Would you have an electric car if you had the money for a new car and were in the market for one?

[ZRX61]

Luckily, someone has a solution: get rid of the blades!

https://vortexbladeless.com/technology-design/

There's a home here that has what looks like a hacked about giant tin can on a pole that spins in the wind, looks to be about 10-12ft tall, 6ft dia.

[Horse]

Did wonder about the wobbly stick ones.

People complain about the blades on turbines clouting birds.

Would the wobbly stick ones work like giant baseball bats and welt the birds for a home run?

[Mr. Dazzle]

MIT made a 'solid state' electric plane with no moving parts a few years back. It was just a dinky little model thing but quite interesting. Someone else, can't remember who, has made a generator based on the same principals....no moving parts at all.

Its way off the power levels you get from turbines and impracticable at the moment, but interesting none the less.

[ZRX61]

Did wonder about the wobbly stick ones.

People complain about the blades on turbines clouting birds.

Would the wobbly stick ones work like giant baseball bats and welt the birds for a home run?

Leno had a couple of the tin can versions at his place too. I just looked at the one here & it's 5 vertical blades, not the tin can version. It would appear the local bloke & Leno have both upgraded from the tin can to the vertical blade version
Go to google street view here & look East:
34°42'11.99"N 118° 9'29.24"W

[rodbargee]

Watched a HArrys garage vid on youtube about a test on a 2 litre rangerover HYbred that really got to the bottom of the pros and cons of a hybred verses a all electric EV well worth a watch.

[Yorick]

MIT made a 'solid state' electric plane with no moving parts a few years back.

How did it move ?

[KungFooBob]

The carpenter kind of pushed and pulled on it.

[demographic]

MIT made a 'solid state' electric plane with no moving parts a few years back. It was just a dinky little model thing but quite interesting. Someone else, can't remember who, has made a generator based on the same principals....no moving parts at all.

Its way off the power levels you get from turbines and impracticable at the moment, but interesting none the less.

IIRC it was a type of ion drive wasnt it? I think I saw something about it.
Usually ion drive units only work in microgravity (although they provide high speed thrust there's not much of it) and this thing was somehow different.

[Mr. Dazzle]

Just googled it.

It ionises the air with high voltage, said air is then pulled between two wires. One with very high plus and one with high minus voltages on. The reaction force from the resulting air flow is what generates thrust.

The generators work the other way around. You ionise air with a high voltage, but then the wind blows away said ionised air leaving a "gap" of charge which then results in a voltage being set up between the two wires.

Google "ionic wind".

[Wreckless Rat]

I read that as bionic wand.

I’ve clearly watched too many videos of a certain nature

[Horse]

They contribute the fat end of sweet fuck all when they're frozen solid... or when the wind isn't sufficient... so basically we still need nuclear/coal/oil etc that is capable of supplying 100% of the need when the weather doesn't cooperate...

This is covered on the BBC this morning:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-56085733

[Excerpts]
Wind turbines froze, as well as vital equipment at gas wells and in the nuclear industry.

But because gas and other non-renewable energies contribute far more to the grid than wind power, particularly in winter, these shortages had a far greater impact on the system.

So when critics pointed to a loss of nearly half of Texas's wind-energy capacity as a result of frozen turbines, they failed to point out double that amount was being lost from gas and other non-renewable supplies such as coal and nuclear.

Texas has promoted the development of wind energy over the past 15 years.

And on average, renewable energy sources - mostly wind - account for about 20% of its energy supply.

But the largest proportion comes from fossil fuels, as well as 10% from nuclear.

On Tuesday, the state's principal energy supplier, the Electricity Reliability Council of Texas (Ercot), said the freezing conditions had led to:
- 30GW being taken offline from gas, coal and nuclear sources
- 16GW loss in capacity in wind and other renewable energy supplies

Also notes:

The debate about renewable energy and the blackouts in Texas has also prompted the sharing of misleading claims online.

One image widely circulating on Twitter and Facebook shows a helicopter de-icing a wind turbine, with some comments suggesting it is in Texas.

"In Texas today... a helicopter, using fossil fuels, spraying de-icer, made with fossil fuels, to de-ice a wind turbine, manufactured using fossil fuels, that is supposed to produce clean energy without using fossil fuels," one Facebook post says.

But the picture actually shows ice being removed from a wind turbine in Sweden, using hot water.

BBC News traced the image back to a 2016 report published by Swedish company Alpine Helicopter, demonstrating "airborne de-icing solutions" for wind turbines.

[Mr. Dazzle]

Yeah, yeah, yeah....don't be talking sense like that.

[Horse]

New electric motor for those people missing their Porsche engines.

[Horse]

Yeah, yeah, yeah....don't be talking sense like that.

Don't know the truth behind this, or whether Texas Tribune is a reliable source.

In 2011, Texas faced a very similar storm that froze natural gas wells and affected coal plants and wind turbines, leading to power outages across the state. A decade later, Texas power generators have still not made all the investments necessary to prevent plants from tripping offline during extreme cold, experts said.


https://www.texastribune.org/2021/02/17 ... -failures/

[Mr. Dazzle]

One could be forgiven for thinking that extreme weather (extreme in the sense of whats normal for a location before anyone says "it's just a bit of snow") has an impact on ALL infrastructure.

[Kneerly Down]

Google "ionic wind".

I did that and it came up asking me if I wanted a quote from Anglian Windows!

It does ring a bell though, from when we had to make wind speed measuring devices (never sure how to spell anenenemonitomors) in an MEng lab task.
Some used whirly blades. We did a fancy hot wire one and one group decided to do it using, I guess but had no idea at the time, ionic wind...that failed.
I reckon the guy (must've been a guy as the only girl on the course was in our group) who thought it up is probably like Elon Musk now, only not so boastful of his wealth & achievements.

[ZRX61]

Don't know the truth behind this, or whether Texas Tribune is a reliable source.

In 2011, Texas faced a very similar storm that froze natural gas wells and affected coal plants and wind turbines, leading to power outages across the state. A decade later, Texas power generators have still not made all the investments necessary to prevent plants from tripping offline during extreme cold, experts said.


https://www.texastribune.org/2021/02/17 ... -failures/

Governor Rick Perry had fast tracked four new coal fired power plants to add to the baseline. The environmentalists were so enraged they forced a takeover of the large energy provider TXU and got those projects cancelled. The grifters soon moved in and what we saw was a full embrace of unreliable renewable energy. To supplement the base load electron shortage during the summer A/C season many smaller natural gas power plants sprung up. Of course, the NG powerplants failed too. Why? Because of EPA mandated CO2 reductions. The NG pumping stations are electrified now.
No electricity - no NG to power the electrical power plants.... oops.

[demographic]

Reasonable explanation for the issues Texas has had recently, amongst other things she points out that one of Texas's nuclear power stations went offline because its water supply froze.
She covers some details of how colder areas have wind turbines better suited to freezing conditions.

[ZRX61]

The 5000+ wind turbines here operate in the cold... well, the 66% that actually work. The others are all broken & there's no taxpayers subsidy to remove them, just to install new ones so we have countless "standing scrap".

[demographic]

The 5000+ wind turbines here operate in the cold... well, the 66% that actually work. The others are all broken & there's no taxpayers subsidy to remove them, just to install new ones so we have countless "standing scrap".

Jeez that sound so irresponsible that I wouldn't want whoever regulates it to be in charge of any nuclear power stations...