[HN Gopher] Rooftop wind energy innovation claims 50% more energ...
___________________________________________________________________
Rooftop wind energy innovation claims 50% more energy than solar at
same cost
Author : fairytalemtg
Score : 187 points
Date : 2022-10-26 14:36 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.pv-magazine.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.pv-magazine.com)
| yodelshady wrote:
| "The unit... generates round-the-clock energy... producing energy
| in all weather conditions."
|
| Can someone explain to me how, whenever wind energy is mentioned,
| _any_ sort of of scepticism, and I don 't mean "snarky internet
| contrarian" scepticism, I mean "human being who has lived on
| Earth" scepticism, _ceases to exist_?
|
| Is there actually a large population out there _who has never
| experienced outside weather conditions in which there was no
| wind_?
|
| Or do you... think that bad things will not happen to you if you
| just _believe_ in transparent bullshit hard enough? Because I 'm
| sorry, but they will.
|
| How. Does this Shit. Get Written?
|
| The best, most reliable sources of wind, FYI, are known by anyone
| in industry to be very far away from most built structures, and
| high.
| Ayesh wrote:
| It's too late for me in my time to pull my thoughts together,
| but this goes on the same lane as Nigerian prince scams,
| cryptocurrency/ICO scams, etc.
|
| It's like if your lie is so bad, and if you can still get a
| small amount of people to believe you, they will fall HARD to
| it, and you can scam them multiple times because they continue
| to fall for them. That's the target audience.
| [deleted]
| BorisTheBrave wrote:
| It means round-the-clock as in "it works during the day and
| night", rather than literally non-stop. For example, if I said
| that security did "round the clock patrols", you wouldn't
| assume they patrol every second of they day, but rather
| regularly through the night.
|
| The fact a few people might misinterpret it is a marketing
| bonus, but surely negligable, because no one could believe
| that.
| ajross wrote:
| > Is there actually a large population out there who has never
| experienced outside weather conditions in which there was no
| wind?
|
| Over a geographic area approximating typical grid distribution
| distances, and at altitudes reached by commercial wind
| turbines? Surely there's such a population, but it's a very,
| very small one. A "calm day" in your backyard at sea level with
| a bunch of trees around is still generating a ton of wind power
| on hilltop turbines. And if your neighborhoods hills aren't
| getting it done, there are gusts somewhere within a few hundred
| km just waiting to be milked.
|
| No, this is wrong. Wind power is in fact extremely reliable,
| especially when you remember that things like fuel distribution
| routinely idles fossil fuel plants too. Nothing is 100%
| reliable.
|
| But the other part of your point: that building roofs are a
| poor place for wind, is I think more defensible. Certainly if
| you have $N to spend on wind power, you build more ridgeline
| turbines and you don't put these things on roofs. But the
| people spending those dollars aren't the same.
|
| If you're a business or home with a roof, and you're looking at
| putting solar on it for whatever reason, and this thing is
| better (itself very much an open question), why not?
| laverya wrote:
| > No, this is wrong. Wind power is in fact extremely
| reliable, especially when you remember that things like fuel
| distribution routinely idles fossil fuel plants too. Nothing
| is 100% reliable.
|
| According to [0], Germany's wind farms averaged a 36.9%
| capacity factor over the course of 2019. Further down there's
| load duration curves, and it looks like a lot of plants have
| _no_ power generation for >10% of the time.
|
| EDIT I FORGOT TO INCLUDE MY CITE
| https://energynumbers.info/germanys-offshore-wind-
| capacity-f...
| ajross wrote:
| You didn't provide a cite, FWIW. But taking the numbers as
| given:
|
| Those aren't the right metrics. First, capacity factor is
| an approximation of "fraction of maximum", not reliability
| at all, which is a whole-grid measurement.
|
| Find the data for any one gas plant. How often was it
| producing (emphasis in the original) _no_ power? I 'll bet
| anything that most plants are offline quite a bit more than
| 10%, precisely because demand itself is variable and gas is
| the easiest plant to bring up and down. Yet you call one a
| "reliability" metric and the other not, why?
|
| In fact as a whole, German wind power has been exceedingly
| reliable. Wind power everywhere has been exceedingly
| reliable. The world as a whole has been building out wind
| like crazy over the last decade (because it's cheap and
| great) and... I'm not aware of even one instance of a "calm
| day blackout". Not one. Have a cite for that?
| laverya wrote:
| > You didn't provide a cite, FWIW. But taking the numbers
| as given:
|
| Ah, hell. It was meant to be
| 'https://energynumbers.info/germanys-offshore-wind-
| capacity-f...', which was Google's infobox for when I
| searched 'germany wind power capacity factor'.
|
| > Find the data for any one gas plant. How often was it
| producing (emphasis in the original) no power? I'll bet
| anything that most plants are offline quite a bit more
| than 10%, precisely because demand itself is variable and
| gas is the easiest plant to bring up and down. Yet you
| call one a "reliability" metric and the other not, why?
|
| I call wind's lack of production a reliability metric
| because I don't get to choose when the lack of production
| happens. My home's generator might only run for <1% of
| the year, but as long as it runs _when I need it_ it 's
| perfectly reliable.
|
| > I'm not aware of even one instance of a "calm day
| blackout". Not one. Have a cite for that?
|
| What's a 'calm day blackout'? Is it when there's no power
| produced by an individual wind farm, or is it when
| rolling blackouts happen because the wind farm didn't
| produce enough power, in conjunction with the rest of the
| power system?
|
| The former is pretty common as shown in the link, and you
| could _arguably_ say that Texas 's winter blackouts from
| a few years back were an example of the latter. (lots and
| lots of both demand and generation issues in that
| scenario, but wind didn't come out covered in roses
| either, and while wind wasn't _expected_ to produce much
| power in the winter there to begin with 'we don't expect
| this source to produce much power in the winter' is not a
| fantastic argument in favor of it being reliable)
| hohloma wrote:
| So you are comparing "any one gas plant", the output of
| which can be fully controlled, with "whole-grid
| measurement" for wind? As a whole grid, wind generation
| capacity is mostly dependent on wind, and not on demand.
| While gas is used usually for those cases where such
| power as wind does not cut it. I dont see how you can
| compare the two. A gasplant CAN produce 100% output if we
| wish, wind cannot. You can of course compensate somewhat
| by building out several times the capacity you need in
| extremely disperse geographic locations (>1000 miles
| distance between each farm). Could be done, but not sure
| how its gonna impact the climate change (those farms need
| to be built and require continuous maintenance).
|
| Uk has wind capacity factor "long-term average of around
| 27%". https://www.eci.ox.ac.uk/publications/downloads/sin
| den06-win...
|
| The reason is that wind generation is optimal during a
| certain wind speed, and less or no power is generated if
| winds are too slow or too fast. And wind power blackout
| occurs not only during calm days, but also during very
| stormy days. In total there is plenty of occurrences when
| a specific area has no wind at all. The correlation in
| weather can be seen in wind farms as far as 800 miles
| apart. https://www.eci.ox.ac.uk/publications/downloads/si
| nden06-win...
|
| 2021 was a year of very low wind speeds across whole
| northern europe.
| https://climate.copernicus.eu/esotc/2021/low-winds
|
| Additionally, wind power may be going down in strength...
| due to climate change https://www.ft.com/content/d53b5843
| -dbe0-4724-8adf-75c66127e...
| ajross wrote:
| > So you are comparing "any one gas plant", the output of
| which can be fully controlled, with "whole-grid
| measurement" for wind?
|
| That was absolutely what I was _not_ doing. That was a
| counterfactual presented to refute the grandparent, who
| was.
| samatman wrote:
| I'll take the other side of that bet.
|
| Fossil and nuclear plants routinely run at 90% of
| nameplate capacity. If a gas plant is down more often
| than that, it's because that plant is a peaker, which
| exists to make up for things like, say, the wind dying
| down.
|
| I'm sure there's a somewhat tedious discussion to be had
| about how France's recent adventures with their decaying
| nuke plants affect that 90%. Have at it if this interests
| you.
| walnutclosefarm wrote:
| The claims made in the article are too over the top to be able to
| take them seriously - particularly the idea that wind is somehow
| going to even out the stochasticity of solar. In most locations,
| and particularly at the heights implied the notion of "rooftop"
| wind, wind is just as variable as solar. They might well be
| partially complementary (there isn't much wind on the best solar
| days, where I live, but might be good wind on cloudy days; but
| still, when the sun down goes here, the wind goes with it 4
| nights out of five).
|
| These turbines may or may not be a good deal for many sites, but
| you sure can't tell that it's even a question from this article.
| constantcrying wrote:
| The article just repeats the companies statement. Of course not
| an ounce of scepticism or doubt is to be found.
| MikeDelta wrote:
| And upstream turbines will take away the wind from the
| downstream ones, making them less useful in closely-built
| environments.
| mrb wrote:
| You can see technical drawings of their device in their patent
| (US 11391262):
| https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/26/02/b1/f9004c8...
| The article calls it "motionless" and "bladeless", but this is
| patently (hah!) false. There are actually spinning blades... See
| figures 16c, 16d, 19 in the patent: the blades are in the turbine
| underneath the central body element.
|
| At first sight, given the quantity of material used in the device
| for the foils and central body, relative to the small turbine
| size, it's hard to intuitively picture how or why it can be more
| efficient than a regular wind turbine built using the same amount
| of material which could, therefore, have much larger blades.
|
| Edit: in fact the inventor of the device, Carsten Hein
| Westergaard, previously published results from a prototype
| https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1742-6596/2265/4/...
| in which he claims the prototype achieved an efficiency of 42% of
| Betz limit, which is inferior to standard utility-scale turbines
| (Wikipedia claims 75-85% but I haven't checked sources:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betz%27s_law#Betz's_law_and_co... )
| so that seems to confirm my intuition.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > inferior to standard utility-scale turbines
|
| But isn't this supposed to be a rooftop wind turbine? I'm
| curious how it compares to other small turbines that I could
| conceivably put on my own property.
| cbhl wrote:
| Sounds like the inverse of those "bladeless" dyson fans where
| the blades are hidden inside the body/base. Might still be a
| net safety improvement?
| 7952 wrote:
| But it is not about power per kg of materials but power per $
| spent. You may be able to fabricate the wing elements out of
| cheaper and heavier materials using simpler methods.
| laverya wrote:
| There's a difference between thermodynamic efficiency and
| _cost_ efficiency. Extracting 40% of the energy in the wind for
| $500 is very often going to be better than extracting 70% for
| $5000.
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| Yes but then location comes into play - offshore power needs
| to be delivered!
| foxyv wrote:
| I think they mean that the blades are not visible from ground
| level. A big problem with wind turbines in residential areas is
| the motion is really distracting and shadows on windows can be
| annoying as heck. Although looking at the patent, this thing
| would be stopped up with dead squirrels on my house in ten
| minutes unless they added some grating to the inlet.
| Obi_Juan_Kenobi wrote:
| > efficiency of 42% of Betz limit, which is inferior to
| standard utility-scale turbines
|
| That isn't surprising at all; wind generation scales very very
| well with larger size. If it actually achieved 42% at that
| size, it would still be a major innovation.
|
| But that's also a strong claim that requires very strong
| evidence. The reasons for inefficiency at smaller scales are
| fundamental: higher drag to lift. Essentially what they're
| doing is using the existing building as part of the device to
| direct wind. This is not a new idea, and in favorable
| conditions you can get some impressive numbers. But in real
| life..
|
| https://www.renewableenergyworld.com/storage/small-wind-turb...
| taftster wrote:
| Just to ask. Do you think the housing of the turbine would
| somehow "channel" the wind it collects into the blades? And
| therefore increase the performance or yield against the size of
| the blades? Maybe in this way, the comparison is legitimate,
| that a smaller turbine blade (as in this case) can collect more
| wind?
|
| I'm honestly not sure if that holds up properly, like from a
| true physics point of view. But it kind of makes sense from
| intuition. It would seem you'd get quite a fast moving turbine
| blade with this configuration.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _not sure if that holds up properly, like from a true
| physics point of view_
|
| Thrust efficiency from ducting is real [1].
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ducted_fan#Duct
| mrb wrote:
| That's entirely the point of Aeromine's invention: the foil
| and body channel the wind (by decreasing air pressure between
| the foils) and this increases the speed of wind at the
| turbine. But per my edit, it doesn't seem sufficient to beat
| the efficiency of traditional wind turbines. I suppose that's
| why the company tries to focus on other advantage (less
| noisy, better aesthetics).
| earleybird wrote:
| If I remember correctly they claim something like 40% of a
| conventional turbine, so it doesn't beat a conventional
| turbine in a classic setting however it may work well
| enough in a residential/light commercial setting.
|
| It really seems like a reverse Dyson bladeless fan.
| merely-unlikely wrote:
| > 40% of a conventional turbine
|
| If I'm not mistaken, a conventional turbine can turn to
| face the wind but these can't. That could significantly
| impact actual performance.
| nerpderp82 wrote:
| Dyson Jet https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbXJa8osys0
|
| 'Bladeless' airplane turbine
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPZI6XoHi10
| saalweachter wrote:
| I could see another advantage for residential use -- you
| should be able to make the failure mode for this style
| safer, because you are already wrapping the turbine in
| metal. It should also be easy to close the channel and stop
| wind from getting to the blades which is also not possible
| with traditional designs.
|
| But yeah, I'm leaning with the other comments in this
| thread that these guys sound too shifty in the way they're
| promoting this, and it makes me suspicious of the utility
| of the product.
| Obi_Juan_Kenobi wrote:
| What they're really after is using the structure to direct
| the wind and create stronger flows by the lip of the roof.
| This is not a new idea, but perhaps they have hit on a shroud
| design that works more effectively.
|
| I have little doubt that it can produce impressive figures in
| very specific conditions - many designs do - but I doubt they
| see vastly improved real-world performance.
| abc_lisper wrote:
| This is like the Dyson fan in reverse. Look ma, no blades -
| well there are, just not behind/facing the wind.
| suprjami wrote:
| > An Aeromine system typically consists of 20 to 40 units
| installed on the edge of a building facing the predominant wind
| direction.
|
| I don't want 40 of these highly visible things on the edge of my
| roof.
| pencilguin wrote:
| I bet you wouldn't mind 40 of them on the edge of the nearest
| Walmart roof.
| bpodgursky wrote:
| Rooftop solar is essentially drop-and-forget -- you have to do
| approximately 0 maintenance for the next 10 years (at least).
|
| There are definitely moving parts in that video -- does it have
| to be cleaned? Do the bearings wear out? Will a bird nest in it?
| Fill with leaves?
|
| I definitely hope it works but I'm skeptical this is really as
| mindlessly easy to do as to drop panels on a residential house.
| [deleted]
| 2Gkashmiri wrote:
| I own one. 5.6 kWh I think.
|
| Its amazing. Been using it for like 2.5/3 years now and it has
| really helped in becoming energy independent. Don't have
| batteries yet as the tech is unproven here, but on grid-off
| grid without batteries already has given us more usable energy
| during the day when the grid goes.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| Wait, are you saying that you're off grid and don't have
| batteries? Do you just lose power if there's no wind?
| bpodgursky wrote:
| I'm pretty confused about this... I don't think any
| household devices are willing to gracefully power down when
| the wind stops for a minute. Like, what's a microwave going
| to do when voltage drops?
|
| I can't imagine this working for anything except _maybe_
| charging laptops, or other battery devices.
| pencilguin wrote:
| "On-grid/off-grid" _seems_ here to mean on-grid when it is
| not producing enough.
| Aachen wrote:
| What type of turbine do you have and what's your environment
| like? Do you live in a city or on a farm or something in
| between?
| ansible wrote:
| I am highly skeptical.
|
| The amount of energy you can extract from the wind is a
| function of swept area for a conventional wind turbine. I don't
| see how this is going to be much different, even if it is
| incredibly efficient. "swept area" in the video is, what,
| around 6 square meters? So about the same as a wind turbine of
| 1.9m in diameter. If it has the same efficiency, we're talking
| about maybe 1600W maximum.
|
| The design may, or may not be good and dependable, and may, or
| may not require less maintenance than a conventional wind
| turbine.
|
| But a lot of the problem is mounting it on a roof. There's a
| reason why the commercial units are being built bigger and
| bigger, and higher and higher. The higher up you go, the more
| steady and strong the wind becomes. At rooftop level, a lot of
| the wind is blocked by trees and buildings.
|
| So I don't care how good the turbine design is, mounting it on
| a roof isn't a great solution for generating much power.
| halfmatthalfcat wrote:
| In snowy climates, brushing off panels is a pain in the ass and
| heating solutions result in net neutral generation for the most
| part, so there's no point. In heavily overcast climates,
| recouping costs from installation takes dramatically more time.
| Wind is ubiquitous and doesn't run into these problems...
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| I never brush snow off my panels. It slides off after a
| couple days at worst (and does a nice job of cleaning in the
| process). TBH I don't really care because my production is
| very low in winter anyway.
| teeray wrote:
| Not my experience in northern NH. It snows, then the panels
| are covered for maybe a day, then it all slides off like an
| avalanche. It's like having a metal roof.
|
| I'm not sure how a wind turbine would fair with winter
| weather. I would think they could be subject to icing like
| any other propeller---reducing their output and possibly
| creating mechanical damage. Aviation has certainly thought
| about that problem a lot, so there might be solutions.
| Steltek wrote:
| Who brushes off their panels? Snow comes crashing down off
| mine within 24 hours of the storm. The whole house shakes in
| a very unnerving manner as it hits the porch roof. How do you
| brush off snow without risking damage anyway?
| zemvpferreira wrote:
| I'm with you in that any mechanical system will be more trouble
| than a photo-electrical system however...we really can't afford
| to overlook any renewable power sources at this time.
|
| If nothing else, there is a lot of security to be gained from
| the fact that wind speed is anti-correlated with sunshine in
| many places.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| > we really can't afford to overlook any renewable power
| sources at this time
|
| We shouldn't _overlook_ options, but we can absolutely look,
| do a cost /benefit analysis, and then discard options that
| don't make sense.
| loceng wrote:
| It's all quite nuanced, and details are important, things like
| there will also be noise-vibrational pollution created from
| wind vs. solar.
| duxup wrote:
| Yeah if I had a noisy wind power device on my roof... I would
| not be happy about it.
| loceng wrote:
| Even worse if it was your neighbours'.
| duxup wrote:
| Home wind power seems to get less appealing very fast ...
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Wouldn't people do both then?
| andsoitis wrote:
| Fascinating.
|
| Checking out the company who makes these,
| https://www.aerominetechnologies.com, I see they position it for
| larger buildings, including multi-family residential, but not
| large single-family homes, but I feel motivated to see whether
| this might be a good solution for my case instead of installing
| solar.
| MajimasEyepatch wrote:
| Seems like you need a flat rooftop. Where I live, that's
| uncommon among single-family homes.
| andsoitis wrote:
| Flat rooftops are very common in SoCal, and luxury homes are
| large. Seems like a potentially good market for them, but
| yeah, maybe it isn't a big enough market in their calculus.
| danans wrote:
| > The unit requires about 10% of the space required by solar
| panels and generates round-the-clock energy
|
| That's a pretty sneaky way of implying that it provides energy at
| all times, when it probably just provides energy when the wind is
| blowing, whether that is during the day or night. There's nothing
| in the article about any energy storage capacity included with
| these things, apart from the claim that it can minimize auxiliary
| storage requirements.
| Panino wrote:
| > Aeromine said unlike conventional wind turbines that are noisy,
| visually intrusive, and dangerous to migratory birds, the
| patented system is motionless and virtually silent.
|
| I've been a supporter of wind energy for 30 years and it's my
| favorite generation source. I want to believe the claims of this
| company, but the above quote is activating my spidey senses.
| Conventional wind turbines are not a serious threat to birds.
| According to _Homebrew Wind Power_ by Dan Bartmann and Dan Fink,
| here are the causes of bird fatalities per 10000 fatalities (page
| 28): 5500 Buildings / Windows 1000 Cats
| 1000 Other 800 Power Lines 700 Vehicles 700
| Pesticides 250 Communication Towers <1 Wind Turbines
|
| Many other sources agree.
|
| Any wind turbine company will know this. For one to spread this
| lie makes me doubt their other claims. I hope they're right about
| price per watt but I have serious doubts.
|
| That said, I would LOVE to have affordable grid-tied residential
| wind to complement my rooftop solar. It's not an easy problem to
| solve.
| spaniard89277 wrote:
| And they provide a video without sound.
|
| The only truly bladeless wind tech I've seen is this one:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7Q92fX2P5A
|
| And they are still not commercial AFAIK.
| merely-unlikely wrote:
| > The scalable, "motionless" wind energy unit can produce 50%
| more energy than rooftop solar at the same cost
|
| > An Aeromine system typically consists of 20 to 40 units
| installed on the edge of a building facing the predominant wind
| direction
|
| I'd like to know how well it performs in variable wind
| directions vs variable sun directions for solar. Obviously
| location dependent but I'm guessing the figures quoted are best
| case scenarios.
| ihunter2839 wrote:
| From what I understand, one of the big bird issues with
| turbines is that birds of prey like hawks, eagles, and falcons
| don't generally look forward but down as they scout for prey,
| and thus are likely to fly into turbine blades. I believe some
| turbines have cameras systems to detect birds in the vicinity
| of the blades and either make a noise to alert the bird or
| maybe even bring the turbine to a halt. This is really only an
| issue for large scale installations though, obviously wouldn't
| apply to low lying roof installations.
| tinco wrote:
| The bearded vulture is one of Europe's largest birds, it
| rarely comes to The Netherlands, living mainly in Spain and
| France. When it does comes to The Netherlands, about once
| every 3 years, it'll be a national news item as it's quite a
| spectacular bird. Last year one came, and not a week later it
| was found dead under a wind turbine.
|
| That bird is not just a statistic, it was the single bird of
| one particular species in our country, and it flew into one
| of the few wind turbines we have.
|
| I'm 100% for wind turbines, I think it's a magnificent sight
| every time I cross the afsluitdijk seeing them rise from the
| mists providing us with clean future proof energy. But the
| sort of stupidity that drives an engineer to say only 1 in
| 10000 bird deaths is due to wind turbines, without asking why
| or how or what bird is going to be the end of us all one day.
| shagie wrote:
| On this particular vulture (my apologies for looking the
| way the story is told makes it sound like one of the "They
| can't have cows feed under those because it, it causes some
| kind of birth defects. This is what my sister who has
| cattle was telling me." (
| https://www.marketplace.org/shows/how-we-survive/white-
| gold/... ))...
|
| Yes, this is a real story.
| https://4vultures.org/blog/necropsy-results-shed-light-on-
| th...
|
| > With certain bird populations like the Bearded Vulture
| growing, birds can disperse in unusual habitats, and it is
| critical to find solutions to mitigate such threats.
| Operators need to develop shut down on demand processes and
| be willing to cooperate with conservationists to avoid
| accidents and help save birds. Furthermore, wind farms
| should implement mitigation measures to help prevent
| collisions such as equipping deterrent devices and even
| painting a single wind turbine blade black as a recent
| study suggests, however, more research is necessary to
| determine the effectiveness of this anti-collision measure.
| To safeguard biodiversity, conservationist should work
| alongside the energy sector to find solutions and prevent
| such accidents.
|
| There are systems that do this.
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffkart/2018/06/07/system-
| can-...
|
| > Now comes research in the journal Biological Conservation
| on an automated system that scans the skies and can turn
| off a windmill if a bald or golden eagle is headed toward a
| deadly collision. Researchers from The Peregrine Fund,
| Western EcoSystems Technology and American Wind Wildlife
| Institute used human observers and photographs to see how
| well the camera-based monitoring system called IdentiFlight
| could detect, classify and track birds.
|
| > The IdentiFlight system detected 96% of birds detected by
| observers and 562% more birds than observers. It's not
| perfect; the system misclassified nine of 149 eagles, for a
| false negative rate of 6%., with a false positive rate of
| 28% for misclassifying 278 of 1,013 eagles. Birds were
| classified as eagles by the system at a median distance of
| 793 meters (about a half a mile), and detected and
| classified in less than half a second.
|
| The paper is at https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/artic
| le/pii/S000632071...
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Statistically, something that kills 1 in 10000 birds _will_
| occasionally kill the only bird of a species in a country.
| tinco wrote:
| True. About 50.000 birds die due to windmills per year in
| The Netherlands, so according to this stat we should have
| 500M birds. So the odds of it killing a specific bird is
| roughly 50.000/500M=0.01% chance. So we'd expect it to
| happen once every 10.000 years. Guess we got unlucky last
| year..
| Swenrekcah wrote:
| But the statistics can also be deceiving if presented
| like that, just like you said if people don't stop and
| think about which specific birds they kill.
|
| For example let's say windmills kill 100,000 birds a year
| and let's say that is 0.1% of all birds. That looks
| acceptable. Well 90,000 of those might be seagulls and
| represent perhaps 1% of seagulls and 9,000 might be
| eagles representing perhaps 50% of all eagles.
|
| I pulled these numbers out of a hat but all that to say
| we shouldn't lump rare birds together with abundant ones.
| arb-spreads wrote:
| Tough country killing 500m birds/year not to mention all
| the natural bird deaths
| unicornhose wrote:
| Are you really 100% for wind turbines then?? Is there a way
| to make them less harmful to birds? Maybe keeping the speed
| lower? Maybe putting up some more static installations that
| keep birds away? (Like, say, bright trailers on the fan
| blades? Is that a real idea?)
| eunos wrote:
| >afsluitdijk
|
| Apparently this is a real place, not a slamming keyboard
| word.
| Someone wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afsluitdijk
| yamtaddle wrote:
| It's all the QWERTY home-row letters making it look that
| way, I think. Does look a lot like a quick slam of the
| fingers on the keyboard to generate a "random" string.
| m463 wrote:
| maybe using qwerty is closer to Dvorak in that locale
| tinco wrote:
| Afsluit = "close off". Dijk = "dike" (pronounced the same
| too). It's a 20 mile long dike we've built that closes
| off what used to be the South Sea from the North Sea,
| turning it into a big lake that's called the IJsselmeer.
| dylan604 wrote:
| I had to do the same slow down and re-read that, as it
| looks a lot like a username I've used when slamming keys
| for a Zoom meeting.
| devonkim wrote:
| Wait until you look up Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndr
| obwllllantysiliogogogoch
| slim wrote:
| wow, I thought you were joking
| fragmede wrote:
| https://xkcd.com/1053/
| devonkim wrote:
| And now for the grand reveal of someone pronouncing it!
| https://youtu.be/fHxO0UdpoxM
| weaksauce wrote:
| painting one of the blades black reduces the bird fatalities
| significantly from a study i read on here a few months back.
| [deleted]
| acchow wrote:
| I'm not sure how to interpret these statistics. Since it's
| given per 10000 fatalities (and not per square meter covered in
| said obstacle), can't you conclude that the wind turbine
| fatalities are so low because we haven't deployed many of them?
| Whereas there are _tons_ of buildings?
| clnq wrote:
| I suppose that if fewer than 1/10000 birds are killed by an X
| number of wind turbines, then we could guesstimate that fewer
| than 1/5000 birds will be killed by 2X number of wind
| turbines in a given area.
|
| Of course, many other factors are probably involved in any
| kind of practical estimation. Densities of turbines and wind
| farms are probably important. There's also the aspect of
| birds learning to avoid these turbines over time, and the
| question of whether we can/would do something to make these
| turbines easier for birds to avoid. For the latter, we have a
| lot of creative solutions recently -
| https://www.rechargenews.com/wind/wind-farm-eagle-deaths-
| cut..., https://vortexbladeless.com/technology/, https://teth
| ys.pnnl.gov/sites/default/files/publications/May....
| bckygldstn wrote:
| Wind power accounts for about 10% of total generation in the
| US. So even if turbines were added to account for 100%
| generation, and demand increased 10x, it'd still be far less
| than anything else on the list.
| conductr wrote:
| This is my thought. What happens when we have 10 million wind
| turbines out in the wild?
| zaphod12 wrote:
| I can't speak to the technology, but their CEO and marketing
| staff have been aggressively crapping on other clean energy
| sources. They also repeated a lot of lies about solar. I hope
| the tech is real, the people behind it seem like jerks.
| eisa01 wrote:
| Sounds like Trevor Milton
|
| Estimated Teslas battery cost by the delta between the normal
| model and the performance model with bigger battery :)
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Surely those stats depend on the prevalence or absence of wind
| turbines. So if we had as many turbines as buildings they may
| well be a greater cause of bird deaths.
| pakitan wrote:
| Wind power is responsible for something like 5% of generated
| electricity in the world. If we scale it 1000x, to reach the
| cat level, we'll have enough electricity to power 50 Earths
| :)
| [deleted]
| Someone wrote:
| More like 20 earths. "5% of generated electricity" isn't
| "5% of energy use", by a decent margin.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power: _"In 2021, wind
| supplied over 1800 TWh of electricity, which was over 6% of
| world electricity and about 2% of world energy"_
| [deleted]
| tertius wrote:
| You're telling me there are just as many windows as there are
| wind turbines? Or are you lying with statistics?
| devonkim wrote:
| The estimate for cats is widely disputed and was a complete WAG
| with little empirical backing and more like extrapolation from
| a non-representative sample. There are studies currently in
| progress to more accurately measure the impact of cats upon
| bird populations and last I saw the results were showing the
| prior estimates were grossly overestimated because cats kill
| many more kinds of animals than just birds like squirrels,
| lizards, and rodents.
|
| Also, I have a 9kw solar setup and simply can't add more
| without sacrificing land or basically tearing my house down to
| make a new, more optimal roof, at which point all the
| environmental pros of using solar are more than wiped out by
| the construction carbon footprint. Old homes really are
| terrible oftentimes for solar installations, sadly.
| midasuni wrote:
| Presumably that's a 9kWp system, with peak potential on a
| good day to generate 9kW at the optimal time of the day
|
| Is there any way to work out how many kWh such a system would
| tend to generate for a given latitude throughout the year? If
| I wanted to charge a 10kWh battery once a day for 12 months
| what kWp system would I need. What would it produce in June
| vs December etc.
| mindslight wrote:
| https://pvwatts.nrel.gov/
|
| The main issues are cloudy days, and angle of the sun. Do
| you still want to fully charge that battery on cloudy days?
| If not, then you need to size the battery based on how many
| cloudy days in a row you can tolerate before needing to cut
| back on energy use.
|
| The angle of the sun affects the number of hours of
| sunlight in the day, as well as the angle of incidence to
| the panel (and you can adjust the panel angle). The default
| is to angle your panels equal to your latitude. If you
| angle them more horizontal, you will have more summer
| generation. If you angle them more vertical, you will have
| more winter generation. Which is your design constraint -
| heating or air conditioning loads? You can also use
| adjustable mounts that can be changed over the year. When I
| ran this for myself, adjusting the panels a few times a
| year would only net me a negligible amount of additional
| generation.
|
| There's so much we take for granted with the grid
| abstraction. Net metering was a huge subsidy to drive
| adoption of solar, but ultimately if you want a truly
| independent setup you need to think like an off gridder.
| The hard truth is that you're probably better off designing
| for the 95% or whatever common case, and falling back to a
| gas generator for the few times conditions are worse.
| devonkim wrote:
| There's websites to calculate it based upon satellite
| photos of your roof alone (what the installer and system
| designers did for me along with permitting that would have
| taken me far too much time / effort). Your panel type,
| inverter, etc. all matter as well. A meter to determine
| your electricity usage throughout the year is good to have
| as well although I didn't do that before I installed my
| system and expected to try to size a battery backup system
| only once I had sufficient data. But basically so far my
| house is pretty much a dud in terms of ROI for any more
| modernization efforts without tearing it down basically and
| this is what I've been thinking about a lot more than the
| usual trend of renewables and such. Old homes in the US are
| really, really, really hard to retrofit remotely
| economically and are burdens upon the energy grid and
| infrastructure throughout the lifetime of the structures.
| The costs fall disproportionately upon our population that
| can least afford it as well and subsidies are laughably
| minuscule and mostly taken by more affluent homeowners in
| practice.
| actually_a_dog wrote:
| The exact numbers re: what kills birds here aren't really
| what matters. What matters is the relative orders of
| magnitude. Even if the number for cats is a WAG and wildly
| off by a factor of 2 in either direction, we can safely say
| that buildings and windows are _far_ more dangerous to birds
| than _Felis catus_.
|
| If cats are in fact _half_ as dangerous to birds as
| estimated, then the danger is still of the same order of
| magnitude as that from power lines, vehicles, and pesticides.
| If they are _twice_ as dangerous as estimated, then the
| danger is still not far off from those other things in terms
| of order of magnitude.
|
| Ultimately, these things are all factors to keep in mind in
| terms of how we can prioritize actions that benefit the bird
| population.
|
| TL;DR: focus on orders of magnitude here, don't get fixated
| on exact numbers.
| devonkim wrote:
| I think part of my point should be taken further that we
| don't even have the correct order of magnitude for cats and
| the numbers for windmills are so small it's probably
| negligible although care should be taken to see if there is
| some disproportionate externalities observable now such as
| when Australia changed its own ecosystems with changes to
| farming practices. What isn't under so much debate though
| that does unequivocally matter is the amount of land
| necessary to convert to renewables which is a function of
| energy density in urban areas where land use is much more
| expensive and total energy used per area is quite high.
| While systems do get more efficient over time the
| efficiency isn't exponential and portable energy is a big
| issue that is mostly orthogonal to renewable sources in
| funding mechanisms yet also part of the incredibly complex
| energy supply chain of the world economy.
| medion wrote:
| Domestic cats should be illegal anywhere outside of a major
| city. It's such low hanging fruit in reducing loss of small
| native animals, with virtually no downside.
| virtualritz wrote:
| If you care about the planet pets should be illegal.
|
| Look at CO2 footprint of pets and your toenails will curl.
|
| E.g. https://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/the-truth-about-
| cats-and-...
| didgetmaster wrote:
| I am always skeptical whenever I see a headline that says new
| technology X can be better, cheaper, or more efficient than
| existing technology Y, but then fails to show in the actual story
| how that is true with real numbers.
|
| This CAN produce 50% more energy than solar, but under what
| conditions? It seems like they should have a side-by-side chart
| of a solar and a wind setup that costs the same and show how much
| energy each one produced over the course of a year. Since nothing
| like that was in the article, I remain skeptical.
| VBprogrammer wrote:
| Scepticism is sometimes a lazy response but in this case I
| think you are completely correct.
|
| Power from a wind turbine varies as the square of wind speed
| and the cube of diameter. Some places in the world have a lot
| more wind than others in general, someone once said that if the
| wind is a persistent annoyance where you live then a wind
| turbine is a good fit. Without specifying the conditions under
| which this is the case then its pointless.
| solarkraft wrote:
| But the lazy response is the totally right one. Oh, you have
| a super simple technology that is 10x better and 10x cheaper
| than what already exists? And you've been chugging along
| trying to bring it to market for 5 years and nobody wants to
| invest? Yeah, everyone else must be stupid or something ...
| jakobnissen wrote:
| It's the other way around - cube of wind speed. So wind speed
| and consistency is critical
| VBprogrammer wrote:
| I knew I shouldn't have gone by memory!
| ErneX wrote:
| Agreed, but this has the advantage of being able to generate
| at night.
| avip wrote:
| >> but under what conditions?
|
| A windy night.
| throwaway5752 wrote:
| I am deleting this and all my other deletable comments on this
| topic.
| didgetmaster wrote:
| "They" should be the author of this article who chose the
| headline but failed to back up the claim in the story. If you
| are going to say that anything is 50% better, then at least
| show one instance where that was actually achieved. If you
| invent a new engine that you claim gets 50% better gas
| mileage, then you better show at least one trip of a
| significant distance where it did it.
|
| I built a new database engine that I claim is at least 2x
| faster than Postgres at queries without needing separate
| indexes on the table columns. I don't claim it will always be
| that much faster on every query, but I show several instances
| where it is not only 2x faster, but 10x faster.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVICKCkWMZE
|
| Without a video like this, I would not expect anyone to take
| my claims seriously.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| throwaway0x7E6 wrote:
| >reflexive skepticism isn't any better than reflexive
| optimism.
|
| it is in the current climate, with shady marketing and
| clickbait journalism producing three dozen such headlines
| every day
| pakitan wrote:
| And that paper looks extremely fishy. You can see they tested
| with 10m/s and 15m/s. I definitely wouldn't want to live at
| place with average speeds like that. Then you need the wind
| to blow at a _very_ specific angle of 10-15.
|
| And they finish it with
|
| > This analysis shows that AeroMINEs can be installed at
| $2,400/kW. Finally, at optimum performance AeroMINE systems
| can reach a LCOE of 10 C/kWh at just over 5 m/s average
| annual wind speed, which is highly competitive with a solar
| PV installation
|
| How is the "analysis" showing that? There is no cost analysis
| in the paper and they never tested speeds of 5 m/s.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > Then you need the wind to blow at a very specific angle
| of 10-15.
|
| It misses the obvious improvement where the platform
| rotates. I guess this is necessary for their costs target,
| but I don't think anybody would build this on practice
| without it.
|
| > $2,400/kW
|
| Anyway, isn't solar cheaper than that nowadays? I think the
| entire framing of competing with it is flawed, this should
| be complementing solar to reduce battery costs.
| solraph wrote:
| Not to negate anything mentioned in the sibling comment,
| but yes. A home solar installation in Australia is about
| AUD$1.5 per watt for a complete system (panels, inverter,
| cabling, installation, sign off, etc) before subsidies.
|
| For comparison with the OP system, an average 6kw system
| producing 8Mwh per year, with a conservative 15 year
| lifespan works out to AUD$0.075 per kwh.
|
| ($1AUD is currently USD$0.65)
| samatman wrote:
| I maintain that the power of an intermittent generator
| should be considered in terms of watt-hours per year.
| Which is of course just watts, but collapsing the time
| terms obscures that it's a mean value, which the Whr/yr
| refuses to do.
|
| Perhaps we could go full acre-foot here, and use the
| kilowatt-day per year. So a 100,000kWday/yr installation
| can provide 2kW to 500 homes for a hundred days.
|
| Those of you who are aesthetically repelled by batteries
| using amp-hours instead of joules will really hate this
| one. But it gets at the difference between maximum
| continuous power, and total energy delivered per
| installation.
|
| So, big 'it depends'. Anywhere where the wind averages
| the working speed more often than the sun averages the
| working luminosity will make wind cheaper in relative
| terms, and vice versa for solar.
| bumby wrote:
| According to the article, Aeromine is the company making the
| claim that the design can produce 50% more energy. I don't
| think it's unreasonable to expect them to validate that
| claim.
| [deleted]
| 7952 wrote:
| I don't think the comparison with solar is particularly useful
| and would always need to be made on a site by site basis. But
| it is true that some sites have better wind resource than
| solar. A better comparison is with the limitations of
| traditional turbines.
|
| Compared to a traditional turbine this design could eliminate
| shadow flicker, reduce structural loading on the roof, have
| different safety margins, increase the number of generators
| that can be placed and reduce visual impact. And they may have
| found a way to do that whilst maintaining a relatively large
| swept area. That is key as power output scales relative to
| swept area rather than height.
|
| I am usually sceptical about vertical axis but this seems more
| interesting than most designs. It could be a good fit for
| commercial buildings if installation is simple enough. And
| maybe could be placed temporarily on agricultural land during
| winter. And you could see the concept being applied in other
| ways such as with sun shields on buildings.
| RosanaAnaDana wrote:
| >but under what conditions?
|
| Windy ones?
|
| Seems as long as it could be a plug and play solution, it would
| be a great compliment to solar. Typically days with lower solar
| gain are more blowy.
| emiliobumachar wrote:
| At night, of course.
| RosanaAnaDana wrote:
| I mean, we have batteries. Having enough storage to get
| through the night is basically solved.
|
| The bigger issue is a several day stretch of no solar where
| your batteries can't support. This would basically solve
| that allowing homes to effectively built to be off grid to
| begin with.
| didgetmaster wrote:
| There are various areas where the wind blows quite a bit and
| bright, sunny days are not the norm. In those conditions,
| then maybe it makes total sense to install one of these
| systems instead of a typical solar rooftop installation.
|
| I would even expect an example where 50% more energy was
| actually achieved to be set up in one of those areas. Since
| no example was given, it makes you wonder how extreme the
| conditions have to be for this new technology to make sense.
| RosanaAnaDana wrote:
| Yeah, those are good considerations. I live on Oahu, on the
| dry side, and when it isn't blaring sunlight, its pretty
| much 5-15 sustained. Obviously, this a pretty cherry picked
| example, but its also an important one considering the cost
| of importing fuel to this island.
| sophacles wrote:
| My conditions are: an area of Illinois a few miles down the
| road from a wind farm, in a neighborhood with lots of big
| old trees (which block my roof from the sun for a large
| portion of the sunny part of the year).
|
| Nothing extreme at all, yet this would also be a great
| solution for me since I won't cut down the trees that drew
| me to the place to being with. Whether or not this is the
| specific tech, I'd love to get some small scale wind
| generation since a couple of KW worth of solar panels would
| be a waste of money for me.
| VBprogrammer wrote:
| Typically those trees cause the wind to be turbulent,
| like the dirty air coming off the back of a race car.
| Normally a wind turbine wants to be mounted high up in
| the air where the wind is all moving in one direction
| fairly uniformly. It's unlikely that this technology will
| naturally overcome that.
| carlsborg wrote:
| Tested by Sandia National Lab. The idea from what I can tell is
| this thing co-exists with Solar on the rooftop because it sits
| at the edge.
| gremlinsinc wrote:
| I think there needs to be a hybrid system for some redundancy
| when there's no sun or no wind, of course then maybe we need a
| water feature so we can have hydro when there's no sun and no
| wind..hehe.
| shagie wrote:
| On a semi-serious note, you use surplus renewable energy to
| pump water up to a higher elevation and then use that when
| you need it. The energy storage capacity of pumped hydro can
| be very impressive.
|
| > The upper reservoir (Llyn Stwlan) and dam of the Ffestiniog
| Pumped Storage Scheme in North Wales. The lower power station
| has four water turbines which generate 360 MW of electricity
| within 60 seconds of the need arising.
|
| https://www.energy.gov/eere/water/pumped-storage-hydropower
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-
| storage_hydroelectricit...
| mcguire wrote:
| Also see the Racoon Mountain Pumped Storage Plant
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raccoon_Mountain_Pumped-
| Storag...): 1652 MW.
| xyzzyz wrote:
| These pumped storage plants are great. However, just like
| standard hydroelectric plants, they do not scale easily.
| You cannot build them just about anywhere, you need rather
| specific conditions, like suitable topography or
| availability of water. These won't suffice for our storage
| needs.
| pencilguin wrote:
| This is often repeated, but is false each time.
| pydry wrote:
| Snowy 2 can store 350 GWh - slightly more than 2 weeks'
| worth of energy from an average nuclear power plant.
| briffle wrote:
| Pumped Hydro is great, but there are only a few places
| where its cost effective to implement. They are trying to
| put two in Southern Oregon [0] [1]. They have been looking
| at it for decades, and still need many more years to look
| at environmental costs, diverting existing water
| (especially since that area has been in a large drought for
| the last few years, and farmers in that basin have had
| wells running dry), etc.
|
| [0] https://www.opb.org/article/2022/01/10/pumped-storage-
| hydrop... [1] https://slenergystorage.com/
| pencilguin wrote:
| > " _there are only a few places where its cost effective
| to implement_ "
|
| This is repeated often, but is _wholly false_.
|
| Often it comes with a claim that an existing, elevated
| watershed is needed, which is false. A watershed is
| needed only for regular hydro generation. Most places
| suitable for that already have dams, many of which _can
| be_ used for pumped hydro storage. Many are. But that is
| just a matter of convenience.
|
| Some claim an existing elevated lake is needed, which is
| false. An earthen dike at a hilltop suffices. Such a dike
| may be needed only at one end of the reservoir.
|
| Some insist an expensive concrete dam is needed to
| provide enough "head" to store much energy. They either
| have not heard of a penstock, or pretend. An earthen dike
| suffices. "Head" is the height of the hill, _not_ the
| dike.
|
| Some insist a copious water supply is needed, which is
| false. Water may be stored at the bottom and pumped back
| up, with only evaporative losses. Such loss may be
| reduced by floating solar PV on the reservoir. Some
| places can use sea water.
|
| Some insist a mountain is required, where in fact a hill
| suffices. The greater the altitude, the more energy each
| ton of water stores, but a few hundred meters height is
| plenty. In places with underground cavities, even the
| hill is optional. Using an underground cavity for the
| lower reservoir can radically increase the head
| available, vs. just a hill.
|
| Few places are very far from any hill, or cannot afford
| evaporative loss from a reservoir.
| VBprogrammer wrote:
| > Some claim an existing elevated lake is needed, which
| is false. An earthen dike at a hilltop suffices. Such a
| dike may be needed only at one end of the reservoir.
|
| This seems like an over simplification. At a minimum it
| needs to be an earthen dyke on a strata suitable for
| retaining water, right? It needs to be located in an
| appropriate area, near suitable grid infrastructure to
| ship the power out and road access to get workers and
| equipment in. Lots of mountainous regions are highly
| valued for their natural beauty which makes large
| infrastructure projects more challenging.
| pencilguin wrote:
| The bottom of the reservoir needs to be impermeable. It
| is well understood by civil engineers how to achieve
| this.
|
| Earth-moving equipment is very good at getting to places
| you would not want to try driving your car into (unless,
| apparently, you are French). Generation and pumping
| equipment remains at the bottom of the hill. An earthen
| dike on a hilltop can be as inconspicuous as you care to
| make it.
|
| You do need wires from there to where the power is, as
| usual.
| shagie wrote:
| Tangent - a bit on the math behind Oregon's hydro power
| on the Columbia river:
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonbruner/2011/10/20/the-
| high-s...
|
| I was hunting for the video of the "where water is being
| released to make sure that there is sufficient volume in
| the river for the hydro plant at the proper time to meet
| the expected demand" - https://youtu.be/jvnaiHFT6nQ
| Finnucane wrote:
| At least judging by the video, this doesn't look like something
| that would be a practical choice for a lot of residential
| situations relative to existing solar options. Maybe on larger
| apartment buildings? It would be cool if it were, I mean here in
| New England we get lots of wind, all the time.
| aruanavekar wrote:
| https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/25/climate/energy-transition...
| dml2135 wrote:
| Is this truly motionless, or are the turbines just hidden, sort
| of like those Dyson fans?
| marcosdumay wrote:
| You can see the moving part on the video. It's just internal to
| the duct.
| constantcrying wrote:
| There is a turbine at the bottom. It just redirects the wind
| down.
|
| Calling it "motionless" is truly bizarre.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Upward, I think. The wind thru the vanes sucks air up?
| constantcrying wrote:
| Yeah, I don't know why I wrote that...
| razster wrote:
| From what I've seen it does not move. In my area winds come
| from the north and east, so it would work one direction but not
| the other. Also, how does the wind channel into the main duct?
| giantg2 wrote:
| Based on the video, there's definitely internal movement.
| mostly_harmless wrote:
| If you look on their website
| (https://www.aerominetechnologies.com/) you can see there is a
| downward facing turbine hidden underneath
| yohannparis wrote:
| Motionless in the sense or they do not have to be facing the
| wind at all time.
| dieselgate wrote:
| Cool article and comment section just to see the tech used here
| (some folks even linked the patent for this design). It's
| interesting to see this in "pv" magazine which presumably stands
| for photo-voltaic.
|
| It's good to have options and I don't think the world will ever
| be "solar OR wind" - they compliment each other and can provide
| redundancy.
|
| The interesting thing here is Rooftop seems to focused on selling
| to consumers (?) as opposed to industrial scale turbines or solar
| farms. For my personal (off the grid) energy needs one/two 100w
| panels are sufficient but nice to see a less "dangerous looking"
| wind catcher.
|
| This probably has less installation than solar and I'm curious
| about the lifespan/service intervals of the mechanism
| brightball wrote:
| I have been wondering about this for years.
| Aachen wrote:
| I've looked into it but the results, unless you live in an open
| field or an otherwise windy area or want to build fifty meters
| into the air, and unless you and your neighbors are fine with
| moving shadows all day every day, are disappointing. Silent
| vertical turbines sound cool but far outperformed by solar.
| Might still make sense to have a mix since batteries won't get
| us through the winter, but wind turbines are much better suited
| to fields and forests really. Even a relatively small one (so
| you don't need to cut down swathes of said forest for access
| roads and work area) has much better performance than what
| you'd place on a roof.
|
| The only promising thing I found for rooftops is something that
| is placed on the nave of your roof (hope I'm using the right
| word, I mean the highest part) and the wind blowing over the
| surface ends up concentrating there. Should be out of sight and
| reasonably performant. But it was all still proof of concept
| stage from what I remember.
|
| I'm curious how this project will pan out. I hope good, but the
| article doesn't mention what their innovation is other than
| proposing to put a whole array on one's roof.
| thefourthchime wrote:
| Forget about all of that. Have you seen this thing? The WAF
| (Wife Acceptance Factor) is going to be near zero on this
| one.
| ZetaZero wrote:
| The company has not yet provided any real numbers. I want to know
| how much electricity is generated at a specific wind speed. The
| lack of this most basic number leads me to believe this isn't as
| good as it sounds.
| ltbarcly3 wrote:
| Moving parts, noise. These are the reasons PV is likely to
| continue to dominate most deployments.
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| I think there is a hybrid future coming - and I suspect farmers
| will be at the forefront of this - hills with steps full of these
| built in, marginal fields providing pv-solar.
|
| I can smell a new industry I just cannot understand the leverage
| points
| ortusdux wrote:
| I've been fascinated by roof ridgetop fans. They capture the air
| being funnel up and over the roof to increase their efficiency
| without increasing their size. The startup RidgeBlade uses a
| simple ducted squirrel cage fan along the ridgeline, and their
| studies show a 2.2x efficiency increase on 45deg slope roof. They
| also work well with solar.
|
| https://thepowercollective.ca/products/rb1/
| jonnycomputer wrote:
| Well, the look of them is unobtrusive enough to gain
| acceptance, I think. But you know anyone with practical real-
| world experience with one of them? how much electricity
| produced, how much to install, roi?
| forgotusername6 wrote:
| The site says 2kw continuous for the domestic system. That's
| about half of typical domestic solar installation. I really
| do wonder if you can get that in a real world environment.
| jansan wrote:
| I wonder how these compare to old fashioned savonius rotors,
| which are cheap, silent and omnidirectional. No visible moving
| parts is nice in residential areas, and I suspect that is their
| main selling point.
| byyll wrote:
| I don't think it's worth popularizing such concepts and patents.
| I've seen plenty of them in the past 2 years and non have reached
| production and promised value that outperforms solar panels.
|
| Furthermore, there is research done on solar panels all the time
| too to increase their efficiency and panels have and continue to
| improve their W/m2. So by that time, solar panels might have
| outpaced it.
|
| This "same cost" is likely calculated as initial cost +
| electricity/24h instead of initial cost + maintenance cost +
| lifetime.
|
| Other comments have mentioned the moving parts which don't exist
| on solar panels. Moving parts will inevitably fail in contrast to
| solar panels which often outlast their 25 year warranties with
| only reduced efficiency.
|
| Wind is less predictable than sun too. It's also less powerful
| the lower the height is due to buildings blocking it. That's why
| wind turbines are so high and usually out of cities.
|
| Cost is not the only factor that matters. Panels on rooftops are
| more or less not visible. This thing sticks out a lot and isn't
| aesthetically pleasing.
| nofollow wrote:
| I'm waiting for Vortex Bladeless: https://vortexbladeless.com/
| tmikaeld wrote:
| What is the efficiency and power generation?
| trenchgun wrote:
| It is essentially vaporvare.
| brink wrote:
| That movement with that shape is reminding me of something
| else.
| hammeiam wrote:
| Found the YIMBY
| soperj wrote:
| wacky inflatable arm flailing tube man?
| [deleted]
| bxtt wrote:
| How will this be financed?
|
| In residential solar, panels are largely subsidized by federal
| ITC or financed by banks claiming the tax equity which covers the
| maintenance, upfront costs, etc; hence the zero upfront
| residential solar model. Will this be similar?
| hinkley wrote:
| I've seen a bunch of people talking about how you need to
| install solar this year because the subsidies are going away.
| The whole goal of the subsidy is to get enough of an installed
| base to get costs down so you don't need the subsidy. Even if
| the midterms give us a better Congress, you can't count on
| these forever.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| Wait a few years and panel prices will drop by more than the
| subsidies you are receiving now on the existing ones. Even
| without subsidies, it might be worth it for some people to do
| right now. It depends on your situation.
|
| The trick is having a well integrated system that doesn't
| waste power but instead works with batteries, grid, and EVs
| to make sure you waste as little as possible of the free
| energy your panels generate when they are producing rather
| than just serving excess power to your neighbors via the grid
| at some token value that your power supplier sets. There are
| some nice solutions emerging in this space.
| hinkley wrote:
| There's a company making water heaters that store about 4x
| the heat per liter of water, and heat the water on demand.
| I can't recall if the storage material is solid or liquid
| so I hesitate to call it a "tankless" system if it has a
| tank of hot sludge.
|
| Those units are supposed to be quite good as a dump for
| excess solar power.
| pornel wrote:
| There's more wind at higher altitudes, so I expect industrial-
| scale wind farms to have an inherent advantage over any rooftop
| solution.
| hot_gril wrote:
| I'm all for renewable energy, but what's up with the push (and
| subsidization) for homeowners to become mini power plant
| operators? It's even weirder with home batteries involved. Yeah
| you save on transmission costs, but it's overall a lot cheaper,
| safer, and less politically messy to do this at dedicated
| facilities or huge buildings like malls.
| hot_gril wrote:
| Also, I'm happy at least something is being done. It's just not
| a great way.
| samatman wrote:
| This things is clearly not designed for residential roofs.
|
| For one thing, it's hideous.
|
| But mostly it's intended to be installed on the ridge of a
| standard commercial flat roof, tar-paper style, and take
| advantage of the effect which large walls have on the wind.
|
| Houses, being lower, having (generally) pitched roofs, and
| therefore no structural ridge, are not the intended market.
| hot_gril wrote:
| The picture does seem to be in a neighborhood. Can't tell if
| it's on a house, but either way it's a small building.
| jeffbee wrote:
| It plays together with other ridiculous myths like urban
| farming. People want to _feel_ and _appear_ green regardless of
| objective reality.
| hot_gril wrote:
| Yeah but at least urban farming isn't super subsidized. If
| someone wants to play with home solar or farming as a hobby,
| that's great, but it's not everyone else's job to make sure
| it's profitable for that person.
|
| Maybe the issue with urban farming is that water is
| subsidized, and those people use a lot of it.
| fairytalemtg wrote:
| Wonder if the funding will come from those that support solar
| panels like Sunrun, Sunpower.. or new lending sector will form
| that specialize on lending + insurance for wind equip
| c2h5oh wrote:
| I'd like this to be true, but that's some industrial grade BS
| sprinkled in that press release:
|
| > The unit requires about 10% of the space required by solar
| panels and generates round-the-clock energy.
|
| Let's be generous here and use numbers for my area, which further
| north than all of US excluding Alaska. I can get just over 200W
| of electricity per m^2 from solar (peak) with standard ~20%
| efficient panels here and 200kWh per year.
|
| So with this I should be getting 2MWh per m^2 per year with an
| average power output of almost 230W and much higher peak as it is
| generally much more windy during the day.
|
| So 1m^2 footprint of this device would match performance of
| standard 3.5-4m diameter wind turbine (9.6-12.5 m^2) assuming a
| sane if slightly optimistic average annual wind speed of 4m/s.
|
| I find that super hard to believe.
| exabrial wrote:
| Home Owners Associations already block solar, unfortunately I
| give this a 0% chance of getting approved in any neighborhood
| that has one :(
|
| EDIT:
|
| ====
|
| Don't shoot the messenger. I don't agree with it either.
| mywittyname wrote:
| Some do. Mine doesn't.
|
| And there are laws being passed across the country making solar
| access a legal right for all home owners.
|
| Plus, I doubt these would work on typical suburban houses,
| given their roof pitch. Houses would need to be designed with
| flat roofs in mind in order to accommodate these things. Thus,
| you're looking at this being applied to new construction in
| most of the USA.
| MonkeyMalarky wrote:
| I love the inherent contradiction of the existence of HOAs.
| Americans love freedom and small government so much, they have
| to invent a worse and more invasive replacement.
| brightball wrote:
| The perk of HOAs is that you can get elected to it. You can
| organize your neighborhood to get elected and make changes if
| they aren't happy with the way it's currently run.
|
| The whole goal of smaller and more localized governing bodies
| is that you have easier access to change them. The only thing
| stopping you is getting the support of your neighbors.
| Steltek wrote:
| True government is restrained by US and State
| Constitutions. HOAs can fine you for painting your house
| the wrong shade of blue.
|
| Just because there are elections doesn't make it a fair
| system.
| brightball wrote:
| HOA's are also restrained by their individual covenants.
| You can push for changes to the covenants.
|
| I have an HOA in my neighborhood for example. It has no
| power to levy fines at all.
| [deleted]
| scifibestfi wrote:
| It's a small, local government run by people who actually
| live in the area they are governing. It's objectively better
| than a large, non-local government that has no skin in the
| game and doesn't have to live with the consequences of their
| actions.
| MonkeyMalarky wrote:
| That's not entirely true, my municipal government has skin
| in the game because taxes are based on property values
| here. So for example, I know someone who had the bricks
| redone on his house and when he got the permit to do the
| renovation, it stipulated that the surface area of brick
| afterwards was to be equal or greater than before. I
| suppose it is because brick has higher value than vinyl
| siding.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| > _It 's a small, local government run by people who
| actually live in the area they are governing._
|
| More specifically, it's run by people who live in the area
| they are governing _and have nothing else to do with their
| time_.
|
| Not sure what can be done about this; it's a general
| failure mode of democratic systems at every level (and many
| non-democratic as well): over time, the power goes to those
| who prioritize getting the power. I.e. career politicians.
|
| (Yes, I'd classify the few people who show up at our HOA-
| equivalent meetings as career politicians, and the small
| group of troublemakers in my block of flats as the
| opposition :).)
| hot_gril wrote:
| I've thought of this too. Bored people don't prioritize
| things well.
| mypalmike wrote:
| The phrase "objectively better" is an oxymoron.
| pessimizer wrote:
| HOAs were originally "White Homeowners' Associations," so
| after (and likely before) losing their legal purpose of being
| entities that enforced the racial covenants that restricted
| their members from selling their homes to black and Jewish
| people, their purpose instead became to enforce a particular
| kind of _cultural_ whiteness on the neighborhood. Whites who
| didn 't take care of their lawns or wanted to paint their
| houses the wrong color weren't being white well enough.
|
| > Americans love freedom and small government so much, they
| have to invent a worse and more invasive replacement.
|
| The same group of Americans, too. HOAs were like a GPL for
| racists.
| xyzzyz wrote:
| HOAs are much better, not worse replacement. If I don't like
| HOA rules, I have more ability to affect these than to affect
| county, state or federal level rules. I can also vote with my
| feet by moving out of HOA, to a different HOA or even to a
| place with no HOA. Moving out of county, state or country has
| significant higher cost, which is higher the bigger the
| administrative unit is. In short, for any given problem with
| HOA, municipal/state/federal government has the same problem,
| and in fact it's worse there.
| Tangurena2 wrote:
| There is no transparency nor accountability for the "condo
| commandos" who rule some HOA boards like the girls in Mean
| Girls. I've ended up on 2 separate condo boards and each time
| I swear "never again!". Maybe this time I mean it.
| exabrial wrote:
| It's absurd. People are forced into them if they want to buy
| a house, and part of the agreement is if you sell the house,
| you can only sell it to a person that agrees to sign. It
| _should_ be illegal, especially given the racist history that
| HOAs were designed for.
| kortilla wrote:
| > People are forced into them if they want to buy a house
|
| "Forced" in the sense that they voluntarily enter them by
| buying a house in an HOA.
|
| Each HOA (or lack thereof) is a property of the house you
| are looking to buy. Complaining about being forced to take
| the HOA is like complaining about being forced to be a part
| of the county.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| > Each HOA (or lack thereof) is a property of the house
| you are looking to buy. Complaining about being forced to
| take the HOA is like complaining about being forced to be
| a part of the county.
|
| No, it's like complaining that the lawn has been
| saturated with salt so that it can never grow properly,
| and a previous owner somehow managed to legally enshrine
| that so that you can't fix it.
| foogazi wrote:
| > People are forced into them if they want to buy a house
|
| They're not - they're free to buy a house without an HOA
| [deleted]
| cwkoss wrote:
| Neither of the two real estate agents I've worked with
| batted an eye when I asked to exclude any property
| subject to an HOA.
|
| If enough of us do this, the price of HOA properties will
| drop due to decreased demand and people will more broadly
| recognize HOAs as the liability they are.
| Consultant32452 wrote:
| It's a chicken and egg situation.
|
| Nobody wants to live under the thumb of an HOA.
|
| Without the HOA busy-bodies, suburban neighborhoods tend
| to turn into the kind of place most people would not
| aspire to live.
|
| Often, HOAs are annoying. More often it's like teenagers
| who hate it when mom makes them clean their rooms.
| cwkoss wrote:
| I think the main issue is that hall monitor types are
| attracted to the power, and so if a HOA gets taken over
| by people who like judging others without any other major
| obligations, they lose sight of the reason for the HOA
| rules and enforce to the letter of the rules rather than
| the spirit.
| mrtranscendence wrote:
| I've lived most of my life in houses not subject to an
| HOA, but for the past four years I've been "under the
| thumb" of one. Anecdotally, I notice startlingly little
| difference between the two regimes. I suppose if someone
| wants to park a wheelless rusty pickup truck in the
| middle of their lawn the HOA would do something about it,
| but that sort of thing was never really an issue.
|
| From my perspective, the HOA has done little except offer
| a pool, and insist once that I remove an _almost
| completely invisible_ stump in my front lawn that was
| over my water line.
| Consultant32452 wrote:
| Valuable things my HOA does: pools, parks, negotiated
| bulk internet, neighbors keep their lawn mowed and low
| weeds, no junk cars in the yard type stuff, no unsightly
| house colors, no serious disrepair of homes, no cars
| parked on the side of the road because 10 people live in
| a 3/2.
|
| Annoying things my HOA does: I had to replace some plants
| in my yard because they were not technically shrubs, and
| the rules said I had to have shrubs.
| hot_gril wrote:
| Cause the HOA is small-scale and localized to your
| neighborhood, not big govt. The idea is sensible, but some of
| them do stupid things.
| danans wrote:
| In California at least, the law forbids HOAs from blocking
| solar:
|
| https://findhoalaw.com/solar-panels-solar-energy-systems/
| harshaw wrote:
| not sure of your state but in Massachusetts the state law
| overrides these HOA rules.
| carlsborg wrote:
| These are not meant for residential units (yet)
| kortilla wrote:
| No they can't. It's illegal for an HOA to block solar:
| https://aurorasolar.com/blog/how-to-get-hoa-solar-approval-t...
| mattmaroon wrote:
| That article is pretty clear that it's only protected via
| solar access laws in some states, and even in many of those
| states while they sometimes can't specifically prohibit
| panels they can make them basically impossible to find
| placement for with rules about what can go In outdoor spaces,
| requiring permission and permits, etc.
|
| OP is right, HOAs can be a nightmare for someone wanting to
| install solar. I'm dealing with this in one of my units
| currently.
| beembeem wrote:
| This is a poor blanket statement. This is not true in
| California.
| seydor wrote:
| > Home Owners Associations already block solar
|
| on what grounds?
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| curb appeal, my realtor said that solar panels are actually a
| downside a lot of the time when he's dealing with the higher
| end of the real estate market
| exabrial wrote:
| Usually that "it's an eyesore" or some other BS. That's the
| entire reason the Tesla solar roof has a market share, is
| that it "looks like" a normal roof without giant boxes on top
| of a house.
|
| again, I think the whole notion is silly and
| counterproductive, just reporting on reality.
| doctorhandshake wrote:
| In my understanding, the justification commonly given is that
| the disruption to the unified neighborhood aesthetics is bad
| for resale value - resale being the justification HOAs use to
| block anything they don't like.
| Tangurena2 wrote:
| Satellite dishes used to be banned by almost all HOAs in
| America until the FCC prohibited it.
| https://spectrumam.com/fcc-regulations-satellite-dishes
|
| Basically:
|
| If the buildings are condos or townhomes, then the building
| is owned by the HOA. In a condo, the homeowner owns from the
| paint inwards. In a townhouse, the HOA owns the structural
| elements, but in short, the homeowner owns the sheetrock and
| paint on "their" side of the walls. Exterior walls and roofs
| are owned by the HOA.
|
| If the buildings are detached single family houses, then the
| building is owned by the homeowner.
| ElevenLathe wrote:
| They similarly hate ham radio antennas, but there are federal
| laws that mean you can do it anyway and they can pound sand.
| Something similar could be put in place for solar/wind
| installations.
| pencilguin wrote:
| I have seen conflicting claims about ham antennas.
|
| _If_ you have an overriding right to a ham antenna, you can
| threaten to put one up if they don 't back down over
| something else. (To be clear, this would be a good thing.) If
| you already have one, you could threaten to expand it.
| bushbaba wrote:
| Solar panels are fairly set and forget. No moving parts. For wind
| curious what kind of maintenance is needed
| dont__panic wrote:
| Where I live, I wonder how they'd interact with heavy wind,
| ice, and snow. I imagine during the winter months you'd have to
| de-ice them, and potentially clear away wet, heavy snow.
| Whenever a Noreaster or similar strong wind comes through, I
| wonder what the chance of damage is -- presumably they
| automatically shut off if the wind becomes too strong?
| mywittyname wrote:
| I'm surprised to hear that these don't have built in heaters
| for de-icing.
|
| If you drive through the great plains states, you'll pass
| hundreds of these going far as the eye can see. They can't
| require that much ongoing maintenance, because it would be
| untenable to do so at that scale.
|
| I get that these are different designs, but the fundamental
| constraint of being low maintenance has to be a design
| requirement.
| jansan wrote:
| To be fair, those weather conditions are not optimal for
| solar power, either.
|
| Regarding strong wind, some wind energy technologies are self
| limiting, like the savonius rotor. I have no idea how the
| approach mentionen in the article handles strong winds.
| tantalor wrote:
| From the article:
|
| > Aeromine said... the patented system is motionless and
| virtually silent
|
| Edit: This is just a quote from the article! I'm only trying to
| provide context from the article to the above comment. There's
| no need to signal your disagreement with this quote by voting
| on it.
| zardo wrote:
| By motionless they mean something other than "no moving
| parts" as it has a turbine connected to a generator.
| bushbaba wrote:
| It has motion. The cylinder rotates. All boils down to how
| long that mechanical part will last prior to needing to be
| replaced.
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| Imagine if it had no motion!
|
| It would appear to fly off at supersonic speeds as it
| ignored -earth's rotation -earth's movement around sun
| -solar system's movement around the galaxy -galaxy's drift
| through the universe
|
| (Sorry "no motion" is like a claim out of a Dilbert
| cartoon)
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| We are obviously operating with the planet as our
| reference frame.
| wongarsu wrote:
| Judging by the 30 second clip they show it's motionless in
| the same sense as dyson's fans are bladeless. The motion and
| blades are less in-your-face, but still present.
| Tangurena2 wrote:
| When I lived in Denver, our data center would sometimes have
| HVAC trouble because cottonwood tree seeds would clog up the
| fins of the roof-top heat exchangers. They look like white
| fluff and some years would cover lawns looking like a light
| dusting of snow. The worst year, the fins were covered (on one
| side) with a solid white felt that clogged the fins enough to
| cause the HVAC to blow circuit breakers and shut down our data
| center (which was mostly a DR site for other branches of the
| corporation).
| hinkley wrote:
| The moving parts of solar panels are the dust and the cleaning
| equipment needed to remove it.
| dahfizz wrote:
| Where is this true? Rain would be more than enough to clean
| solar panels.
| hinkley wrote:
| Apparently not. You're supposed to clean them. Pollution
| tends to be sticky, and I'm sure etching the glass probably
| doesn't help either.
| bushbaba wrote:
| Impact of not cleaning is minimal. Maybe 10% at worst.
| There's been multiple studies that show the cost of
| cleaning is greater than improved efficiency for home
| owners.
| hinkley wrote:
| There are studies that can say anything.
|
| A lot of green power on the West Coast. Do you have a
| study that looks at the effects of soot particles
| accumulating on solar panels? Or pollen for that matter?
| I've washed my car more in the last three years than in
| the entire rest of my adult life.
| pencilguin wrote:
| Panels laid out in deserts accumulate dust that can cut
| production by 50%.
|
| This mainly just means the desert is a dumb place to put a
| solar farm. But ignorant investors _love_ the idea of
| desert solar farms, so there is plenty of money being
| wasted building desert solar farms.
| ilyt wrote:
| I'd imagine once per year or two, any consumables (grease,
| maybe occasional bearing replacement) would be cheap so you
| really would be mostly paying for time of someone proficient to
| do it.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| I mean, solar panels degrade with time. I've heard "30 years"
| bandied about, but I've also heard that a lot of Chinese-
| manufactured solar panels rated for 30 years only last 5-10
| years (that may have been specific to Australia, I don't
| recall).
| photochemsyn wrote:
| Chinese-made monocrystalline silicon panels are expected to
| have extremely long lifetimes (25+ years with no degradation)
| relative to thin film types (Cd-Te, etc.) However, another
| main issue is quality encapsulation of the panels; if done
| shoddily this greatly shortens the lifetime of the panels.
| Practically, look for manufacturers who have the longest
| guarantees.
|
| https://solaranalytica.com/solar-panel-encapsulation/
| seydor wrote:
| > An Aeromine system typically consists of 20 to 40 units
| installed on the edge of a building
|
| why not a bigger single installation? seems like this is rotating
| a tunnel internally, not motionless.
|
| Looks like there s no shortage of good ideas to generate energy
| but how do we store it
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| > Looks like there s no shortage of good ideas to generate
| energy but how do we store it
|
| The nice thing about solar and wind together is that they are
| complimentary - wind usually starts to pick up right when solar
| starts to fall off. Here is a helpful dashboard from ERCOT in
| Texas: https://www.ercot.com/gridmktinfo/dashboards/combinedwin
| dand.... Usually what happens is that when the sun starts to go
| down, winds starts to pick up. This was critical when we had
| near-capacity conditions this summer when it got so hot.
| kortilla wrote:
| Barely. Once the sun goes down the wind usually stops.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| That is most definitely untrue for the vast majority of
| Texas wind farms - I've been following those Ercot graphs
| ever since Winter Storm Uri.
| happyopossum wrote:
| That's completely dependent on location and geography.
| Where I am, it regularly blows all night, only to taper off
| in the morning...
| seydor wrote:
| looking at renewables power generation it seems wind is
| slightly going down at night too , certainly not picking up
|
| https://www.energy-
| charts.info/charts/power/chart.htm?l=en&c...
| ilyt wrote:
| I'd imagine cos it's easier to produce one size unit and just
| install multiple of them
| [deleted]
| DrNosferatu wrote:
| Price per kWh?
| chess_buster wrote:
| This is the question.
| [deleted]
| tb_technical wrote:
| How do I get one? I live in a high wind area.
| constantcrying wrote:
| >bladeless >motionless I always love it when articles are obvious
| shill pieces for a company. It is a turbine system with a
| different mechanism of getting air to a turbine. The first thing
| you see in the video of the article are spinning blades.
|
| The real question which the article should be asking is how they
| compare to traditional large turbines. (Which can stand
| unobstructed at great heights). How well this works in urban
| environments, where Wind is blocked/funneled by other buildings.
| Or if the claims over solar are actually justified.
|
| _Far_ too often there are articles about blatant vaporware
| (often fusion) where people just report sone companies claims as
| if it were self evidently true. If you want to convince me: -
| Show actual data. What did one such unit generate over a few
| month in electricity? _Surely_ you have to know. - Do not lie.
| The thing _obviously_ is neither motionless nor bladeless.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-10-26 23:01 UTC)