2 ms·
The power is also proportional to the swept area of the rotor disk, which increases by the square of the radius. This means the number of smaller windmills will
by gvb 10y ago
The power is also proportional to the swept area of the rotor disk, which increases by the square of the radius. This means the number of smaller windmills will have to go up by the square of the blade length.
12m blades have an area of 452m^2
60m blades have an area of 11,300m^2
At the same efficiency, you would need 25 times more windmills to generate the same power. Even if Cringely's theory is correct that smaller windmills can be made to be more efficient (doubtful), requiring an order of magnitude more physical hardware (towers, generators, etc.) is going to be a killer cost increase.
- bargl 10y agoDid you factor in the increase in running time? If you can run at almost 90% of the time then you get a 4 fold increase in output as compared to the bigger turbines. So instead of 25 times as many, it's 5 times as many which isn't that bad. That is going off the assumption that he'll get his optimal running time.
- beat 10y agoHis basic assumption is one I've often seen... that a lot of very smart engineers working in a fast-moving and big money industry all make the exact same design mistake, because they're lazy and stupid and follow conventional wisdom rather than clever new thinking. Which is sometimes true, but far more often, it's because those engineers know something you don't, because working on this problem is their job.