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Sweden welcomes its first wooden wind turbine tower:
The wheels have begun to turn on an interesting new form of wind turbine in Sweden, with the country's first wooden power-generation tower now complete. Built from sustainably sourced materials and said to offer comparable performance to traditional wind turbines, it's hoped the wooden power tower will be a harbinger of cheaper and greener solutions for renewable energy in the Nordic country, with commercial versions planned for a couple of years down the track.
Following in the footsteps of a similar creation in Germany, the new wooden wind tower is the brainchild of Swedish engineering firm Modvion, which is out to improve on what it sees as significant drawbacks when it comes to typical wind towers. These tall, steel towers demand thick bases to support their upper sections, which not only makes them very expensive to produce, but very expensive to transport to site, with rules around load size on public roads often proving problematic.
Modvion is instead working on a modular version that can be made out of cheaper and greener materials than steel, which requires huge amounts of energy to produce. The company's wooden wind towers are designed to reach heights of more than 120 m (393 ft), at significantly lower cost than those made out of steel, with the modular approach allowing for stackable sections to be transported on public roads without issue. They are also claimed to be carbon neutral from the day construction begins.
The 30-meter (100-ft) proof-of-concept tower was built together with wood construction company Moelven at its facility in Töreboda. The wooden sections of the turbine were then transported to Björkö, an island outside Gothenburg around 200 km (124 mi) away, with the final piece put into place in late April.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Tuesday June 09 2020, @06:13PM (4 children)
Finally somebody other than Michael Moore has done a couple calculations on the actual energy footprint of alternative sources, ending up with green as in tree units. Also, as people living in well built wooden houses know, wood is amazing.
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(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday June 09 2020, @06:32PM (3 children)
I've grown up in American wooden houses. Sometimes with some brick walls.
In Europe they build with stone. I suppose because it grows more plentiful than wood. So a building might last a thousand years or more. Which becomes a problem once it becomes time to install indoor plumbing. Then later electricity. Then later ethernet. Then later different ethernet. Then again different ethernet, but for the last time, for sure! Then again more ethernet.
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(Score: 2) by Bot on Tuesday June 09 2020, @07:05PM
I prefer wood to stone to bricks to concrete, personally. People who build wood houses here though, mostly people of Austrian and German descent, refer to north american style wooden houses as economy class buildings. Given the amount of planks I see in their roofs I can understand why. I think the amount of planks is a status symbol or something because structurally seems overkill. MELIVS ABVNDARE.
As for plumbing, The only house my family had a say in how it was built had wooden floor wooden stair and all plumbing in view.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 09 2020, @07:42PM
I never really appreciated my American wooden house until I lived in earthquake country. I wouldn't want to live in something that might become a rock pile. OTOH, I've heard that wood-reinforced masonry is the best of both worlds. You get a durable, insulated surface on the outside and a flexible frame that can keep all that durable stuff from tumbling in on you when the Big One comes in the middle of the night. It's crazy expensive though. Wood framing is the way to go when there's a possibility that everybody wants to move from your town because the next boom is someplace else. Italy has ghost towns too [yourguidetoitaly.com], so I don't let smug Europeans or Americans who think Europe is better get me down.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Tuesday June 09 2020, @09:23PM
It's mostly survival bias: Because stone buildings last centuries, anyone who decided to build a stone buildings in your area any time over the last millennium created something that still stands, while any wooden or wattle-and-daub buildings (both of which were far more common, say, 500 years ago) burn or are otherwise destroyed far more easily and thus are long gone. Heck, most castles historically were made of wood, because wood was much much cheaper and easier to build with than stone.
Newer housing does exist, though, that's either wood or more modern materials like concrete.
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