The Future of Wind Turbines? No Blades (2015) | Hacker News Reader

The Future of Wind Turbines? No Blades (2015)

wired.com

101 pointsPeterRodwell64 comments

From wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vortex_Bladeless

>> In late 2016 and after validating the technology on computational simulations and tech demonstrators, the company reached the prototype stage with a geometry that can harness a nice amount of energy from the wind with this principle. On this stage Vortex was able to apply for funding from the Horizon 2020 for research and innovation programme of the European Commission.[19] Being the greatest funding that the company had, Vortex built a big wind tunnel for testing their turbines (the tallest wind tunnel in Spain) and started the development of their patented concept of an oscillating alternator with tuning system. On this phase, the company won the "Seal of Excellence" of the H2020 programme.[20]

>> All along 2017, the company kept developing their alternator and tuning system. Since this technology is considered as new in many aspects intervening (geometry, movement, energy conversion system), it has been a harder development than the company expected. The collaboration on this stage of the Microgravity Institute of the Technical University of Madrid and the European University of Madrid, alongside CDTI, Altair, Birdlife and BSC were the key to obtain a feasible technology that can harness energy from the wind on this particular way. In this year the company obtained the "Innovation SME" seal of the Spanish government.[21]

>> In 2018 the company started to plan the industrialisation of their aerogenerators. On this point the company faced many problems due to the lack of feasible industrial processes to mass-produce some of the pieces that use Vortex technology. The geometry and the materials were almost definitive on this stage so the company started a certification process for their current prototypes and obtained the ISO 9001. This certification is a regular process for every wind turbine in the European and American market but the normative is written for blades based turbines or rotating turbines, so the normative may need to be rewritten in order to certify Vortex devices as wind generators.[citation needed]

>> The goals of the company for the future are to obtain the certification needed to start selling, to set up a feasible method of production and logistics of shipping so they can start commercializing first Vortex turbines for 2020.[2]

Vortex had been Busted in 2017 already: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9VjJ1e1nIY

Apparently, they seem to be disingenuous about the state of their technology and their fundraising strategy. It seems there are no working prototypes which produce a reasonable amount of power.

However - I'm not certain about this myself - I'm not a mechanical/power systems engineer.

It’s a nice idea and I’m glad to see it investigated, however the efficiency of kinetic energy generation from a regular turbine is always going to be greater.

Oscillation from vortex shedding behind a cylinder depends on separation of slow moving air and the subsequent imbalance in lift on either side. You’re using some of the kinetic energy of the flow to induce the vortex shedding.

A regular turbine on the other hand uses very efficient airfoils where you can at attempt to maintain laminar flow and maximise energy extraction.

I see this technology as being great for energy harvesting on existing infrastructure. Put vibrational energy harvesters on pylons and poles in windy areas and you could power traffic lights, street lights etc.

Regular turbine will be always be more efficient per square km of wind plant, but are you you sure that regular turbine will be always more efficient per dollar invested in construction?

Yeah reducing the costs of maintenance would be huge for this industry.

While it's true the vortex design has no moving parts and is thus inherently simpler, a regular old turbine is hardly a complicated machine. A bunch of fixed blades, some gearing, and an electric motor -- all of which are routine things that can be mass produced in huge quantities and have been for decades. Really the only serious difficulty with building out a modern turbine is the size of the blades and the transportation complexity of getting them to the site on existing road networks. And these Vortex things seem to be about the same size.

Yes but you can put more of them in the same space, total cost is likely going to be lower and you can put them into places where turbines can not go. If they manage to make it to market they could be huge.

Unfortunately not, it has fundamental issues, the largest of which is that these devices only scale linearly compared to HAWTs which scale at h^2. Putting in more of them won't over come the scaling losses, neither will the cost reductions; even with twice the number of them and with 50% reduction in cost, you're still loosing linearly at 30% to HAWTs h^2 gains.

https://cleantechnica.com/2015/05/21/bladeless-wind-turbine-...

Will this be safer for bird life?

Modern wind turbines already are safer for bird life. The windmills that killed raptors were the small fast-moving ones, which are being replaced by more efficient, and gigantic, slow moving ones.

Do you have citation for this? I looked on Google and it's a jumble of conflicting reports.

My reason for doubting is that modern turbines turn slowly in rpm, but the blade tips are still moving extremely fast. Like, just barely sub-sonic fast. So I could well believe that might still be an issue especially for large birds.

We should try to make wind turbines safe for birds because it's the right thing to do, but we should focus our energy elsewhere if preserving bird life is a goal: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/01/chart-cats-vs-t...

The risk that wind turbines pose to birds is already very small. Wind farms kill 440 thousand birds per year. Meanwhile, building windows kill about 500 million, and cats another 500 million. A standard wind turbine kills 4.27 birds per year, so of course you shouldn't build a massive wind farm in an area with endangered birds.

Outside of that case, what if the whole US was powered by wind energy? That would mean 315333 wind turbines, causing 1.34 million bird deaths per year. That's still negligible compared to cats, windows, hunting or communication towers.

sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_wind_p...

The US uses 473 GW on average, A standard wind turbine produces 1.5MW. 473000/1.5 = 315333. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_the_United_States#Co...

It’s not all about numbers. Wind turbines kill rare, and threatened species, such as birds of prey and bats. Cats and window accidents mostly kill very common species.

Why was this comment flag killed???

...which is why, as the parent states, they shouldn't be built in the habitats or flight paths of endangered species. Environmental impact studies are now a routine part of the wind farm development process, and have been for over a decade.

How many birds do you think a mountain top coal mine kills?

Vortex shedding can be incredibly efficient for generating force. It's how bees and hummingbirds fly. The big advantage of this wind power plant is that it could have a much lower cut in speed, capturing energy even at lower wind speeds.

I think one should be really careful when translating fluid dynamics things from hummingbird sized objects to wind turbine sized objects.

It is claimed that the oscillating pillar creates no audible sound, making it attractive in rural communities sensitive to noise pollution. I hope they are right but remain fairly skeptical on whether this will hold outside clean lab settings, especially when the constructs age and wear.

I skeptical that this system can scale to decent power output. A 100W conventional turbine is not a threat to birds either, because it's tiny. Modern wind turbines produce something like 10MW. That's 100000 times more power. Even small residential turbines are in the kilowatt range.

The small size makes it ideal for putting some in your garden. Probably comparable to solar panels. Transport of electricity is also expensive so there are some benefits.

Transport of electricity isn't expensive enough that this really makes sense anywhere.

There might be some niche applications of this, but I really doubt that you should call it "The Future of Wind Turbines".

And the bird threatening factor of one wind turbine compares to one cat (at least in Germany).

Cats don't kill large migratory birds. But wind turbines do.

There was a 2007 legal case that, though the jury ended in deadlock (as to whether or not the shooting of a cat was legal), suggests that cats do in fact kill migratory birds. Stevenson v Galvestone, I believe.

That's interesting, and I'm curious why someone would know this. Are you in the field?

I started getting cluster headaches a couple years ago, so it isn't true anymore, but I used to have a photographic memory. Useful for picking up lots of entirely useless information.

I see. Thanks for sharing that.

Initially, or later, when the large, mechanical apex predator has cleared the area?

I am quite convinced that the areas where there are wind turbines in Germany don’t intersect much with the area where there are cats.

Germany e.g. has a many offshore wind parks and cats can’t really swim that well.

And I wouldn’t call something that rotates completely unimpressed of flying criters a “predator”. Maybe you could call it a trap. Or a hazard.

Are glas windows considered a predator?

Yeah, I'm skeptical too, but I still think it's a worthwhile investment to see what comes out. Probably nothing, but we need as much investing as possible in climate-friendly power sources. This bet might not pay off, but you do enough of them, one might pay off big.

In one of their videos [1] the mast can be seen vibrating at a high intensity. There is for sure lots of tension in the material produced, I wonder how durable the masts are. I have the feeling they would instantly break during a storm.

Wind turbines have pitch control to reduce the speed of the rotor and blades. This allows wind turbines to survive most storms. I don't see an equivalent control mechanism with Vortex Bladeless masts.

[1] https://youtu.be/Mf-gps4r2L0

From their FAQ (https://vortexbladeless.com/faq/#question6):

"Vortex wind turbines are designed to have high performance with most common wind speeds (between 3-12 m/s) and to has a quick response to turbulent airflows changes.

If wind velocity exceeds the device’s working threshold, it will stop by itself due to physics principles."

I can't see how this design improves over a traditional three bladed turbine. Kinetic energy is still extracted from a large moving structural element and the forces involved will be much larger to generate the same amount of energy. Turbines are extremely efficient in extracting large amounts of energy while using the lightest weight components.

Hopefully it kills less birds

Turbines killing birds is just nonsense that global warming deniers and NIMBYs say. Wind turbines kill fewer bird than fossil fuel power stations so even if these people really did care about birds they're better.

But we can tell they don't care about bird because they don't complain about glass buildings, cars, power lines or cats, all of which kill more birds than wind turbines.

http://theconversation.com/wind-farms-are-hardly-the-bird-sl...

While I agree, and assuming those numbers are correct it is a huge win, this doesn't mean we can't continue to improve over current technology.

According to the company:

- It's cheaper per KWh (they claim 40%, IIRC, but that was in 2015)

- It requires less maintenance (no moving parts)

- It doesn't kill birds

- It's silent (no frequencies >20 Hz)

- It's 30% less efficient than a blade design but you can put twice as many in the same area

- It doesn't cause the alternating light/shadow effects that huge blades do

> It requires less maintenance (no moving parts)

They are no rotating parts, but some parts are moving.

see here: https://vortexbladeless.com/technology-design/

I'm skeptical about the cheaper per KWh. A 100W conventional turbine can be purchased for around $200 and has 3 blades around 50 cm in length. The 100W vortex device is 2.7m tall and I doubt can be purchased for less than $600 since the structure is much wider and weighs around 3 times more. 14kg vs 5kg for a conventional turbine.

A 100W conventional turbine also only has a couple of moving parts, won't kill birds and is effectively silent. I'm unsure on wether these claims are still true as the device scales up. A device 100m or so tall will have a fast velocity at the tip perhaps as much as 50m/s at a few Hz which is similar to the blade tip speed of a conventional turbine thus having similar potential to kill birds and make noise.

While I also doubt their claims - the price you want to look at is :

(purchase + installation) / average_life_span + maintenance per time unit

So, even at triple the cost it could still be worthwhile.

> It's silent (no frequencies >20 Hz)

I hope there also isn't much noise below 20 Hz, as infrasounds are uncomfortable and potentially dangerous.

With this article being four years old, it is safe to assume they did not meet their economic goals, right?

Nevertheless, technology like this might still be useful in very special environments. As an extreme example, consider Mars. Completely different economical conditions.

Mars’s pressure is 1% of Earth’s at sea level, don’t believe the film “The Martian”, which on Earth is tantamount to a vacuum.

Having said that NASA’s going to flying a helicopter drown there, the rotors just have to go around really fast to overcome the lower gravity.

Curent status of the project - https://vortexbladeless.com/faq/#question10

They still appear to be updating the website at least.

wish they would update it to not hijack browser scrolling

Well, bladeless low-speed generator's been around for some years already. It's directly driven, i.e. no multiplier too

http://d.intellect-labs.com/our-projects/88-slow-generator.h...

A few days ago there was already another article here about new wind tech, I could repeat my comment [1].

tl;dr looking at historic patterns I've seen many new forms of wind energy, they all didn't make it. What stays successful is doing almost the same thing more efficient and at larger scale.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20895000

> tl;dr looking at historic patterns I've seen many new forms of wind energy, they all didn't make it. What stays successful is doing almost the same thing more efficient and at larger scale.

This is the main reason: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betz%27s_law. Wind turbines are already very close to max efficiency, the only thing you can do is make them bigger and cheaper.

I don't like them, where I live we had a view like something from the sound of music and now we have 8 turbines in the foreground. Also they are visible from so far away that they have diminished the perceived scale of the landscape.

Betz' law is not a restriction. The challenge isn't extraction of more of the energy. The challenges are:

* Production cost $ * Production cost in terms of resources (e.g. renewable organic materials vs metal, rare earth etc.) * Maintenance $ * Complexity of maintenance * Necessary area / turbine * Necessary area / turbine * Necessary volume / turbine * Noise level * Usability in extreme environmental conditions

... and maybe other things I've missed.

That's still a big restriction, other technologies could have a breakthrough which makes them 10x more efficient, this will never happen with wind turbines.

We're talking about harnessing wind power. There is no "10x more efficient".

The present incumbent technology has matured and been researched over a few decades. Like evolution new technologies could possibly thrive in a niche area to some level of maturity, however that would appear unlikely.

There appears to be a certain amount of scepticism as to how this design can convert the vibration into electricity.

Discussed at the time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9555293

Would there be efficiencies in combining this with a 3 blade fan? Your already putting a mast up, could you include this as part of the mast?

The actual mast is lightweight and and wouldn't be able to support anything. Also it seems the foundations wouldn't be able to support a traditional wind turnbine:

"Instead of the usual tower, nacelle and blades, our device has only a mast made of lightweight materials over a base. This reduces the usage of raw materials and the need for a deeper foundation."

On the upside it must make for easier deployment, opening up more areas to installation.

I was thinking more wrapping this around a standard 3 blade fan mast. So the structural integrity is there but your taking advantage of an existing structure (obviously with some modification to suit) to generate additional power. This additional lower while maybe not as efficient as the fans, it might be cost effective since the base structure is there and systems to collect the power.

Another comment here posted a video - the base kind of wobbles around violently, so attaching blades to it would be ill advised.

The Future (2015) - well, we live in the future and these turbines are nowhere to be seen :-(

The other future.

Wouldn’t these be ideal to address a rooftop or backyard market?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com