The biggest weakness or failure of Planet of the Humans is the following fact:
When technologies go through fast and exponential changes you CANNOT use history to judge the same technology.
Like concluding on Wind power or Solar power using examples from 2005 og 2012 like in the movie.
Nuclear France will now expand windpower with 30 GigaWatt the next decade. The goal is 33% renewables in the mix by 2030. A dramatic increase from today.
I am waiting another year for my German quality Build Tesla 😎
Anyhow, Tesla do have battery patents in their some 450+ Patents, and is still expanding their IP rights, like the tabless free and new battery form factor.
Munroe & Associates was rather impressed after Battery day, but most analysts are not engineers and missed the point 😉
Tesla Motor has I believe more than 400 patents, but this recent Battery one may become one of the most important.
The reduced thermal resistence of the cell and improvement in manufacturing presented at battery day was amazing. This may become a game changer and enable profitability of even cheaper EV's.
Display MoreI agree. There are pics of three prototypes here though: http://watersturbine.weebly.com/waters-turbine.html
Reading the text we see that wind velocity and pressure profiles have been taken! There is verbosity, but what is conspicuously absent is simple electrical power output. But, they have put the axle under load :
There are comparisons to a conventional turbine:
I would think this should depend very much on the gearing system, not just on turbine design.
My suggestion to Mark G: forget new prototypes for now. Just ask that they attach a gear system and generator to what they currently have. It ultimately has to be done anyway. Frankly, putting this off is avoidance of a likely mediocre outcome imo.
O dear, it is the same mistake we often see, experimenters confuse torque and power and efficiency.
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Comparing my 4' design against a stock 5' three blade, under the same load, the conventional product starts at over 7 mph and produces very little torque or rpm at that speed. My turbine, under the same load starts at under 1 mph. If the square force relationship is used, that is 49 times more force required to turn the conventional design.
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To get the power he needs to multiply torque in NewtonMeters with the rotational speed in Radians pr. Seconds.
Different wind speeds and different torque applied will then result in different rpms and then generate datapoints which will indicate a maximum power curve at various wind speeds.
Now compare this with the maximum energy of the wind = 0,5 * air density * wind area covered by the turbine * wind velocity ^3
The wind area is just the PI * the waters turbine radius ^2
To CONCLUDE: comparing torque of a propeller wind turbine with the waters turbine tell nothing more than which turbine is easier to start, and the lower velocity range.
But 14 mph is only 6 m/s speed, not much energy in the wind at these wind speeds...
A 5' turbine will then cover a wind area containing 200 Watt theoretical energy.
If it converts 80% of the Betz limit we get 93 Watt power.
Now prove that a Waters turbine are able to produce 93 Watt at 6 m/s.
Mark U. The output of prototypes and the independent reproduction were so much greater than anticipated, or could be explained by energy available from the wind, that Waters concluded that thermodynamics must explain the surplus. That eventually led to his statement about ambient heat.
I can offer no additional information.
I do not see how this contraption could be a thermodynamic converter of heat to mechanical energy, when all it does is redirect air current.
Which leads me to conclude error in measurements and mathematics.
Display MoreThe calculations are very simple: 1m3 air is about 1.2kg. Air - 1m3 - traveling at 1m/s contains 1/2* 1.2* 12 =0.6J Joule of Energy or simply said almost nothing. At 10 m/s it's 60J So you need 15m2 for 1 KJ at 10m/s.
To cover the same area you need 30x more material than a conventional 3 blade rotator that also covers the same full area as the blades (at 10 m/s) almost stops the full air Cylinder it covers.
There is a small advantage with the Waters turbine as it can harvest a virtually larger size than it covers due to side winds blocking the near by flux of air.
But seen with clear brain this is a no brainer approach that tries to fool people with arguments like: It starts to rotate even at speeds of 1 m/s. So it does harvest farts...
Yes, the reason propeller type turbines won the battle of wind energy conversion, is that they are very material efficient.
The energy you can extract from wind is dierectly proportional to the swept area of any turbine perpendicular to the wind.
So propellers will cover a large area with only a small amount of material.
The waters turbine have a large amount of material to cover the same area as a propeller.
But another problem is the enormous torque on the foundation from the turbine depending on height above ground and wind speed.
if anyone doubt windpower is profitable, they should start listen to the Market.
Now a gigantic 1500 MW offshore windpower plant will be build completely free of subsidies.
if anyone doubt windpower is profitable, they should start listen to the Market.
Now a gigantic 1500 MW offshore windpower plant will be build completely free of subsidies.
This is a great way to look at U.S. electric power generation data:
EIA Electricity data browser
Nice,
So, in March 2020, solar+wind delivered 13% of US consumption.
And offshore wind will take this to another level next decade.
So why I should pay it? Why wind plant operators won't pay it itself from surplus of energy, which wind plant allegedly generates after first six-eight months for free? They should generate clean profit after this payback period. They did use existing plant infrastructure, so they should return all subsidizes - instead of this they ask another ones? They don't make enough of money even for wind plant scrapping and recycling. Which is understandable, because just the cost of maintenance of wind plants gets comparable with price of fossil fuel energy
what are you trying to say?
Do you think private companies would give the power for free if they had a zero point energy source? Will never happen whatever source. They will need to build systems to deliver the power to the grid and will need to make profit, that is how the world work.
But power will become cheaper as seen with solar and wind since they are cheaper to manufacture and have LOWER maintenance cost than coal power.
Scrapping and recycling must be included in the contract. And europe has stricter environmental laws than US, So we do recycle. Search Veolia company and read about it.
So, you are completely wrong on maintenance costs. The low power price offered from wind cover all costs AND make them a profit.
At first I know about it, because I know that direct energy input represents let say eight months of wind plant life-time, but the retail cost of its energy indicates, it's higher than cost of fossil fuel energy and it takes whole rest of wind plant lifetime. All the rest is thus represented with another costs components, which are always spent together and they cannot be separated.
Nonsense
And the article still doesn't tell, that wind plant electricity must be sold much cheaper than average market price of electricity.
No, it "must " not.
These are private companies offering the UK government a price of power at Long term agreements.
And the UK government of course choose the cheapest ones.
And still the private companies make a profit, which typically is 8 to 10%.
And they are obligated to remove the turbines at end of life after some 30 years.
So it is a win win for everyone.
And The required back up you complain about is simply enough the existing coal and gas fired plants that just is uses less as wind power grows. We do not need to build New fossil fuel plants when we add renewables.
just 6 years back and Coal power in UK made up 43% of british electricity mix.
So far in 2020 coal is less than 3%.
thank's to UK massive Expansion of renewables, like offshore wind power. And thanks to increase of less CO2 intensive natural gas.
And now 2 months without coal.
Population growth will increase electricity demand. The market price of power will the increase is the Market cannot increase supply enough.
Nope, this price will increase, because more electricity will be consumed. At given technology level it would require to use more energetically demanding methods for its production.
If the price of electricity would rise without increasing consumption, then it wouldn't follow price-demand equilibrium.
I see autocorrection kicked in again. And this is what the centence should be
"The market price of power will increase if the Market cannot increase supply enough."
So er agree, and you understand the mechanism of supply and demand setting the prices.
The resume is, once "renewable" electricity is supposed to save fossil fuel electricity, it must get cheaper than fossil fuel electricity, which means it should decrease prices of electricity instead of increase. ...
If we cannot generate renewable energy by some cheaper way than this fossil one, then it would be better not to produce it at all.
You misunderstand what set the Market price of electricity.
-Economic growth will increase electricity demand. The market price of power will then increase is market cannot offer more electricity..
Population growth will increase electricity demand. The market price of power will increase if the Market cannot increase supply enough.
So you see, the Market do not care where the electrons come from, coal power og renewables.
There is one market price of power that varies with supply and demand.
No then, the profitability of an energy source depends on CAPEX investment for the source and the Market price of power.
And that is the point. Uk offshore bottom fixed large wind turbines now are profitable at the market price of power in UK, meaning those projects cam be built without government support.
And CO2 pay back time is a different issue as explained. Only months to pay back all energy that went into the project.
Could we agree, that price of product or service expresses amount of net energy expenditure required for generation product or service?
Nonsense.
It is supply and demand balance that set the prices. Basis economic theory and practice.
For example price of gold is high because its production requires large amount of energy on background.
completely and utterly wrong.
The price of gold has NOTHING to do with energy requirements for production.
On the contrary, the DEMAND is keeping the price such that it is profitable to mine low grade ore, i.e. ore that may have high energy requirement pr. Unit gold.
It is the balance between supply and demand that set the prices. Just as most other commodities.
And the Market price of power now makes it very profitable to install large solar arrays without any subsidies in a growing number of places.
Again, do you want to deny reports like these ones? Renewables Threaten German Economy & Energy Supply, McKinsey Warns, What happens with German renewables in the dead of winter? Sometimes, a Greener Grid Means a 40,000% Spike in Power Prices
How some "perpetuum mobile", which should pay itself in 6 - 8 months (as it's claimed about wind plants) could ever suffer by lack of money? How such a device could even raise the price of electricity? The payback period of nuclear plants is some twenty / thirty years - and yet they still prosper (if we ignore fear from nuclear accidents here and there)...!
Nope, I don't deny any of research studies on energy payback time of "renewables". I simply care only about real financial results.
Zephir, you misunderstand.
You mix ENERGY payback period with MONETARY payback period.
My referral was to energy payback. Since you think rebewables increase fossil fuel consumption, I explained the consesus on CO2 payback time for wind power.
For Solar the ENERGY payback is a litle longer than wind, but not more than some additional 6 months as I remember.
Now then, if you want to discuss economics and subsidies we can do that also, but that was not the issue here.
Main reason why I'm upset with "renewables" of course is, that they increase net fossil fuel consumption, ....
Again Zephir, you deny all the research studies on energy payback time?
Energy payback time is the time it takes to pay back ALL the energy that went into the project, from mining of minerals to make the steel to complete the full project being wind or solar or nuclear or hydro power etc.
Of all the research reports I have read the consesus for wind power projects is from 4 to 7 months payback time.
After this the wind project is CO2 negative and energy positive for the remaining life time.
