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Comment by vipshek | Hacker News Reader

From the article:

> Radia estimates the larger turbines could reduce the cost of energy by up to 35% and increase the consistency of power generation by 20% compared with today’s onshore turbines.

Not sure what that translates to in terms of energy output over time.

As for the sibling "Why not airships?" question, the article says:

> Blimps can’t land in windy conditions. Helicopters are more costly than airplanes, and flying with a dangling blade designed to catch wind would prove complex and dangerous.

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Does this cost reduction factor in the cost of making a new airplane company? If they transport a million blades then the cost per blade is not that high. But if they only make 10,000 blades then it becomes more of a factor (especially if the useful life turns out to be not as long as predicted).

Plus how long does each turbine need to operate for before it mitigates the CO2 and other pollutants produced by building and operating the plane?

If they move 3,000 blades for ~10MW turbines then a 20% improvement in capacity factor alone is worth 3,066,000 metric tons of CO2 year. Edit: (Ops 10Mw * 1,000 turbines * 0.5 tons from natural gas /MW * .35% capacity factor * 20% improvement * 24 * 365 hours, coal is roughly double that.)

By comparison a commercial jet takes ~20 years to emit 1 million tons of CO2. https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/boeing-je...

Assuming: 500tons of fuel for the transport of the 3 blades (comparison: AN225 with higher max payload weight guzzled ~15tons/hour).

You could have used that energy to produce 500000kg * 40MJ/kg * 40% = 8TJ. The turbine would need ~40d to produce this (~25% capacity factor, 10MW nameplate power):

8TJ / (10[MW] * 25% * 3600[s/h] * 24[h/d])

The existing option is semi trucks traveling in daylight with additional vehicles supervising and special self steering trailers, local PD stopping traffic if necessary, new roads being built or existing ones improved.

From their website:

"Simultaneously, Radia is developing a world-class portfolio of wind energy projects to leverage this solution"

So they just need to deliver one of those projects for the carbon to be offset.

Upping the consistency of power generation by 20% has a huge downstream impact because it reduces the cost of storage and transmission.

Underrated comment. Grids need less upgrades, less congestion, less curtailment of other renewables can add up to billions in savings for a country

It means more consistent energy output, higher “capacity factors”. It will always be intermittent but taller turbines reduces the intermittency

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