Flying kites deliver container-sized power generation • Hacker News Board

Re: Flying kites deliver container-sized power generation

#131

Post by m4rtink » Thu, Jan 18, 2024, 10:55 PM UTC

londons_explore wrote: post #69

Scea91 wrote: post #61

Interestingly, the very first statement is quite misleading. The statement: > On average, a humble wind turbine uses less land area per megawatt-hour than almost any other power source. The article itself refers to this citation [1]. It says, unsurprisingly, that the most land efficient power source is nuclear. The statement is of course technically true because it says "almost any power source". With wind, however,…

Wind turbines can be built big enough that the blades, at the lowest point, are higher than almost all other land uses, except perhaps forestry. To be honest, the access roads are probably the biggest real impediment to using the land around a wind turbine. Can't exactly farm millions of acres of corn with robotic combine harvesters with a criss-cross of access roads to the base of every turbine.

I'm not sure robotic combine harvesters are a real concern (yet ?) - modern "manned" harvesters are already crazy effective and fast & I've seen them navigate some pretty crazy field geometries at times, so I'm sure they can handle a straight road.

Re: Flying kites deliver container-sized power generation

#132

Post by fwip » Thu, Jan 18, 2024, 11:12 PM UTC

xg15 wrote: post #129

It's an amazing project, but, out of curiosity: Why do all the AWE projects except Google's seem to use the reel-in/reel-out approach and don't attach turbines to the kite itself? Reel-in/reel-out seems a lot more complicated, power inefficient and taxing on the material than just having the kite up there (semi-) permanently. I assume there are some technical reasons why turbines are less practical, but could anyone…

I only have wikipedia-level knowledge, but my understanding is that turbines are heavy, and wind power spent holding the turbines up is power that isn't converted to electricity. If you want to put the turbine up high, you can save power by just building a traditional fan-on-a-stick wind turbine.

Re: Flying kites deliver container-sized power generation

#133

Post by nywles » Thu, Jan 18, 2024, 11:13 PM UTC

xg15 wrote: post #129

It's an amazing project, but, out of curiosity: Why do all the AWE projects except Google's seem to use the reel-in/reel-out approach and don't attach turbines to the kite itself? Reel-in/reel-out seems a lot more complicated, power inefficient and taxing on the material than just having the kite up there (semi-) permanently. I assume there are some technical reasons why turbines are less practical, but could anyone…

I thought turbines work much better when the blades are big. You can only attach relatively small turbines to the kite compared to using the whole kite.

Re: Flying kites deliver container-sized power generation

#134

Post by marcandre » Thu, Jan 18, 2024, 11:17 PM UTC

xg15 wrote: post #129

It's an amazing project, but, out of curiosity: Why do all the AWE projects except Google's seem to use the reel-in/reel-out approach and don't attach turbines to the kite itself? Reel-in/reel-out seems a lot more complicated, power inefficient and taxing on the material than just having the kite up there (semi-) permanently. I assume there are some technical reasons why turbines are less practical, but could anyone…

How heavy would this turbine be? Much energy might be wasted just to keep it floating in the air...

Re: Flying kites deliver container-sized power generation

#135

Post by jeffbee » Thu, Jan 18, 2024, 11:34 PM UTC

tomatotomato37 wrote: post #123

jeffbee wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet. https://www.google.com/maps/@43.0700265,-95.6508704,3a,60y,9...

That's a turbine in the middle of active farmfield, off a dirt road, servicing a town a bit under a mile away that is barely 10 city blocks wide at its widest point. In the middle of Iowa. My point just because you can build the turbines to clear everything, there are areas in this nation where there's just no point to doing that; and it's more economical to just make them shorter and put the money towards something…

OK, I think I agree but I was responding to london. The idea that wind turbines and large-scale corn cultivation are incompatible is contrary to an abundance of counterexamples.

Re: Flying kites deliver container-sized power generation

#136

Post by renewiltord » Thu, Jan 18, 2024, 11:36 PM UTC

beebeepka wrote: post #118

OtherShrezzing wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Of course it doesn't. We don't build nuclear generators with pre-approved unusable exclusions zones. This is a ridiculous suggestion. I'm not suggesting we assign 5,000km^2 to each individual nuclear plant, just in case they explode. I'm suggesting the 5,000km^2 that currently exists as barren nuclear wasteland should be included in the total land attributed to nuclear energy. That would bring down the average gener…

> I'm suggesting the 5,000km^2 that currently exists as barren nuclear wasteland Aren't you exaggerating by quite a bit?

It appears it's not far from the truth. According to https://www.britannica.com/story/nuclear-exclusion-zones it's 4100 sq.km. for Chernobyl and 371 sq.km. for Fukushima (800 sq.km. at peak) which isn't an exaggeration. Interesting.

Re: Flying kites deliver container-sized power generation

#137

Post by itishappy » Thu, Jan 18, 2024, 11:39 PM UTC

saulrh wrote: post #78

Scea91 wrote: post #61

Interestingly, the very first statement is quite misleading. The statement: > On average, a humble wind turbine uses less land area per megawatt-hour than almost any other power source. The article itself refers to this citation [1]. It says, unsurprisingly, that the most land efficient power source is nuclear. The statement is of course technically true because it says "almost any power source". With wind, however,…

An offshore wind farm by definition uses no land area :V

Aircraft carriers suddenly looking competitive...

Re: Flying kites deliver container-sized power generation

#138

Post by klyrs » Thu, Jan 18, 2024, 11:41 PM UTC

londons_explore wrote: post #69

Scea91 wrote: post #61

Interestingly, the very first statement is quite misleading. The statement: > On average, a humble wind turbine uses less land area per megawatt-hour than almost any other power source. The article itself refers to this citation [1]. It says, unsurprisingly, that the most land efficient power source is nuclear. The statement is of course technically true because it says "almost any power source". With wind, however,…

Wind turbines can be built big enough that the blades, at the lowest point, are higher than almost all other land uses, except perhaps forestry. To be honest, the access roads are probably the biggest real impediment to using the land around a wind turbine. Can't exactly farm millions of acres of corn with robotic combine harvesters with a criss-cross of access roads to the base of every turbine.

> Can't exactly farm millions of acres of corn with robotic combine harvesters with a criss-cross of access roads to the base of every turbine.

You certainly can; single-objective suboptimality is not the same as impossibility. But perhaps this would be an excellent use-case for heavy-lift dirigibles.

Re: Flying kites deliver container-sized power generation

#139

Post by antisthenes » Thu, Jan 18, 2024, 11:42 PM UTC

brazzy wrote: post #86

antisthenes wrote: post #37

So it's just a really big battery. The kite thing is just a novelty/marketing move. There have been containerized commercial battery systems available for at least a decade. The barrier to adoption is, as always, price, not "kite delivery". Is this for really remote places, like Greenland/Alaska? Because otherwise you can just use a truck/tractor.

You completely misunderstood. The kite is not for "delivery", it actually generates the power.

Yes, you're right. I'll have to re-read the article to see how much this kite can actually generate.

Re: Flying kites deliver container-sized power generation

#140

Post by itishappy » Thu, Jan 18, 2024, 11:46 PM UTC

xyzzy_plugh wrote: post #107

OtherShrezzing wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm wondering if the OWID data takes the 3,400km^2 of exclusion zone from Fukushima and Chernobyl (more like 5,000km^2, see below) into account when calculating the average size of a nuclear plant? I think if we're saying the space beneath the blades can count towards aggregate wind-power land use, an argument can be made to include nuclear wasteland in the aggregate nuclear-power land use.

Of course it doesn't. We don't build nuclear generators with pre-approved unusable exclusions zones. This is a ridiculous suggestion. Should we consider the potential blast radius of the catastrophic failure of wind turbines as well? You literally cannot build structures in the path of a wind turbine if you want it to function.

> Should we consider the potential blast radius of the catastrophic failure of wind turbines as well?

Please? (Not as policy, just, like, in general.)

I imagine falling over and/or yeeting a blade-tip is about the worst thing they're going to do, right? I've know they can burn, but I don't think they explode. What's literally the worst that could happen?