|
I know that closed-cycle Stirling engines can be quite efficient at utilizing waste heat. They usually use helium as a working fluid, because it leads to less viscous loses. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stirling_engine dong engine lol
|
#
?
Nov 8, 2023 21:38
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 8, 2024 17:14 |
|
|
nuscale's idaho project just got canceled https://www.nuscalepower.com/en/news/press-releases/2023/uamps-and-nuscale-power-agree-to-terminate-the-carbon-free-power-project down 28% in after-hours trading: https://www.google.com/finance/quote/SMR:NYSE not only had the nrc approved the reactors, but the feds were even kicking in over a billion: https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/US-government-backs-NuScale-projects-at-home-and-a
|
|
#
?
Nov 9, 2023 00:54
|
|
|
MightyBigMinus posted:nuscale's idaho project just got canceled My guess? High Interest Rates killed it.
|
|
#
?
Nov 9, 2023 06:07
|
|
|
Interesting wind-power design: Bill Gates backs novel device promising wind energy at 1/3 the cost  quote:Wind turbines are getting absolutely enormous, with some new designs standing taller than the Eiffel tower, as some of the largest moving machines in history . And they'll continue getting bigger, because the bigger they get, the greater the energy incentive becomes to make the blades even longer. 
|
|
#
?
Nov 9, 2023 06:08
|
|
|
VideoGameVet posted:My guess? High Interest Rates killed it. That and renewables got relatively cheaper again. This the cross over points for cost have changed. It’s always the problem for nuclear it’s also interesting for other reasons.
|
|
#
?
Nov 9, 2023 07:15
|
|
|
Bar Ran Dun posted:That and renewables got relatively cheaper again. This the cross over points for cost have changed.  That's a huge bummer about Nuscale anyway though. We need to be trying different stuff. VideoGameVet posted:Interesting wind-power design: That's fascinating. Instinctively it does seem like it might work. It might require more land it seems, and I guess maintenance of these wings running around a track would be more complicated. But OTOH you won't need giant cranes to lift stuff up and what not. Should be fairly easy to set up some test farms, at least.
|
|
#
?
Nov 9, 2023 11:08
|
|
|
Does look far less majestic than the current grand sky windmills and far more weird future grey hound races.mobby_6kl posted:That's fascinating. Instinctively it does seem like it might work. It might require more land it seems, and I guess maintenance of these wings running around a track would be more complicated. But OTOH you won't need giant cranes to lift stuff up and what not. Should be fairly easy to set up some test farms, at least. Yeah, while it seems more moving parts and the moving parts not a centralized you'll need more maintenance but it sounds like with the lesser height, and also the parts just being smaller, still a net gain.
|
|
#
?
Nov 9, 2023 11:19
|
|
|
Yeah, seems like a lot more moving parts. The current windmills are big, but as far as moving part count goes, they are pretty simple. Do love the dog track analogy.
|
|
#
?
Nov 9, 2023 12:11
|
|
|
It's a super interesting plan, but "This track will just always move smoothly" seems like a tough sell. And while sailboats can move with the wind in most directions, the sail itself should be trimmed correctly. Angling a solid blade 10' blade to catch the wind seems like it would really throw things off balance. I wonder if the cost savings disappear when installed off-shore, because you need more pylons installed. Probably a great solution for very specific situations, but I don't think it will displace windmills.
|
|
#
?
Nov 9, 2023 15:00
|
|
|
mobby_6kl posted:Didn't the rising costs just tank some wind farm projects? I'm having trouble keeping up That's pretty neat! I hope it works, but man, lol if the future is powered by dumb-looking wings whirling around a fancy clothesline.
|
|
#
?
Nov 9, 2023 18:59
|
|
|
mobby_6kl posted:That's fascinating. Instinctively it does seem like it might work. It might require more land it seems, and I guess maintenance of these wings running around a track would be more complicated. But OTOH you won't need giant cranes to lift stuff up and what not. Should be fairly easy to set up some test farms, at least. So I do wonder just how much cheaper such a system really would get in comparison to the „traditional“ form once the capacity factor is included.
|
|
#
?
Nov 9, 2023 19:19
|
|
|
Suspension wires going to be interesting. Keeping the track from bending is uhh, an engineering feat
|
|
#
?
Nov 10, 2023 01:03
|
|
|
Mid-Life Crisis posted:Suspension wires going to be interesting. Keeping the track from bending is uhh, an engineering feat So there is a chance the track could bend?
|
|
#
?
Nov 10, 2023 01:06
|
|
|
Phanatic posted:So there is a chance the track could bend? They could just extend the system vertically to have multiple tracks, and the struts between them would fix this weakness of the single track design. Blorange fucked around with this message at 02:25 on Nov 10, 2023 |
|
#
?
Nov 10, 2023 02:22
|
|
|
mobby_6kl posted:Didn't the rising costs just tank some wind farm projects? I'm having trouble keeping up Yes! The big offshore one on the east coast died from higher interest rates. Anything capital intensive it’s going to get grim with rates up.
|
|
#
?
Nov 10, 2023 04:53
|
|
|
It's a fascinating idea, though I have a lot of doubts regarding lubrication and vibrations. At bigger scale theres gonna be a lot of shocks and vibrations going through the system and a flimsy frame of rods and rails doesn't seem like it'll be able to compensate those very efficiently. Also as mentioned wind is less stable and more unpredictable at ground scale, inside the prandl layer up to 100 meter the roughness of the ground is a major restriction to viability in some ways. Random buffets of winds will stress the structure, it flows less reliably, etc. That aside I think the argument about them looking less intrusive is also a bit optimistic, having a bunch of gigantic cloth lines littering the landscape is not very attractive either. At first glance I also don't know why you'd not use a vertical low wind speed turbine instead, which are already established. The argument about this concept being able to pitch into the wind is interesting but since the angle is fixed it would not be at full effectiveness, would it? I don't really know enough about sailing to understand that part tho, maybe that's really the big breakthrough.
|
|
#
?
Nov 10, 2023 08:25
|
|
|
Frankly, it's solving problems that don't need to be solved.
|
|
#
?
Nov 10, 2023 10:39
|
|
|
MiddleOne posted:Frankly, it's solving problems that don't need to be solved. I wouldn't go that far. The stated goal is to reduced levelized cost of electricity though lower installation capex. If it is able to deliver than it will be a valuable addition to the world wide wind roll out campaign. I will say I am more disappointed that Nuscale has taken a knock then I am excited that about the clothesline dog track but I am still keen to see how it develops.
|
|
#
?
Nov 10, 2023 10:47
|
|
|
Phanatic posted:So there is a chance the track could bend?
|
|
#
?
Nov 10, 2023 14:59
|
|
|
cat botherer posted:Not on your life, my Hindu friend! Lmao. Aerorail! Aerorail! Aerorail!
|
|
#
?
Nov 10, 2023 18:53
|
|
|
dr_rat posted:Does look far less majestic than the current grand sky windmills and far more weird future grey hound races. 33 foot blades can be easily transported on 'normal' flatbed semis. Ditto the other components. The bases can also be more compact as the track itself should provide some structural integrity.
|
|
#
?
Nov 10, 2023 19:15
|
|
|
It seems like if it works then it would be a great way to bring clean energy to more corners of the world. I'm sure in the first world we can afford gigantic infrastructure like wind mills reaching to the stratosphere or nuclear plants that are as big as a city, but it's nice to have more options that don't require such heavy initial investment and supporting infrastructure. And if we in the developed world really want to move away from fossils within a decade then better cost efficiency in clean energy is definitely something to strive for.
|
|
#
?
Nov 10, 2023 21:31
|
|
|
Wouldn't the groove track the blades are running on eventually get caked up with rust and goop and such? I'm not an engineer, but I'm not seeing the huge advantage this has over turbines.
|
|
#
?
Nov 10, 2023 22:30
|
|
|
MiddleOne posted:Frankly, it's solving problems that don't need to be solved. There's basically no such thing as power that's too cheap. We've made a lot of headwinds making consumer goods and industrial equipment more efficient, but making power cheap is a much more efficient and scaleable way to improve the world. Almost every problem can be solved with the application of enough raw power, but the practical limit in real life is the cost. If power is free, you can solve human hunger and thirst with desalination that uses free power and hydroponics that costs nothing to run except for material inputs. Every building air tightness standard becomes meaningless because it's actually better for buildings to have airflow and if the cost of heating doesn't matter you just heat it more. (This even has a statistically noticeable effect on things like radon deaths.) Transport fuel costs are removed. Even things in knowledge sectors improve as you can run servers for free. There are a million other examples of things that can be done if your power is too cheap to meter; not only does it make things we do now cheaper, but it means we can start implementing solutions to things which would have been impractical because of energy costs. This windmill design, even if it does everything it claims, won't give us that future on its own. But decreasing energy costs is basically always worthwhile.
|
|
#
?
Nov 11, 2023 00:28
|
|
|
Well, the thing is that windmills are getting larger and larger because larger windmills are more effective and efficient and cheaper per unit of energy produced. They do get more complex and expensive per individual windmill, but they are cheaper than building a number of smaller windmills in order to produce the same amount of energy. That’s the whole reason repowering exists: taking a number of older, smaller windmills and replacing them with a single larger one. Thereby producing more energy, more reliably, while using less land. Unless this concept is drastically cheaper, which I doubt, I don’t really see it as being an alternative to that. If you simply want to have less investment into a single windmill, then you can just build a smaller one requiring less exotic construction methods. But that will still be less efficient than building the largest windmill possible. Where this concept might theoretically become interesting is if the construction becomes so simple that almost no special equipment is needed at all, so that any rural community with lots of land can install such a system by themselves with no special knowledge. But competition with top of the line „traditional“ windmills on a cost efficiency level seems like a pipedream to me. One example (from a company advertising cheaper ways to lift a windmill up higher - relevant for our case is the difference in costs between the capacities of the windmills): 
DTurtle fucked around with this message at 00:53 on Nov 11, 2023 |
|
#
?
Nov 11, 2023 00:43
|
|
|
And to just highlight it: The major reason big windmills are better is not just that are more efficient, but that their output is less unpredictable. Wind power is already amazingly cheap, when it is available. The only reason it's not displacing everything is that it's not always windy, and that unpredictability forces you to do a whole bunch of different expensive mitigations around it. As a rule, the higher off the ground you are, the less local weather impacts wind speeds. The economic output of a bigger windmill that on average makes twice the power than a smaller one is a lot higher than twice that of the small one, because averages are worth a lot less than minimums, and the minimums of big windmills go up faster than the averages. And a fancy track system doesn't help with this, at all.
|
|
#
?
Nov 11, 2023 01:32
|
|
|
What if we attach windmills to zeppelins with extremely long power cables, so the windmill is like a thousand feet up or something. They could also have solar panels.
|
|
#
?
Nov 11, 2023 03:55
|
|
|
HelloSailorSign posted:What if we attach windmills to zeppelins with extremely long power cables, so the windmill is like a thousand feet up or something. Everything is moving to the cloud these days. May as well.
|
|
#
?
Nov 11, 2023 03:55
|
|
|
HelloSailorSign posted:What if we attach windmills to zeppelins with extremely long power cables, so the windmill is like a thousand feet up or something. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crosswind_kite_power
|
|
#
?
Nov 11, 2023 05:55
|
|
|
Bigger and bigger is all fine and well where you have excellent geotech assessment resources, (relatively) cheap large crane hire (I have been part of a lift involving a 400t crane and the single lift cost $800k Aussie, most of which was mob/demob), robust and suitable transport infrastructure able to handle outsize loads, etc. Part of the reason North Sea offshore wind looks so good is that humongous cranes are actually less difficult to work with at sea than on land and the North Sea is shallow. Where you don't have access to primo resources and still have access to land, then the lower, smaller, fit in routine transport channels, easy to install wind could be good. I do wonder that if it really is more effective than 100 m windmills, then what is to stop the clothesline dog track from being scaled up several hundred meters?
|
|
#
?
Nov 11, 2023 16:43
|
|
|
Also I really wonder if it's more practical than simple pv plus small battery pack. Yes, the pricing sounds extremely attractive but before a commercial model is out the numbers is just marketing guesswork and you can put a 3x multiplier to it easily I'm guessing. Still, love these alternative energy harvesting methods, people need to keep trying, who knows what funky stuff can still be developed.
|
|
#
?
Nov 11, 2023 17:19
|
|
|
Son of Rodney posted:Also I really wonder if it's more practical than simple pv plus small battery pack. Yes, the pricing sounds extremely attractive but before a commercial model is out the numbers is just marketing guesswork and you can put a 3x multiplier to it easily I'm guessing. For the racetrack solution, I can see them as a possible solution for low cost, low energy, high wind, high space usage, low infrastructure areas. I don't ever see it competing in the traditional wind mill market.
|
|
#
?
Nov 11, 2023 23:49
|
|
|
VideoGameVet posted:33 foot blades can be easily transported on 'normal' flatbed semis. Ditto the other components. The logistics for shipping even the longest blades by vessel is basically routine at this point.
|
|
#
?
Nov 12, 2023 08:13
|
|
|
Bar Ran Dun posted:The logistics for shipping even the longest blades by vessel is basically routine at this point. Yes at sea that's true. On land it can be an issue.
|
|
#
?
Nov 13, 2023 16:43
|
|
|
VideoGameVet posted:Yes at sea that's true. On land it can be an issue. They should just ask Gandalf to ask those lazy eagles to transport the blades. 
|
|
#
?
Nov 13, 2023 17:17
|
|
|
https://interestingengineering.com/science/scientist-lasers-by-a-million-times “Scientists from the UK and South Korea have discovered a way to create laser pulses 1,000 times stronger than currently possible. Using computer simulations, they have discovered that a new way of compressing the light can drastically increase its intensity to such an extent that it can extract particles from a vacuum. This new technique could open up doors for important discoveries into the very nature of matter.” this new technique can be explored with plasma and other things
|
|
#
?
Nov 16, 2023 07:39
|
|
|
You're just trolling this thread aren't you?
|
|
#
?
Nov 16, 2023 07:47
|
|
|
His Divine Shadow posted:You're just trolling this thread aren't you? No he’s not you can compress light you just have to squeeze it really hard
|
|
#
?
Nov 16, 2023 07:55
|
|
|
His Divine Shadow posted:You're just trolling this thread aren't you? no im not what’s untruthful about the article
|
|
#
?
Nov 16, 2023 08:11
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 8, 2024 17:14 |
|
|
TheMuffinMan posted:no im not what’s untruthful about the article That it has anything to do with energy generation.
|
|
#
?
Nov 16, 2023 15:48
|
|