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The world’s largest wind turbine has been switched on

iflscience.com

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

#91

Post by petee »

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…

It is an unedited photo, available in their press packet -- http://www.myse.com.cn/en/zlxz/index.aspx

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

#92

Post by adrianmonk »

mirko22 wrote: post #27
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?

Cos some people care about birds? How does eating meat factor into this?

Well, if the meat is chicken or turkey...

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

#93

Post by thefurdrake »

doodlebugging wrote: post #90
thefurdrake wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... 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 c…

I'm not sure there are too many higher-priority targets than a modernized nation's capacity for generating and supplying electricity when it comes to that nation's ability to resist invasion. There's a reason modern wars involve targeting electrical infrastructure as a strategic priority...

That and industrial manufacturing (which China has motivation to keep intact), but even industrial targets are contingent upon an electrical supply.

The military can run off fossil fuel generators for only so long.

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

#94

Post by moffkalast »

mig39 wrote: post #77
windows2020 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Do wind turbines kill more birds than cats?

Looking at this source [0] they kill about as many birds in a year as we eat chickens in a week, i.e. ~1 million.

7 times as many are killed by cell towers, 80x as many by cars, and up to 1000x as many by cats. Maybe they should put cat ears on turbines and people would be fine with them.

[0] https://www.energymonitor.ai/tech/renewables/weekly-data-how...

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

#95

Post by weinzierl »

In the 80s we had GROWIAN [1], which I found utterly fascinating as a kid. I have always been under the impression it proved that ultra-large turbines were a dead end. Maybe they will be rehabilitated?

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Growian

EDIT: I always remembered GROWIAN as a single blade system, but apparently that was its successor Monopteros, which only ever reached the prototype stage.

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

#96

Post by KennyBlanken »

weinzierl wrote: post #95

In the 80s we had GROWIAN [1], which I found utterly fascinating as a kid. I have always been under the impression it proved that ultra-large turbines were a dead end. Maybe they will be rehabilitated? [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Growian EDIT: I always remembered GROWIAN as a single blade system, but apparently that was its successor Monopteros , which only ever reached the prototype stage.

From your own link:

> Some lessons were however learned from conceptional mistakes made in its construction, e.g., the futility of trying to reach profitable installation sizes without taking intermediate steps

> The point of view that multi-MW-yield wind turbines were technically and commercially infeasible gained some currency after the failure of the project, but was eventually superseded by technical progress. Beginning with the late 2000s, twenty-five years after Growian was decommissioned, installations with identical dimensions and yield (100 m rotor diameter, 3 MW net yield) were being produced in large numbers, a class of turbines that has continued to dominate the market and to push forward the mean net yield of newly installed turbines.

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

#97

Post by dylan604 »

civilitty wrote: post #24
rcme wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is crazy, but, on the other hand, seeing this rotate faster than once every two seconds would be insanely fast.

We just need to hook it up to a flux capacitor and the next typhoon will give us time travel.

I did the math, but we didn't hit 1.21 jigawatts

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

#99

Post by adrianmonk »

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[…

> of open sea space

I'm not disagreeing with your math, but it doesn't need to be offshore only. Currently 93% of wind power is on land, and 7% is offshore[1].

In the United States, it's much more extreme. Literally 99.99% of turbines are on land and 0.01% are offshore[2].

Offshore is growing faster than onshore, though.

---

[1] See "Technology deployment" section here: https://www.iea.org/energy-system/renewables/wind

[2] See this map: https://eerscmap.usgs.gov/uswtdb/viewer/ . It shows 72,731 wind turbines, 7 of which are offshore. Also see this Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_offshore_wind_farms_in...

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

#100

Post by KennyBlanken »

mirko22 wrote: post #26
steelbrain wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not trying to pick a fight but just posting because I hear this often from my friends, re birds being happy. The choice, if between coal-fired plants and windmills should be pretty obvious to birds. Sure we may not see them getting splashed to bits with coal-fired plants but they are silently getting ill/dying over time.

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

Because solar and wind are a fraction of the capex and opex, have none of the risk or security headaches, more easily distributed (meaning less grid infrastructure) and don't generate nuclear waste.
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