4 ms·
I wonder if that's really the right direction to go. Admittedly, the gains in output are impressive for comparatively small increases in size (I think there's a
by choeger 5y ago
I wonder if that's really the right direction to go. Admittedly, the gains in output are impressive for comparatively small increases in size (I think there's a cubic growth somewhere). But the main problem with offshore wind energy currently seems to be installation. It might be economically better to produce more small turbines and install them much more efficiently instead of doing fewer, more complicated installations. One could, for instance, create 6MW floating in a large factory near the cost turbines and literally ship them to their location.
- 542458 5y agoI mean, we have small wind turbines already but the industry keeps moving to larger ones. That says to me that the economics favour the fewer-but-large approach. I can see why this would be - it has to be nontrivial to anchor an object of any size to the sea floor (not to mention maintenance and inspection) and doing that ten times at a large scales sounds easier than doing it hundreds of times at smaller scales.
- codeulike 5y agoThe article states the opposite - that fewer bigger turbines are overall cheaper to install than many smaller ones to reach the same capacity No wonder these things keep getting bigger; the bigger they get, the better they seem to work, and the fewer expensive installation projects need to be undertaken to develop the same capacity
- ClumsyPilot 5y agoArea = pi * radius ^ 2. Three time bigger turbine sweeps 9 times larger area / volume of air, and gives 9 times more power Faster winds are accessible higher up, and power that can be extracted from the wind goes up as velocity cubed (V3)