Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The world’s largest wind turbine has been switched on

iflscience.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 178 posts

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

#151

Post by ljf »

danans wrote: post #66
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.

I live on the coast in the East of England and can see three banks of wind turbines on a clear day. The nearest are 4 miles out to sea.

When they were first installed there was local opposition, but now no one cares about them at all. They don't ruin the horizon, they aren't an eyesore, and compared to office blocks they don't seem to be killing a large number of birds or causing any other issues with wildlife.

They want to build more, but the blockage seems to be the large increases in costs of materials and labour since the project was costed pre-COVID (likely just a play for some govt subsidies?) and also concerns about pylons to carry the power generated. I'm personally not so worried about the pylons esp given the cost of buried cabling.

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

#152

Post by dontlaugh »

ljf wrote: post #151
danans wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I live on the coast in the East of England and can see three banks of wind turbines on a clear day. The nearest are 4 miles out to sea. When they were first installed there was local opposition, but now no one cares about them at all. They don't ruin the horizon, they aren't an eyesore, and compared to office blocks they don't seem to be killing a large number of birds or causing any other issues with wildlife. They…

I think they look nice.

Only putting them in the sea is a big limitation in England, though. It’s not easy to defeat the remaining feudal lords who oppose land ones.

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

#153

Post by cinntaile »

thenewwazoo wrote: post #20
bobthepanda wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The blades are transported in single pieces, on trucks with steered rear carriers, as in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTpZ5V4HrK4

The blades in this topic are about 4 times the length of the ones in the video. It's a whole different world.

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

#154

Post by cinntaile »

vGPU wrote: post #119
Gwypaas wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's stop subsidizing their accident insurance then. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price%E2%80%93Anderson_Nuclear...

> The Act required companies to obtain the maximum possible insurance coverage against accidents, determined to be $60 million It’s a necessity, and extremely logical and reasonable.

The most recent "disaster" was Fukushima, the actual cost there is far far greater than $60 million.

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

#155

Post by bluGill »

pengaru wrote: post #31
bluGill wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The mechanism is designed (or at least should be designed) so that if anything breaks the blades rotate to the no power position. There is a lot of engineering and redundancy that i'm only partially aware of.

I guess the real question is how bad can conditions get before the "no power position" is still too much force for the structure to withstand. You can't escape the fact that the blades are a ton of surface area on a long lever... and if the winds are both forceful and directionally chaotic, there isn't really a "no power position" to be found. Going back to the sailboat metaphor, it's the conditions where you douse t…

The tower catches more wind than the blades and will fail first. And the tower is built dor the force of strong winds with the blades resiting the wind.

Though they are built in rural areas and at sea so even in the worst case disaster (manufacturing flaw, not wind) nobody is hurt.

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

#156

Post by ZeroGravitas »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #141
jl6 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The goal is to stop turning fossil fuels into CO2. Plastic production is not an urgent issue.

There are however various companies looking to e.g. make ethylene from CO2 which, if made economically viable, simultaneously fixes previous fossil CO2 release, and further reduces the financial viability of continuing to drill for more fossil gasses.

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

#157

Post by landemva »

adrianN wrote: post #144
landemva wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Energy consumption is an indicator of living standards. I hope we harness and use much more reliable energy!

Energy consumption is a bad indicator of living standards. Everything that defines my living standard has become much more energy efficient during my lifetime. I have for example more light in my house than I used to and consume about 20% of the energy I used to. My induction stove uses a lot less energy than the wood fired stove my grandma had at her house. My current computer uses about a tenth of the electricity o…

Induction stove. Electric car. Heat pump. Those are indicators of being born in privilege. What about your AC in car and hotel and home?

USA setting off nukes and Britain fire bombing Dresden are examples of energy use which is wasteful and polluting. There are always exceptions to one broad indicator, in this example energy usage.

Technology improvement typically brings more efficient use of resources and less pollution. Energy consumption, as one indicator, tracks with increased GDP and increased standard of living.

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

#158

Post by Gwypaas »

landemva wrote: post #157
adrianN wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Energy consumption is a bad indicator of living standards. Everything that defines my living standard has become much more energy efficient during my lifetime. I have for example more light in my house than I used to and consume about 20% of the energy I used to. My induction stove uses a lot less energy than the wood fired stove my grandma had at her house. My current computer uses about a tenth of the electricity o…

Induction stove. Electric car. Heat pump. Those are indicators of being born in privilege. What about your AC in car and hotel and home? USA setting off nukes and Britain fire bombing Dresden are examples of energy use which is wasteful and polluting. There are always exceptions to one broad indicator, in this example energy usage. Technology improvement typically brings more efficient use of resources and less pollu…

Many advanced economies have decoupled energy use from economic growth.

https://ourworldindata.org/energy-gdp-decoupling

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

#159

Post by flangola7 »

jakewins wrote: post #109
askvictor wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given that the wind is pushing it, wouldn't the blade tip's speed somehow be naturally limited by the wind speed?

At least in sailing, you can go a lot faster than the wind; I assume the same is true for these blades.

How can you travel faster than the wind that is pushing you?
Post reply on HN