The world’s largest wind turbine has been switched on • Hacker News Board

Re: The world’s largest wind turbine has been switched on

#61

Post by windows2020 » Sat, Jul 29, 2023, 5:56 PM UTC

throwbadubadu wrote: post #25

windows2020 wrote: post #12

I wonder what paint job would best prevent birds from being destroyed by this. It looks like sometimes one blade is painted black for this purpose. How do bird deaths from wind turbines compare to other manmade objects?

Insignificant on many levels. If we should care for that we should stop all fossil fuel consumption right now, stop eating meat, and most importantly, stop putting glass windows into our cute buildings. Why are these questions always in wind turbine posts before anything els?

If wind turbines were the number one bird killer, wouldn't figuring out the best color to paint the blades or other mitigation strategies be worth it?

Re: The world’s largest wind turbine has been switched on

#62

Post by jrmg » Sat, Jul 29, 2023, 6:02 PM UTC

jl6 wrote: post #50

The world used about 180,000TWh of energy in 2022[0]. That requires about 21TW of generation capacity. If we assume wind turbines have a capacity factor of about 30% due to the intermittency of wind, we would need about 69TW of nameplate capacity. If each of these turbines is rated at 16MW, we would need about 4.3 million of them. Is there enough space? Let's assume turbines should be spaced 10 rotor diameters apart[…

That’s just a 2100x2100 square. How much ground area does one of these turbines need?

I know that in reality you couldn’t just put them all in one place.

Re: The world’s largest wind turbine has been switched on

#63

Post by myshpa » Sat, Jul 29, 2023, 6:03 PM UTC

Qem wrote: post #11

ninkendo wrote: post #5

123 meter blades, that’s insane. This means the tip of the blade travels 772 meters in a single rotation. The speed of sound is 340 meters per second, meaning if it travels more than 0.44 rotations in a second, the tips of the blades are breaking the sound barrier.

Birds won't be happy, unfortunately. Yet, better than wrecking Earth's cycles by pumping to much garbage in the atmosphere like we do today.

Painting the blades lowers the number of collisions significantly.

Re: The world’s largest wind turbine has been switched on

#64

Post by Shaanie » Sat, Jul 29, 2023, 6:07 PM UTC

jl6 wrote: post #56

robin_reala wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is anyone seriously proposing a wind turbine monoculture for energy generation?

Pick your desired percentage of wind in the future energy mix. Even if we say 25%, it's still going to need millions of turbines. And our energy demands are not shrinking.

My country produces around 20% of its energy from wind nowadays, 2010 it was less than 3%. Seems to work just fine and is growing rapidly.

Re: The world’s largest wind turbine has been switched on

#65

Post by tedunangst » Sat, Jul 29, 2023, 6:07 PM UTC

windows2020 wrote: post #61

throwbadubadu wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Insignificant on many levels. If we should care for that we should stop all fossil fuel consumption right now, stop eating meat, and most importantly, stop putting glass windows into our cute buildings. Why are these questions always in wind turbine posts before anything els?

If wind turbines were the number one bird killer, wouldn't figuring out the best color to paint the blades or other mitigation strategies be worth it?

There will always be a number one bird killer, unless no birds die ever.

Re: The world’s largest wind turbine has been switched on

#66

Post by danans » Sat, Jul 29, 2023, 6:11 PM UTC

AYBABTME wrote: post #47

Similar wind speeds happen every afternoon in "the Slot" in the SF Bay. Maybe we should decorate the area with a similar giant windmill. It also happens to be when peak pricing is in effect.

I've been thinking along the same lines recently. The shallows just next to Emeryville seem ideal for this, and would aesthically match the new eastern span of the Bay Bridge. I'm not sure if or why this hasn't been proposed yet.

Re: The world’s largest wind turbine has been switched on

#67

Post by matthewdgreen » Sat, Jul 29, 2023, 6:13 PM UTC

jl6 wrote: post #56

robin_reala wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is anyone seriously proposing a wind turbine monoculture for energy generation?

Pick your desired percentage of wind in the future energy mix. Even if we say 25%, it's still going to need millions of turbines. And our energy demands are not shrinking.

We built about a million aircraft globally during WWII (specifically: 1939-1945). I’m not saying the average WWII airplane compares perfectly to a modern wind turbine, but the technology and industrial base we used to do this was also vastly more primitive. So yes, I’d bet that a sufficiently-motivated human society can crank out a million turbines over a multi-decade time span. You can Google the IEA “Net Zero by 2050” report to find estimates of how much offshore wind capacity there is (it’s a lot.)

It does illustrate the specific challenge of this energy transition. If a given energy technology isn’t being mass-produced in factories, it’s basically irrelevant given the scale of what we need to do.

Re: The world’s largest wind turbine has been switched on

#68

Post by aaron695 » Sat, Jul 29, 2023, 6:21 PM UTC

Animats wrote: post #46

The picture looks strange. You can see a ship through the turbine blade. That seems to be because ifisicence took a promotional picture with lettering and leaf decoration from here [1] and "cleaned it up" with some photo tool. General Electric and Vestas both have 14 megawatt wind turbine prototypes in operation. This seems to be a prototype deployed in a large installation. It's not in the catalog yet.[2] Mingyang h…

[dead]

Re: The world’s largest wind turbine has been switched on

#69

Post by jl6 » Sat, Jul 29, 2023, 6:24 PM UTC

hannob wrote: post #59

jl6 wrote: post #50

The world used about 180,000TWh of energy in 2022[0]. That requires about 21TW of generation capacity. If we assume wind turbines have a capacity factor of about 30% due to the intermittency of wind, we would need about 69TW of nameplate capacity. If each of these turbines is rated at 16MW, we would need about 4.3 million of them. Is there enough space? Let's assume turbines should be spaced 10 rotor diameters apart[…

You're confusing primary energy with useful energy. What people need to realize is that if we go to renewable, electric energy, in most cases this will also involve efficiency improvements. Many fossil fuel based processes are horribly inefficient, with electricity you can often avoid doing things like "80% of our energy goes into heating up the air around whatever we're doing". That said: Yes, we'll need a lot of wi…

I don't mind being conservative for this exercise, and renewables have their own inefficiency issue: we'll need to accept the inefficiency of using electrolysis to produce the hydrogen needed to synthesize the feedstocks needed to run petrochemical processes (e.g. producing plastic), because energy production isn't the only thing that depends on fossil fuels.

Re: The world’s largest wind turbine has been switched on

#70

Post by doodlebugging » Sat, Jul 29, 2023, 6:28 PM UTC

They have installed these in the Taiwan Strait where, in the event of war between China and Taiwan, one well-aimed missile knocks out power to 36000 homes or businesses. Obviously the first target and the juiciest targets are those that disrupt and disable the adversary's ability to produce the means and materials of conducting warfare. Therefore power generation, factories that produce munitions or that can be quickly flipped to dual purpose factories are obvious targets to neutralize. Accomplishing the destruction of your adversary's domestic ability to produce the weapons of war, food stocks for the nation, munitions, etc compromises the adversary's ability to conduct a war without needing to depend on outside assistance.

In Texas we have numerous wind farms. One of my relatives came home to find a crew at work on the neighboring property building a pad for a turbine. They had received no notice that a wind farm was to be constructed in the area and none about opportunities to object to turbine placement and as a result, while they were trying to determine who to contact about this, brand new turbines were installed on the neighboring property with the nearest one being less than 1500 feet from their home. It appears that they are now stuck with the constant whoosh-whoosh-whoosh of the blades as they rotate and an electric hum, 24 hours a day and their peaceful home now has an inescapable background noise pattern.

I love wind power, I have some solar power installed on my own property and will be upgrading that. I think though that the ability to enjoy peace and quiet in your own home should not be compromised by a private utility even if they are providing clean power for public consumption.

It would be better if we could replace some older turbines with newer units like this high-capacity turbine in the article. Perhaps with larger, more pwoerful turbines we would need fewer to be installed to be able to meet our state's power consumption needs. New wind power installations should be mandated to use best-available technology so that we end up with durable, reliable, quiet power generation with a minimal footprint.