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The world’s largest wind turbine has been switched on

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

#81

Post by doodlebugging »

jl6 wrote: post #74
doodlebugging wrote: post #70

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 quick…

The low density of wind power actually makes it much harder for an adversary to take out a country's energy production capacity. Currently, that well-aimed missile could hit a nuclear plant and cause devastation as well as the loss of multiple gigawatts of capacity. The equivalent wind power would be spread across hundreds or thousands of turbines, spaced kilometers apart. Destroying one wouldn't have the same impact…

Missiles with integrated guidance systems are in every modern inventory. I mentioned the possibility of the loss of a single turbine to one missile and left it up to the reader to extrapolate the consequences if the one firing the missile had a large number of missiles at their disposal. Satellite data available allows one to pick high value targets with high precision.

I hope that conflict between Taiwan and China never happens. I enjoy reading about new technologies coming into production and if these nations go to war, a lot of this productive capacity will shift to production of tools for war instead of tools useful for solving problems that we have brought on ourselves over generations.

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

#82

Post by windows2020 »

gWPVhyxPHqvk wrote: post #48
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?

Bird deaths from wind turbines are essentially a rounding error, probably less than a million a year. On the other hand, cats kill billions of birds per year.

It would be interesting to see the number of animals killed by power source per unit of energy.

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

#83

Post by Animats »

jameskerr wrote: post #44

Giant turbines out in the ocean with regular gales and storms. That must be a massive challenge to construct.

These are advertised as "typhoon resistant". Like all big wind turbines, the props are variable pitch, feather under excessive wind, and rotation stops.

The big trouble spot is the gearbox and its bearings.[1] These big turbines are advertised as "semi direct drive" turbines, which means they only have one stage of geared speed step-up. Large wind turbines are very slow compared to desirable generator RPMs, and the bigger the turbine, the lower the RPMs.

Bearing trouble is currently the big limitation on turbine life. Not many large wind turbine drivetrains are reaching the 25 year design life. Huge bearings and gears with off-axis loads have problems not seen in other applications. As the wind changes, stresses appear from odd angles. This causes minor bearing damage, which increases wear, which eventually causes major damage.

A new research result: [2][3] Argonne National Lab has been able to reproduce this problem in a benchtop setup. The metallurgy/lubrication problem is still not fully understood, and it's getting considerable attention.

Stuff like this is the difference between a prototype and a long-lived production product.

[1] https://www.stle.org/files/TLTArchives/2020/08_August/Featur...

[2] https://www.energy.gov/eere/wind/articles/zeroing-no-1-cause...

[3] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09215...

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

#84

Post by fasterik »

kdmccormick wrote: post #30
mirko22 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So are people, yet we are afraid of nuclear power…

Bird death from turbines small-scale and highly predictable. Deaths from nuclear can range from zero to regional catastrophe and it's basically impossible to predict when it'll happen and how bad it'll be. I'm not anti-nuclear, but the risk profile is SO different from wind.

The worst case is worse, but nuclear disasters are so rare and reactors produce so much power that nuclear is safer than wind in terms of deaths per TWh.

https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy

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

#85

Post by thefurdrake »

doodlebugging wrote: post #81
jl6 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The low density of wind power actually makes it much harder for an adversary to take out a country's energy production capacity. Currently, that well-aimed missile could hit a nuclear plant and cause devastation as well as the loss of multiple gigawatts of capacity. The equivalent wind power would be spread across hundreds or thousands of turbines, spaced kilometers apart. Destroying one wouldn't have the same impact…

Missiles with integrated guidance systems are in every modern inventory. I mentioned the possibility of the loss of a single turbine to one missile and left it up to the reader to extrapolate the consequences if the one firing the missile had a large number of missiles at their disposal. Satellite data available allows one to pick high value targets with high precision. I hope that conflict between Taiwan and China n…

... But how many missiles would be used to take down a massive wind farm vs taking down a single nuclear reactor?

Regardless of whether the enemy has lots more missiles, they still have a finite number of them. Those missiles cost money. War is as economic as it is kinetic.

Using those missiles to disable power generation means they can't be used on other targets. Overuse of ammunition eats into stockpiles or forces early resupply, which takes time.

Time matters in war.

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

#86

Post by thefurdrake »

throw0101a wrote: post #78
jl6 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The low density of wind power actually makes it much harder for an adversary to take out a country's energy production capacity. Currently, that well-aimed missile could hit a nuclear plant and cause devastation as well as the loss of multiple gigawatts of capacity. The equivalent wind power would be spread across hundreds or thousands of turbines, spaced kilometers apart. Destroying one wouldn't have the same impact…

> The equivalent wind power would be spread across hundreds or thousands of turbines, spaced kilometers apart. Take out the transformer station at, or transmissions line from, the wind farm.

I have this problem a lot in rimworld. I solved it by running more than a single line. I feel like that's a viable solution for attacking transmission lines in the real world, too.

Transformers less so, I suppose. I'd imagine those could be hardened. Is there a reason we couldn't place them underground?

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

#87

Post by kabanossen »

bobthepanda wrote: post #16
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.

Do you transport something like this in pieces, or as a single blade?

Depends, regular ones as a single blade since they're assembled in the factory. But there are attempts to do it differently because of the inconvenience. A swedish company make wind turbine towers out of wood that can be assembled on site: https://modvion.com/

Here are some images to give you an idea of the size of large wind turbines https://growsverige.se/2023/02/11/storleken-svindlar-pa-nya-...

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

#88

Post by Gwypaas »

fasterik wrote: post #84
kdmccormick wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bird death from turbines small-scale and highly predictable. Deaths from nuclear can range from zero to regional catastrophe and it's basically impossible to predict when it'll happen and how bad it'll be. I'm not anti-nuclear, but the risk profile is SO different from wind.

The worst case is worse, but nuclear disasters are so rare and reactors produce so much power that nuclear is safer than wind in terms of deaths per TWh. https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy

Let's stop subsidizing their accident insurance then.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price%E2%80%93Anderson_Nuclear...

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

#89

Post by Someone »

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.

> And our energy demands are not shrinking.

I think they should be, but even if they aren’t, there still is the observation that a kWh of electricity often can produce more of what we really want (light, motion, compute power) than a kWh of oil (about the only thing we can efficiently convert that into is heat)

For example, Google tells me

- petrol is about 12 kWh/kg,

- the modern fiat 500 has a 47l gas tank,

- Tesla sells cars with 50kwh batteries.

Yet, that Fiat doesn’t have ten times the rang of the larger Tesla.

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

#90

Post by doodlebugging »

thefurdrake wrote: post #85
doodlebugging wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Missiles with integrated guidance systems are in every modern inventory. I mentioned the possibility of the loss of a single turbine to one missile and left it up to the reader to extrapolate the consequences if the one firing the missile had a large number of missiles at their disposal. Satellite data available allows one to pick high value targets with high precision. I hope that conflict between Taiwan and China n…

... But how many missiles would be used to take down a massive wind farm vs taking down a single nuclear reactor? Regardless of whether the enemy has lots more missiles, they still have a finite number of them. Those missiles cost money. War is as economic as it is kinetic. Using those missiles to disable power generation means they can't be used on other targets. Overuse of ammunition eats into stockpiles or forces…

Very valid points. Those who have to conduct the war must consider these things - supply chain issues, production bottlenecks, existing stockpiles - and prioritize targets accordingly. Choosing between potentially causing a nuclear disaster and disabling power generation from cleaner sources is a no-brainer for me. I'd leave the reactor intact and re-evaluate the sensibility of that decision daily in case something changes. There are so many higher value targets available that would have a noticeable effect on the adversary's ability to continue waging war that those higher-value targets should get a higher priority.

It's a lot like WWII where Allied aerial bombardment campaigns tried to target oil refining, ball bearing production, railroads and critical transportation infrastructure like bridges, factories where tanks, planes, and other vehicles were manufactured, and rocket launching facilities. Those targets, if you can keep hitting them so that they never come back to full capacity will give a tangible advantage.

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