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Wooden towers to help cut cost of wind turbines
- Lammy 4y agoCan’t wait for California’s yearly fire season to take out a chunk of our generation capacity too.
- mattlondon 4y agoHow would a steel or concrete wind turbine fare if it was in the middle of a forest fire? I don't know but I would imagine that they would be fairly damaged or weakened as a result. For what it is worth though, they are building low/mid-rise buildings out of wood now and supposedly they can be better at handling fires than steel (since steel will fail catastrophically at a certain temp but wood chars as it burns, insulating the unburnt parts which retain structural strength for longer)
- toast0 4y agoIf a wind turbine is in the middle of a forest fire, something seriously wrong happened with site planning. A brush fire could happen though. Not sure how hot those get, especially if you regularly clear around the base of the turbines.
- aliswe 4y agoCan you elaborate?
- adgjlsfhk1 4y agotrees block wind. you normally put turbines in big fields or in top of mountains.
- hannob 4y agoThat hasn't been true for a while. Wind turbine towers are large enough these days that they can absolutely be built in a forest, and this is often happening. It's also crucial, because you simply need that space if you want to build wind energy everywhere - which obviously includes forest-rich areas.
- im3w1l 4y agoWouldn't a major difference be that a burning building spreads the fire, while a melting building does not? One thing I noticed while fiddling around in the fireplace is that if you have two logs neither of which burns very well - everytime you try to light one it goes out soon after - if you put them close together, they can support and warm each other enough to sustain an intense burn.
- adamlett 4y agoFrom what I’ve read, laminated timber is quite resistant to fire. In a fire, a layer of charcoal is generated on the outside which insulates the structural core, and it’s therefore more likely than reinforced concrete to maintain structural integrity.
- spacebeer 4y agoHaha, few weeks ago I was thinking if wooden wind turbines could become reality. Though I think blades could also be made of some wood composite
- dehrmann 4y ago> Though I think blades could also be made of some wood composite They already are. They're balsa and fiberglass.
- frosted-flakes 4y agoAre they really? I just assumed they were made of metal for some reason.
- dehrmann 4y agohttps://www.economist.com/the-americas/2021/01/30/the-wind-power-boom-set-off-a-scramble-for-balsa-wood-in-ecuador https://www.economist.com/the-americas/2021/01/30/the-wind-p...
- idiotsecant 4y agoThey sure would be easier to recycle after their normal lifetime if they were!
- coryrc 4y agoThey originally were, scroll to the 80s: https://gougeon.com/gougeon-history/ https://gougeon.com/gougeon-history/ Well, wood epoxy composite.
- LeoPanthera 4y agoIsn't a "wooden wind turbine" otherwise called a "windmill"? I think they've been around for a while. Not, admittedly, generating electricity.
- discreteevent 4y ago
- mattlondon 4y agoPresumably these would be on-shore only? Or could you have e.g. a steel base and then a wooden tower for an off-white turbine? At least in the UK, off-shore wind is utterly dominant.
- mkl 4y ago"Off-white"? Did you mean "off-shore", or is this something else that search engines are failing me on?
- mattlondon 4y agoAuto-correct gone wrong - off-shore was correct.
- coryrc 4y agoUK has about 35% more onshore capacity than offshore: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_the_United_Kingdom https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_the_United_Kin...
- mattlondon 4y agoAIUI there are essentially no new on-shore wind farms being built. So while there is existing capacity, the focus is now on deploying new farms off-shore. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/oct/05/boris-johnson-to-unveil-plan-to-power-all-uk-homes-with-wind-by-2030 https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/oct/05/boris-johns... and https://www.ukri.org/news-and-events/responding-to-climate-change/topical-stories/harnessing-offshore-wind/ https://www.ukri.org/news-and-events/responding-to-climate-c... have some more context.
- jl6 4y agoYes, onshore wind in the UK is big, but offshore has the potential to be very, very big.
- Gravityloss 4y ago
- epistasis 4y agoNot a huge deal for direct emissions, but if they cut costs even more, that's pretty great. As I understand it, as a no expert, the US is way behind when it comes to laminated timber. We need to update our building codes before it can be a major building material, and the regulatory bodies and the builders are all super slow to adopt new tech.
- WalterBright 4y agoI've talked to builders. They don't want to try anything new that: 1. they have to mount a major campaign to get a permit for from the building code people 2. would result in them getting sued because they did something different
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- Gravityloss 4y agoThat's why thorough testing needs to be done once and the results shared. Research and testing doesn't fit the startup model. It's instead close to open source or academic research. And that involves then institutions and cooperation...
- aliswe 4y agoi was interested in how the tower looks, seemingly its white from the outside but looks more or less untreated from the inside. this is the company making them, with images: https://modvion.com/ https://modvion.com/
- chgo1 4y agoWhy are the straps pixelated on https://modvion.com/the-product/ https://modvion.com/the-product/? Original: https://modvion.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2022/03/The-module.jpg https://modvion.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2022/03/The-m...
- nwatson 4y agoHmmm, my best guess is they're violating terms of use for the strap. Maybe the strap is a component of a system related to a competitor's product, and part of the licensing of that system stipulates no use for development of competing products.
- petee 4y agoWeird, and a little bit of the trashcan. My two guesses are: they thought it looked sloppy, and don't have photoshop foo; or the designer was asked to hide something sensitive but didn't hide the right thing, and also doesn't have photoshop foo.
- camtarn 4y agoThe one thing that I don't see mentioned on Modvion's page is the glue/resin that's used to laminate the timber. Resins are usually made from hydrocarbon feedstock, as far as I can tell, and that must take a bunch of energy - although presumably not as much as smelting steel? I'm guessing that is built into the calculation of 'The corresponding tower in wood emits 90% less emissions [than steel]'. I've wondered before if the reason the resin is never mentioned in these sort of laminated/engineered timber projects is that 'we built this structure entirely from wood!' sounds a lot better than 'we built this structure mostly using wood, but also using hydrocarbons'.
- credit_guy 4y agoWhat's wrong with hydrocarbons?
- carapace 4y agoNothing, if they're made from organic sources, if they're made from fossil fuels they're part of the problem. The carbon in organic hydrocarbons comes almost entirely from the atmosphere, rather than being pulled up from underground.
- credit_guy 4y ago> The carbon in organic hydrocarbons comes almost entirely from the atmosphere, rather than being pulled up from underground. Why does that matter? It is trapped carbon, it doesn't contribute to CO2 emissions.
- ZeroGravitas 4y agoIf it provides money to the people digging up fossil fuels then it contributes to CO2 emissions.
- carapace 4y agoI think credit_guy's right, if the carbon isn't going into the air it's not causing the Greenhouse Effect, eh? Petroleum is way too useful to stop using, even if we completely phase it out as an energy source. E.g. plastics, lots of pharmaceuticals, etc., there are too many useful products made from petrol.