posted by
martyb
on Friday September 30 2016, @01:45AM
from the gonna-need-a-really-big-battery dept.
from the gonna-need-a-really-big-battery dept.
Typhoons are generally associated with mass destruction, but a Japanese engineer has developed a wind turbine that can harness the tremendous power of these storms and turn it into useful energy. If he's right, a single typhoon could power Japan for 50 years.
Atsushi Shimizu is the inventor of the world's first typhoon turbine—an extremely durable, eggbeater-shaped device that can not only withstand the awesome forces generated by a typhoon, it can convert all that power into useable energy. 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.
Less efficient that traditional turbines, but built more rugged to survive a typhoon.
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New Wind Turbines Could Power Japan for 50 Years after a Single Typhoon
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(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 30 2016, @01:58AM
How are they going to store 50 years worth of energy?
Oh, wait a sec. He needs a "sufficiently large array" of them to capture that energy. Well, I could power Japan for 50 years too using solar power if I had a sufficiently large array of solar panels. That's the definition of "sufficiently", just like the answer of "How much of XYZ is too much?" is always "too much".
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 30 2016, @02:41AM
sigh...
The journalist puts up some sensational click bait and misrepresents what the numbers mean and people fall for it like lemmings.
The figure means that is how much POTENTIALLY trappable energy a typhoon contains.
Yeah yeah, everyone knows that is not how much you would get in reality...DUH!
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 30 2016, @03:15AM
The journalist? How about the story submitter and/or editor?
(Score: 2) by frojack on Friday September 30 2016, @04:04AM
How about the story submitter and/or editor?
Exactly
We don't have to submit trash and waste everybody else's time.
And if we do submit it we can tone it down to just report a durable windmill.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Friday September 30 2016, @06:20PM
People don't store Libraries of Congress on their iPhone, either.
(Score: 3, Funny) by frojack on Friday September 30 2016, @04:00AM
Yup, hype hype hype.
First you are lead to believe one would suffice in Typhoon.
They they let slip that you need a whole array as well as the Typhoon.
By the end of the article, you realize you need a huge array, and a Typhoon that lasts 50 years.
This is what journalism school does to people.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by driverless on Friday September 30 2016, @07:16AM
That was my immediate reaction as well. May as well say that a single Hiroshima-sized bomb would produce enough energy to power Japan for 50 years.
(OK, I'm exaggerating for effect there, it's only about 20MW/h, the point is that you've got just as much chance of storing it as for the wind farm in the original article).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 30 2016, @09:28AM
(Score: 2) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Friday September 30 2016, @06:15PM
After reading the headline, I was envisioning perpetual motion machines that spin at high speeds.
Welp, there goes that idea.
The article has this to say about power storage:
So they did not even finish researching the story before publishing!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 30 2016, @02:18AM
A very efficient engine it can be powered by the sun or basically anywhere that there is a slight heat difference between two locations and can generate quite a bit of power from almost nothing. I'm surprised it's not used more often. It seems like it would be rather easy to direct sunlight at this thing or put it in windy environments and have it efficiently generate power.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 30 2016, @03:03AM
You fail Thermodynamics 101.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 30 2016, @03:12AM
matter to energy is kinda something from almost nothing when done right.
zero point energy is nothing... kinda.
(Score: 1) by tekk on Friday September 30 2016, @04:38AM
Note that he said almost nothing, not nothing: Stirling Engines are known for being ridiculously efficient, but generating approximately no power in absolute terms.
(Score: 1) by tekk on Friday September 30 2016, @04:40AM
or to clarify, not that it generates little power in absolute terms, but it has a poor power:weight ratio, making we've tended to use other engines.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 30 2016, @03:30AM
What about the Seebeck effect?
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Friday September 30 2016, @04:40AM
A 1.5 MW solar thermo-mechanical facility, using Stirling engines, opened in the southwestern United States in 2010.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rl1H-53Mks [youtube.com]
(Score: 4, Funny) by BK on Friday September 30 2016, @05:32AM
Since it's Japan, how many fighting giant humanoid robots could be powered by such an array? And for how long?
...but you HAVE heard of me.
(Score: 2) by Sulla on Friday September 30 2016, @03:13PM
These turbines in combination with http://www.designweneed.com/the-gravity-battery/ [designweneed.com] might be a nice way to store up some quick access power without taking away from normal baseline operations.
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 1) by TrentDavey on Friday September 30 2016, @04:26PM
Neat concept but no mention of the size/depth of the tubes or mass of the weights. Is it the size of a drilled water well or more like a dug well (manhole sized) and is the mass like a person or a small/large car etc. One can also store mechanical energy via a fly wheel in many different ways:
http://www.power-thru.c//flywheel_ups_technology.html/ [www.power-thru.c],
http://jalopnik.com/how-the-swiss-developed-an-emissions-free-bus-without-u-1413061006/ [jalopnik.com].
Dave.