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The Birmingham Blade: geographically tailored urban wind turbine designed by AI
- ggm 2y agoWhy would you release a press write up of a new blade design and not include a picture of the blade design?
- gadtfly 2y agoI think the thing behind the group photo at the top is it.
- gus_massa 2y agoFirst I thought your comment was a joke about the clock tower, but then I realized the blade was the 6 dark gray rectangles just behind the team. (I initially thought the rectangles were a fountain or sculpture or something.)
- theGeatZhopa 2y agoIt's designed to be invisible and include itself into the geographic conditions :) You even didn't notice it. Job well done!
- Animats 2y ago"... a solution to one of the most pressing issues in the green energy landscape – how to produce small-scale, affordable, generators of clean wind energy." Wrong problem, unless you're in an isolated area. There are already good wind turbines for isolated plants. That's more a ruggedness problem than an efficiency problem. There are good reasons wind turbines have become huge. The big ones are far more cost-effective, partly because wind speeds are higher around 100-200m from the ground. 1970s wind turbines were in the 10KW-20KW range. Pacheco Pass in California had row after row of them. Now, 1MW is small, and the little ones have been removed. Here's a video of the thing.[1] No info about how much power they get out, but it's probably under a kilowatt. Three standard solar planels will produce more than that, and would fit in about the same ground space. This is a decorative object, not a power source. It's in the same category as energy-generating sidewalks.[2] These are Rule of Cool devices, not useful energy sources. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=StLyTZazgVE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=StLyTZazgVE [2] https://www.archdaily.com/911965/sidewalks-that-generate-energy-through-the-steps/5c6e8818284dd151290006bb-sidewalks-that-generate-energy-through-the-steps-image https://www.archdaily.com/911965/sidewalks-that-generate-ene...
- porker 2y agoI agree, however our 5kW solar roof in southern England has barely generated 1kWh/day since October. Apart from that still period in November we've got wind, generally 10-15mph at roof height. A feasible home wind turbine would be a good addition in winter. Or buying a share of a massive wind turbine, but the maths of Ripple Energy have never stacked up when I've looked at it.
- consp 2y agoLooking at urban landscapes in Europe in general I expect diminishing returns with everyone placing a useful windmill. And it would be ugly as hell no matter what (imagine every roof having one of these monstrosities).
- baq 2y agoHello from 50-55 degrees latitude where we get our heads blown off by the jet stream all. the. time.
- fasthandle 2y agoYours might be HN's first comment from South Georgia!
- baq 2y agoI’ll learn to not mix those two sometime in the next decade. Pinky promise
- odux 2y agoPop culture and mainstream politics affect people’s opinions in a weird way. Only in the USA and some part of the western world, people see wind turbines as “ugly”. Coming from another part where wind turbines are picking up very fast, the words I have heard are “amazing” and “elegant”.
- teruakohatu 2y ago> turbine designed by AI I wonder what definition of AI they are using. It seems anything that uses mathematics is now AI.
- Zanfa 2y agoSome sort of genetic algorithm would be my guess.
- Garlef 2y agoSeems like it - From the article: > Our evolutionary simulations have confirmed the Birmingham Blade is up to seven times more efficient than existing designs in Birmingham’s wind speeds and urban environment. Pretty good idea. From what I've read, they iterated through 2000 simulations over the course of a few weeks.
- SonicScrub 2y agoCool stuff for sure! But cheeky comments like this (and others I personally have made in this thread) are to do with the "AI" branding aspect of a thing that is just bog standard mechanical engineering work. Hooking up optimizers to simulation work is far from new. But that's being called "AI" now to drive news article clicks (and presumably to fish for investor capital).
- cesarb 2y ago> Hooking up optimizers to simulation work is far from new. But that's being called "AI" now It that being called "AI" just now, or has it been called "AI" since the beginning? A lot of the optimization algorithms we take for granted nowadays originated from AI research.
- JimDabell 2y agoGenetic algorithms were being called AI back in the 90s.
- probablypower 2y agoThe article didn't do enough literature review, this isn't a new idea: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960148114006089 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S096014811...
- padjo 2y agoUrban wind turbines seem like a terrible way of producing energy. Low wind speeds, lots of people to disturb with noise and flicker, turbulent flows due to buildings. Hard to see how a bunch of these could ever compete with a single gigantic 6MW turbine out in the countryside
- __alexs 2y agoThey are terrible. Source: I worked for one of the UKs highest profile and now bankrupt micro wind generation companies for years. Pros: Less need for moving power a long way. (This is a lie because you can't generate enough power in the urban environment anyway.) Cons: Maintenance is much more expensive. Less wind. More turbulence.
- padjo 2y agoHah, thanks for confirming my suspicions with professional experience.
- miohtama 2y agoWhat does AI mean in this context? Is it more than running scikit-optimizer on the model?
- metalman 2y agoAll wind turbines must meet the criteria of bieng extream service 100% duty cycle machines. The competing technology is solar pv, which by bieng a solid state generator with no moving parts is winning ,hands down in all small scale instalations, other than places where there is not enough light, and very very plentiful wind, artic, ant artic, certain mountain research stations and some marine/island/extream rugged coast areas. Whatever scam is in the wrks in Birmingham, should cost someone, there tenure....
- ionwake 2y agoAh Birmingham. A place full of simple well meaning folk, where little is done, and a few misplaced geniuses trying to make ends meet. Much lovelier people than in london, but a backward place full of well intentioned mistakes. Sort of like the play area of an old fashioned rest home. Really relaxed, but nothing going on. A purgatory if you will.
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- markvdb 2y agoSmall scale wind would be ideal for winter in our remote northern place. We have the space. Except the energy returns aren't there, and maintaining the moving parts is not trivial.
- jacknews 2y ago"Birmingham’s relatively low wind speeds " Is there a clue in there somewhere? IMHO we should carefully pick our climate/energy fights, and install whatever tech is most appropriate, even if that's 'nothing, here, build a transmission line to the irish sea offshore wind farms instead'. I do like the cleverness of custom parametric solutions, but also hate them for their specific, non-reusable, design-overhead aspects. Just deploy a few more cheap, modular, repairable, replaceable, generic units, instead of the costly custom designs.