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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: 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