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Are wind turbines really viable with Mars's atmosphere?

by enkid 5y ago

ceejayoz 5y ago
Not very. https://www.nasa.gov/centers/ames/news/releases/2001/01_72AR.html https://www.nasa.gov/centers/ames/news/releases/2001/01_72AR... > "Only during dust storms on Mars is there enough wind energy to operate a wind turbine," said Michael Flynn, another NASA Ames scientist. On Earth about 10 meters (33 feet) per second wind speed is needed to make electricity with wind turbines; on Mars about 30 meters (98 feet) is needed because of the extremely thin air, according to Bubenheim.
- qayxc 5y ago
  Incidentally, though, during storms is when power is needed most, as solar won't work very well during that time.
  - ceejayoz 5y ago
    Sure, but a nuclear plant solves that issue without sitting around being useless 90% of the time.
    - qayxc 5y ago
      But do you have the necessary infrastructure to maintain a nuclear reactor on Mars? As the article points out, the device required significant manpower, had reliability issues and wasn't cost effective. While it'd be relatively simple to build wind power locally once infrastructure is in place, the same cannot be said for nuclear power on Mars. Autonomy and self-reliance are critical factors for outposts on Mars - a point that cannot be overstated.
      - fastball 5y ago
        We've made a lot of improvements to nuclear reactor design since the 60s, and potentially we'll have working fusion by the time we have a colony on Mars, which would probably be the best solution (can easily get H from water and then would have He which is useful). I can't imagine a viable self-sufficient Mars colony that doesn't involve a lot of manpower anyway (I'm talking thousands of people).
        qayxc 5y ago
        Well a working fusion reactor would render any current power source obsolete anyway. I wasn't necessarily thinking about complete self-sufficiency, just the fact that it might take up to 2½ years to get replacement parts.
        fastball 5y ago
        Right but without complete self-sufficiency that applies to any power generation method. The only viable solution is to have enough raw material and redundancy on Mars that you can recycle things if something fails. e.g. have multiple redundant reactors, if one breaks you fix it, if it can't be fixed you dismantle it and start using the parts to build a new one, taking parts from other things when necessary and using parts you can't use for other things. Basically there needs to be enough "stuff" on Mars that you can use stuff to make other stuff in perpetuity. To my mind that would require enough diversity of equipment that you'd want on the order of 1000 / 10k people. And of course Mars is not a totally barren world – another big part of the solution is to build things with materials that can be gathered on Mars.
      - ClumsyPilot 5y ago
        We have since deployed many nuclear reactors in space, with totally different reliability, so those should be used as reference. They can be packed on a rocket, launched, turned on and work for years unattended ( they powered societ radar satellites) Cost is dominated by weight in space, and a large wind turbine needs hundreds to thousands of tons of concrete for foundations - are those going to be brought from Earth? Can you make concrete on Mars?
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
        petre 5y ago
        Pray that the rocket doesn't blow up spreading nuclear fuel all over the place. Here is a Soviet "success story" involving a nuclear reactor on a sat. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kosmos_954 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kosmos_954 Concrete would need cement made with limestone and massive amounts of heat and water which is scrace on Mars.
        ClumsyPilot 5y ago
        Nuclear fuel that has never been "fired up" in a reactor is almost hamless - its just uranium. You could have it under your bed and you'd be fine, just don't eat it. In this case the reactor would only be started once it arrives on mars.
        petre 5y ago
        I know, that's why I did not say radioactive waste.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
qayxc 5y ago
Let's do a simple calculation, shall we? Wind power is calculated by A * v³ * ρ * η A is the area, e.g. π/2 * r² for horizontal axis designs, ρ is the air density and η is the total system efficiency (limited to <59% and safe to assume to be >0.4 for modern systems) and v is the wind speed. Mars' atmosphere is about 1% of Earth's atmosphere in density. Given a wind speed of 7 m/s² (the optimal wind speed for most modern wind turbines), on Mars we'd get only 1% of the power we'd get on Earth. A 100m installation (~2.6MW on Earth) would deliver only 21kW on Mars. The average wind speed during a year is slightly higher on Mars, though, at 10 m/s² [0]. The average power output thus would be about 61kW. The most important time, however, would be dust storms, which render solar useless. Wind speeds have been recorded to exceed 30 m/s² during dust storms. Assuming we can efficiently shield the generator from the dust, the power output would peak at 1.7MW. A more conservative 17 m/s² for dust storms still yields about 308kW. 100m class wind turbines, while rare on Earth (e.g. GE Haliade-X [1]) would be easier to build on Mars given the significantly lower gravity. Wind turbines would work on Mars and have great synergy with solar - when solar doesn't work (e.g. during dust storms), wind turbines would be most efficient. Wind power wouldn't be the first choice for powering a Mars station, though. As can be seen above, installations would have to be pretty significant in size to deliver noteworthy amounts of power. [0] https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/factsheet/marsfact.html https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/factsheet/marsfact.htm... [1] https://www.ge.com/renewableenergy/wind-energy/offshore-wind/haliade-x-offshore-turbine https://www.ge.com/renewableenergy/wind-energy/offshore-wind...
- HPsquared 5y ago
  A 100m wind turbine would require a lot of material and/or energy to construct, though - some of the materials would have to be processed locally, I wonder what the embodied energy of such a structure would be, and how long it would take to be net energy positive.
- Denvercoder9 5y ago
  I don't think 100m wind turbines on Mars are feasible anytime soon. Even Starship has only a 18m high cargo area, so even if we assume that blades are assembled out of two parts in-place, you get only a 40m radius. That reduces the average power to just 10 kW. Furthermore, I think your average 10 m/s is an overestimation -- the source gives it as the high limit outside of dust storms.

Are wind turbines really viable with Mars's atmosphere?

by enkid 5y ago

Are wind turbines really viable with Mars's atmosphere?

Not very. https://www.nasa.gov/centers/ames/news/releases/2001/01_72AR.html https://www.nasa.gov/centers/ames/news/releases/2001/01_72AR... > "Only during dust storms on Mars is there enough wind energy to operate a wind turbine," said Michael Flynn, another NASA Ames scientist. On Earth about 10 meters (33 feet) per second wind speed is needed to make electricity with wind turbines; on Mars about 30 meters (98 feet) is needed because of the extremely thin air, according to Bubenheim.

qayxc 5y ago
Incidentally, though, during storms is when power is needed most, as solar won't work very well during that time.
- ceejayoz 5y ago
  Sure, but a nuclear plant solves that issue without sitting around being useless 90% of the time.
  - qayxc 5y ago
    But do you have the necessary infrastructure to maintain a nuclear reactor on Mars? As the article points out, the device required significant manpower, had reliability issues and wasn't cost effective. While it'd be relatively simple to build wind power locally once infrastructure is in place, the same cannot be said for nuclear power on Mars. Autonomy and self-reliance are critical factors for outposts on Mars - a point that cannot be overstated.
    - fastball 5y ago
      We've made a lot of improvements to nuclear reactor design since the 60s, and potentially we'll have working fusion by the time we have a colony on Mars, which would probably be the best solution (can easily get H from water and then would have He which is useful). I can't imagine a viable self-sufficient Mars colony that doesn't involve a lot of manpower anyway (I'm talking thousands of people).
      - qayxc 5y ago
        Well a working fusion reactor would render any current power source obsolete anyway. I wasn't necessarily thinking about complete self-sufficiency, just the fact that it might take up to 2½ years to get replacement parts.
        fastball 5y ago
        Right but without complete self-sufficiency that applies to any power generation method. The only viable solution is to have enough raw material and redundancy on Mars that you can recycle things if something fails. e.g. have multiple redundant reactors, if one breaks you fix it, if it can't be fixed you dismantle it and start using the parts to build a new one, taking parts from other things when necessary and using parts you can't use for other things. Basically there needs to be enough "stuff" on Mars that you can use stuff to make other stuff in perpetuity. To my mind that would require enough diversity of equipment that you'd want on the order of 1000 / 10k people. And of course Mars is not a totally barren world – another big part of the solution is to build things with materials that can be gathered on Mars.
    - ClumsyPilot 5y ago
      We have since deployed many nuclear reactors in space, with totally different reliability, so those should be used as reference. They can be packed on a rocket, launched, turned on and work for years unattended ( they powered societ radar satellites) Cost is dominated by weight in space, and a large wind turbine needs hundreds to thousands of tons of concrete for foundations - are those going to be brought from Earth? Can you make concrete on Mars?
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - petre 5y ago
        Pray that the rocket doesn't blow up spreading nuclear fuel all over the place. Here is a Soviet "success story" involving a nuclear reactor on a sat. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kosmos_954 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kosmos_954 Concrete would need cement made with limestone and massive amounts of heat and water which is scrace on Mars.
        ClumsyPilot 5y ago
        Nuclear fuel that has never been "fired up" in a reactor is almost hamless - its just uranium. You could have it under your bed and you'd be fine, just don't eat it. In this case the reactor would only be started once it arrives on mars.
        petre 5y ago
        I know, that's why I did not say radioactive waste.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

qayxc 5y ago

Let's do a simple calculation, shall we? Wind power is calculated by A * v³ * ρ * η A is the area, e.g. π/2 * r² for horizontal axis designs, ρ is the air density and η is the total system efficiency (limited to <59% and safe to assume to be >0.4 for modern systems) and v is the wind speed. Mars' atmosphere is about 1% of Earth's atmosphere in density. Given a wind speed of 7 m/s² (the optimal wind speed for most modern wind turbines), on Mars we'd get only 1% of the power we'd get on Earth. A 100m installation (~2.6MW on Earth) would deliver only 21kW on Mars. The average wind speed during a year is slightly higher on Mars, though, at 10 m/s² [0]. The average power output thus would be about 61kW. The most important time, however, would be dust storms, which render solar useless. Wind speeds have been recorded to exceed 30 m/s² during dust storms. Assuming we can efficiently shield the generator from the dust, the power output would peak at 1.7MW. A more conservative 17 m/s² for dust storms still yields about 308kW. 100m class wind turbines, while rare on Earth (e.g. GE Haliade-X [1]) would be easier to build on Mars given the significantly lower gravity. Wind turbines would work on Mars and have great synergy with solar - when solar doesn't work (e.g. during dust storms), wind turbines would be most efficient. Wind power wouldn't be the first choice for powering a Mars station, though. As can be seen above, installations would have to be pretty significant in size to deliver noteworthy amounts of power. [0] https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/factsheet/marsfact.html https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/factsheet/marsfact.htm... [1] https://www.ge.com/renewableenergy/wind-energy/offshore-wind/haliade-x-offshore-turbine https://www.ge.com/renewableenergy/wind-energy/offshore-wind...

HPsquared 5y ago
A 100m wind turbine would require a lot of material and/or energy to construct, though - some of the materials would have to be processed locally, I wonder what the embodied energy of such a structure would be, and how long it would take to be net energy positive.
Denvercoder9 5y ago
I don't think 100m wind turbines on Mars are feasible anytime soon. Even Starship has only a 18m high cargo area, so even if we assume that blades are assembled out of two parts in-place, you get only a 40m radius. That reduces the average power to just 10 kW. Furthermore, I think your average 10 m/s is an overestimation -- the source gives it as the high limit outside of dust storms.