Wind turbines meant to work at the South Pole and Mars | Hacker News Reader

Wind turbines meant to work at the South Pole and Mars

arstechnica.com

33 pointsjfdi24 comments

Once upon a time there was a man named Jacobs who designed wind turbines. In 1933 Admiral Byrd set one of these up on the South pole and many years (and many storms) later the machine was still working. No maintenance, no parts replaced, just incredibly durable and very well designed:

http://www.motherearthnews.com/renewable-energy/wind-power-h...

I took a lot of inspiration from that model (but used many modern materials such as Neodymium magnets which were not available at the time).

The Jacobs brand survives to this day. I really don't understand how Ars could have missed this in their research for the article.

Hey neat! My dad helps run another harsh-environment wind turbine company, Black Island Wind Turbines[1].

>Black Island, Antarctica. One of the harshest wind turbine installations in the world. Routine category 5 hurricane winds. Top speeds reaching almost 89 meters/sec (200 mph). Temperatures falling to minus 57 degrees Celcius (minus 70 degrees Farenheit). Marine environments. Super-critical loads. One wind turbine prevails--the HR3, a high-reliability 3 kW wind turbine that Black Island Wind Turbines will soon be offering for commercial sales to satisfy the most difficult site and customer demands around the world.

[1]: http://www.blackislandwindturbines.com/

Did your dad have anything to do with the Crowley Ridge turbines?

I went there to have a look, those are really special machines even though they look ordinary at first glance.

http://www.gettyimages.nl/detail/foto/crowley-ridge-wind-pow...

Being able to withstand extreme cold is one thing but is Mars atmosphere density enough to even turn the blades?

Why do you assume they wouldn't have considered that?

That's a variation on the 'but whey don't the theme'. In this case it is a valid question though, because the atmosphere of Mars is almost 200 times less dense than Earth's. So you'd need a pretty big machine to get real power, the advantage is that mars gravity is 2.5 times or so less than Earth so making a large windmill is a lot easier than it is here. You might even get by with very thin shelled blades.

too late to edit, s/whey/why/

Yes, with the correct blade design, wind turbines could work on Mars, but they are probably not a great idea, because they will have a low specific power output (W/kg). Cost to transport items to Mars is mostly based to weight, so any power generation system should be mass-efficient, and play to Mars' strengths. Spare parts and maintenance are also likely to be issues, and dust will probably cause issues with any exposed parts or moving seals, so turbines are likely to cause problems.

Mars has lower insolation than Earth, but a significant amount of sunlight reaches the ground, especially in the UV spectrum (because of Mars' thin atmosphere). Solar panels which are more efficient at shorter wavelengths (compared to their Earth-bound bretheren) would generate more power than wind turbines of similar mass. The Solar panels also have the benefit of being solid state devices, thus they require no maintenance other than occaisional clearing of dust, and they even operate quite well and for a long time when that is not done (as demonstrated by NASA's probes and rovers).

But windmills complement solar, on Mars as well as on Earth. The sun isn't always visible and you will want to have multiple inputs to reduce the amount of storage required. Upgrading your battery after a couple of years is probably a bigger problem than shipping a windmill once.

There are no clouds on Mars, so why do you need an inefficient, labor intensive system to complement an efficient, reliable, and predictable one? NASA rovers and probes have been getting very good results with solar panels, do you think they would have gotten better results if they also had wind turbines?

I think you can make a strong case for bringing along hydrazine (or at least hyrdogen to make methane in situ) and/or substantial battery banks (if you can't manufacture batteries in situ), but the case for wind power is even weaker on Mars than on Earth (and it is quite weak on Earth).

Mars has a day-night cycle.

Batteries + Solar Panels > Solar Panels + Wind Turbines

Batteries + Solar Panels = Higher efficiency, higher performance, lower maintenance, lower weight.

Yes, but the most reliable set-up is batteries + solar panels + wind turbines.

How do you arrive at that conclusion? I assume that you are stating that for a given mass of power generation equipment, you'd prefer all three, but I am not convinced that this will be more reliable, and I am sure that it will have a lower output.

Well, let's reverse the question. What do you use to base your opinion on? I've run a setup like the one described above for years and my whole house was powered from that, it was a lot more reliable than solar + batteries only.

Nobody has ever run your setup on Mars, but many have run the solar panels + batteries setup on Mars to good effect.

Nobody has grown cucumbers on Mars either. That doesn't mean it can't be done or that it won't be useful. Anyway, I see this is going nowhere so thank you for the exchange.

You know whats even more reliable? Coal fired or nuclear power plant. However these solutions are not mass efficient or practical.

Similarly Wind turbines, while practical, are not mass efficient. Carrying extra batteries instead of turbines makes for a much more efficient system.

> Similarly Wind turbines, while practical, are not mass efficient.

Those are big words to use without having seen a specific design. Terrestrial wind turbines likely have as much in common with turbines destined for Mars as the Mars rovers have to do with our cars. Sure they both have wheels but that's roughly where the similarities end.

There are dust storms, which resemble clouds from a distance.

They are not as commonplace as clouds on Earth (from what I've read), and like clouds, they don't block all light. The Mars rovers seem to get good results from solar panels and batteries despite the dust storms (though perhaps they have just been lucky).

Yes, but there won't be a whole lot of power unless you make a very large machine.

I always wondered if we could generate power in Antarctica from harnessing ice sheet movement.

Perhaps Have it pull a cable geared up by some crazy amount and turn a generator.

Anyone know if this has been investigated? It could produce more power than hydro electric since these sheets are massive. (And constantly renewed by snowfall)

There's a lot of places in the world you could generate electricity in crazy ways. For example, you could spin up a giant gyroscope at one of the poles and generate power from Earth's rotation.

The problem is distribution.

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