
Japanese breakthrough will make wind power cheaper than nuclear - etruong42
http://www.mnn.com/green-tech/research-innovations/blogs/japanese-breakthrough-will-make-wind-power-cheaper-than-nuclea
======
pingswept
People have been working on shrouded wind turbines for decades. Over and over
again, the shrouds end up costing more than the cost of extending the blades
and tower enough to capture the equivalent amount of wind.

I won't say that it will _never_ work, but the list of failures is so long
that anyone who mentions shrouded wind turbines without mentioning their
history of failure should be suspected of being clueless. Inventing a new name
for them, like "wind lens," makes them even more suspect.

For a weak census of recent attempts, see Google Image Search:
<http://www.google.com/search?q=ducted+wind+turbines>

1868, Ernest Bollee in France:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89olienne_Boll%C3%A9e>

1926, Dew Oliver, San Gorgonio Pass in California, USA:
[http://books.google.com/books?id=7M9C1Adp0yQC&pg=PA46...](http://books.google.com/books?id=7M9C1Adp0yQC&pg=PA46&lpg=PA46&dq=dew+oliver+turbine)

("The abandoned [Oliver] turbine remained at the top of San Gorgonio Pass for
almost two decades until it was dismembered for its scrap metal during World
War II.")

2005, Enflo turbine, still trying in 2011: <http://www.enflo-windtec.ch/>

2007, FloDesign: <http://fdwt.com/> $56M in funding so far.

2008, Marquiss Wind Power: $1.3M Series A in 2008, now dead:
<http://www.marquisswindpower.com/>

To be fair, Enflo and FloDesign haven't failed yet, or at least their websites
are still up.

~~~
synnik
I'm doing my own renewable energy startup right now, with our own innovations
in turbine design. And while the engineering is critical, it is not the
problem with the industry.

Energy startups fail primarily due to a lack of appreciation for the intensive
capital required to make renewable energy work.

This is an industry where every project will cost millions of dollars,
hundreds of millions, or even a billion for truly large-scale operations.

And that is EVERY project. You do not just come up with a design, test it,
then repeat it 500 times. Each site has its own unique properties, each
turbine need to be manufactured and shipped, connected into a grid, operated
and maintained.

So you need a permanent source of massive amounts of cash to operate. Your
standard VC firm normally is not an option because the ROI is likely to be 10
years out, and that is too long for most investors.

When the ROI does come in, it is massive. But this is a high-risk, long-term
play, and it just doesn't match the interest of most VCs.

We have built our first production units, field tested them, and are ready to
roll, but have spent the last 3 months lining up finances because we do not
want to be another failed company added to the list.

~~~
acangiano
This is an area where I think government should provide generous grants and
investments. Innovation for this type of problem is possible, but it takes
more than 2 guys in a basement. Plus, as you mentioned, few VCs will want to
wait a decade to see the results. Government can wait, however.

I'm not in the field, so I'll naively ask: Is the US government, or any
government for that matter, doing anything about it?

~~~
jerf
Energy production is one of the purest of the wealth producers. If the energy
producer can't break even on their own strength, then needing government
subsidy (especially indefinitely) is all but a mathematical proof that the
subsidized energy production method is a net loss to society as a whole; were
it not, they would _be_ profitable and not need the subsidy. See also corn-
based ethanol.

Yes, I am aware of subsidizing R&D but that has diminishing returns too, and
given the amount already poured in around the world and the rather dismal
returns, I'm underwhelmed by the proposition that pouring _even more_ in will
turn things around. You can _always_ claim that if you just keep pouring the
money in it'll all turn around; it's a null argument when it comes down to it.
(We'd almost certainly be better off pouring equal funds into getting nuclear
going instead.)

~~~
evgen
_Energy production is one of the purest of the wealth producers._

Extractive energy production where you can dump negative externalities onto
the public or hide your subsidy in a part of the budget that is not directly
traceable to you (e.g. Marines in Iraq and destroyers in the straits of
Hormuz) is surely one of the purest wealth producers, but if forced to
actually compete on its own the equations would look a bit different...

~~~
jerf
It would still be radically net positive. Oil is a stonking great deal; you
put in one joule and get something like 10 to 30 back. (Note how I phrased
that in energy terms this time, that's an important point.) You can't actually
subsidize something of that size to profitability, because the energy industry
is on of the _bases_ of the economy; if oil is a net loss, the whole edifice
comes crumbling down regardless of what you do. You can't subsidize the oil
industry into net energy profitability with wealth taxed away from dry
cleaners and accountants, and it doesn't matter what games you play with
dollars if you aren't making a true net energy profit at the base of the
economic structure.

Wind and solar both generally barely break even or barely above if you take a
full accounting of their energy inputs and costs, biofuels are often a net
loss (depends on the crop, but I think the balance of the argument has corn
ethanol as a net loss, cane sugar seems to be a net gain, but...), and the
problem is they're competing with things that easily get tens of times of
returns on energy expended with the fossil fuels and nuclear power.

One of the things you rarely see correctly computed is what it would truly
take to power our entire society with renewable energy, _including_ the sudden
new energy expenditures necessary to keep our purely-renewable infrastructure
maintained with replacement gear. As the net energy benefit of the average
piece of gear approaches 1x, the necessary expenditures approach infinity.
Replacing 10-25x sources with 1.5-3x sources requires yet again far more
resources than the naive multiplications and divisions would imply, if you
don't make the mistake of assuming free infrastructure that never decays, or
one-time-cost infrastructure that never decays.

(Incidentally, this is why cheap solar, in the sense of truly cheaper without
government subsidy solar, is exciting. A solar panel that can make back 5-10x
the expenditure to make and install it, and isn't a massive expenditure of
metal and glass and silicon is a big deal, it makes things practical that
weren't before. Or a solar installation consisting of lots of cheap reflectors
concentrating the energy on a centralized station. I still think we might be
able to go both net positive and practical on solar. Wind I'm less optimistic
about, it's difficult to see what we can cut out of our wind generators and
still have wind generators the way we can cut down on the mass/energy
footprint of a solar installation with clever engineering. In the limiting
case, a reflector is a sheet of foil and an amortized central station; a wind
generator is an entire wind generator.)

------
unwind
Annoying article, it talks more about the (in my opinion very naïve and
utopian) ramifications about the technology if implemented on a massive scale,
than about the technology itself.

[http://news.discovery.com/tech/lens-wind-turbines-magnify-
po...](http://news.discovery.com/tech/lens-wind-turbines-magnify-power.html)
is marginally better (and more brief), I'm sure there are further sources.

~~~
sbt
I'm confused. The discovery article says "Each Lens, which measures 112 meters
in diameter, can provide enough energy for an average household." Does that
mean we need millions (or even billions) of these structures?

~~~
MediaBehavior
So the diameter more than the width of a football (NFL) field. And... one of
those per each household? Besides the visual obstruction, just finding such
space for each abode is daunting anywhere (not to mention somewhere with the
population density of Japan).

EDIT: Or, consider the transmission costs from areas where such land _is_
available.

------
rauljara
The article itself has almost no information on the actual technology. The
embedded video is much more helpful, and explains how the "lens" around the
turbines helps to disperse air and create a low pressure zone on one side of
the turbine. The relatively higher pressure air on the other side naturally
wants to push through, greatly increasing the efficiency of the turbines.

~~~
datromero
So in theory, this "wind lens" could be applied to existing wind turbines.

------
PaulHoule
I drove across western New York this weekend and saw a few large wind farms. I
found the view was quite pleasant and made a point to stop the car near the
base of one to listen for noise -- I heard nothing above the background.

Wind's got two big problems. The power isn't where you want it in time and
space. The wind doesn't blow all the time, so wind turbines need to be
supported with "peaking" power plants which will almost certainly burn natural
gas. Any effort to store power is likely to be as expensive as generating it.
Another problem is that good wind resources aren't close to demand, so a large
network of new power lines need to be built to get power into cities. Power
companies aren't excited about this, because the power isn't available at the
times they want it, and NIMBYism makes it quite hard to acquire new rights of
way for power lines.

As for a comparison to nuclear, that's a comparison that can come out any way
you like. Nuclear fuel is almost free, compared to the capital costs of
building the plant. When you try to charge that cost to a kWh of electricity,
it all depends on the lifetime of the plant and the cost of capital. For a
while it seemed that nuclear plants have a longer life than we anticipated
they would, which lowers the cost of electricity a lot. The Fukushima accident
will probably cause people to give up on older BWRs, which hurts the
economics.

In the past, the construction of nuclear plants has proven to be risky and
unpredictable -- often nuclear plants cost many times more to build than
originally planned. If the industry is going to have a future, it's going to
need to answer this problem through technology (small modular reactors) and
management (project management, quality control.)

------
DennisP
He brushes off "utility-scale storage" but to actually power the country with
wind, storage is a big problem. He mentions batteries. The cheapest battery is
lead-acid. Here's an estimate of just how much lead it would take to run the
country on lead-acid batteries: [http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-
math/2011/08/nation-sized-bat...](http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-
math/2011/08/nation-sized-battery/)

Short answer: 50 times more lead than exists in known deposits, and $25
trillion dollars.

That's probably an overly pessimistic estimate. He assumes that we have to
handle the wind stopping all over the country for a week (or, equivalently,
going down to 30% for ten days). But I think it makes the point that
renewables can't take over until we figure out scalable storage.

I did see one interesting idea: go someplace with lots of solid granite
bedrock. Carve out a giant plug and store power by using hydraulics to raise
the plug. [http://www.solarserver.com/solar-magazine/solar-energy-
syste...](http://www.solarserver.com/solar-magazine/solar-energy-system-of-
the-month/hydraulic-hydro-storage.html)

That article says claims that "an analysis of a future of renewable energy
shows that a mix of wind and solar energy needs, at least, a two day storage
capacity." With that assumption, two plugs of 500m radius and 1km deep could
handle all of Germany, at a cost of half a euro per kWh.

On the other hand, my ex-geologist brother was fairly sceptical of this idea.

~~~
rdtsc
Doubt lead batteries would work on this scale. Other solutions: pump water up
into some mountain reservoir (simlar to the granite plug idea), actually they
already do this, they can run some hydroelectric power plants in reverse.
Compress air into some airtight undeground chamber. Or even use giant
gyroscopes to store energy for a short period (maybe night vs day type
scenario).

~~~
DennisP
Yep. The question though is, how much hydropower can you actually build? How
much volume is available in abandoned mines and so on, or what would it cost
to dig out new ones just for this? A lot of things sound great, until you
actually work out the cost and maximum capacity.

------
jsvaughan
Direct from the University:

[http://www.riam.kyushu-u.ac.jp/windeng/en_aboutus_detail04.h...](http://www.riam.kyushu-u.ac.jp/windeng/en_aboutus_detail04.html)

"Wind power is proportional to the wind speed cubed. If we can increase the
wind speed with some mechanism by utilizing the fluid dynamic nature around a
structure, namely if we can capture and concentrate the wind energy locally,
the output power of a wind turbine can be increased substantially. At wind
energy section of Kyushu University, a new efficient wind power turbine system
has been developed. This system has an diffuser shroud at the circumference of
its rotor to embody the wind energy concentration. The diffuser shroud is now
named "Wind lens". To apply the wind-lens structure to a larger size turbine,
we have developed a compact collection-acceleration device"

------
DougWebb
How much would it cost to buy the equiivalent of 25% of Alaska and then build
2.6 million huge turbines? From the pictures, these turbines look like they
use a lot more material than current turbines because of the huge ring around
them, so they're probably a lot more expensive.

Add to this the costs of reworking the power grid to distribute power from the
new turbines across the country, and decommissioning all of the existing power
generating facilities.

I doubt the turbines could ever recover their costs before they get worn out
and need replacement.

~~~
alttag
I think those not familiar with the size of Alaska (particularly from the
"lower-48") might conceptually think of it as about the size of Texas. 'Tis
not so.

20% of the size of Alaska is roughly the size of two or three full Midwest
states. 20% of AK is about 132K sq miles, equivalent to about 80% the size of
California (total ~164K sq miles).

[http://www.google.com/search?q=alaska%20size%20compared%20to...](http://www.google.com/search?q=alaska%20size%20compared%20to%20us&tbm=isch)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Alaska_area_compared_to_co...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Alaska_area_compared_to_conterminous_US.svg)

One of the insights from the video (and not mentioned in the article) is the
option of using ocean area for wind collection, rather than doing it on land.

------
Duff
"Cheaper than nuclear" is a great pitch -- you can always adjust upward!

Does "nuclear" strictly mean operating costs? Or does it include the billions
of government capital investments? How about storing waste for a period of
time longer than recorded human history?

~~~
iwwr
Storing nuclear material ('waste') is only a problem because it's not
processed or exploited economically. Well, with the thorium cycle there is the
possibility of burning a large proportion of existing waste and with
electricity generation on the side.

This material can also be 'downblended' (the opposite process of enrichment)
or simply mixed in with sea water in very small concentrations. Being long-
lived radioactive sources also means the relative radioactivity (per volume)
is low.

~~~
Duff
Sure, but as a competitor to this technology, that's just more to add to the
cost.

It will cost many billions of dollars to develop infrastructure to "downblend"
waste products, build thorium reactors, litigate, etc.

~~~
nitrogen
It would cost more to buy enough land to build the wind turbines described in
the article.

------
ams6110
_Of course this assumes the concurrent deployment of a nationwide Smart Grid
that could store and disburse the variable sources of wind power as needed
using a variety of technologies — gas or coal peaking, utility scale storage
via batteries or fly-wheels, etc_

That parenthetical comment, dismissed with the lead-in "Of course..." is
actually itself a huge technological hurdle that is decades away from reality.

------
gfodor
I always have to laugh when wind advocates are forced to get to the point and
explain how many wind turbines they're actually going to need. Yes, a 200k
square mile patch of land with 3 _million_ wind turbines isn't an indication
that perhaps this isn't quite the right approach to solving our energy needs.
It's just plain absurd.

------
khafra
I've seen some content-free articles, but this one really takes the vapor-
cake. It spends two sentences very nonspecifically talking about a technical
development in wind energy, then paragraph after paragraph waxing rhapsodic
about the wonderous world of the future that awaits us.

------
beefman
Conventional turbines are already near the Betz limit - no room for tripling
their efficiency. There's potential to reduce the amount of material required
(e.g. kite-based systems like those proposed by Makani), but this design
doesn't look like it will deliver that. So something is probably wrong with
the reporting here, to say nothing of the fluff written around the story
(deploying 2.6M giant steel structures without causing any deaths?). So how
the heck did it get 125 points?

------
InclinedPlane
Wind and solar power can never make up the bulk of base load power production
on their own. They produce power on their own schedule, not based on when it's
needed. Until we have vastly more efficient energy storage systems these will
forever be niche power sources. They aren't entirely useless, but they are
still 2nd or 3rd string, and this sort of innovation (increasing capacity and
efficiency) won't change that.

------
skittles
The article mentions this in passing, but wind energy tends to be exactly
wrong for the daily increase of electrical load. As the sun rises and
temperatures increase, the wind tends to die down. That's why storage was
mentioned. That's probably a more important problem to solve: how do we
efficiently store energy produced now for later?

------
JacobAldridge
Based on a tumbling-domino-theory of assumptions, this could be excellent. I
particuarly like the fact that this new technology will be the answer to
current unemployment because of the maintenance jobs it will create ...
presumably, overnight.

~~~
nosse
Also we get rid of those dangerous mines. Why they are dangerous? People have
to work there.

Luckily wind-turbine building and maintenance is not dangerous...

------
vilda
The article is badly one-sided. Some misconceptions were already mentioned,
here are more which comes to my mind:

"Of course, this assumes the concurrent deployment of a nationwide Smart Grid
that could store and disburse the variable sources" -> the price is extreme
and not calculated. Furthermore, you would still need 100% backup in
traditional sources.

"it will create lots and lots of permanent jobs" -> therefore badly increases
the price of the power generated

"projected growth in electric vehicles" -> thus further increasing the demand
for electricity

------
shazam
The technology could be interesting, but this article is painful to read.

"One downside often cited by advocates of coal and gas power is that wind
turbines require a lot more maintenence than a typical coal or gas power
plant. But in a lagging economy this might just be wind power's biggest upside
— it will create lots and lots of permanent jobs, sparking a new cycle of
economic growth in America."

He thinks the fact that they require more maintenance and are less efficient
is good for the economy. Unbelievable.

~~~
16BitTons
It is a tempting mistake to make.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window>

Anything that increases the cost of energy will decrease the ability of a
civilization to advance.

------
spenrose
See also:
[http://www.scienceagogo.com/news/20110613232554data_trunc_sy...](http://www.scienceagogo.com/news/20110613232554data_trunc_sys.shtml)
. More broadly, the piece has a crude understanding of the complex issues
around energy and cost.

------
toobig
Anyone here familiar with or suffer from megalophobia? The "wind lens" on
these seems to somehow aggravate my very mild case more than normal turbines
do. While I hope for the success of this tech, I don't relish the idea of
driving past a field of them at all.

------
mooism2
Would be helpful if it said on what basis it will make wind power cheaper than
nuclear. Cheaper maximum generating capacity? Cheaper raw per watt cost?
Cheaper per watt cost even after taking into account the extra power storage
capacity wind power requires?

~~~
illume
Yeah, you are right. There are many variables that need to be defined first.

How much does it cost to put nuclear power generation in a house? You can't.
So therefore wind power is infinitely cheaper than nuclear.

If you put a wind turbine on the side of a building where that side forms a
wind tunnel, then you can generate power very cheaply - if you only count the
cost of the generator and the batteries. If you count the cost of the building
that makes the natural wind tunnel and repairs it is more.

Same with nuclear - you need to count other costs. The cost of a rare accident
is billions or trillions. The cost of cleanup, ruined nearby industries ( and
even not so nearby industries (Wales farmers)) can be massive.

Wind power can be used without storage depending on what needs to use the wind
power. Like the article mentions, car batteries are quite useful to store the
power in. There are many uses for electricity that do not require continuous
electricity. Likewise it can be used as a complementary source of renewable
energy. There are communities that generate 100% of their energy from
renewable sources, and part of that is from wind.

Wind is also a cheaper investment. Nuclear costs a lot of money initially, and
on an ongoing basis. At a small scale, I can buy a portable wind generator for
my ipod for under $30. At a large scale, some communities have farms that
generate 5 gigawatt hours a year.

How do you price the cost to the environment of wind farms? Noise pollution,
and visual pollution. The cost of safety - that is damage to human and animal
life. Wind power causes the lowest amounts of death to humans, but apparently
causes bird deaths.

It's all very complicated, but wind power does have some clear cost
advantages. From scale of investment required, to safety cost advantages, to
reduced environmental cleanup costs, to reduced tourism and land price
effects.

------
tintin
The video tells it all: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifF-MOuzM_s>

I think this is also a great example for startups. When things don't go as
planned (nuclear disaster) don't give up innovating.

------
brudgers
"Cheaper than nuclear" until the environmental impacts are mitigated. One
turbine every forty acres times 2.6 million is likely to comprise a
significant change on a massive scale...before considering the support
infrastructure.

------
aidenn0
I thought the problem with wind wasn't the cost, it was that all the places
with both consistent wind and no migratory birds that will get your project
killed have been taken?

------
nosse
Wikipedia already has an article about the phenomenon.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_lens>

------
motters
Japan is also well positioned to make use of hydrothermal. All those vents
along fault lines pushing out superheated steam is currently unused.

------
jff
An oil pipeline across Alaska? Eeeeevil. Clearing out hundreds of thousands of
square miles and covering them in turbines? The future!

~~~
colanderman
You do realize most wind turbines are installed in land that's _already
cleared_ , such as farmland or the ocean, right?

------
compoundBLING
the title of this link is misleading. "will" should be replaced with "could".

------
michaelcampbell
They had me until "nuke-u-lar".

Still, I'm all for these sorts of technologies. I hope it works. Now we need
to work on STORING this energy efficiently.

~~~
coldarchon
not only that. Every year in Germany 150.000 birds and bats are hit by the
wings of wind turbines. Not good ..

