Re:The Future of Wind Turbines? No Blades (2015)
by bnegreve on Saturday September 07, 2019 @08:01AM
(#20903245)
> It requires less maintenance (no moving parts)
They are no rotating parts, but some parts are moving.
Re:The Future of Wind Turbines? No Blades (2015)
by barbegal on Saturday September 07, 2019 @08:13AM
(#20903293)
I'm skeptical about the cheaper per KWh. A 100W conventional turbine can be purchased for around $200 and has 3 blades around 50 cm in length. The 100W vortex device is 2.7m tall and I doubt can be purchased for less than $600 since the structure is much wider and weighs around 3 times more. 14kg vs 5kg for a conventional turbine.
A 100W conventional turbine also only has a couple of moving parts, won't kill birds and is effectively silent. I'm unsure on wether these claims are still true as the device scales up. A device 100m or so tall will have a fast velocity at the tip perhaps as much as 50m/s at a few Hz which is similar to the blade tip speed of a conventional turbine thus having similar potential to kill birds and make noise.
Re:The Future of Wind Turbines? No Blades (2015)
by einpoklum on Saturday September 07, 2019 @09:51AM
(#20903757)
While I also doubt their claims - the price you want to look at is :
(purchase + installation) / average_life_span + maintenance per time unit
So, even at triple the cost it could still be worthwhile.
- It's cheaper per KWh (they claim 40%, IIRC, but that was in 2015)
- It requires less maintenance (no moving parts)
- It doesn't kill birds
- It's silent (no frequencies >20 Hz)
- It's 30% less efficient than a blade design but you can put twice as many in the same area
- It doesn't cause the alternating light/shadow effects that huge blades do