much higher than normal. Which means the wind attempting to destroy them is MUCH, MUCH more powerful - that cube law.

        Conversely, wind speed 25% of normal has very little power. Maybe just enough to overcome the friction from those big beefy parts, with none left over to generate electricity.

        • Which means the wind attempting to destroy them is MUCH, MUCH more powerful - that cube law.

          Square law, if you're talking about force. Structures generally don't get statically destroyed by excess power rather than by excess force.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by XXongo ( 3986865 )

            Which means the wind attempting to destroy them is MUCH, MUCH more powerful - that cube law.

            Square law, if you're talking about force.

            Yep. Aero force is velocity squared, and power is force times velocity

            Structures generally don't get statically destroyed by excess power rather than by excess force.

            You brake the rotation at high wind speeds in any case, because other parts of the electrical system can't take overpower.

        • Conversely, wind speed 25% of normal has very little power. Maybe just enough to overcome the friction from those big beefy parts, with none left over to generate electricity.

          The friction forces can be quite large and once stopped static friction, or "sticion", comes into effect and this is larger than the friction of a moving object. This means that the force to get the turbine moving can be more than the wind alone can overcome, and this means that the turbines will need to be spun up to speed using power from the grid before they can produce power. There has been a lot of research into windmills that can self start because if there is already a shortage of power then drawing

      • They claim 5 times the energy "per unit", with is meaningless.

        The only measurement that matters is the energy output per dollar invested.

        • That, but operating costs and lifespan also come into play. One of the reasons offshore wind is now financially viable is that we've figured out how to do maintenance effectively and cheaply. It seems easier to maintain this design with smaller, lighter turnines, but is that really the case?

          Also: "We have 126 individual turbines, so if we need to change the blade, we can stop one turbine". That sounds great but you better wear the correct PPE if you're going to be working around the unstopped turbines.
          • I would anticipate that they would stop neighbouring ones too. On larger systems they also use predictive maintenance such that they can schedule things efficiently rather than just send someone with a spanner out when something breaks. That includes looking at sensor data for early signs of future failure weeks in advance, if possible.

          • Also: "We have 126 individual turbines, so if we need to change the blade, we can stop one turbine". That sounds great but you better wear the correct PPE if you're going to be working around the unstopped turbines.

            If you're working on the hub then you'll be 50 feet from the nearest moving turbine.

            There's also no reason they can't stop a 3x3 grid of turbines so you can work on the center one.

      • Perhaps you should have looked at it.

        Before posting your nonsense rant.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by XXongo ( 3986865 )
        Insightful, but one small correction:

        Assuming your generator (or motor) can handle the torque, the SLOWER spinning blade is more efficient because of lower parasitic drag and tip vortexes.

        No. There is an optimal tip speed which is expressed as a fraction of the wind speed ("tip speed ratio"). Thus, smaller rotors go at a higher RPM but get the same tip speed. TSR depends on the airfoil as well as factors like number of blades, but if the aerodynamics are the same it does not depend on the size. Propellers are one thing where smaller scales are not less efficient.

        (in the real world the smaller rotors will have a lower Reynolds number and thus slightly di

    • Hmm, five mills generate more power than one mill - I would hope so!
  • I don't see much reinventing here? 5 times more power but it looks to be at least 5 times the size and complexity too. all they are doing is putting lots of small wind turbines on a very very large grid many times the size of a single turbine system.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

      And despite their assertion, longer blades are more efficient.

      • It depends on how quickly the wind is moving, since the longer blades top out at a relatively low maximum speed.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by lsllll ( 830002 )

      I hear you, but think about when something breaks on this one, it'll affect only 1/100th of the power output, plus the total cost to replace it will be less than 1/100 or the total cost. When something goes wrong with the big ones, you're out all the power and depending on what goes out, it may cost a lot of money as well.

      As to complexity, I'm sure what's complex about this. It's a whole bunch of turbines on a grid. Now, whether they can make it work (it'd require a LOT, LOT, LOT of weight under water to

      • you mean hundreds more moving parts, cables and friction to cause failures, all on a device sitting many miles offshore. Sounds like a recipe for constant maintenance and hugely costly trips to do said maintenance. One of the big advantages of modern wind turbines is the minimal amount of moving parts
    • Five times the power in a single spot is impressive use of space, provided that it is still cost effective.
  • Quite recently the British installed wind turbine fleet, onshore and offshore was producing under 1GW of electricity for days on end with the lowest instantaneous amount noticed on the Gridwatch site under 200MW. - antipope.org

    • If you watch British wind turbines, you will see a few of them running whilst many sit idle. The reason for that is that the UK has quite a bit of legacy thermal power which is very inflexible (coal and especially nuclear is very problematic). Currently wind power has become really good for the grid due to weather prediction models. When wind is expected to be relatively low output, the grid ramps up the thermal power to compensate. Is it possible that, at the point the 200MW output was noticed, a number

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      The UK hasn't even really begun to tap it's reliable offshore wind resources. Out in the North Sea the wind is constant, but only recently has it become cost effective.

    • I'm trying to find the graphs. Today it seems very still, and generation is 3GW wind. It's pretty cloudy, but solar is still 4GW. Coal under 1, gas 12, nuclear 4.5, imports 3.8 net positive. Smaller amounts from other sources.

  • Smaller blades better? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by ByTor-2112 ( 313205 ) on Friday September 03, 2021 @09:41PM (#61761625)

    Wait, there was a story [slashdot.org] very recently about an enormous wind turbine that said larger was better. The Dept of Energy says the same thing... But TFA says "more RPM = more energy" in kind of a blanket statement. I can see why an array would be more efficient. Sounds like "it depends".

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

      Sounds like someone forgot about the existence of gears.

      • Gears cost efficiency. Going through additional gearsets is why an automatic has more loss than a stick, even with a lockup TC.

  • Wildly imagined (Score:5, Informative)

    by MDMurphy ( 208495 ) on Friday September 03, 2021 @09:43PM (#61761629)
    Someone has an idea, and had done some testing. But in the middle of the article is

    "The company is planning to build a prototype next year. If it succeeds..."

    The article titles are just BS. "It generates" isn't true. Add in "might generate" or "hopefully will generate" and it would be truthful, but less click worthy.

    • Prototypes on this scale are expensive.

      There'll be some engineering challenges to overcome, sure, but there's nothing radical about this tech. Nothing that screams "This will never work!"

  • This thing generates five times the electricity because it has five times the swept area.

    Got it.

  • Another benefit to this design (Score:4, Funny)

    by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Friday September 03, 2021 @09:53PM (#61761651)

    McDonalds can put a barge behind it and collect plenty of chopped bird meat to use for Chicken McNuggets.

  • The power generated by wind turbines is proportional to the area swept. This design generates 5x the power because it sweeps 5x the area, as established by it's huge "three times taller" claims. The other efficiency arguments are minor contributors. The recycling factor is nifty though.
    • Close. That’s only with equal wind speed. You’d have to integrate the wind speed over the swept area, taller generally means higher speed wind near the top and is a substantial reason small turbines are underperforming money losers.

  • which exposes the rotor blades to higher wind speeds.

    Looking at the design, some of the turbines are higher, and exposed to higher wind speeds, but some are significantly lower.

    What about the potential differences in speeds across the array? Will they employ synchronization across the array to prevent resonances that might rip the array apart? Or do they just say, "it's out at sea, so the winds won't be turbulent or otherwise inconvenient"?

  • It's a drawing, they "plan to build a prototype". Big drawings of big turbines have been done before and failed :)

    That square design, how does that draw more energy than other shapes? I hope you know that the available energy depends on the area swept, not the amount of blades (or the amount of coverage).

    Even taking such wild claims as 5x energy at face value, that thing looks like it has *much* more than 5x the number of moving parts compared "normal" turbines sweeping the same area. Unless they have magi

  • They set up the sim wrong

  • The first prototype quaintly named Bird Mulcher .. (Score:3)

    by fygment ( 444210 ) on Saturday September 04, 2021 @07:09AM (#61762489)

    ... will be made some time in the future ... maybe ....

    What "engineer" came up with this? The windage [wikipedia.org] alone makes it impractical for pretty much any use at sea. It looks strikingly top-heavy for a floating platform. And sorry, but smaller blades are less efficient.

    Making the blades out of aluminum is a good idea. Makes them heavier than fiber reinforced polymer and thus less efficient overall, but good for recycling.

  • It would seem to be five times bigger than its competitors.

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