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70% of the planet is water.  Windmills have just started to venture onto the continental shelf.

Do you think swimming windmills will be viable some day?

If not, and only the continental shelves can be utilised, they won't add that much in the case of the USA (unlike in the case of Europe). Consider this: utilising the entire continent (not taking into account limitations in zoning laws) and shallow waters, the US total capacity with present technology was estimated at three times the current consumption a few years ago. Incidentally, another study estimating the electricity need if all US cars go fuel cell also put the need at three times the current usage (i.e. the new need would be four times of today's in total).

There is not much benefit from size: you have to place larger wind turbines further apart. As both the power of a wind turbine is proportional to the swept area (hence the square of its rotor diameter) and the required distance between rotors is proportional to the rotor diameter (hence the number of rotors on a given area is inversely proportional to the square of the rotor diameter), the two factors cancel out. What you can win with size is some economies of scale (less maintenance or installation costs), but it can break down with further increase in size.

*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.

by DoDo on Thu Feb 9th, 2006 at 05:06:19 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Larger wind turbines operate farther away from the ground to take advantage of higher wind speeds - the "laminar boundary layer"

In this sense, the size of the turbines does matter, and bigger is better. I suppose if you get farther away from the ground the wind speeds get so large that you get into the "turbulent boundary layer"

so there is indeed a limit to how high you can go with wind turbines of this type

but maybe other turbine designs will be better suited to operating in turbulent conditions?

This is a semi-educated guess - I know hydrodynamics but little about turbine engineering

A society committed to the notion that government is always bad will have bad government. And it doesn't have to be that way. — Paul Krugman

by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Thu Feb 9th, 2006 at 06:04:58 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Larger wind turbines operate farther away from the ground to take advantage of higher wind speeds

That is (a) a function of turbine height, not rotor diameter, which can (and is) increased independently, (b) it is a strong factor only on land - on water, in fact, the same type of turbines stand on typically lower towers (the lower limit is not even turbulence-related: it is a height for safe passage of smaller yachts).

*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.

by DoDo on Thu Feb 9th, 2006 at 07:19:31 AM EST
[ Parent ]
I mentioned turbulence for the upper limit. As land is rougher than water you have to climb higher in order for the boundary layer to set in. The lower limit on water should be a function of typical wave height in rough weather.

A society committed to the notion that government is always bad will have bad government. And it doesn't have to be that way. — Paul Krugman
by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Thu Feb 9th, 2006 at 07:30:08 AM EST
[ Parent ]
I admit to having been cursory in my reading, and now being confused. Aren't both the laminar and turbulent boundary layers lower limits - and the turbulent one being lower? I would expect the flow to be laminar or turbulent depending on weather (on water, this includes the waves) and the surrounding surface, and the laminar boundary layer as the lower limit.

On the other hand, larger-scale turbulence and differing wind speeds might be a limit on rotor diameter indepentently of height.

*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.

by DoDo on Thu Feb 9th, 2006 at 07:46:05 AM EST
[ Parent ]
The flow is laminar at low Reynolds numbers, and turbulent at high Reynolds numbers. For our purposes, the Reynolds number is proportional to wind speed and distance to the ground.

A society committed to the notion that government is always bad will have bad government. And it doesn't have to be that way. — Paul Krugman
by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Thu Feb 9th, 2006 at 08:04:45 AM EST
[ Parent ]

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