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World's largest wind turbine to be 853ft tall


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That's... enormous. Will they be able to get planning permission for such a thing ? 

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Bigger windmill mean getting the more constant wind flow higher up. But shutting down one of these for repair and you have a big drop of energy while you have lesser impact when you have multiple smaller ones. But it's good to see more use of wind force than coal and gas.

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How do you repair a heavy turbine 850 feet above the ground ? 

 

It will never be built !

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7 minutes ago, RoofGardener said:

How do you repair a heavy turbine 850 feet above the ground ?

If it can be build, it can be maintained. And, the big ones have an "onboard" crane.

Quote

It will never be built !

If GE will not do it, others will.

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1 hour ago, RoofGardener said:

How do you repair a heavy turbine 850 feet above the ground ? 

It will never be built !

We allready have windturbines that are 720 feet and produces 9,5 megawatts, so I don't see any fundamental reason why it should be a problem ?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vestas_V164 

The idea behind building larger windturbines is that their blades cover a much larger area, so you get a lot more power per installed unit. Larger turbines are of course more expensive per installed unit, but due to economy of scale they are actually cheaper in term of cost per megawatt.

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Cool. Now if we could just get the world to build and use hundereds of thousands of wind turbines. Oh, and places like where I live (New Mexico) should be so covered in solar panels they look black from space. It'd create millions of jobs, and solve all of our energy problems.

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I always found wind turbines to be ugly and loud.  I wouldn't want to look at one out my back door or hear one churning away through the night while I'm trying to sleep.  Not to mention all the birds killed by these things every year.  I'd prefer solar to these things (and clean coal power plants to solar btw) but if they're over the horizon offshore then maybe it's not as big a deal since no one can see or hear them.

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1 hour ago, Seti42 said:

Cool. Now if we could just get the world to build and use hundereds of thousands of wind turbines. Oh, and places like where I live (New Mexico) should be so covered in solar panels they look black from space. It'd create millions of jobs, and solve all of our energy problems.

And covering an area of earth with solar panels large enough to be seen from space would create a far larger climate disaster then not using solar at all.  The heat island effect of cities, which only raise local temperatures if I remember correctly 5 to 10 degrees on average, are believed to have an effect on local climate.  Something on that scale would be significantly larger then any city and would be raising the local temperature probably closer to 50 to 60 degrees, the effects on climate would be on a continental scale.

Even building hundreds of thousands of wind turbines might have a severe environmental effect.  Wind turbines dont produce energy out of nothing, the wind speed after it gets past the area the blades sweeps out is lower then it is in front of it.  Build enough wind turbines and you can drastically slow or stop wind all together which would also almost certainly cause a climate crisis.

41 minutes ago, Noxasa said:

I always found wind turbines to be ugly and loud.  I wouldn't want to look at one out my back door or hear one churning away through the night while I'm trying to sleep.  Not to mention all the birds killed by these things every year.  I'd prefer solar to these things (and clean coal power plants to solar btw) but if they're over the horizon offshore then maybe it's not as big a deal since no one can see or hear them.

Wind turbines actually kill very few birds but an extreme number of bats, if I remember correctly from my class on them for every bird killed it's like 50 bats killed.

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2 hours ago, DarkHunter said:

And covering an area of earth with solar panels large enough to be seen from space would create a far larger climate disaster then not using solar at all.  The heat island effect of cities, which only raise local temperatures if I remember correctly 5 to 10 degrees on average, are believed to have an effect on local climate.  Something on that scale would be significantly larger then any city and would be raising the local temperature probably closer to 50 to 60 degrees, the effects on climate would be on a continental scale.

Even building hundreds of thousands of wind turbines might have a severe environmental effect.  Wind turbines dont produce energy out of nothing, the wind speed after it gets past the area the blades sweeps out is lower then it is in front of it.  Build enough wind turbines and you can drastically slow or stop wind all together which would also almost certainly cause a climate crisis.

Whats the name of that CT?

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6 hours ago, DarkHunter said:

And covering an area of earth with solar panels large enough to be seen from space would create a far larger climate disaster then not using solar at all.  The heat island effect of cities, which only raise local temperatures if I remember correctly 5 to 10 degrees on average, are believed to have an effect on local climate.  Something on that scale would be significantly larger then any city and would be raising the local temperature probably closer to 50 to 60 degrees, the effects on climate would be on a continental scale.

The reason why large cities produce a heat island effect is because of the large energy consumption concentrated in a small area of land.

Solar farms taps the solar energy that is comming onto that area anyway, they don't add any additional energy, so why should they produce this effect ? 

Quote

Even building hundreds of thousands of wind turbines might have a severe environmental effect.  Wind turbines dont produce energy out of nothing, the wind speed after it gets past the area the blades sweeps out is lower then it is in front of it.  Build enough wind turbines and you can drastically slow or stop wind all together which would also almost certainly cause a climate crisis.

The amount of energy tapped by windturbines is only a tiny fraction of the total energy. What you are doing here is extrapolation.

Extrapolating

Quote

Wind turbines actually kill very few birds but an extreme number of bats, if I remember correctly from my class on them for every bird killed it's like 50 bats killed.

Placing the wind turbines off shore means that bats won't be affected. 

The bird argument is indeed overblown. https://phys.org/news/2017-06-farms-bird-slayers-theyre-behere.html

Edited by Noteverythingisaconspiracy
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I have heard, perhaps incorrectly, that the energy involved in making a wind turbine of this type is greater than the energy produced over the lifetime of the device, and that most are heavily government subsidized. Plus manufacturing these is not without environmental concerns as well. 

Could be wrong, I have not researched it further. 

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4 hours ago, Noteverythingisaconspiracy said:

The reason why large cities produce a heat island effect is because of the large energy consumption concentrated in a small area of land.

Solar farms taps the solar energy that is comming onto that area anyway, they don't add any additional energy, so why should they produce this effect ? 

The amount of energy tapped by windturbines is only a tiny fraction of the total energy. What you are doing here is extrapolation.

Extrapolating

Placing the wind turbines off shore means that bats won't be affected. 

The bird argument is indeed overblown. https://phys.org/news/2017-06-farms-bird-slayers-theyre-behere.html

From wikipedia on urban heat Island.

"The main cause of the urban heat island effect is from the modification of land surfaces. Waste heat generated by energy usage is a secondary contributor."

The main contributor to the heat island effect is that concrete, asphalt, and other human constructions tend to gather solar energy instead of reflecting it or dispersing it.  Concentrated energy consumption does play a part but it is only secondary.  Putting a panel that is designed to absorb solar radiation instead of reflecting it will create a far larger heat island effect then just concrete, might be close to asphalt though.  While solar panels dont consume energy the production of energy does also create waste heat.

I know what I said about wind turbines is extrapolation but none of it is illogical and I did say for it to be a concern it would have to be taken to extreme measures.

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Umm.... solar panels convert elements of sunlight into electricity. On that basis, do they transmit heat back into the air on the same basis as - say - a sheet of asphalt ? After all, energy is being converted ? 

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8 hours ago, toast said:

Whats the name of that CT?

I know from previous conversations with you that you have little to no understanding of energy generation and think that solar, wind, and biofuels will solve everything even though they wont but you could at least put a bit more effort into it.

Might as well start with the albedo, the reflectiveness, of various surfaces.  The albedo goes from 0 being a perfect black body to 1 which is perfect reflection.  Fresh asphalt has an albedo of 0.04, worn asphalt of 0.12, bare soil of 0.17, and desert sand of 0.4.  Strangely there was very few results of albedo of solar panels that weren't from anonymous people with no sources on Quora but I did find one source that said the albedo of solar panels is about 0.05 and deserts are 0.2, they use percentage instead of decimal.

https://www.nature.com/articles/srep35070

Also the study points out how larger solar farms, far smaller then what would be seen from space, in the desert raise the local temperature a few degrees.

But there is more then just albedo going on in solar panels there is the heat they produce from generating electricity also.  The back side of solar panels tends to be about 30 C hotter then the ambient air temperature.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.quora.com/Is-the-underside-of-a-solar-panel-hot/amp

I dont like to use Quora but the guy provided where he got his graph and information.

On rooftops and solar farms this is normally neutralized by using convection to move away the excess heat but in a solar farm that covers large tracts of the desert and can be seen from space that would no longer be possible and you would have to start factoring in that heat also.

Also for the fun of it apparently building solar farms out in the desert isnt a great idea.  Solar panels are designed and tested to operate at 25 C and for each degree over you lose some efficiency, in more extreme cases like deserts it can be a 10% to 25% drop in efficiency.  

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31 minutes ago, DarkHunter said:

......

Also for the fun of it apparently building solar farms out in the desert isnt a great idea.  Solar panels are designed and tested to operate at 25 C and for each degree over you lose some efficiency, in more extreme cases like deserts it can be a 10% to 25% drop in efficiency.  

Solar panels designed and manufactured for domestic urban use might be designed and tested to operate at 25C. However, I assume it is possible to manufacture them to operate at any temperature desirable ? 

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1 hour ago, DarkHunter said:

From wikipedia on urban heat Island.

"The main cause of the urban heat island effect is from the modification of land surfaces. Waste heat generated by energy usage is a secondary contributor."

The main contributor to the heat island effect is that concrete, asphalt, and other human constructions tend to gather solar energy instead of reflecting it or dispersing it.  Concentrated energy consumption does play a part but it is only secondary.  Putting a panel that is designed to absorb solar radiation instead of reflecting it will create a far larger heat island effect then just concrete, might be close to asphalt though.  While solar panels dont consume energy the production of energy does also create waste heat.

I know what I said about wind turbines is extrapolation but none of it is illogical and I did say for it to be a concern it would have to be taken to extreme measures.

I stand corrected on that. :tu:

On the other hand fossil fuel plants lose about 2/3 of their energy as waste heat, so they are hardly blameless when it comes to heat production.

I don't think there is a single magic solution when it comes to clean energy, so in the real World I think the solution is to use different systems. A mixture of wind, solar, geo-thermal, hydro-electric and nuclear is probably the way to go for power production. 

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5 minutes ago, RoofGardener said:

Solar panels designed and manufactured for domestic urban use might be designed and tested to operate at 25C. However, I assume it is possible to manufacture them to operate at any temperature desirable ? 

Concentrator photovoltaic are specially designed to work at higher temperatures than normal cells.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentrator_photovoltaics#High_concentration_photovoltaics_(HCPV)

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20 hours ago, RoofGardener said:

How do you repair a heavy turbine 850 feet above the ground ? 

 

It will never be built !

Very carefully!  (Had to do it!)

 

I just wonder how much of the pole will need to be sunk into the ground and by how many tons of concrete.

44 minutes ago, Noteverythingisaconspiracy said:

I stand corrected on that. :tu:

On the other hand fossil fuel plants lose about 2/3 of their energy as waste heat, so they are hardly blameless when it comes to heat production.

I don't think there is a single magic solution when it comes to clean energy, so in the real World I think the solution is to use different systems. A mixture of wind, solar, geo-thermal, hydro-electric and nuclear is probably the way to go for power production. 

Anyone know how much heat is lost by the water in a nuclear generation plant?

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2 hours ago, paperdyer said:

Anyone know how much heat is lost by the water in a nuclear generation plant?

The efficiency of a nuclear plants is about 40 %. So 60 % is lost as heat.

The large towers many people associate with nuclear reactors are in fact cooling towers. Most nuclear plants use a nearby river or the ocean to dissipate the waste heat. 

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2 hours ago, paperdyer said:

Very carefully!  (Had to do it!)

I just wonder how much of the pole will need to be sunk into the ground and by how many tons of concrete.

You don't need to use Poles, other nationalities works equally well, and why do you need to sink the poor Poles into the ground and cover them with concrete ? That is just cruel. :P

(I might have misunderstood you here)

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3 minutes ago, Noteverythingisaconspiracy said:

The efficiency of a nuclear plants is about 40 %. So 60 % is lost as heat.

The large towers many people associate with nuclear reactors are in fact cooling towers. Most nuclear plants use a nearby river or the ocean to dissipate the waste heat. 

Depends on how you defined lost, a lot of that wasted heat can be used for cogeneration instead of just lost but it terms of electricity production it is lost.

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1 hour ago, DarkHunter said:

Depends on how you defined lost, a lot of that wasted heat can be used for cogeneration instead of just lost but it terms of electricity production it is lost.

Its true that some heat can be used for heating through regeneration, but that is unfortunately not nearly as common as it should be. I can only hope that this will change.

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On 26/04/2018 at 8:11 PM, UM-Bot said:

The upcoming 12 megawatt wind power platform will be almost three times the height of the Statue of Liberty.

https://www.unexplained-mysteries.com/news/317575/worlds-largest-wind-turbine-to-be-853ft-tall

853ft That's 260m - over a quarter of a kilometre high.

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On 2018-04-27 at 12:19 AM, Noteverythingisaconspiracy said:

We allready have windturbines that are 720 feet and produces 9,5 megawatts, so I don't see any fundamental reason why it should be a problem ?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vestas_V164 

The idea behind building larger windturbines is that their blades cover a much larger area, so you get a lot more power per installed unit. Larger turbines are of course more expensive per installed unit, but due to economy of scale they are actually cheaper in term of cost per megawatt.

Damn that one is even taller than your highest mountain ;)

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