something fishy about wind power

[Old Rocks]

Learning from nature.

Fish inspire wind farm configuration - physicsworld.com

Conventional wind turbines work best when located as far as possible from the destructive vortices of neighbouring turbines. However, a pair of scientists in the US have worked out that the performance of other kinds of turbine actually improves when they are placed close to one another, concluding that wind farms could therefore be made much smaller than they are today.

The familiar propeller-like turbine with a horizontal axis of rotation can convert 50% or more of the energy from the wind that it is exposed to. In a wind farm, however, the wake from one turbine will disturb the air reaching the blades of its neighbours meaning that turbines must be placed far apart. Typically, to ensure that it generates about 90% of the power that it would in isolation, a turbine must be placed about three rotor diameters from its nearest lateral neighbours and around 10 rotor diameters from the turbine downstream. For a rotor with a diameter of 100 m this latter figure becomes 1 km – a considerable distance.

 

[AllieBaba]

In other words, they're a crappy alternative, they produce miniscule amounts of power, and a huge waste of land, money and time.

I'm surrounded by them.

 

[Old Rocks]

No, that is not what the article is saying at all. However, I am glad that you get to see one of the good ways of generating power up close. You could be just down wind of a dirty coal plant.

 

[dilloduck]

Learning from nature.

Fish inspire wind farm configuration - physicsworld.com

Conventional wind turbines work best when located as far as possible from the destructive vortices of neighbouring turbines. However, a pair of scientists in the US have worked out that the performance of other kinds of turbine actually improves when they are placed close to one another, concluding that wind farms could therefore be made much smaller than they are today.

The familiar propeller-like turbine with a horizontal axis of rotation can convert 50% or more of the energy from the wind that it is exposed to. In a wind farm, however, the wake from one turbine will disturb the air reaching the blades of its neighbours meaning that turbines must be placed far apart. Typically, to ensure that it generates about 90% of the power that it would in isolation, a turbine must be placed about three rotor diameters from its nearest lateral neighbours and around 10 rotor diameters from the turbine downstream. For a rotor with a diameter of 100 m this latter figure becomes 1 km – a considerable distance.

Shit that makes me happy as hell wooo hooo

 

[Old Rocks]

Fish inspire wind farm configuration - physicsworld.com

How fish save on energy
Now, Robert Whittlesey and John Dabiri of the California Institute of Technology have worked out how best to arrange such closely spaced turbines by drawing on the work of aeronautical engineer Daniel Weihs, who showed in the 1970s how fish save on energy by swimming within schools. Such fish form a series of offset rows, and Weihs found that fish get carried forward by the vortices created by the swimming motion of their two closest companions in the row immediately in front of them. Whittlesey and Dabiri wondered whether the relative spacing of vortices produced by an individual fish might serve as a good template for the arrangement of vertical-axis turbines within a wind farm and set up a computer model to test this idea.

The researchers took wind speed and other measurements from a vertical-axis turbine and then fed these data into the model, in which they analysed various arrangements of virtual turbines to see if any of these would lead to greater average rotation than that that of a free-standing turbine. What they found was that a staggered column of alternately clockwise- and anticlockwise-rotating turbines significantly enhances the speed of turbine rotation. The reason, they say, is that the presence of neighbouring turbines concentrates and accelerates the wind.

 

[AllieBaba]

No, that is not what the article is saying at all. However, I am glad that you get to see one of the good ways of generating power up close. You could be just down wind of a dirty coal plant.

I live a few miles from the Columbia and John Day Rivers.

The Indians want to take out the dams. Then we'll be compelled to either use coal or possibly nuclear, as there is no way the windfarms generate even a miniscule fraction of what we need. And there is no way to make enough of them to do it.

 

[Big Fitz]

Learning from nature.

Fish inspire wind farm configuration - physicsworld.com

Conventional wind turbines work best when located as far as possible from the destructive vortices of neighbouring turbines. However, a pair of scientists in the US have worked out that the performance of other kinds of turbine actually improves when they are placed close to one another, concluding that wind farms could therefore be made much smaller than they are today.

The familiar propeller-like turbine with a horizontal axis of rotation can convert 50% or more of the energy from the wind that it is exposed to. In a wind farm, however, the wake from one turbine will disturb the air reaching the blades of its neighbours meaning that turbines must be placed far apart. Typically, to ensure that it generates about 90% of the power that it would in isolation, a turbine must be placed about three rotor diameters from its nearest lateral neighbours and around 10 rotor diameters from the turbine downstream. For a rotor with a diameter of 100 m this latter figure becomes 1 km – a considerable distance.

Nice. Now we can get 50% more power and break the 10% total generation barrier after spending billions more... as compared to one nuclear reactor that has a geographical footprint that is incredibly small by comparison and do hundreds if not thousands of times the work.

Nice trade up.

 

[Toronado3800]

I detect amazing animosity towards a modest scientific advance.

This is another small step in the right direction. Neat article.

I can't wait to see the new cost benefit analysis.

 

[Big Fitz]

I detect amazing animosity towards a modest scientific advance.

This is another small step in the right direction. Neat article.

I can't wait to see the new cost benefit analysis.

I will say this about windmills. They are good for small residential scale as a SUPPLIMENTAL form of power. They are not, nor never should be a main source. Same can be said for solar. If you made it cost effective for people to put those on their property and sell power to the grid, I guarantee you that you will see them popping up like TV antennas in the 1950's. EVERYONE would want one to lower their power bills and possibly even MAKE money!

But right now, zoning laws and anti-competitive regulations make this cost prohibitive. I know you haven't seen it here, but this has been my stance about Solar and Wind for a long long time. Given my druthers and the ability to build the house I want, I'd have both.

You need something more potent and reliable for the backbone of your power grid. This is where you need the most efficient and cheapest forms of energy to maximize savings. That would be Hydroelectric or Nuclear. So we either need to start flooding more valleys, or building nukes.

 

[Toronado3800]

I will say this about windmills. They are good for small residential scale as a SUPPLEMENTAL form of power. They are not, nor never should be a main source.

I essentially agree with everything you said!

Ameren UE does things like use overnight surplus hydro power here to pump water into uphill reservoirs that they can release at will when power demands are higher for Air Conditioners and the like during the day. If windmills ever reach too high a percentage of our power generating capacity then more of this will be needed, but its not very efficient.

 

[Screaming Eagle]

The best way to make sure you windfarm is up 100% is to put jet engines in front of the turbines.

 

[Midnight Marauder]

Dirty little secrets of wind farms:

• There is enough steel in one tower to make a thousand Prius's.
• There is enough concrete used for one tower to build 1,000 low-cost green homes.
• There is enough oil used annually by just one turbine to power a diesel-electric locomotive across the country and back twice.

Wind farms are NOT carbon neutral, in fact they're nothing even close to it. Just in the steel alone, they fail the "green" test.

Then there's this:

In terms of stationary wind mill farms all that is needed is jet engines to provide wind when natural winds are not available.

Above, you see the mentality and average intellect of these greenies.

 

[xotoxi]

There is enough steel in one tower to make a thousand Prius's.

Wouldn't that be a thousand Prii?

 

[Midnight Marauder]

There is enough steel in one tower to make a thousand Prius's.

Wouldn't that be a thousand Prii?

Unfortunately no.

 

[xotoxi]

There is enough steel in one tower to make a thousand Prius's.

Wouldn't that be a thousand Prii?

Unfortunately no.

Well, that's what I'm going to use.

It is greener to type "Prii" than to type "Priuses" because there are fewer characters and fewer bytes, thus less power used.

 

[Ringel05]

Dirty little secrets of wind farms:

• There is enough steel in one tower to make a thousand Prius's.
• There is enough concrete used for one tower to build 1,000 low-cost green homes.
• There is enough oil used annually by just one turbine to power a diesel-electric locomotive across the country and back twice.

Wind farms are NOT carbon neutral, in fact they're nothing even close to it. Just in the steel alone, they fail the "green" test.

Then there's this:

In terms of stationary wind mill farms all that is needed is jet engines to provide wind when natural winds are not available.

Above, you see the mentality and average intellect of these greenies.

I'm perfecting origami turbines. The tissue paper I use makes them 100% recyclable.

 

[Midnight Marauder]

Wouldn't that be a thousand Prii?

Unfortunately no.

Well, that's what I'm going to use.

It is greener to type "Prii" than to type "Priuses" because there are fewer characters and fewer bytes, thus less power used.

That's the spirit. Apply Monckton's Razor, which proved mathematically using the IPCC's own numbers that none of the "green" technologies is economically feasable and won't make any difference whatsoever in the earth's temperature.

 

[Toronado3800]

And cars will never run on gas w/o lead!

Oh wait, they do.

 

[Midnight Marauder]

And cars will never run on gas w/o lead!

Of course, your nonsense is completely off-topic.... But please show us where anyone -- ever -- made such a claim. I'll wait.

 

[Toronado3800]

Honest, I'm not making up the complaints about leaded fuel by hot rod fellas or a possible corporate misinformation campaign to discredit scientists who thought lead was bad for folks.

Old cars, new oil: Is there anything to worry about? - Washington Times

Oddly enough, the number of valve-seat failures in engines using Amoco unleaded gas in the 1950s and 1960s were no greater than in those using leaded gas, so it logically follows that valve recession was a function of other engine defects and not the type of gasoline used. Most automotive engineers will tell you that valve recession normally occurred as a result of extended high RPM operation or under extreme loads and had little to do with the valve-seat material.

Some automotive historians speculate that the valve recession story was mostly hokum pushed by the Tetraethyl Lead Corp. when they were trying to lobby against the regulations mandating unleaded gas, but you can form your own opinions.

Tetra-ethyl lead - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In the U.S. in 1972, the EPA launched an initiative to phase out leaded gasoline, Ethyl Corp's response to which was to sue the EPA

Damn Interesting • The Ethyl-Poisoned Earth

Upon learning that automotive fuel was the source of the contamination, Dr. Patterson began to publish materials discussing the toxic metal’s ubiquity and its probable ill effects. In order to demonstrate the increase of lead in the environment, Patterson proposed taking core samples from pack ice in Greenland, and testing the lead content of each layer– a novel concept which had not been previously attempted. The experiment worked, and the results showed that airborne lead had been negligible before 1923, and that it had climbed precipitously ever since. In 1965, when the tests were conducted, lead levels were roughly 1,000 times higher than they had been in the pre-Ethyl era. He also compared modern bone samples to that of older human remains, and found that modern humans’ lead levels were hundreds of times higher.

The Ethyl corporation allegedly offered him lucrative employment in exchange for more favorable research results, but Dr. Patterson declined. For a time thereafter, Patterson found himself ostracized from government and corporate sponsored research projects, including the a National Research Council panel on atmospheric lead contamination.

Folks do the darndest things in the name of making a dollar in the business world. Its a human failing and 1/2 their fault we need big government as a check or balance