14 ms·

I am always skeptical whenever I see a headline that says new technology X can be better, cheaper, or more efficient than existing technology Y, but then fails

I am always skeptical whenever I see a headline that says new technology X can be better, cheaper, or more efficient than existing technology Y, but then fails to show in the actual story how that is true with real numbers. This CAN produce 50% more energy than solar, but under what conditions? It seems like they should have a side-by-side chart of a solar and a wind setup that costs the same and show how much energy each one produced over the course of a year. Since nothing like that was in the article, I remain skeptical.

VBprogrammer 4y ago
Scepticism is sometimes a lazy response but in this case I think you are completely correct. Power from a wind turbine varies as the square of wind speed and the cube of diameter. Some places in the world have a lot more wind than others in general, someone once said that if the wind is a persistent annoyance where you live then a wind turbine is a good fit. Without specifying the conditions under which this is the case then its pointless.
- jakobnissen 4y ago
  It's the other way around - cube of wind speed. So wind speed and consistency is critical
  - VBprogrammer 4y ago
    I knew I shouldn't have gone by memory!
  - aitchnyu 4y ago
    Hmm, I can imagine a 2 meter blade intercepting 4x the area of the moving air column and capturing 4x the kinetic energy. KE is proportional to the square of velocity. I'm having trouble imagining how a column of air moving 2x the speed generates 8x the power. Does it mean 2x the speed mean 8x the energy that can be captured?
    - VBprogrammer 4y ago
      I can't actually remember the explanation but thinking about it E=1/2mv² but when the air is moving twice as fast the mass of air passing the wind turbine would also double. Sounds plausible at least.
      - jakobnissen 4y ago
        That's exactly the reason why. Kinetic power of each air molecule scales with the square of its speed, and the number of air molecules passing over the wing scales linearly with speed.
- ErneX 4y ago
  Agreed, but this has the advantage of being able to generate at night.
- solarkraft 4y ago
  But the lazy response is the totally right one. Oh, you have a super simple technology that is 10x better and 10x cheaper than what already exists? And you've been chugging along trying to bring it to market for 5 years and nobody wants to invest? Yeah, everyone else must be stupid or something ...
throwaway5752 4y ago
I am deleting this and all my other deletable comments on this topic.
- bumby 4y ago
  According to the article, Aeromine is the company making the claim that the design can produce 50% more energy. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect them to validate that claim.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- didgetmaster 4y ago
  "They" should be the author of this article who chose the headline but failed to back up the claim in the story. If you are going to say that anything is 50% better, then at least show one instance where that was actually achieved. If you invent a new engine that you claim gets 50% better gas mileage, then you better show at least one trip of a significant distance where it did it. I built a new database engine that I claim is at least 2x faster than Postgres at queries without needing separate indexes on the table columns. I don't claim it will always be that much faster on every query, but I show several instances where it is not only 2x faster, but 10x faster. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVICKCkWMZE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVICKCkWMZE Without a video like this, I would not expect anyone to take my claims seriously.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- pakitan 4y ago
  And that paper looks extremely fishy. You can see they tested with 10m/s and 15m/s. I definitely wouldn't want to live at place with average speeds like that. Then you need the wind to blow at a very specific angle of 10-15. And they finish it with > This analysis shows that AeroMINEs can be installed at $2,400/kW. Finally, at optimum performance AeroMINE systems can reach a LCOE of 10 C/kWh at just over 5 m/s average annual wind speed, which is highly competitive with a solar PV installation How is the "analysis" showing that? There is no cost analysis in the paper and they never tested speeds of 5 m/s.
gremlinsinc 4y ago
I think there needs to be a hybrid system for some redundancy when there's no sun or no wind, of course then maybe we need a water feature so we can have hydro when there's no sun and no wind..hehe.
- shagie 4y ago
  On a semi-serious note, you use surplus renewable energy to pump water up to a higher elevation and then use that when you need it. The energy storage capacity of pumped hydro can be very impressive. > The upper reservoir (Llyn Stwlan) and dam of the Ffestiniog Pumped Storage Scheme in North Wales. The lower power station has four water turbines which generate 360 MW of electricity within 60 seconds of the need arising. https://www.energy.gov/eere/water/pumped-storage-hydropower https://www.energy.gov/eere/water/pumped-storage-hydropower https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricit...
  - mcguire 4y ago
    Also see the Racoon Mountain Pumped Storage Plant (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raccoon_Mountain_Pumped-Storage_Plant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raccoon_Mountain_Pumped-Storag...): 1652 MW.
  - pydry 4y ago
    Snowy 2 can store 350 GWh - slightly more than 2 weeks' worth of energy from an average nuclear power plant.
    - Schroedingersat 4y ago
      That's fantastic news then. Wind + solar need about 2 days storage to be viable as the only power at > 90% So the $10bn on snowy plus $10bn AU of renewables can provide about the same contribution as 4GW or $40-60bn AU of nukes. You're really selling pumped hydro.
  - xyzzyz 4y ago
    These pumped storage plants are great. However, just like standard hydroelectric plants, they do not scale easily. You cannot build them just about anywhere, you need rather specific conditions, like suitable topography or availability of water. These won’t suffice for our storage needs.
RosanaAnaDana 4y ago
>but under what conditions? Windy ones? Seems as long as it could be a plug and play solution, it would be a great compliment to solar. Typically days with lower solar gain are more blowy.
- emiliobumachar 4y ago
  At night, of course.
  - RosanaAnaDana 4y ago
    I mean, we have batteries. Having enough storage to get through the night is basically solved. The bigger issue is a several day stretch of no solar where your batteries can't support. This would basically solve that allowing homes to effectively built to be off grid to begin with.
    - unicornhose 4y ago
      Hydrogen...? Gonna have to live real energy-cheap though. Not much heating/cooling, good insulation, less bathwater, less appliance use, as little driving as possible. Honestly relieved that computer and internet use is lower on the list, but eventually that too.
- didgetmaster 4y ago
  There are various areas where the wind blows quite a bit and bright, sunny days are not the norm. In those conditions, then maybe it makes total sense to install one of these systems instead of a typical solar rooftop installation. I would even expect an example where 50% more energy was actually achieved to be set up in one of those areas. Since no example was given, it makes you wonder how extreme the conditions have to be for this new technology to make sense.
  - RosanaAnaDana 4y ago
    Yeah, those are good considerations. I live on Oahu, on the dry side, and when it isn't blaring sunlight, its pretty much 5-15 sustained. Obviously, this a pretty cherry picked example, but its also an important one considering the cost of importing fuel to this island.
carlsborg 4y ago
Tested by Sandia National Lab. The idea from what I can tell is this thing co-exists with Solar on the rooftop because it sits at the edge.
avip 4y ago
>> but under what conditions? A windy night.
7952 4y ago
I don't think the comparison with solar is particularly useful and would always need to be made on a site by site basis. But it is true that some sites have better wind resource than solar. A better comparison is with the limitations of traditional turbines. Compared to a traditional turbine this design could eliminate shadow flicker, reduce structural loading on the roof, have different safety margins, increase the number of generators that can be placed and reduce visual impact. And they may have found a way to do that whilst maintaining a relatively large swept area. That is key as power output scales relative to swept area rather than height. I am usually sceptical about vertical axis but this seems more interesting than most designs. It could be a good fit for commercial buildings if installation is simple enough. And maybe could be placed temporarily on agricultural land during winter. And you could see the concept being applied in other ways such as with sun shields on buildings.

VBprogrammer 4y ago

Scepticism is sometimes a lazy response but in this case I think you are completely correct. Power from a wind turbine varies as the square of wind speed and the cube of diameter. Some places in the world have a lot more wind than others in general, someone once said that if the wind is a persistent annoyance where you live then a wind turbine is a good fit. Without specifying the conditions under which this is the case then its pointless.

jakobnissen 4y ago
It's the other way around - cube of wind speed. So wind speed and consistency is critical
- VBprogrammer 4y ago
  I knew I shouldn't have gone by memory!
- aitchnyu 4y ago
  Hmm, I can imagine a 2 meter blade intercepting 4x the area of the moving air column and capturing 4x the kinetic energy. KE is proportional to the square of velocity. I'm having trouble imagining how a column of air moving 2x the speed generates 8x the power. Does it mean 2x the speed mean 8x the energy that can be captured?
  - VBprogrammer 4y ago
    I can't actually remember the explanation but thinking about it E=1/2mv² but when the air is moving twice as fast the mass of air passing the wind turbine would also double. Sounds plausible at least.
    - jakobnissen 4y ago
      That's exactly the reason why. Kinetic power of each air molecule scales with the square of its speed, and the number of air molecules passing over the wing scales linearly with speed.
ErneX 4y ago
Agreed, but this has the advantage of being able to generate at night.
solarkraft 4y ago
But the lazy response is the totally right one. Oh, you have a super simple technology that is 10x better and 10x cheaper than what already exists? And you've been chugging along trying to bring it to market for 5 years and nobody wants to invest? Yeah, everyone else must be stupid or something ...

throwaway5752 4y ago

I am deleting this and all my other deletable comments on this topic.

bumby 4y ago
According to the article, Aeromine is the company making the claim that the design can produce 50% more energy. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect them to validate that claim.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
didgetmaster 4y ago
"They" should be the author of this article who chose the headline but failed to back up the claim in the story. If you are going to say that anything is 50% better, then at least show one instance where that was actually achieved. If you invent a new engine that you claim gets 50% better gas mileage, then you better show at least one trip of a significant distance where it did it. I built a new database engine that I claim is at least 2x faster than Postgres at queries without needing separate indexes on the table columns. I don't claim it will always be that much faster on every query, but I show several instances where it is not only 2x faster, but 10x faster. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVICKCkWMZE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVICKCkWMZE Without a video like this, I would not expect anyone to take my claims seriously.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
pakitan 4y ago
And that paper looks extremely fishy. You can see they tested with 10m/s and 15m/s. I definitely wouldn't want to live at place with average speeds like that. Then you need the wind to blow at a very specific angle of 10-15. And they finish it with > This analysis shows that AeroMINEs can be installed at $2,400/kW. Finally, at optimum performance AeroMINE systems can reach a LCOE of 10 C/kWh at just over 5 m/s average annual wind speed, which is highly competitive with a solar PV installation How is the "analysis" showing that? There is no cost analysis in the paper and they never tested speeds of 5 m/s.

gremlinsinc 4y ago

I think there needs to be a hybrid system for some redundancy when there's no sun or no wind, of course then maybe we need a water feature so we can have hydro when there's no sun and no wind..hehe.

shagie 4y ago
On a semi-serious note, you use surplus renewable energy to pump water up to a higher elevation and then use that when you need it. The energy storage capacity of pumped hydro can be very impressive. > The upper reservoir (Llyn Stwlan) and dam of the Ffestiniog Pumped Storage Scheme in North Wales. The lower power station has four water turbines which generate 360 MW of electricity within 60 seconds of the need arising. https://www.energy.gov/eere/water/pumped-storage-hydropower https://www.energy.gov/eere/water/pumped-storage-hydropower https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricit...
- mcguire 4y ago
  Also see the Racoon Mountain Pumped Storage Plant (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raccoon_Mountain_Pumped-Storage_Plant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raccoon_Mountain_Pumped-Storag...): 1652 MW.
- pydry 4y ago
  Snowy 2 can store 350 GWh - slightly more than 2 weeks' worth of energy from an average nuclear power plant.
  - Schroedingersat 4y ago
    That's fantastic news then. Wind + solar need about 2 days storage to be viable as the only power at > 90% So the $10bn on snowy plus $10bn AU of renewables can provide about the same contribution as 4GW or $40-60bn AU of nukes. You're really selling pumped hydro.
- xyzzyz 4y ago
  These pumped storage plants are great. However, just like standard hydroelectric plants, they do not scale easily. You cannot build them just about anywhere, you need rather specific conditions, like suitable topography or availability of water. These won’t suffice for our storage needs.

RosanaAnaDana 4y ago

>but under what conditions? Windy ones? Seems as long as it could be a plug and play solution, it would be a great compliment to solar. Typically days with lower solar gain are more blowy.

emiliobumachar 4y ago
At night, of course.
- RosanaAnaDana 4y ago
  I mean, we have batteries. Having enough storage to get through the night is basically solved. The bigger issue is a several day stretch of no solar where your batteries can't support. This would basically solve that allowing homes to effectively built to be off grid to begin with.
  - unicornhose 4y ago
    Hydrogen...? Gonna have to live real energy-cheap though. Not much heating/cooling, good insulation, less bathwater, less appliance use, as little driving as possible. Honestly relieved that computer and internet use is lower on the list, but eventually that too.
didgetmaster 4y ago
There are various areas where the wind blows quite a bit and bright, sunny days are not the norm. In those conditions, then maybe it makes total sense to install one of these systems instead of a typical solar rooftop installation. I would even expect an example where 50% more energy was actually achieved to be set up in one of those areas. Since no example was given, it makes you wonder how extreme the conditions have to be for this new technology to make sense.
- RosanaAnaDana 4y ago
  Yeah, those are good considerations. I live on Oahu, on the dry side, and when it isn't blaring sunlight, its pretty much 5-15 sustained. Obviously, this a pretty cherry picked example, but its also an important one considering the cost of importing fuel to this island.

carlsborg 4y ago

Tested by Sandia National Lab. The idea from what I can tell is this thing co-exists with Solar on the rooftop because it sits at the edge.

avip 4y ago

>> but under what conditions? A windy night.

7952 4y ago

I don't think the comparison with solar is particularly useful and would always need to be made on a site by site basis. But it is true that some sites have better wind resource than solar. A better comparison is with the limitations of traditional turbines. Compared to a traditional turbine this design could eliminate shadow flicker, reduce structural loading on the roof, have different safety margins, increase the number of generators that can be placed and reduce visual impact. And they may have found a way to do that whilst maintaining a relatively large swept area. That is key as power output scales relative to swept area rather than height. I am usually sceptical about vertical axis but this seems more interesting than most designs. It could be a good fit for commercial buildings if installation is simple enough. And maybe could be placed temporarily on agricultural land during winter. And you could see the concept being applied in other ways such as with sun shields on buildings.