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Mon Nov 18, 2024 9:04 am

oprn wrote: The head fell off one of the 80 wind generators just west of us. No cause stated in the news. It was only a few years old. There is a picture in the local paper of it in a scrambled heap along with the blades at the foot of the tower.

The ones that catch fire and keep spinning are the best.

Mon Nov 18, 2024 12:15 pm

heimlich wrote: oprn wrote: The head fell off one of the 80 wind generators just west of us. No cause stated in the news. It was only a few years old. There is a picture in the local paper of it in a scrambled heap along with the blades at the foot of the tower.

The ones that catch fire and keep spinning are the best.

Well...short of something sad and silly like a bunch of bolts being left out....this happens fairly frequently when the transmission locks up due to either running out of lubricant, lubricating pump or lines broken....who knows!

Other times I have heard of this happening is due to massive "overspeed"....like a high wind event. BUT....when there is an overspeed, if the system is operating properly, the internal braking system should start braking the speed down and the blades should be automatically feathered to shut down.

There are nice videos of wind turbines in storms where the braking system cannot slow the blades down and the brakes burn up. The blades keep spinning faster until the tips break the speed of sound and then they disintigrate and many times it rips the head off the tower as well.

Here is a famous video of this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAWMpxX60KM

Ray

Tue Nov 19, 2024 5:37 am

Could easily have been overspeed. We get lots of high winds here at which time they always feather the blades and stop them from turning.

They don't turn in strong winds, they don't turn in no wind and they stop them when it gets to -25. It would be interesting to see a breakdown on power producing hours over a year. Just from personal observation of these units I would venture a guess of them turning about 60 to 70% of the time at best.

Tue Nov 19, 2024 8:07 am

oprn wrote: Could easily have been overspeed. We get lots of high winds here at which time they always feather the blades and stop them from turning.

They don't turn in strong winds, they don't turn in no wind and they stop them when it gets to -25. It would be interesting to see a breakdown on power producing hours over a year. Just from personal observation of these units I would venture a guess of them turning about 60 to 70% of the time at best.

I saw a nice news piece about 3 months ago. The problem with wind turbines is two-fold.

1. What you just mentioned. Depending on where they are sited, wind patterns and weather, they can have a lower availability rating. Since you cannot store the power currently, when wind starts dropping off or gets high enough that large groups of turbines are shutting down for safety.....something locally in the grid has to make up for that power....FAST.

This rapid need to spool up steam or gas turbines is very wasteful and expensive. It means that until the standard gas/water/steam can catch up....you local grid has to steal some of the "slosh" from other remote parts of the grid. In the US....one state with too many wind turbines may have to pull power from halfway across the country in the gridnetwork. Everyone else has to ramp up to counteract.

2. On one hand, wind turbines are amazing. They make lots of power....and they make the same amount of power from whatever their minimum windspeed is ....say 5-7 mphminimum...up to their maximum of (depending on what turbine) up to about 45 mph maximum before shut down.

They can make the same amount of power because they have fluid coupled gearboxes (like a torque converter).

What they mostly have a problem with and is the most serious problem....is problems with power frequency....Hz. The power frequency needs to stable.

Wind turbine power frequency has poor stability. When you fly over wind turbine fields and you see a small power sub-station nearby...these are doing well. That substation is there to correct the power frequency.

But here in the US...they have been letting so many people build turbine fields that only about half have their own correction sub-stations. This causes HUGE problems in electrical frequency for the grids they are feeding.

Its a regulation problem...and I mean "regulatory". I for one like smaller government....but some things have to be regulated.

Ray

Tue Nov 19, 2024 11:11 am

raygreenwood wrote: Since you cannot store the power currently

Great choice of words !!!

Tue Nov 19, 2024 9:06 pm

SR type do not have the same issues as tower versions. I've seen a few fields using this design , never understood why they are not used more. Vanadium storage batteries also overcome traditional limitations. Neither solve the industry problems , yet they could fill some holes. My postmaster just bought a Subaru EV and loves it, the incentives from tax rebates made it very convincing. The jockeying for market share and attempts to keep profitability high from the major producers just reinforces the reality that oil is yesterdays fuel.

Wed Nov 20, 2024 7:10 am

I wasn't aware of the fluid coupling in the heads and I have no idea how that would work. I do know that they can change the pitch on the blades to help keep turning at the same RPM with varying wind speeds.

I have often wondered how they keep them pointed directly into the wind. The old 32 volt wind chargers had a big tail on them to do that job. Without that tail it must take a tremendous force to bring them into the wind as the wind changes.

Anyhow, I am so glad we don't have to depend on power to heat our homes here because it has become very undependable since these wind systems went up and the existing power station's outputs have been downsized to natural gas. Extreme weather events now mean that for the first time in my 70 years we are seeing power shortages here.

One huge power waste that bothers me is the apparent need to light up our cities like there is no night. Take a look at some of the night time photos take from space to see what I mean. There is a tremendous effort on the part of humanity to try and replace the sun at night. Nobody ever talks about that waste of energy! Let night be night, cars have headlights and flashlights have never been so good if you need to go out in the dark.

When I was growing up in the city there was one street light at each intersection with nothing between and we survived! Now when there is a power shortage they tell us to shut the lights and appliances off in our houses and they leave the lights on in the street. Are we supposed to move our furniture out and live on the sidewalk or what? :P

Wed Nov 20, 2024 9:16 am

oprn wrote: I wasn't aware of the fluid coupling in the heads and I have no idea how that would work. I do know that they can change the pitch on the blades to help keep turning at the same RPM with varying wind speeds.

I have often wondered how they keep them pointed directly into the wind. The old 32 volt wind chargers had a big tail on them to do that job. Without that tail it must take a tremendous force to bring them into the wind as the wind changes.

Anyhow, I am so glad we don't have to depend on power to heat our homes here because it has become very undependable since these wind systems went up and the existing power station's outputs have been downsized to natural gas. Extreme weather events now mean that for the first time in my 70 years we are seeing power shortages here.

One huge power waste that bothers me is the apparent need to light up our cities like there is no night. Take a look at some of the night time photos take from space to see what I mean. There is a tremendous effort on the part of humanity to try and replace the sun at night. Nobody ever talks about that waste of energy! Let night be night, cars have headlights and flashlights have never been so good if you need to go out in the dark.

When I was growing up in the city there was one street light at each intersection with nothing between and we survived!

They do change pitch in small amounts for small scale rpm modulation. But wholesale control of higher speeds in stronger winds is done is with BRAKING of the driveline. This is why they have rpm limits much lower than the blades themselves can handle.

I just saw a video the other day with a camera inside of the machine room of a turbine that was over speeding and the brakes were burning up and it caught fire. You could see a big ring of red around the shaft throwing off occasional sparks. It's a giant brake band or series of braking bands. I will try to find that video and link it.

The object is that as the speed starts to increase.....the braking system ....part of which is hydrostatic but the lions share is the brake system.....works together to apply brakes off and on to maintain a "programmed" best speed.

So if the wind is intermittently gusty slow and fast.....the speed is modulated to keep it "nominal". If some point the wind speed keeps pushing the speed up....the blades feather and the brake system stops it altogether. Ray

Wed Nov 20, 2024 9:55 am

Here is an answer
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savonius_wind_turbine

Assuming reliable power is some sort of birthright is laughable. You will take what they are offering or make your own. Go sit through a few PUC meetings, and wake up. Centralized power is the standard large corporations seek, with that comes all sorts of concerns from many different players. Wind will be part of the mix as the Permian Basin supply has an expiration date.

Wed Nov 20, 2024 10:21 am

Manfred58sc wrote: Centralized power is the standard large corporations seek, with that comes all sorts of concerns from many different players.

You left out government from that list.

Large corporation also love the government to get involved that way they can influence them to pass regulations. Regulations keep small companies from entering the markets.

Thu Nov 21, 2024 5:14 am

raygreenwood wrote: oprn wrote: I wasn't aware of the fluid coupling in the heads and I have no idea how that would work. I do know that they can change the pitch on the blades to help keep turning at the same RPM with varying wind speeds.

I have often wondered how they keep them pointed directly into the wind. The old 32 volt wind chargers had a big tail on them to do that job. Without that tail it must take a tremendous force to bring them into the wind as the wind changes.

Anyhow, I am so glad we don't have to depend on power to heat our homes here because it has become very undependable since these wind systems went up and the existing power station's outputs have been downsized to natural gas. Extreme weather events now mean that for the first time in my 70 years we are seeing power shortages here.

One huge power waste that bothers me is the apparent need to light up our cities like there is no night. Take a look at some of the night time photos take from space to see what I mean. There is a tremendous effort on the part of humanity to try and replace the sun at night. Nobody ever talks about that waste of energy! Let night be night, cars have headlights and flashlights have never been so good if you need to go out in the dark.

When I was growing up in the city there was one street light at each intersection with nothing between and we survived!

They do change pitch in small amounts for small scale rpm modulation. But wholesale control of higher speeds in stronger winds is done is with BRAKING of the driveline. This is why they have rpm limits much lower than the blades themselves can handle.

I just saw a video the other day with a camera inside of the machine room of a turbine that was over speeding and the brakes were burning up and it caught fire. You could see a big ring of red around the shaft throwing off occasional sparks. It's a giant brake band or series of braking bands. I will try to find that video and link it.

The object is that as the speed starts to increase.....the braking system ....part of which is hydrostatic but the lions share is the brake system.....works together to apply brakes off and on to maintain a "programmed" best speed.

So if the wind is intermittently gusty slow and fast.....the speed is modulated to keep it "nominal". If some point the wind speed keeps pushing the speed up....the blades feather and the brake system stops it altogether. Ray
Braking constantly like that sounds like a high maintenance/prone to failure idea. Can you imagine setting up a vehicle where the speed is controlled by how hard you apply the brakes?

Anyway, last evening I found out that the failed wind turbine in question was not part of the 80 unit phase 1 installation. It was one of the phase 2 expansion units that had not yet been put in service. Investigation pending...

Fri Nov 22, 2024 2:30 pm

Yes, the energy to charge a battery needs to come from somewhere but this is an interesting next step.

Solid State Battery R&D
https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a62963564/honda-solid-state-batteries/

Sat Nov 23, 2024 11:46 pm

heimlich wrote: Manfred58sc wrote: Centralized power is the standard large corporations seek, with that comes all sorts of concerns from many different players.

You left out government from that list.

Large corporation also love the government to get involved that way they can influence them to pass regulations. Regulations keep small companies from entering the markets.

Governments oft warp the market, tax people to subsidize their favored industry, and tax and or regulate their unfavored industry out of business. California wants to ban new gas car sales in a decade, plans to ban gas appliences in homes, and is taxing fuels to as they say incentify electric cars. then there are bansmof certain flavors of vapes, and menthol cigs, some have declared a war on tobacco, while they legalized dope. drive up the cost of collage with non degree education requirements, while taxing to help reduce the cost. California highspeed rail, if it ever gets done, wants the feds to reduce the number of airline flights allowed in the state to help up the ridership of the train.
politicians love to tax and regulate to curry favor from one organization company or group so as to assure a huge source of political donations, post public service employment, and other graft. since government has the absolute power, it becomes absolutely corrupt.

Sun Nov 24, 2024 4:15 am

oprn wrote: raygreenwood wrote: oprn wrote: I wasn't aware of the fluid coupling in the heads and I have no idea how that would work. I do know that they can change the pitch on the blades to help keep turning at the same RPM with varying wind speeds.

I have often wondered how they keep them pointed directly into the wind. The old 32 volt wind chargers had a big tail on them to do that job. Without that tail it must take a tremendous force to bring them into the wind as the wind changes.

Anyhow, I am so glad we don't have to depend on power to heat our homes here because it has become very undependable since these wind systems went up and the existing power station's outputs have been downsized to natural gas. Extreme weather events now mean that for the first time in my 70 years we are seeing power shortages here.

One huge power waste that bothers me is the apparent need to light up our cities like there is no night. Take a look at some of the night time photos take from space to see what I mean. There is a tremendous effort on the part of humanity to try and replace the sun at night. Nobody ever talks about that waste of energy! Let night be night, cars have headlights and flashlights have never been so good if you need to go out in the dark.

When I was growing up in the city there was one street light at each intersection with nothing between and we survived!

They do change pitch in small amounts for small scale rpm modulation. But wholesale control of higher speeds in stronger winds is done is with BRAKING of the driveline. This is why they have rpm limits much lower than the blades themselves can handle.

I just saw a video the other day with a camera inside of the machine room of a turbine that was over speeding and the brakes were burning up and it caught fire. You could see a big ring of red around the shaft throwing off occasional sparks. It's a giant brake band or series of braking bands. I will try to find that video and link it.

The object is that as the speed starts to increase.....the braking system ....part of which is hydrostatic but the lions share is the brake system.....works together to apply brakes off and on to maintain a "programmed" best speed.

So if the wind is intermittently gusty slow and fast.....the speed is modulated to keep it "nominal". If some point the wind speed keeps pushing the speed up....the blades feather and the brake system stops it altogether. Ray
Braking constantly like that sounds like a high maintenance/prone to failure idea. Can you imagine setting up a vehicle where the speed is controlled by how hard you apply the brakes?

Anyway, last evening I found out that the failed wind turbine in question was not part of the 80 unit phase 1 installation. It was one of the phase 2 expansion units that had not yet been put in service. Investigation pending...

While y’all are on the topic of wind turbines, on a recent excursion across country, I caught a pic of a replacement blade in transit.

Sun Nov 24, 2024 6:39 am

this sounds like a fun way to travel...
https://uk.yahoo.com/news/high-mileage-electric-car-usage-105706844.html

Sun Nov 24, 2024 10:11 am

kingkarmann wrote: Yes, the energy to charge a battery needs to come from somewhere but this is an interesting next step.

Solid State Battery R&D
https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a62963564/honda-solid-state-batteries/

This is actually a fair chunk of my industry.

This is also the only short article out of many that are "pimping" this technology....that actually kind of fairly alludes to the difficulties, challanges and outright roadblocks facing those trying to make solid state batteries....more properly known as thin film printed batteries.

I have had no less than 6 solid state battery companies as clients. Only about two are still in business. I spent 6 months out of this past year working with one main client that had excellent process, chemistry and product designs....but they went out of business in July simoply because the cost to ramp up production at the speed they needed could not be done fast enough and the market could not supoort a slow ramp.

As the article noted, Toyota has also been touting their work on this over the last year....and it disappeared from the news didn't it? :wink:

The technological concept behind thin film, solid state batteries...is rock solid. A battery cell of any format type from pouch cells to AA's to car battery size cells can be made to be 2-3X the amp hours (or more) at 1/3 the size and 50% or less recharge time.

If you want to know why this works I can further explain.

BUT....BUT....the challanges are astronomical. In any given cell if you get a single piece of dust or even a bubble or two a handful of microns in diameter....it creates a hole or via between layers. Depending on the layer that can create a dead short....a dead battery or plate.

These layered cells tyoically have an average of five main layers and 3-4 sub layers. Chemistry, grind size, particle dispersal....and especially rheology are critical....because these are all PRINTED. Most use some version of screen printing from normal screen to stainless mesh to stainless stencil to rotary screen...to blade coating roll to roll, to slot dies coating...to vapor deposition layers....even some gravure.

The screen printing process alone average about 1500 variables to control.

Then we get into the issue of the fact that these are not actually printing inks (except for the dielectric layers). This means that they have no additives that modify shear and flow....so they are very difficult to print.

Just the R&D printing to identify the screen or stencil recipe can cost mountains of money and take years.

The other huge problem for all of my clients is procuring metallic ingredients for the reactive or conductive slurries/pastes/inks ...that are pure enough to not create unexpected reactions within the cell layers.

From the equipment in that video and others I have seen, some of that is Sakurai roll to roll screen. Some of it is slot die.

Here is a better overview of that process at Honda...of which they have purposely NOT shown the print heads of any of their roll to roll machines instead skipping to animation :wink:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mP4_NUzywq8

In this video you see the long white machines which are the dryers or baking lehrs and you see some of the pressure lamination equipment

Yes...keep your eye on solid state battery technology but don't hold your breath. It will be a while.

But...the smart thing about what Honda is doing is that as they note in the video, they STARTED with a line and clean room that is already large enough to do production.

The problem with most thin film/sold state battery companies is that they start small, run in batches...make their name and perfect their chemistry...at GREAT cost. Then they very quickly have to ramp up production scale to be able to further fund their existence.

It typically cannot be done fast enough. Just building a lot of those machinery they need will take over a year or more.

Ray

Sun Nov 24, 2024 10:14 am

Sounds similar to the process by which microchips are made. Those rooms have to be very clean.

Sun Nov 24, 2024 10:49 am

heimlich wrote: Sounds similar to the process by which microchips are made. Those rooms have to be very clean.

Yes in some respects. But generally the FABS that screen printing, and all of the print/deposition processes I mentioned cannot be made anywhere near as clean as microchip FABS. It's the nature of the process. To many vapors and particles.

But it's still involved and expensive.

For example....most screen printed or stencil printing processes like these batteries and solar cells work within an ISO class 7 (most common and formerly Fed std 209E class 10,000) sometimes an ISO 6 (class 1000) and in rare instances an ISO 5 (class 100) clean rooms.

If you believe Wikipedia.....they state that a lot of semiconductor can get away with class 7, 6 or 5. Uh....no.
Some of the lesser accessory products that go along with semiconductor levels or work....yes...like boards and connectors and sockets.

Or.....in many cases semiconductor has smartly gone to the main facility being a class 7, 6 or 5....but the individual subdivided small spaces a piece of equipment may be operating in....will have to be ISO class 4 or better.
If you can manage this.....it's huge orders of magnitude cheaper than trying to maintain 10s of thousands of square feet at a very clean level.

Typically when you are making chips....it's ISO 3 or 2.

That same article states that class 1 clean rooms are rare. They are not. They are few and far between yes.....but not rare.

Back in 2004, our little 3500 square foot R&D clean room that oscillated between class 10,000 or ISO 7 and 1000 or ISO 6......was costing the company ~$60,000 per week just for the clean room suits, accessories, tacky mats, HEPA filters and power. This does not even include the chemistry, gases and employees.

That process moved to a class 10,000 facility in the Philippines that was ~200,000 square feet....but we had a lot of on-site manufacturing of clean room accessories. It was still over $100,000 per week just to turn the lights on.

For an ISO 4 or higher clean room....that cost double or triples.

Ray

Sun Nov 24, 2024 11:46 am

How thick are the layers being printed for these new batteries? What materials make up these thin films? Is post printing processing required (diffusion, baking, etc...?
What are the critical dimensions for the lithography?

Sun Nov 24, 2024 11:53 am

This article shows one of the big problems with the push for zero carbon electric...

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/solar-powe...&ei=62

excerpt...

" the Newsom administration estimated California needs another 70 gigawatts of industrial solar farms by 2045 to get to a carbon-free electrical grid. That would require solar to be built across another 300 to 450 square miles, an area that would cover nearly half of Rhode Island.

Some of those projects have cleared thousands of acres of pristine land in the Mojave Desert, where it has angered local residents worried about declining property values and environmentalists concerned about the loss of wildlife habitat."