More Compact and Efficient Vertical Turbines Could Be the Future for Wind Farms

SciTechDaily ^ | 26 April 2021

[zeestephen]

The now-familiar sight of traditional propeller wind turbines could be replaced in the future with wind farms containing more compact and efficient vertical turbines. [Photo in Comment #1]

[Osage Orange]

7 come 11....

They like 7....

Wind energy sucks and so does solar....So far.

[Osage Orange]

Add bat’s....and flying witches too.

[Osage Orange]

LOL!

Really?

What do you propose?

[cuban leaf]

Yes. A very long propeller blade moving at well over 100 mph at the tip can completely surprise birds. A spinning barrel is much easier to avoid. By an order of magnitude. Or two.

[LastDayz]

Tongue in cheek man, tongue in cheek.

[Moltke]

Hard to be sure sometimes, hard to be sure...

[353FMG]

The immediate future belongs to LNG and it provides plenty of American jobs.

[353FMG]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QgtSoEJD9HE

[Osage Orange]

I actually know a lot about LNG.....

I watched 5 seconds of that film...

Was there something in that film you needed or wanted to tell me?

[Hiddigeigei]

Interesting video, but it doesn’t tell us the energy cost of extracting from the ground, purifying, freezing, transporting, re-gasifying the liquid natural gas versus the energy produced by the gas at the end of the process.

[353FMG]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OvaabI8O_A

If we don’t go the LNG route, we’re screwing ourselves because of the huge quantities that we have. China would love to conquer us just for our natural gas alone.

[353FMG]

If you know a lot about LNG you should be the one to tell your fellow Americans that our government should NEVER give up on fossil fuels like our newly elected Bolsheviks are suggesting they do. Any 3rd world country with a handful of nukes will try to take it from us and we have enough traitorous politicians who will comply.

[353FMG]

If you know a lot about LNG you should be the one to tell your fellow Americans that our government should NEVER give up on fossil fuels like our newly elected Bolsheviks are suggesting they do. Any 3rd world country with a handful of nukes will try to take it from us and we have enough traitorous politicians who will comply.

[Osage Orange]

Well...you had to post it twice,,,

EXCELLENT!!

Pretty sure I know more than enough...to know this Country has billions of cubic yards of LNG to last hundreds of years...

But there are politics...involved. And money involved....

So you what goes on there.......

[Oil Object Insp]

Nuclear, LNG, or even coal is the real answer to the USA and the world’s energy requirements.

Unfortunately, the people steering this train wreck don’t want what s heart idea, their plan is the opposite. Whatever is the furthest from a good idea.

And that’s what is wrong with the world, we tolerate idiots in politics.

[hecticskeptic]

By small footprint I mean compact design, rather than long blades spinning at very high speed catching birds off guard. The same power producing area can be incorporated in a verticle spinner that doesn’t extend out like a blade. A spinning cylinder is easier for them to see and avoid.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Ok....You are talking about a few different things in the three sentences of your Post 13.

“The same power producing area can be incorporated in a verticle spinner that doesn’t extend out like a blade.” There is nothing more compact about Vertical Axis Wind Turbine (VAWT) than there is about a Horizontal Axis Wind Turbine (HAWT). In fact, the opposite is true when looking at the issue from the perspective of ‘power per unit area’. The amount of power that any wind turbine produces is related to the swept area that impacts the blades. In a HAWT, the area impacted by the wind (ignoring the hub for the moment as being negligible compared to the overall area) is pi x (radius) square i.e. the swept area. For a VAWT, that area is diameter x height (of the cylinder). Speaking in terms of generalities, a HAWT is substantially more efficient than a VAWT….. this of course stands to reason since for half of the cycle, a VAWT turbine is moving against the wind as opposed to with the wind.

Here’s a calculator for you…. It’s not the best but I don’t want to spend too much time looking for a better one and it will suffice for the purpose of this point. https://www.omnicalculator.com/ecology/wind-turbine#how-to-calculate-the-power-generated-by-a-wind-turbine At the top of the calculator, you can select whether you want to use it for a VAWT or a HAWT. First do a HAWT calculation…. Put in a 10 foot diameter blade and a wind speed of 25 mph. You should get 6.442 kW output after the losses have been subtracted for a turbine spinning at 210 rpm. Now select a HAWT and play with the diameter and height for the same 25 mph wind. Let’s say you try to maintain a 3 to 1 ratio of turbine height to diameter ratio…. To get the same 6.44 kW output power, the VAWT has to have a diameter of 10.25 feet and a height of 30.75 feet and this is for a turbine spinning at 410 rpm. Not surprisingly, the area swept for the VAWT is essentially the same as the diameter x height for the HAWT…. This is because the flaw with this calculator is that its default efficiency is the same for both the HAWT and the VAWT…. while the theoretical efficiency of a VAWT might be similar to a HAWT, most empirical tests show that VAWT designs end up much lower… typically about ½ to ¾ of what the efficiency of a HAWT is. That being the case, the area has to be increased to get a similar power output for the VAWT.

Will a HAWT design actually ‘catch more birds of guard’ than a VAWT design? I doubt it but I’d be interested in looking at a study that actually does a good job of trying to set up an ‘apples to apples’ comparison.

[nascarnation]

There’s a BIG future for wind.
Not because of physics but because of Democrat gravy flowing to cronies.

[dearolddad]

There are those words again “Computer Simulation”. Where have I heard those words before?

[SunkenCiv]

Wind power is one of the fastest-growing renewable sources that works well at scale, but it isn't perfect. What if we could scale down wind turbine power to something that could fit on your roof? And be self-contained with smaller moving parts ... or maybe no blades or moving parts at all? Let's look at some future alternatives for harnessing wind power. Watch "Are Stirling Engines the Future of Energy Storage?"

The Future of Solid State Wind Energy - No More Blades | May 18, 2021 | Undecided with Matt Ferrell