- cross-posted to:
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- cross-posted to:
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- [email protected]
"Having fewer total turbines means a wind farm could space them farther apart, avoiding airflow interference. The turbines would be nearly twice as tall, so they’ll reach a higher, gustier part of the atmosphere. And big turbines don’t need to spin as quickly, so they would make economic sense in places with average wind speeds around 5 meters per second… "
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Shipping them in multiple pieces and reassembling them on-site won’t work because the joints would create weak spots.
Not qualified to have any opinion on this topic, but from a laymans perspective that sounds like an easier problem to solve than developing a gargantuan steel T-Rex with wings just for deployment of blades?
The forces on a blade of this size are truly staggering, when you think about how long a lever they are attached to only one side, its clear that the issue is not only strength at the seam of a proposed joint but also the impact any additional weight will have on the junction of the blade with the rotor. They are pushing the limits of what high pressure molded composites can handle at these scales, but still some companies have developed multi-piece turbine blades.
Generally the biggest downsides to multi-component blade technologies are that they cost substantially more, and they have lower operating lifespan, a bad double whammy for the profitability of a windmill.
Basically the cargo plain developers are banking on the cost per flight of each turbine blade being less than the cost of building, installing, maintaining, and replacing multi-part blades over the lifetime of the windmill, and as of now this economics pencils out. Who knows though, tech changes fast, what I wonder is whether portable blade foundries might not be possible to build the blades on-site for large windmill projects.
If you want to get into the nitty gritty I found this presentation very helpful: https://windmillstech.com/wind-turbine-design/
we already know how to build bigger planes. the lockheed CL-1201 design study is from like the 60s.
I’m no Boeing engineer, but the design on the thumbnail does not look airworthy at all, the wings are too small and probably too far rearward to generate the necessary lift. And only 4 engines? Look up pictures of the late An-225 for an actual superheavy airlifter.
Did you read the article? It addresses those items.
Read? An article?
You need wing area and engine power to carry weight, not to carry space. That plane is made to carry extremely lightweight wind turbine blades that take up a lot of space but are very low density.
Yes, if you fill that payload area with iron, it won’t fly. But if you use it for its intended purpose, the wing area is large enough.
The An-225 was designed to carry 253 tons about 2500 miles. This aircraft needs to carry just 75 tons, and could get away with about a 1000 mile range.
This is not supposed to be a superheavy airlifter. Supersized, yes, but wind turbine blades are very light for their size.
Lmao, it’s like a flying T-Rex.
Didn’t realise they would be transported by plane, only ever seen them going out by barge.
I’ve seen one transported by ground vehicles. It was a humbling experience.
They can’t be, yet, as the article points out - they’re building a new plane
They are already building wind turbines, this is just about bigger ones. Would have thought they are assembled by where ever you load the barge
But do we really need bigger turbines? It seems the ones we have work fine.
“GigaWind turbines would decrease the cost of energy by 20 to 35 percent while increasing output by 10 to 20 percent” - efficiency matters
