Offshore Wind Power Redesign Key To Adoption, Says Irish Firm (theregister.com) 93
Dublin-based company Gazelle Wind Power has developed a modular floating offshore wind turbine design that it claims is more affordable than traditional designs. The Register reports: While it still has to be anchored to the seafloor, Gazelle's design places the anchor cables on a trio of articulated arms that help the platform move with the motion of the ocean. To ensure the turbine tower itself stays stationary, a counterweight hangs from the center of the platform; Gazelle claims this will reduce the turbine's pitch to less than five degrees, which the company said will greatly reduce wear and tear on the tower. Despite those design changes, the result is a turbine base that Gazelle reckons is smaller, lighter and 30 percent cheaper to deploy compared to traditional semi-submersible designs, it said. Speaking to IEEE Spectrum recently, Gazelle CTO Jason Wormald claimed the counterbalanced turbine was designed from the ground up, so to speak, for the offshore wind industry.
Gazelle's design has yet to be fielded - it's working on a pilot project in Portugal with renewable energy firm WAM Horizon, whose Chairman also serves as a non-executive director at Gazelle -- but if test results scale well it could mean every 1GW of third-generation Gazelle towers deployed would use 71kt less steel, preventing around 100kt of carbon dioxide emissions, the company claims. Gazelle also touts its modular design, which it said doesn't require any specialized equipment, like cranes or custom-built launch vessels, as another way in which it reduces environmental impacts.
Gazelle's design has yet to be fielded - it's working on a pilot project in Portugal with renewable energy firm WAM Horizon, whose Chairman also serves as a non-executive director at Gazelle -- but if test results scale well it could mean every 1GW of third-generation Gazelle towers deployed would use 71kt less steel, preventing around 100kt of carbon dioxide emissions, the company claims. Gazelle also touts its modular design, which it said doesn't require any specialized equipment, like cranes or custom-built launch vessels, as another way in which it reduces environmental impacts.
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Microturbine arrays is the way this needs to go. These giant monsters just make no sense.
Unfortunately not.
For wind power, bigger is much better and the winds are steadier & stronger higher up.
But I wonder who's going to maintain those monsters & who's going to tear them down & recycle them and, if necessary, remediate the site.
The original big farms in California like Altamont & San Gorgonio had 100s or 1000s of small-ish turbines that sat unmaintained for well over a decade, and most of those were at most 50 - 80 feet high, not nearly a 1/4 mile like some of today's monstrosit
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Being the EU, there will be a requirement to maintain and eventually dispose of them. Likely the disposal will be done with replacement at the same time.
That said, even if they just sank them on the spot, it would still be better environmentally than any other source of generation. I'm not suggesting they do that, I'm saying that given the position we in with 1.5C looking increasingly unlikely we really need to be focusing on the bigger picture here.
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The power companies/owners of the turbines will be maintaining the wind turbines. It is the cost of doing business. Being cheaper to operate, doesn't mean free to operate.
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"The power companies/owners of the turbines will be maintaining the wind turbines. It is the cost of doing business. Being cheaper to operate, doesn't mean free to operate"
Companies shirk their responsibilities all the time. They also go bankrupt & abandon sites.
I used to work oil company contracting firms who operated globally & found out there are sites almost 100 years old that still haven't been cleaned up.
https://www.nrdc.org/stories/m... [nrdc.org]
I would like to believe legal protections are in place bu
Re:Microturbine Arrays (Score:5, Informative)
These giant monsters just make no sense.
They make no sense to you. They make sense to people who know what they're talking about [energy.gov] however.
Re:Microturbine Arrays (Score:4, Informative)
It's the opposite. The reason for general failure of wind as a power source that needs massive cash injections, priority seller rights and other similar legislation to barely function is intermittency.
If you could have a 1-2 kilometer tall wind mill, it's intermittency would be a tiny fraction, because it would tap far more stable wind patterns at that altitude. We're starting to see this in very limited geographies with current biggest wind plants that are put on top of large hills, and where their blades at the top of the swing are beginning to be able to access some of those more stable winds. They become far less intermittent as a result. And the dream is to be able to get it to about 10km, where it would be able to start tapping some jet streams.
Problem here however is materials technology. We don't have things that can take those incredible horizontal loads at those tower heights. Even currently tallest 280m turbine is pushing the limits right now. And that's for offshore, not onshore where hills are actually available to add height to the tower.
Re:Microturbine Arrays (Score:5, Informative)
This is nonsense. In Europe, offshore wind is subject to a bidding process. Companies compete to bid for the lowest minimum price for the electricity generated, and it's typically around 1/5th to 1/6th the price guaranteed for nuclear. It's lower than for all fossil fuels.
The only subsidies are some government backed low cost loans for capital to build the things, paid back in a few years. Often there are no subsidies at all.
The main issue at the moment is governments being slow to auction off rights to build offshore wind farms.
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The main issue at the moment is governments being slow to auction off rights to build offshore wind farms.
That's part of it, but politics and regulations are making it difficult to get connections built. A number of wind farms have been built near to nuclear plants, not because that's the best place or because that's where the demand is but just because the governments subsidise and support the building of those grid connections.
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There are grand designs for a North Sea distribution network, but they are holding up deployment of offshore wind.
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With nuclear you have the most expensive source of electricity, and it can't easily be adjusted to follow demand. Windmills can feather their blades, but the power is cheap anyway, and it's not such a big deal if the grid has an abundance of cheap energy.
Bullshit!
Nuclear price [Re:Microturbine Arrays] (Score:3)
With nuclear you have the most expensive source of electricity, and it can't easily be adjusted to follow demand. Windmills can feather their blades, but the power is cheap anyway, and it's not such a big deal if the grid has an abundance of cheap energy.
Bullshit!
Unfortunately, it turns out to be true: present-day nuclear power plants are extremely expensive, even with subsidies.
Advocates say that this is not inherent in the technology, and next-generation nuclear power plants can be much cheaper, but right now nuclear power is expensive.
(and I don't disagree that nuclear could be much cheaper. The question is, however, whether in practice it will be much cheaper.)
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>Unfortunately, it turns out to be true: present-day nuclear power plants are extremely expensive, even with subsidies.
Imagine a scenario where you see an excellent runner and a cripple. You are ideologically driven to ensure that cripple finishes competitions first. What do you do?
You cause harm to the excellent runner. You cut his tendons. You threaten his family with repercussions if he dares to try to win. You rip his side of the track up, and fill it with obstacles.
At the same time you also change t
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And imagine a nuclear plant run by the same people. Which one will destroy a small city and make the general area uninhabitable for centuries?
Insurance for nuclear is basically impossible to pay for so we subsidize it. And nuclear is still hideously expensive even after the subsidies..
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>And imagine a nuclear plant run by the same people. Which one will destroy a small city and make the general area uninhabitable for centuries?
Neither. You can go visit Chernobyl right now. There are people living around plant itself right now. They're fine, except for problems with wildlife. Which is abundant because of absence of humans for a few decades. Angry boars are not pleasant to be around as a human.
And nuclear remains the single most profitable long term investment humanity has ever made. I do
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"Allowed" is a funny term for an abandoned area.
In reality, there are plenty of people living in "not allowed" areas. There are even people eating food form the "not allowed" areas. There was a hilarious BBC documentary a few years ago when reporter thought herself a classic white savior when she called the mayor of nearby town to inform him that she tested mushrooms they collected in one of those "no allowed" areas, and they tested pretty damn high in radiation.
You could hear the mirth in the sound of the
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Nothing you said disagrees with what I posted.
Today nuclear power is more expensive than other sources of electricity.
Nuclear power advocates claim it could be cheaper, but that has yet to be demonstrated.
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You're arguing with MacMann. There's no point. He's been debunked a million times over, and continues to post the same tired nonsense. He knows he's wrong, but he'll keep trolling anyway...
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If all externalities were included, nuclear would be among the cheaper options. Just about nobody counts things that way though. E.g. what is the cost of safely (recyclably) disposing of windmill blades? I know of no good estimates. With nuclear you could, in principle, pile the waste up in a heap and wait for a century or two, and it would be nearly as safe as granite. (But nobody wants that pile in their backyard. So putting it somewhere is either going to be expensive, of involve force.)
And ALL sou
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Jet streams are not stable at all.
They are bands of high wind speed - quite narrow bands - that alter their direction of a course of a year continuously.
Imagine a snake line going around the north pole. For a while it has 7 bends, then it has 8, then 9, then one collapses and it is 7 again, a while later it is 8, two collapse and it is 6.
A jet stream is the same thing as a "polar vortex". There was a cold wave like 5 years ago in winter over north America, because a jet stream extended his normal jetting fa
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I think those "high speed winds" are what they were calling "the jet stream", so that's what I was replying to. I've seen lots of news stories where they say things like "the jet stream has tied itself in a loop causing...", and I'm sure what they're actually talking about is those high speed winds. (I've never seen a good explanation of what they mean by the wind has tied itself in a loop, but it's commonly used to explain a storm front or heat wave sitting in the same location for a week or so.)
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Well, you could read it up?
A jet stream is a loop.
So no idea what you actually want to say.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Nope. Nuclear is the road to hell.
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Nope. Nuclear is the road to hell.
I know you are a Troll but I'll bite. Explain why. Cite your sources, reliable ones only. I'll be the judge on if they are reliable or not. But let's hear what you have to say.
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There is no sane reason to. All sources are easily available. You are either willfully ignorant or too stupid for any citations of what is blatantly obvious to make any difference. At this time people with your stance do not even remotely qualify for a discussion. You have finally reached the level of the flat-earthers.
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Let's just go ahead and lay this to rest. What you mean to say, is you won't, because you can't. Back in the old days, before the internet, it was easy for you Trolls to whip up the public hysteria. You just printed a article in some magazine that read "nuclear bad, nuclear" bad and the public fell for it.
The main stream public has access to the internet and they are smarter than you thought they are. They no longer believe what is printed by the main stream media, and do their own research. Can
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Nope. Nuclear is the road to hell.
Still waiting for you to answer this Troll. Come on, put that imaginary PHd you claim to have to work.
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What, so you can push more of your lies? No.
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Incidentally, where I live, claiming a PhD without having one is a crime. Claiming a PhD without attribution when the PhD is from a non-accredited University (i.e. bought) is a crime. But you just remind me of the guy that once identified me and then claimed I was the janitor breaking into my own office and posting from the PC there. While he knew I (or the owner of that office) was an IT security expert. Good times.
The thing is, you are Dunning-Kruger far-left. You are so stupid and arrogant you cannot eve
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Wind power is cheaper because wind turbines are the cheapest way to produce electricity.
What happens as wind power is developed more widely and begins to drive up material costs? It takes a lot more material to construct a megawatt of electrical generating capacity in wind than for nuclear.
https://www.iea.org/reports/th... [iea.org]
Some materials will be needed in large quantities for both wind and nuclear, such as copper, but nuclear power still takes less. If copper prices go up then wind and nuclear power both have to pass that cost on to the consumer, only that nuclear will see 1/2 to 1/3 the cost
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What happens as wind power is developed more widely and begins to drive up material costs?
You mean the cost of aluminum? Probably we increase capacity and the price comes down again.
If copper prices go up then wind and nuclear power both have to pass that cost on to the consumer, only that nuclear will see 1/2 to 1/3 the cost that wind power will see. Costs for materials like zinc will impact wind power costs far more than nuclear power because wind power requires large amounts of zinc
The biggest use of zinc in wind power is galvanizing of the mast, and coating with zinc-rich epoxies. But alternatives to steel masts are becoming more common, so it's an open question whether that high demand for zinc is going to continue into the future. The need for copper is exaggerated, however. We get an improvement in efficiency by using it, as well as permanent magnets, but the efficiencies of both non-PM gen
nuclear fanboys with mod points (Score:2)
Before you can moderate a conversation on nuclear power, you should have to disclose how much stock you've got in building more of it.
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Yes, but that would be insanity of the highest order. If the same technologies allow you to mitigate the output problems of nuclear or wind, why would you ever choose nuclear when it has so many other problems?
Because nuclear power plants produce isotopes of considerable value for science and medicine. The reason Voyager probes can operate in interstellar space is because they have nuclear "waste" in RTGs on board for power. The reason a number of space probe missions failed was because of a shortage of isotopes for power, the probes relied on solar and batteries then got in a position where they were in the shade long enough for the batteries to run dead. There was fuel on board to maneuver into the sun but w
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The reason Voyager probes can operate in interstellar space is because they have nuclear "waste" in RTGs on board for power.
That is WRONG!
They have Plutonium as power source.
How dumb you actually are, we cold not figure yet.
A horde of /. trolls using the same account posting each other contradiction nonsense?
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MacMann, this is honestly pathetic. Hoping that wind power gets more expensive so that your insanely expensive nuclear power doesn't look so bad really is scraping the barrel.
Wind power gets cheaper every year, and there is no sign of it slowing. If anything, its growth is exponential and the price is falling faster than ever.
Re: Microturbine Arrays (Score:2)
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This is nonsense. In Europe, offshore wind is subject to a bidding process. Companies compete to bid for the lowest minimum price for the electricity generated, and it's typically around 1/5th to 1/6th the price guaranteed for nuclear. It's lower than for all fossil fuels.
And it's equally clear that, in the example of Great Britain, where the corporations building onshore and offshore wind farms accept CfDs -- 'Contract for Difference' -- that they bid on for delivered price, but decline to activate the CfD and instead sell their generated power at the spot-market price, typically twice or more the CfD price, are not doing anything to drive power cost down, and in fact are driving costs up because of the increase in costs for generating power when wind and solar are operatin
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Except that even at twice the CfD price it's still only similar to some fossil and a fraction of the price of nuclear.
That's how the system is supposed to work. They get the spot price, the CfD is only a guaranteed minimum.
As we remove fossil and nuclear from the mix the spot price will continue to go down. Batteries will further drive it down by handling peaks at far lower cost than current fossil fuel peaker plants. There is more pumped storage coming online too, which is cheap for peaking.
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As we remove fossil and nuclear from the mix the spot price will continue to go down.
When has removing the reliable supplies of any commodity lowered prices? If this were true then loss of natural gas supplies from Russia would have lowered prices.
Batteries will further drive it down by handling peaks at far lower cost than current fossil fuel peaker plants.
What happens to the cost of batteries should we start building "giga-packs" for grid scale storage? Or if we see a nation like China cut the rest of the world off from exports of critical materials like Russia cut off supplies of natural gas? Pretty sure that means rising costs.
There is more pumped storage coming online too, which is cheap for peaking.
That's great for places with the geography and climate that make pu
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When the price is set by the most expensive source.
Crapping your pants prematurely about battery supplies is ignoring the fact that we are building up capacity in the West too. We need to do it faster, not just for climate change, and increased demand will help do that.
Germany could turn some of those redundant coal mines into storage. They will be able to make sure of the pumped storage in Scotland and other countries when it is available. They already import and export power with other EU countries regula
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Crapping your pants prematurely about battery supplies is ignoring the fact that we are building up capacity in the West too.
I'm pretty sure that it is not premature to be concerned about battery supplies. We already saw BEVs switch to LFP batteries because there's a shortage of cobalt for Li-ion. That switch to LFP comes with the cost of reduced energy density, and that means a hit to performance in acceleration, braking, and likely other performance metrics that matter. The supply of lithium is likely to be the next issue to hit, and that isn't as easily solved as the cobalt problem.
Nobody is ignoring that there's new mines
Re: Microturbine Arrays (Score:2)
Re: Microturbine Arrays (Score:2)
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Storage that can replace fossil fuel peaking plants will reduce CO2, and reduce CO2 emissions for base load fossil fuel plants.
Care to explain how this works?
Wait: patent it first.
Then explain to us.
You will be king of the world with such a thing. Removing peaker plants reduces base load plants fuel cost! Wow ... that is genial!
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Additional renewables lower prices even when the market price is determined by the most expensive (typically conventional) power plant which is still needed to fulfill demand (Merit order). The reason is that more renewables mean that some even more expensive plants are not needed any more, which means they are not running at this time and the price is lower. This is called the Merit order effect. That renewables can produce even cheaper means they make a profit. Which is good, because this leads to more i
Re: Microturbine Arrays (Score:2)
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That would be because as a part of bidding process, they get a legal framework where they get guaranteed priority to sell over everyone else if they have any capacity available.
If this didn't exist, you would have to add at least one, likely two zeros to the end of every bid. Because if you can't choose when you are allowed to produce and when you have to drop out, you cannot run an intermittent power source.
This just to make one point. Massive subsidies to jumpstart the industry is another, but even with t
Re: Microturbine Arrays (Score:2)
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Depending on the language, the concept is called different things. If I remember correctly, the English term is twofold: "priority dispatch" and "priority access".
For example, here's a quote from very pro wind ADB paper:
Priority dispatch. FiT is often accompanied with take-or-pay contract in which the wind
farm owner is paid even for curtailed energy. Curtailments occur when the wind energy
production is higher than the difference between the load and sum of minimum
production levels of all dispatched generato
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>a 2016 working paper was the best you could come up with? Why not some actual legislation or bidding process?
No, it was just among the first results that were readable by a layman in my search results.
>Even then it shows us why wind is prioritised, it bids lower.
It's a pro-wind political pressure paper. What did you expect them to do, lay out the other side of the argument. I specifically steelmanned the argument from the other side to the maximum possible extent because wind is such a weak contender
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plus the mandate that they're allowed to sell everything they generate first on spot markets, before anyone else can sell anything else.
That is complete nonsense. Nearly everything on the market is sold months or years AHEAD of production.
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Another angelospherism to add to the pile of Germany controlling wind, Northern Europe no longer getting winters colder than -20C because of global warming and other nonsense.
Long term contracts are what companies purchase because they seek to amortize themselves from spot price fluxuations. That is what you are thinking about. The actual costs are typically born by various brokers who effectively bet on prices and offer various insured long term contracts for specific price, and pocket the differential. Ma
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Instead of writing nonsense and inventing Germany controls the wind meme:
you simply read up how the European power market works.
But that would be to simple, right?
You could start here: https://www.eex.com/en/ [eex.com]
They have a lot of "informational" PDFs - for dumbasses like you.
Or you could read up the relevant laws ... https://www.europarl.europa.eu... [europa.eu]
Plenty of background information, too.
o//
The actual cost of electricity in the market is the spot price.
Just lol.
In Germany no private household is affected from
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"Angelosphere posts a couple of links that confirm everything I said".
Cool.
>In Germany no private household is affected from the spot price.
So that means everyone pays premium to insurance brokers to get stable prices.
>most industries do not buy from the spot market. All is pre ordered.
From or via insurance brokers. Who require premiums. Who deal with markets for that fee.
>Or do you think anyone has the nerves to have a coal plant on idle to sell all its potential power production on the spot marke
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Grid is not a free market. You're attempting to apply free market economics to the industry that has no supply flexibility and is mandated perfect balance of supply and demand at all times, all while all capacity must be prebuilt and installed well ahead of time.
This is not "simple economics". This is grid management, which by definition is complex economics. So when you think you can apply simple economics rules to a complex economic system, it's not wonder your conclusions are the opposite of correct.
>
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Nuclear is legally required to adjust before wind and solar. That was one of the problems with recent Olkiluoto 3 power plant that finished, and then had to be throttled within a month because of overabundance of wind combined with floods in Lapland forcing hydro to keep running.
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He can't.
As there is no such ting.
Guaranteed prices (for power, guaranteed by the government, never existed in Germany for example). The only thing coming close are guaranteed feed in tariffs for solar and wind power 20 years ago. But that does not mean that the government is paying anyone such a price. It means the grid operator has to pay that price to the person/company that is connecting a power plant to the grid.
Luckyo, is just an idiot. He keeps claiming "Germany is controlling the wind", no idea what
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This is nonsense. In Europe, offshore wind is subject to a bidding process. Companies compete to bid for the lowest minimum price for the electricity generated, and it's typically around 1/5th to 1/6th the price guaranteed for nuclear. It's lower than for all fossil fuels.
It's fundamentally not the same product. It's "1MW whenever we have some wind, whether you need it or not". It's the difference between paying for a server with 99.99 availability and hosting something on your cousin's desktop tower.
Better, more technical link (Score:4, Informative)
Here is the article in question [ieee.org].
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THANKS!
but this is not sexy ! (Score:1)
While this may not be a Zed-P-M, it's precisely the kind of incremental, clever, improvement needed to make things better, cheaper, more efficient, etc...
You don't always need to hit a home run.
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Well, it's promising that. But do remember that this is a company promoting itself, and was for evidence before actually believing it.
In this case evidence will be a bit delayed, because part of the costs are going to depend on maintenance.
doesn't require cranes? (Score:2)
"doesn't require any specialized equipment, like cranes or custom-built launch vessels"
That would be great if its true, because the specialized launch vessels that are usually required for offshore wind are rare and super-expensive. But I am not clear on how they intend to get away without using them. It seems like you would still need to have a crane to erect the tower, mount the nacelle and the vanes.
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Gazelle (Score:1)
Don't they make bicycles?
I guess it's similar tech....
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Bullshit. Get some understanding of wind patterns and stop lying.
Re: Microturbine arrays is the way this needs to g (Score:2)
What is the gyroscopic effect of the rotors? (Score:2)