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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 09 2020, @04:09PM (5 children)
We were lucky if our wind turbine towers were made out of mud. Kids today don't know how good they have it.
(Score: 4, Funny) by looorg on Tuesday June 09 2020, @04:15PM (4 children)
You are lucky! When I was a kid we wished we had a turbine of mud. Our tower was made of sand and we had to get up at 4 am every morning and blow at the turbine until it produced enough electricity to set off the alarm clock to wake us up at 6 am and our father would beat us while doing it! And we liked it!
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday June 09 2020, @05:05PM (3 children)
So did we like it? We were fucking ecstatic!
(Score: 2) by Bot on Tuesday June 09 2020, @06:16PM (2 children)
Not to spoil the combo but nowadays it is, I was never a kid cos they snuffed me out earlier, and I did not like it much actually.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Tuesday June 09 2020, @07:25PM (1 child)
So you were rebooted?
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday June 09 2020, @10:49PM
(Score: 4, Insightful) by looorg on Tuesday June 09 2020, @04:27PM (10 children)
Isn't it hard to claim that the wooden towers with a big propeller at the top of it is your brainchild? Doesn't Windmills so to speak have prior art in the case by about a thousand years or so give or take depending on which form of windmill type we are talking about.
Also for that to be carbon neutral you probably have to engage in some serious hollywood-like accounting practice where you subtract various amounts of carbon due to the tree right before you add up transport and all the chemicals involved in treating the wooden structure to handle all the wind, water etc. Just being better then steel or whatnot doesn't really count.
Are the blades made out of wood to? It could be after all that used to be the case in props back in the day but I don't find any mention of it in the article. They just seem to talk about the tower structure without mentioning the blades even once.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 09 2020, @05:51PM (4 children)
The German model it is based on seems to be a conventional power head on top of a wooden tower. The blades are normally a composite material because steel isn't strong and light enough. I can't see wooden blades surviving their first wind storm, let alone lasting for 20 years. Treated wood isn't as easily recycled as steel is, either.
(Score: 1) by jurov on Tuesday June 09 2020, @08:18PM (1 child)
There is densified wood that is structurally strong like steel, it is made by similar way as paper (to increase content of cellulose) and should be similarly recyclable.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 10 2020, @12:38AM
The picture in the German article doesn't look like engineered wood. The knots are a dead giveaway. Chemical treatment also limits what it can be recycled into.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by dry on Wednesday June 10 2020, @01:37AM (1 child)
Laminated Sitka Spruce may be strong and light enough. It was/is a common aircraft construction material, including the propellers I believe.
(Score: 2) by Muad'Dave on Thursday June 11 2020, @01:17PM
It is/was also common in ship masts. 30 years ago I spent a lot of days scraping and refinishing two laminated Sitka spruce masts on his 44' ketch.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by DannyB on Tuesday June 09 2020, @06:24PM (1 child)
You forgot the magic incantation that makes anything old become patent eligible again. Simply add one of the following items as a suffix to the title of your patent application:
* ...on a computer
* ...on an iPhone
And why is it called a windmill?
Big oil is (sometimes up to three times removed from apparent author) able to publish information about how EVs are less green than ICE vehicles.
And, in case you didn't know, Tobacco does not cause lung or throat cancer.
Hopefully they don't get termites.
What wood that do to the ability to recycle the tower?
Why is it that when I hold a stick, everyone begins to look like a pinata?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 10 2020, @12:46AM
The traditional use cases were wind powered gristmills and irrigation pumps. And by 'traditional' I mean in common use over a thousand years ago, and possibly dating to the 17th century BC. That we know about.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Tuesday June 09 2020, @06:28PM
Much smaller windmills, yes.
Electricity generating windmills don't go back that far.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 09 2020, @09:43PM
Between the ancient grain-mill & water-pumping windmills, 1896 to be exact, there was a brief moment of high style and advanced structural design in water pumpers- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romeo_and_Juliet_Windmill [wikipedia.org]
The Romeo and Juliet windmill by Frank Lloyd Wright uses wood panels as stressed skin to resist the wind loads. Nice picture and more details on the wiki link.
(Score: 2) by dry on Wednesday June 10 2020, @01:34AM
Well building 120 metre high wooden towers is probably the new part. Traditionally wooden structures were not very tall
(Score: 4, Interesting) by PiMuNu on Tuesday June 09 2020, @04:40PM (5 children)
Is there anywhere a full lifetime carbon footprint? E.g. maintenance cost, decommissioning/upgrade cost, etc etc. How does it compare with steel when all this is accounted, as well as initial build.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 09 2020, @05:35PM (4 children)
At EOL... A couple gallons of kerosene and a match completes the carbon cycle. Much more economic than recycling metal.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday June 09 2020, @06:28PM (1 child)
Usually wind turbines don't grow alone. They usually grow in large batches. A "wind farm". (a farm that produces wind?)
Now imagine your proposed solution to completing the carbon cycle, in a large forest of wind turbines, when one arsonist sets a single tower on far.
Why is it that when I hold a stick, everyone begins to look like a pinata?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 09 2020, @07:51PM
Social distancing the towers, to prevent transmission of anything besides green electricity? That would be why they set them on far.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Tuesday June 09 2020, @08:22PM (1 child)
Depending on how they prevented it from rotting, you might not have to burn it: Standing deadwood is a perfect habitat for lots of insects, fungus, microbes, and a bunch of other critters. Or if you have to take it apart for some reason, you can also leave it on the ground. This kind of thing happens slower for pressure-treated and stained lumber, but it still happens given enough time.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 09 2020, @09:54PM
If you really need it gone, just bury it. I doubt anything will be left after 10 years buried shallowly.
(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.
Account abandoned.
(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.
Why is it that when I hold a stick, everyone begins to look like a pinata?
(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.
Account abandoned.
(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.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by srobert on Tuesday June 09 2020, @08:11PM (3 children)
The article doesn't say how the wood laminate material is protected from fire, termites and wood rot. Of course all materials have mitigations. Steel rusts, etc.
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 09 2020, @09:29PM
Add to list: Jihadis with matchbooks
(Score: 2) by Username on Wednesday June 10 2020, @12:11AM
That's my concern as well. All building codes I've seen required buldings over a certain height or density to be made of concrete or steel. They also require a certain number of cross braces. I feel the same way about this as I do about driving over wood bridges.
(Score: 1) by lars_stefan_axelsson on Wednesday June 10 2020, @07:37AM
There aren't any termites in Sweden, so that problem can be removed from the list.
Stefan Axelsson
(Score: 3, Funny) by stretch611 on Wednesday June 10 2020, @02:28AM
Of course they only give you a poor quality allen wrench to put it together.
And the directions for assembly as hard to read and crappy as well.
Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P