3 ms·
I think you have to separate joy of the tech from practical matters here. Regarding the practical matters, it looks like they are three orders of magnitude fro
by olau 11y ago
I think you have to separate joy of the tech from practical matters here.
Regarding the practical matters, it looks like they are three orders of magnitude from being on par with the three-blade vertical design.
So while this idea may be worthwhile in some niches like mentioned in the article, it's currently not a replacement for the giant, towering, 3 MW and up turbines erected these days.
And just like other wind-turbine replacement ideas (like kites or vertical-axis designs, but there are many more, just check Wikipedia), they probably never will. As I understand it, part of the beauty of the three-blade design is that by scaling the blade length linearly, you get a quadratic gain (pi r^2 area swept) in energy harvested.
- samatman 11y agoGetting kites to work has proved challenging, yes. But the beauty of the design is that they have in principle better scaling properties than a wind turbine. Don't count them out yet. As for the parent design, could be interesting. I cannot imagine a possible justification for not building it out given the urgency of renewable power to our present needs.