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from the saving-on-smaller-transmission-line-cables dept.
Danish company Vestas Wind Systems is one of the biggest makers of wind turbines in the world, recently surpassing GE's market share in the US. But as the wind industry becomes more competitive, Vestas appears to be looking for ways to solidify its lead by offering something different. Now, the company says it's looking into building wind turbines with battery storage onsite.
According to a Bloomberg report, Vestas is working on 10 projects that will add storage to wind installations, and Tesla is collaborating on at least one of those projects. Vestas says the cooperation between the two companies isn't a formal partnership, and Tesla hasn't commented on the nature of its work with Vestas. But the efforts to combine wind turbines with battery storage offer a glimpse into how the wind industry might change in the future.
Because the wind doesn't blow all the time.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 08 2017, @03:38PM (10 children)
https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=16/09/29/2033235 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 4, Funny) by realDonaldTrump on Friday September 08 2017, @04:16PM (3 children)
Does it work with hurricanes? Because we're getting a lot, a lot of hurricanes. I loved what we did with Harvey. Really nice, a wonderful thing. It’s been a wonderful thing, I think, even for the country to watch it and for the world to watch. It’s been beautiful, a beautiful sight. Great TV! And now #Irma is coming. She's a solid 4. Like Nicolette Sheridan. She was a 6, she wasn’t a 10. It has been extraordinary. She went from a 6 to a solid 4. Which is still amazing, believe me. It doesn't sound like much, but a 4 is amazing for a hurricane. I view that a hurricane is very hard to be a 10. #TrumpTV 🇺🇸
(Score: 2) by turgid on Friday September 08 2017, @08:39PM (2 children)
But it's pinko-commie wind power and it puts coal miners and frackers out of a job. Think of the share price!
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 4, Insightful) by realDonaldTrump on Friday September 08 2017, @09:33PM (1 child)
You look at Japan, they shut down their coal mining. And their economy stopped growing. You've seen Skyfall? They filmed it on Hashima Island, which was a coal mine. They stopped mining the coal, it went to ruins. Went to ruin as fast as Mika Brzezinski's face. Terrific ruins, that's not what I want for America. We're going to grab, grab, grab the money. So our economy will grow, grow, grow. For which we'll need lots of energy. I'm into all kinds of energy. Believe me, all kinds. When there's a hurricane, that's a terrific time to grab some wind energy. Because birds, if they have any sense, won't be flying. And people, if they have any sense, won't be looking out their windows. They'll board up the windows and get out of there. Which is what everyone in Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina should do. Get out of there ASAP, because #Irma is coming and she's a bitch. And hurricanes bring a lot, a lot of rain. So we get the hydro power. Then it blows over, the sun is shining, we get solar. And we can turn our nuclear back on. In Florida they had to turn off their nuclear, because of the hurricane. But our beautiful, beautiful coal can run all the time. So can our oil and gas. And if we could get the energy from earthquakes, that would be tremendous. 🇺🇸
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 10 2017, @02:06AM
A grandiose scheme so Mexico can pay, in a way, for your other grandiose schemes?
(Score: 4, Interesting) by bob_super on Friday September 08 2017, @05:33PM (1 child)
> Shimizu's calculations show that a sufficiently large array of his turbines could capture enough energy from a single typhoon to power Japan for 50 years.
Which is completely useless, unrealistic, and borderline stupid.
Back on the topic, I'm not sure that battery storage at the turbine is a great idea. Turbine have placement issues, typically far away from consumers, and obviously from each other.
If you're gonna implement giant mechanical flywheels (patenting a giant yo-yo right now), put them at the turbine. But batteries at decentralized production sites don't make much sense from an install/maintenance/safety perspective.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 08 2017, @08:18PM
How about pumped storage at the wind turbine? Here's a proposal to do pumped "in reverse", pump out a sphere under the off-shore turbine, the concrete sphere also is part of the support structure:
http://news.mit.edu/2013/wind-power-even-without-the-wind-0425 [mit.edu]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by turgid on Friday September 08 2017, @08:44PM (3 children)
What would be really useful would to be to have an array of turbines in the locations where the storms form to extract the energy as they form so that you would have less extreme engineering to do regarding the strength of the turbines and you'd get a weaker storm too. I haven't done the calculations, but I expect you'd need a very large number of turbines. However, with the economic damage from a bad storm measured in the billions of dollars, or more, it might pay for itself quite quickly,
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 09 2017, @03:27AM (2 children)
Turbines reach up a hundred meters or so. Thunderstorms go up several thousand meters. Don't have a reference, but I highly doubt that removing some energy down near the bottom is going to have any significant effect on hurricane formation.
This page points out that hurricanes start from high altitude winds coming off the Sahara,
https://response.restoration.noaa.gov/about/media/what-does-sahara-desert-have-do-hurricanes.html [noaa.gov]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by realDonaldTrump on Saturday September 09 2017, @05:46AM (1 child)
So if we eliminate that one little part of Africa, no more hurricanes? Why can't we do that? 🇺🇸
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 11 2017, @01:26AM
You are talking about quite a large amount of irrigation to green up the Sahara desert...not sure where you could source that much fresh water, and that much top soil to start the plants and trees. It might be interesting to get quotes for that geo engineering job and compare to the damages caused by recent hurricanes.
From memory, it was supposedly green (tropical rain forest?) before the ancient Egyptians over-grazed or over-farmed.