Most offshore wind turbines currently in use are 5 MW and under, but that won't be the case for long. Many of the major wind turbine makers are trying to go bigger, bigger, bigger.
Turbine company Vestas recently revealed a 7 MW offshore wind turbine design called the V164 that has three 80-meter-long blades and is 187 meters tall. The sweep area of the turbine will be 21,124 square meters. The V164 will generate 30 percent more energy per ton than current turbines and the power needed to produce the turbines themselves will be paid back in 10 months of use. The V164 could be built sometime next year.
California-based turbine company Clipper is working on a 10 MW turbine called the Britannia, which they plan to unveil in 2012, while Norwegian company Sway is working on a floating turbine of the same size.
One of the advantages to these super-sized turbines is construction costs. A large part of the cost of an offshore wind farm comes from the underwater foundations that support the turbines, so if you can generate more power from a single turbine, then you reduce the amount of foundations you need. Also, it allows for an easier scaling up of wind farm energy output by adding a few larger turbines rather than a lot of smaller ones.
via New Scientist
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written by Chuck Finley, March 31, 2011
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written by ZetaPhased, March 31, 2011
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written by Matthew Yacomine, March 31, 2011
Most communities think that wind turbines are an eyesore anyway... now make it all but visible from space and watch those complaints roll in.
I think the whole ethos of renewable energies is wrong anyway... to be consistent with the decentralised distribution idea these things have to be smaller, and more numerous in order to be viable. Firstly so that each unit's production cost is reduced, and the costs and effort of maintenance are likewise minimised, but also with regard to the ideas of energy security and a consistent energy supply... if this turbine fails, it would take NASA and a huge budget to replace the enormous blade over months, not to metion the lost power as a proportion of the electricity generated for the grid invested in this one turbine.
If they are made smaller and there are more of them, all these problems are solved, and they can sit happily among the community, and not glaring at them from outside... and although there will be those who say that the size of this turbine is necessary to generate the power needed, with reduced production and maintenance costs (and down time costs in the event of failure)you can make more than is required to factor for loss because the renewable quality allows us to waste surplus energy without the thought of damage to the environment as an incorporated property of renewables, which the use of finite fossil fuel generated power cannot.
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written by Doc Rings, April 01, 2011
To all wondering why bigger is better, is because increased size gives economy of scale in both construction and output efficiency.
Bigger engines use more fuel overall, but they have higher volumetric efficiency per cubic inch of displacement. This is why big ships are powered by one or two very large motors, and not thousands of little tiny ones. The converse is true, that one monster generator can make a lot more power than a number of smaller ones, and why the one large one is less expensive per megawatt generated.
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MAR 30
"Wonder why vertical windmills are not considered for offshore deployme..."
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