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Wind turbine blade transportation challenges
- litbear2022 1y agoA darkly humorous idea that significantly increases the carbon emission cost of wind turbine construction
- Kaibeezy 1y agoWere we not getting airships for this purpose? The ones with a butt? A diagram comparing it to the 747s and oil tankers mentioned in the text would have been appreciated. OK, looked it up. 108m v 72m. Kvikk diagram, pretty much to scale: , || WR ============ ‘ || , \\ 747 ======== ‘ //
- ricksunny 1y ago(what is a kvikk diagram - google isn’t helping here)
- skyyler 1y agowild guess: a distorted "quick"
- Kaibeezy 1y agoBrain glitch. I’d just read this - https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20250909-kvikk-lunsj-the-controversial-sweet-that-fuels-norwegians https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20250909-kvikk-lunsj-the-...
- ricksunny 1y agoI hope you'll have just coined a new diagram name: Kvikk = simple ASCII diagram that trivially illuminates a technical matter =) bonus points that mainstream LLM’s can trivially train on them and produce them. =)
- Kaibeezy 1y agoKool and thx. 72 and 108 divide cleanly by 9, so it’s pretty dang accurate too.
- Agentlien 1y agoMy last name is Kvick (Swedish for quick) and I was delighted to see a variation on it used for something so cool as those diagrams. Please make it a thing.
- Kaibeezy 1y agoFun. Will try. Perhaps we will hear from some of these people sharing a cognate surname: Kvikk Norwegian Kvick Swedish Kvik Danish Kvikur Faroese Kvikur Icelandic Kwiek Dutch Quick German Kwik Frisian Quick English
- Agentlien 1y agoI at least know that there's a Norwegian chocolate bar called Kvikk and a Danish kitchen design company called Kvik. In Dutch (which I happen to be fluent in) Kwiek is sometimes used in writing but I've never heard it spoken.
- eastbound 1y agoIn height, they have a 24m limit because it’s a common threshold in airports from which special studies must be done. Funny thing: The A380 was 24.1m (its other dimensions also required extra studies, let alone the catering difficulties related to its huge passenger count). Maybe wind turbines will cause larger planes which will cause an A380 come back ;)
- brikym 1y agoHere is my armchair engineering design. The blades are already wings so they get bolted on and become the wings of the plane and can rotate (or add canards if that's too hard). The engines are at the back. \ || || || || || || || \ || == || \ ============> == || / / || || || || || || || || / But then how does it get back home? Attach some 70m blades as wings. What about the asymmetry of the blades? You can't have two blades from the same wind turbine as one would have the leading edge facing backwards. Every second wind turbine would have to rotate in the opposite direction for this to work. It would probably work as well as da Vinci's helicopter but it's an interesting thought experiment.
- antod 1y agoAnother problem is that the blade are twisted like propeller rather than straight like a wing. Which then leads to.... Why not a giant helicopter? Then you don't need to worry about the symmetry.
- adrianN 1y agoI would love to see the math on how fast you'd need to spin the blades to lift the engine capable of spinning them. In normal operation they spin quite slowly, but due to their lengths the tips reach some ludicrous speeds.
- viraptor 1y agoOr two helicopters carrying the suspended ends of the blade.
- Gravityloss 1y agoExactly. VTOL is also great as you can deliver the blades really close to construction location. If you installed small props at the tips of the blades, you wouldn't need any torque rotor. I don't know if you still need the variable pitch mechanism or could you lock the blades to one pitch for spin-transport. Helicopter efficiency is quite terrible though so long distance travel would require constant aerial refueling. I guess you could have a probe in the hub. What could go wrong?
- p1mrx 1y agoSadly, an LLM rejected my idea of building an enormous helicopter drone from wind turbine blades. They can't spin fast enough to generate sufficient lift.
- IshKebab 1y agoWhy is that sad? That's way outside LLM training sets.
- p1mrx 1y agoIt's a fairly straightforward physics question, and Gemini Pro thinks the thrust to weight ratio is too low, by more than an order of magnitude, even before adding the weight of the frame and propulsion system.
- tim333 1y agoStraightforward physics suggests the lift is a function of how fast you spin them. I'm sure with a fast enough spin you could get enough lift. Maybe rocket engines on the tips?
- chopin 1y agoThe tips need to stay subsonic. A bigger rotor must turn slower. AFAIK the tips of current wind turbines are already close to this limit.
- tim333 1y agoStill subsonic speeds can produce a lot of lift. I mean jet aircraft weighing 200 tons lift off at about 160 mph. But googling wing tip thrust, jet engines are probably more practical than rockets.
- eightysixfour 1y agoAlternative, can you make a turbine blade that can be an (inefficient) wing when bolted to a fuselage and engine? Effectively fly the blade there, using it as a lifting surface area.
- serf 1y agoseems silly to embrace the design of a plane that is made to move 2 static length blades when even longer blades have been shown to continue the trend of cheaper MW. the article mentions that 3d printing is a no-go due to the facility needed to print the blade in -- seems like it'd be better to pursue an unfolding container factory with a printer in it and how to transport that thing with conventional craft than to go all-in on a new unproven airframe made for very specific parts. plus that way the length of the product isn't set in stone, either. I say this as a total layman -- i'm just taking the articles stated reason for no 3d printing and running with it.
- mjd 1y agoMaybe the idea is: gain expertise in making, loading, flying, and landing 100m planes this year, and try 150m planes next year.
- ttoinou 1y ago“It is faster to make a four-inch mirror then a six-inch mirror than to make a six-inch mirror." https://wiki.c2.com/?TelescopeRule https://wiki.c2.com/?TelescopeRule
- mjd 1y agoThis reminds me of an excellent series of lectures I once attended about how you can't have practical skyscrapers without inventing the elevator, you can't have practical automobiles without inventing the windshield wiper, and you can't have practical electric lighting without inventing a whole lot of power generation and distribution technology, or efficient vacuum pumps. Every big invention depends on hundreds or thousands of other ones you don't hear as much about.
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago> you can't have practical electric lighting without inventing a whole lot of power generation and distribution technology Didn’t lighting cause power generation and distribution?
- zdragnar 1y agoSure, but it starts with the impractical version to kick off the other side. The hearthstone house demonstrated the value of a central power source homes could draw from. The electric lights at the time were not much better than candles in terms of output, but it generated interest enough to get more people on board. Now, electric lighting is present everywhere, and a practical solution for all but mass agriculture (where the sun remains more efficient).
- amflare 1y agoYou need to be able to distribute power to an area more than once
- ACCount37 1y agoBefore there was technology for power generation and distribution at scale, "you can use electricity to make light" was a mere curio. Fit to be showcased at fairs, but not something that could be put to practical use. The first arc lights were made in early 19th century - not long after the invention of voltaic pile made electric power readily obtainable in a lab. But it wasn't until late 19th century that arc lights began to be used as street lights. Why? Because dynamos and alternators didn't exist in early 19th century. They only became usable for industrial power generation in the late 19th century. Only when both power generators and arc lights were viable, electric lighting became practical. And electric lighting becoming practical has, in turn, caused electric power to be deployed at an ever-increasing scales, and spurned further investment into electric light, generators and transmission line technology. The invention of incandecent lights fit for household use and the war of the currents were both downstream from better power generation technology.
- NullPrefix 1y agocraft the blades onsite?
- 3eb7988a1663 1y agoI assumed this was already being done for the massive offshore models. Setup some kind of minimal plant on shore so you minimize transportation to the boats.
- masklinn 1y agoThey're giant single-piece layered composite structures. Crafting the blade onsite means you have to build then unbuild a giant plant next to each wind farm.
- nielsbot 1y agoYou could transport your plant in a huge airpl.. nevermind.
- lkbm 1y ago> Lundstrom says 3D-printed blades will never happen, since it would require a large, sophisticated manufacturing facility to be built at every wind farm.
- nielsbot 1y agoI guess this is easier than setting up a production facility in the target country...
- comrade1234 1y agoGenius idea - use the blades as the wings for the plane. They're close enough in shape. :)
- ReptileMan 1y agowith one wing pushing up, the other down it will be a fun flight.
- jauntywundrkind 1y agoBuild two windmills that spin opposite directions. I wish I could source it, it someone told a story of a contract no one could meet for dropping in either some heavy equipment to a site or maybe windmill parts? It was a small site and it seemed impossible to land them take off... The winning bidder for the contract just landed the plane then abandoned it. Not sure what else you'd do if your blades are your plane!
- ortusdux 1y agoIt's common to abandon mining equipment at the bottom of the mine, or have tunnel boring machines dig their own tomb. The machines are often custom made, and removal would cost more than their EOL value. https://www.untappedcities.com/the-200-ton-tunnel-boring-machine-buried-below-park-avenue-used-for-east-side-access/ https://www.untappedcities.com/the-200-ton-tunnel-boring-mac...
- xnx 1y agoGenius-er idea(?) - use the blades to make a helicopter that flies to the site and drives back.
- silvestrov 1y agoHow do you fly back?
- Krasnol 1y agoYou don't. The rest of the plane is the pillar of course.
- alright2565 1y agoThe big question is why not build the turbines offshore? The article briefly mentions this, and that the off-shore blades are over twice the length of the blades this airplane is designed for, but it doesn't look at all at the economics of either option.
- bluGill 1y agoOffshore is not a problem, they build a factory on the coast and put it on a boat. On shore is a problem - there is a lot of the world where people live that isn't close to a sea. Iowa has more than 6000 despite being hundreds of miles from the nearest sea. (most aren't even close to the Mississippi river)
- Analemma_ 1y agoI'm curious why they went with fixed-wing aircraft and not airships for this purpose. Wouldn't an airship work much better for delivering blades to e.g. the top of a mountain ridge? Or is the plan to fly the blades to the nearest flat area and then drive the rest of the way, without having to worry about tunnels and overpasses.
- lkbm 1y ago> Blimps and airships can carry the weight, but they bring a laundry list of complications. They’re too slow, need an expensive hangar to shield them from bad weather, require helium—which is currently scarce—and struggle to land when it’s windy. “And by the way, wind farms tend to be windy,” he says.
- SilasX 1y ago1) I was curious why they can't just attach two partial blades onsite to make a longer one, and the article makes some attempt to address it, so, to save you from reading the whole thing: >Shipping them in multiple pieces and reassembling them on-site won’t work because the joints would create weak spots. Junctions would also add too much weight compared with that of blades made from single pieces of polymer, says Doug Arent, executive director at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory Foundation and emeritus NREL researcher. >“It comes down to the stress engineering of the components,” Arent says. Blades could one day be 3D-printed on-site, which could negate the need for an airplane, but that research is still in early stages, he says. (Lundstrom says 3D-printed blades will never happen, since it would require a large, sophisticated manufacturing facility to be built at every wind farm.) 2) I'm also curious if anyone has done the numbers on how long it takes these large turbines to pay back the energy cost of flying them there? You would have to a) find out how much more energy they make from the same footprint compared to smaller wind turbines, and b) how much more energy it takes to fly them there compared to transporting the smaller ones (and I'd be curious about a smaller plane vs ones that can be transported on the ground).
- wiredfool 1y agoJet engines are on the order of 50 MW, and big turbines are on the order of 10MW (at least, onshore ones). So you’re really only talking small multiples of the flight time, which is minimal compared to the lifetime of a wind turbine.
- maxerickson 1y agoThe energy content of the max fuel load of a 747 is something like 2.5 gWh. The specifics of the site matter an awful in how fast that pays back. So like if the extra generation were 1 megawatt with a capacity factor of 30%, you are looking at 7500 hours, less than a year, to yield that much energy. That's a lot of assumptions, but the delivery flights probably average less fuel than that, and one of the benefits of size is that the capacity factor goes up.
- jauntywundrkind 1y agoSurprising no one, the military is also showing interest in WindRunner too. https://www.newscientist.com/article/2480857-how-the-us-military-wants-to-use-the-worlds-largest-aircraft/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/2480857-how-the-us-mili... I enjoyed the last submission on WindRunner. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39690182 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39690182
- jollyllama 1y agoYou're gonna build the world's largest airframe from scratch in... (checks notes)... five years?
- cjensen 1y agoBuilt by a company that has never built an aircraft too. That seems... unlikely. Seems like if this idea really makes sense, it's exactly the kind of thing the EU would subsidize Airbus to do.
- throwup238 1y agoEspecially since Airbus already has experience making the Beluga and Boeing the Dreamlifter.
- ahofmann 1y agoNot only that, we will train people to land this thing on a dirt track, because why not?
- jp57 1y agoFinally the use case for the "airship renaissance" I've been hearing about for the last 25 years. Seriously, some kind of VTOL craft that could deploy the blades directly to the site seems necessary. Then there's ground transport from some airport out into the hinterlands.
- Terr_ 1y agoThere's still a problem for generic cargo handling: The moment you start to release the cargo, the now-excessively-buoyant vehicle rises away.
- SoftTalker 1y agoYou tie it down before you unload. You probably also need to load ballast on for the return trip.
- Terr_ 1y agoFully landing the craft and anchoring it flat before un/loading limits how efficiently it can work to move cargo, especially in all the situations where a zeppelin/blimp is compelling because there's a lack of infrastructure.
- OkayPhysicist 1y agoConceptually, you don't need to fully land the craft. If you lower the payload by cable, those cables are your anchor line. Then you adjust buoyancy until you're no longer straining against the cables, cut anchor, and float away.
- quesera 1y agoCan an airship compensate for 60-75 tonnes of buoyancy change? Releasing helium sounds expensive.
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- 1970-01-01 1y agoWhat is the full lifecycle plan for the turbine? Is this special airplane to land in the same dirt field that's now a housing development? Are they only pairing these megaturbines with airfields? How exactly will a new blade arrive on-site in 2050?
- Goronmon 1y agoAre they only pairing these megaturbines with airfields? That seems like the logical solution. Given the complexities involved overall, a step for "don't build over this patch of dirt" seems relatively achievable.
- foota 1y agoThey plan to be able to land the planes in a short distance over rough fields according to the article.
- 1970-01-01 1y agoRough fields tend to grow rough trees.
- Jedd 1y agoYou're coming up with some pretty flimsy reasons that this can't work, and that you believe the people funding, designing, and building these systems haven't contemplated -- such as 'trees'.
- 1970-01-01 1y agoYes. These trees aren't flimsy obstacles for airplanes. Long term infra funding is very often cut if there isn't an immediate problem. Look around the US and you see power infra literally falling down and sparking wildfires from lack of maintenance.
- foota 1y ago
- mxfh 1y agoThat diagram is just weird. At that stage just build symmetrical sets of turbines and fly them wings out in pairs mounted to some host fuselage with wing mounts. Also that's how ornithopters got invented. Overall some serious Cargolifter vibes.
- CarVac 1y agoTurbines have lots of wing twist and far thicker roots than is desirable for planes. And how do you fly it back?
- mxfh 1y agoThe desireable thing here is that they can fly, not that it's optimal. also you could just drive, lol this thing: https://mitxela.com/projects/turbine_transport_transformer https://mitxela.com/projects/turbine_transport_transformer the bigger questing is anyway where this could safely land and start, when it's of no need for sea transport to begin with. Same question remains for that plane. How to do the last miles from the airport. If the route is long enough you can usually find an autobahn and a river wide enough to get 100m blades around. There seem little use for planes in that size class that doesn't add costs.
- CarVac 1y agoIf you read the source material, it's designed to fly from a minimally prepared airstrip.
- CarVac 1y agoDoing some pixel counting suggests a nacelle diameter of approximately 152 inches, which is close to the 155 inches of the A350's Trent XWB or the smaller of the various 777 engines (in particular, not the largest GE90).
- taeric 1y agoMy grandfather in law used to love discussing the difficulties of transporting giant turbine blades. Always reminded me of the sheer difficulty with large solutions that are often not immediately obvious.
- HarHarVeryFunny 1y ago5000 years ago early Brits transported a 7 ton stone 450 miles from Scotland to Stonehenge. "I'm having trouble moving my turbine blade" sounds like a First World problem !
- lexicality 1y agothat was downhill though
- HarHarVeryFunny 1y agoyep - they were lucky the stone they wanted was up north
- krisoft 1y ago> 5000 years ago early Brits transported a 7 ton stone 450 miles from Scotland to Stonehenge. You are probably thinking of the stone named “the Altar stone”. If we are talking about the same it is about 6 tonne, 5m by 1m by 0.5m. We of course don’t know how exactly it was moved but it is probably safe to assume to have been “a big deal”. Like a large group of people working hard for a prolonged time to make it happen kinda project. In comparision I was thinking how would the same feat look today. The stone would nicely fit on a flatbed truck and a single driver could easily drive it from where it was quaried to Stonehenge in two days. (And they would need two days only because of limits on driver hours. If you have two drivers to swap halfway then it would be much closer to half a day.) Now obviously it is not a big revealation that we are better at logistics than our neolitic anchestors. But thinking it through put it to me into perspective how much better we are at it. What was once a huge undertaking we made it now mundane and everyday stuff. So mundane in fact that we had to make laws stopping people from doing it too recklesly without taking enough rest! Now imagine what those original stone transporters would think of that. Crazy.
- xuhu 1y agoWhy don't they just transport the blades standing up ?
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- gmueckl 1y agoOn the ground? Well, you're welcome to count the number of overpasses you'd have to clear or circumvent somehow.
- lexicality 1y agotoo dangerous - they might get struck by lightning
- noselasd 1y agoThey tip over from inertia or a small wind gust.
- azurezyq 1y agoThis is actually the current practice: https://www.windpowermonthly.com/article/1371626/gallery-blade-delivery-top-baoding-mountain-china https://www.windpowermonthly.com/article/1371626/gallery-bla...
- Krasnol 1y agoThe final paragraphs read like stories from the war. "Yeah we hope to survive despite..." Bad times.
- mandeepj 1y agoHow are they going to do last mile(s) delivery then? > onshore wind-turbine blades can be built to a length of 70 meters, max. Interestingly, that is the length of Falcon 9 as well. Spacex has used 44 wheeled trailers to transport it. Noted: Radia’s plane will be able to hold two 95-meter blades or one 105-meter blade
- quotemstr 1y ago> During flight, the hold is only pressurized to about the level of the peak of Mt. Everest, to save energy. Everest's peak is about 29,000 feet above sea level. I imagine this thing flies at, what, 40,000 or so? Why bother pressurizing the cargo hold at all if people can't breathe anyway? You have all the headaches of compression but none of the advantages. Am I missing something?
- margalabargala 1y agoI don't know, but at a random guess, with such immense cargo volume, there could be a danger of implosion during an emergency descent if the hold was unpressurized and the inflow rate was not sufficient. It may have been cheaper to pressurize than have rapid inflow.
- bluGill 1y agothey shouldn't be flying very far, and thus won't even make it to 40k feet before heading down. If you are going more than 500 miles (i made that up but it is a good number to start with) build a new factory. Iowa has kept one factory busy for more than a decade transporting less distance than that.
- bandyaboot 1y agoOk, hear me out. How powerful of a battery would we need to turn the blades and nacelle into a helicopter? And just think. Once it arrives on site, you have a big ass grid storage battery to install!
- ofalkaed 1y ago70 meters is not actually the limit as this article suggests, I know the Duluth/Superior port receives 80 meter blades which are then trucked out and I think they plan on going bigger but don't recall the details. Saw some of the trucks hauling those 80 meter blades last year when I was there, it was impressive. Edit: Reading about it some, the blades I saw might not have been 80m, it looks like the 80m blades might have gone right onto a train. I was told by the person I was with that they were 80m, I didn't measure.
- cratermoon 1y agoI kind of liked the original headline better.
- cratermoon 1y agoHow difficult would it be to come up with a design for a blade that can be made and transported in segments and assembled full length on site? https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/10/8/1112 https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/10/8/1112
- lkbm 1y ago> Shipping them in multiple pieces and reassembling them on-site won’t work because the joints would create weak spots. Junctions would also add too much weight compared with that of blades made from single pieces of polymer, says Doug Arent, executive director at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory Foundation and emeritus NREL researcher.
- cratermoon 1y agoCounter, from the linked paper > While blade segmentation poses serious challenges, the wide variety of possibilities and the potential benefits are bound to lead to further developments in this field. Furthermore, segmentation appears most likely to be cost effective for very large, offshore turbines or on-shore turbines with promising conditions, but accessibility issues.
- ww520 1y agoHere is where airship makes economical sense.
- rixtox 1y agoThey should call it Blade Runner
- lode 1y agoStrange how an article from IEEE (who should be interested of exact measurements) opens with the size unit "more than a football field". Many articles and news broadcasts do this, even though a football field size is not standard. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_non-coherent_units_of_measurement#Football_field_(length) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_non-coherent_units_of_...