
Wind Power Without the Mills - mrfusion
http://www.forbes.com/sites/billtucker/2015/05/07/wind-power-without-the-mills/
======
startupfounder
I have repelled (using Industrial Rope Access) off hundreds of multi-megawatt
Wind Turbines on $1B+ wind farms around the world to inspect and repair the
13+ ton fiberglass blades and wanted to give my 2 cents. [A clarification:
Wind Turbines generate electricity, Wind Mills mill flour. It's a small but
important detail.]

Operation & Maintenance expense is my biggest issue with new technology. I
have met many design engineers that have never been inside of a nacelle or
even visited a wind farm. In the real world generators and blades break,
hurricanes, lightning, shit happens. Cranes are extremely expensive and a 2MW
"mast" that can compete with today's technology is going to be crazy tall. How
to repair a lightning cable? Cranes are over $10k per day and cables take a
few days to fix.

Today there is a 26 story ladder in the interior of the support tower that
people climb up to fix hardware in the nacelle. To inspect the blades we then
rig our anchors to the generator, pop out the top hatch and repel over the
nose cone and down onto a blade in the "down" position. The only specialized
hardware needed is anchors, carabiners, ropes, harness and helmet.

Vortex Bladeless would be impossible to inspect and repair using this method,
yes drones are great for inspection, but what about repairing a stress crack
on the tip? You would need a crazy tall crane that is even more expensive and
with cranes the wind speeds need to be a fraction that of Industrial Rope
Access. This means your available repair days are even less and the turbine
has to be shut down for longer for the fix to occur.

I am all for new technology and crowd financing, but there are many practical
obstacles this team needs to overcome in the design phase to build a product
that can actually scale in the real world.

Also, feel free to AMA if you have specific wind turbine questions.

~~~
ChuckMcM
It is certainly a valid point that maintenance costs are a huge burden on wind
farms, that said, you cannot really jump to the conclusion that 2MW of
generation capability would be deployed as one giant tower. From the web site
it seems it would be 2x 1MW towers but it could easily be 10 separate 200kW
towers or even 100 20kW towers. The density of a this with respect to wind
turbines seems a bit higher.[1]

That said, their web site makes them out to be idealistic dreamers (I know
that sounds judgemental but it is the impression I got from it). If Google
were still running the RE<C initiative I'd suggest they put a couple of test
units next to the data center at The Dalles (its on the Columbia River and was
always windy whenever I visited there). If they can build a 4 - 10kW one and
its something you can stick in your backyard, I would expect that they can
build a small business out of that to develop the expertise to build the big
ones. I worry that if they try to do too much too soon they will become
overwhelmed.

[1] Caveat the amount of energy you can pull out of a moving mass of air at
STP is finite.

~~~
startupfounder
Most wind farms are on leased land and the fee is based on the MWh generated.
Farmers want to maximize revenue from wind harvesting while minimizing crop
harvest revenue loss. Remember roads are built between turbines for big cranes
and trailers to deliver and install the turbines and there is parking
underneath the turbine for maintenance workers.

Having 500 4kw systems cuts into harvest revenues as do 10 20kw systems as the
equivalent square footage lost to generate 1MWh is an order of magnitude
larger.

Also, wind turbines blades in colder climates tend to accumulate ice in the
winter and thus are permitted to be located away from populated areas. Some
big chunks of ice have been flung hundreds of meters. The larger the blade the
further the distance you need to put your structure for safety reasons. These
masts shouldn't be put on buildings (vibration) or near populations (ice).

~~~
kbenson
It sounds like you are attributing the same space usage for these types of
generators as wind turbines, when it appears they could be much more closely
packed. I wouldn't expect ten of these to use ten times the square footage as
the wind turbines. Additionally, I wouldn't expect ice to be flung as far (but
I'm not sure what the oscillation is really like), but from the design, maybe
ice poses other challenges to these.

~~~
startupfounder
MWh/sq.ft.

I am attributing larger footprint usage to trying to generate a similar power
output given current wind mast technology. 10 wind masts alone don't take up
the same space as 10 classic turbines, but the the number of wind masts
necessary to generate the equivalent output of 10 classic turbines is greater
that 1:1 due to wind swept area per turbine.

------
scblock
Again? AGAIN? Another "no blades! save the birds!" technology that's little
more than a concept.

There are constantly _amazing_ technologies just around the corner that will
definitely totally be awesomely better than existing 3 bladed horizontal axis
wind turbine technology. And they'll always be less expensive than current
technology somehow. Trust me, getting the cost right at this stage of the
technology curve is almost impossible, and founders and technology developers
are notoriously optimistic.

Yet they are always a few kW (this one is 4 kW) rather than 2 or 3 MW (a
factor of 1000), and are always "just a few years away". And will never be a
commercially successful product outside, perhaps, small scale demonstration
and greenwashing projects.

We didn't get to the standard model of wind turbine by accident. It took
decades of engineering and refinement. And yes, we still have a lot to learn.
And yes the current technology has problems.

~~~
bpodgursky
Decades? I would say it took centuries at least. The basic design hasn't
changed since the middle ages.

~~~
ifdefdebug
Well maybe changing the basic design of wind turbines would be somewhat like
changing the basic design of wheels but still today's wheels are better than
medieval ones.

------
frobozz
This says 'Because there is no contact between moving parts, there is no
friction. Therefore no lubricant is required. No replacement of spare parts
either.'

However, there are animations that show it wobbling.

This implies that it's made of a flexible substance. I'm not being so pedantic
as to suggest that the fibres or crystals etc. of the substance are moving
parts (though surely there is friction between them), but I do have a query:

In my completely anecdotal and limited experience of household bendy objects
vs. household hinges; hinges win the longevity battle every time, even without
regular application of lubricants. Also, when a bendy object fails, the whole
thing needs to be replaced. On the other hand, when a mechanical part fails, I
can replace the part and keep the rest of the object.

Can these things therefore really be cheaper to maintain than a mechanical
wind turbine?

~~~
david-given
How to make tall, stiff objects wobble safely is pretty standard technology
these days --- all tall buildings do it, and very tall skyscrapers are
carefully tuned and damped to wobble in exactly the right way. This is partly
because of wind, and partly earthquakes. Here's a terrifying video of a
skyscraper farm in Japan swaying gently after an earthquake in 2011.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQaHyY9-Fuw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQaHyY9-Fuw)

So I'd say it's at least _plausible_ that these generators could be built.

~~~
qbrass
Build them out of skyscrapers.

------
frik
It's called the "Magnus effect" and is not new at all:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnus_effect](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnus_effect)

There are airplanes and boats that use this technique too:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotor_ship](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotor_ship)
,
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flettner_airplane](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flettner_airplane)
,
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcyone_(ship)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcyone_\(ship\))
,
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Ship_1](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Ship_1)
,

Wind mills and green energy is great, so go for it - just don't try to patent
the "Magnus effect".

------
boardwaalk
The comments here are amazingly negative -- personally, if I was to live off
the grid, the 4kW, 40', 220lb version sounds pretty great to me. At 220lb, you
could easily raise/lower the thing as one person with some sort of mechanism
for installation/service. I'm really curious how much it'd cost in comparison
to solar. Maybe someone can estimate with the "80% less maintenance cost, 53%
manufacturing cost" than wind turbines bit.

~~~
toomuchtodo
> I'm really curious how much it'd cost in comparison to solar.

For a 4kW sized solar system, you'd be looking at ~$6K-8K USD before your 30%
federal tax credit (plus state incentives, if available). Your solar system
would have _significantly_ less maintenance requirements, consisting of
rinsing the panels with a hose 1-2/year.

------
dates
Also relevant are these awesome wind kits google is developing:
[http://www.google.com/makani/](http://www.google.com/makani/)

~~~
drewm1980
The makani team is serious business. They keep building larger and larger
prototypes and are nailing their predicted power curve every time. They have
internal expertise to build (almost) everything in house, and have already
demonstrated autonomous operation. They recently unveiled the wing from their
under-construction 600 kW model, which should fly sometime this summer.

------
pietrofmaggi
Here's another article with a short video that show a prototype working.

[http://www.renewableenergymagazine.com/article/the-power-
of-...](http://www.renewableenergymagazine.com/article/the-power-of-the-
vortex-20150407)

------
phloxicon
Are there any numbers on how much it generates compared to a traditional
design? I imagine it generates less electricity but it costs less so there's a
trade-off.

------
olau
I think you have to separate joy of the tech from practical matters here.

Regarding the practical matters, it looks like they are three orders of
magnitude from being on par with the three-blade vertical design.

So while this idea may be worthwhile in some niches like mentioned in the
article, it's currently not a replacement for the giant, towering, 3 MW and up
turbines erected these days.

And just like other wind-turbine replacement ideas (like kites or vertical-
axis designs, but there are many more, just check Wikipedia), they probably
never will. As I understand it, part of the beauty of the three-blade design
is that by scaling the blade length linearly, you get a quadratic gain (pi r^2
area swept) in energy harvested.

~~~
samatman
Getting kites to work has proved challenging, yes. But the beauty of the
design is that they have in principle better scaling properties than a wind
turbine. Don't count them out yet.

As for the parent design, could be interesting. I cannot imagine a possible
justification for not building it out given the urgency of renewable power to
our present needs.

------
bkardell
I remember hearing about something similar in '08
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMojRXK14jU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMojRXK14jU)
which became [http://www.humdingerwind.com/](http://www.humdingerwind.com/) \-
I wonder if they are related? Seems like a really interesting idea.

------
realcoolguy
Always found it odd that wind capture/generation shapes resembled centuries
old windmills. Great to see some (expected) innovation in the space. With non-
moving parts, no noise, and won't sent people into epileptic shock around
sunrise/sunset, it looks like a winner. (if you've never driven past a
windfarm in the morning or evening, the flashing is incredibly irritating).

~~~
scblock
Let me do a quick word substitution.

> If you've never driven past __trees __in the morning or evening, the
> flashing is incredibly irritating.

Shadow flicker is a siting and operations problem. It's based on geometry (sun
angles and turbine locations), wind conditions (turbine direction) and weather
conditions (cloudiness). If we consider residences, schools, churches, and so
on as discrete shadow receptors, flicker can be minimized through careful
siting of the machines, and eliminated at those sites through programmatic
controls (curtailment).

------
mark-r
The problem with these things is always in the scaling up. Either things don't
scale linearly, or you run into some fundamental limit where the tech doesn't
yet exist to solve it. Even if the bigger systems don't pan out, it's still
cool and useful.

I wonder what's the size of their prototype? Hard to tell from the picture.

------
Htsthbjig
One of the great things about wind turbines today is that they capture power
over the entire disk of wind the blades touch.

I suppose using this system means blocking the wind with something akin to a
forest, with a small space between "artificial trees".

------
lotsofmangos
If they have managed anywhere even close to their claimed cost reductions then
this is very cool. Wind is already on par with oil in terms of EROEI.

~~~
ci5er
If oil were the primary fuel for electricity generation, you'd have a solid
point.

Assuming that we were to compare it to natural gas, for which you may have
used oil as a proxy, this provides some substantiation to your claim: \-
[http://www.theoildrum.com/node/1863](http://www.theoildrum.com/node/1863)

But the calculations here don't reflect that peak power generation doesn't
reflect peak demand. So, we've looking at adding in battery's costs too.

At the end of the day, if a greedy capitalist can make a bigger buck (with or
without government subsidies) with wind than they can with coal or natural
gas, they will.

Given that the efforts to bring new capacity on-line fluctuate (dramatically!)
with the comings and goings of government subsidies, my guess is that they
aren't quite the competitive economic wonder, at this point, that they are
touted to be.

YMMV.

------
bengali3
oscillating:
[https://youtu.be/2_5K4kmnsL4?t=75](https://youtu.be/2_5K4kmnsL4?t=75)

------
JulianMorrison
Wind engineers: why isn't "save the birds" as simple as a ring-enclosed
sandwich of mesh screen, blades, mesh screen?

~~~
NLips
Because generally the birds don't really need saving from wind turbines.

Numbers from an unverified source:
[http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/green-
science...](http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/green-science/wind-
turbine-kill-birds.htm) (other sites seems to agree on the cats vs turbine
numbers)

Alternatively, from a source you might expect to be very biased in favour of
birds:
[http://www.rspb.org.uk/forprofessionals/policy/windfarms/](http://www.rspb.org.uk/forprofessionals/policy/windfarms/)

~~~
lambdaelite
A problem with the estimates in the U.S. is that turbines disproportionately
affect legally-protected birds, and so the numbers are suspected to be
severely under reported.

~~~
insertnickname
So what? If they're too stupid not to fly into a giant blade, then maybe it's
ok that they die.

~~~
johnchristopher
Let me introduce you to a wonderful concept:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecosystem](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecosystem)

Enjoy the next three days of reading.

------
mrfusion
I don't understand how they can have no moving parts?

~~~
masklinn
It has moving parts, just not moving parts in contact with one another. From
what I understand the outer segment is flexible and oscillates because of
vortex shedding, and a magnetic coupling between the flexible outer segment
and the fixed inner one generates power. So the outer segment is mobile, but
it never touches the inner segment.

