Hat tip to reader redskylite.
Australian scientists are developing wind turbines that are one-third the price and 1,000 times more efficient than anything currently on the market to install along the country’s windy and abundant coast.
New superconductor-powered wind turbines could be installed off the coast of Australia within the next five years to finally take advantage of the country’s 35,000 km of coastline, which offers up some of the best wind resources in the world.
Developed by a team at the Institute for Superconducting and Electronic Materials at the University of Wollongong in New South Wales, the wind turbines are a significant improvement on current technology. Right now, wind turbines cost about $15 million each to construct, and are super-heavy and tough to ship. They also require a whole lot of maintenance because they’re run using a complex, heavy, and costly piece of machinery called a gear box.
“In our design there is no gear box, which right away reduces the size and weight by 40 percent,” said lead researcher and materials scientist Shahriar Hossain. “We are developing a magnesium diboride superconducting coil to replace the gear box. This will capture the wind energy and convert it into electricity without any power loss, and will reduce manufacturing and maintenance costs by two thirds.”
Superconductors are a class of materials that have been getting a lot of attention this year due to their potential to completely revolutionise power systems and batteries as we know them. Right now, these systems generate power by running an electric current through a copper conduction loop, but during this process up to 10 percent of the energy is lost due to resistance. This, and the fact that the copper wire decays quickly, means our current power systems are relatively inefficient with short lifespans.
But superconducting materials generate no electrical resistance, which means they’re able to store electricity with no loss of energy. The current is also able to circulate over and over indefinitely, even if power is turned off. The Australian team is making their superconducting coil out of magnesium and boron, both of which are cheap, durable and easy to make.
The team estimates that their superconductor wind turbines will cost just $3-5 million each to build, because by next year, the magnesium diboride coil will cost just $1 per metre to manufacture.
While this is exciting news, let’s take a good look at this claim.
Magnesium diboride (MgB2) has a critical temp of -234 C.
How much machinery are they going to need to keep the necessary components at that low a temperature?
“and the fact that the copper wire decays quickly” – I wasn’t aware of this.
How “quickly” is quickly?
If these turbines pan out and quickly become the standard, there’s going to be a huge surge in turbine overhaul as the combination of greater energy production / lower losses and reclaiming & re-using megatons of useful & expensive materials will be very appealing.
And there’s also the promising approaches for taller but lighter towers –
Keystone Towers on-site spiral welding and Iowa State’s pre-stressed concrete and steel hexagonal design
http://www.rechargenews.com/wind/1377259/DOE-funds-taller-turbine-towers
and GE’s lattice-style, polyester-wrapped, space frame design
http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/Is-GEs-Space-Frame-Wind-Turbine-Tower-The-Future-of-Wind-Power
Yeah, that is a bit of an issue. Perhaps the compressor for the liquid helium can be run straight off the turbine itself. Or perhaps not.
In any event – the machinery required to refrigerate the helium is nothing like the usual massive gearbox needed to transfer power.
My level of pessimism about renewable energy in Australia has risen steadily since the Tony Abbott regime was elected in September last year and is currently off the chart. Our RET is set to be slashed. Billions of dollars of renewables investment that was in the pipeline is now on hold, fossil fuel subsidies are on the increase and mining and CSG approvals have been fast-tracked bypassing environmental legislation. If these researchers have indeed mastered many of the technical difficulties of cooling these superconductors and can actually produce these turbines, they won’t be appearing along our southern coastline anytime soon. We have another Federal election in 2016-17 which will hopefully see our current government kicked to the kerb and maybe then we can finally move forward but I have also lost faith in my fellow Australians and their political awareness. They are apathetic, short-sighted, gullible and have very short memories. I would not be surprised if they re-elected our current bunch of fascists for another term. This would set back renewables in this country for decades.
“1,000 times more efficient than anything currently on the market”?
That’s silly :/
‘bearing’ versus ‘bearingless’. Not silly.
What causes my Hype Alert to start flashing is the claim “1,000 times more efficient than anything currently on the market”. Um, excuse me?! If a current wind turbine captures, say, 5% of the energy of the wind flowing past it will the superconducting turbine capture 5,000%? That seems a bit of a stretch, but perhaps they’re using the term ‘efficiency’ in a connotation I’m unfamiliar with. Certainly the resistive losses within the turbines would be much smaller but the transmission lines from the off-shore wind farm to the mainland wouldn’t be superconducting, would they?
Yup. Current turbines convert 45 to 50% of the kinetic energy of the air flowing through them into electrical energy. The theoretical limit (Betz’s Law) is 59.3%.
I think the key number here is 1/3 the cost – if that is even close to being true, it is a very big deal. In fact, it is not that far off from US DOE predictions that were being made even a few years ago, of 30 percent cost reductions in the pipelline.
If you look historically at renewable energy, that kind of reduction is completely within the ballpark of what we’ve seen – the superconductivity is just a new wrinkle on how it will be achieved. There will also be continued innovations in
manufacturing, better blade design, higher towers, etc
If there is any chance that we can approach 1/3 the cost, we should probably look to “…continued innovations in manufacturing, better blade design, higher towers, etc…” to achieve it rather than this scheme.
Maybe someone whose physics is more up-to-date than mine can explain it, but the only place I can see that superconductivity might help is if it somehow allows the same amount of electricity to be generated at a far lower rotational speed in the generator. Right now that “heavy and expensive” gear box is needed to multiply the low RPM’s of the turbine blades up to the much higher rotational speed of the generator.
Superconductor coils in motors and generators have been around conceptually for quite a while. They have been researched more in the compact propulsion (motors) side versus the generation. I would imagine the tech would probably go the same way as the propulsion development has gone, kinda slow. The main draw over the years has been how power dense they can be. This may be somewhat useful in a wind turbine nacelle, but there are structural requirements that require a certain size nacelle anyway. Might give maintenance guys more room to work, though.
It seems the claims may have been put together by a marketing guy rather than run through engineering. In a sense, they get the superconducting figures right, but quite a lot is out of context or not worded very well. Case in point the 5000% claim. Sure, resistive losses go down substantially, but that is not the only cause of power losses overall.
This engineer’s opinion? This is promising research, particularly the cost reductions, but the marketing dept. should have toned it down a bit.
Please don’t be upset by my criticism of this piece, redskylite. You do us a great service on Crock by posting links to odd little corners, but this article is full of science nonsense.
Perhaps it’s the fault of a writer with a poor science background, but the video clip is underwhelming also, both in what the “researcher” says and what he is doing on camera (to say nothing of the machinery he is pictured with).
I had the same questions as Morin Moss about using superconductors, especially of the size needed here and located up in wind turbine nacelles. The bit about copper “decay” makes no sense either, and alexisxela’s comment about 1,000 times as efficient being “silly” is spot on.
I would add some other parts of the piece to the WHAT? category as well.
“We are developing a magnesium diboride superconducting coil to replace the gear box. This will capture the wind energy and convert it into electricity without any power loss, and will reduce manufacturing and maintenance costs by two thirds.”
(The gearbox is a straight mechanical device that transmits the wind energy to the electrical generator in the turbine. It sounds like they are trying to design what is called a “direct drive” system in which the generator—now this magnesium diboride “coil”—-is hooked directly to the turbine. This direct drive system is already being explored, and it escapes me why the “coil” has to be made of a superconductor rather than the plain old copper all the others are using that has worked so well in generators for so long. Perhaps because it’s “catchy”?).
“Right now, these systems generate power by running an electric current through a copper conduction loop, but during this process up to 10 percent of the energy is lost due to resistance. This, and the fact that the copper wire decays quickly, means our current power systems are relatively inefficient with short lifespans”.
(This is really nonsensical—-what “systems” generate power by “running an electric current through a a loop”—-that sounds more like an electric motor. Electricity is generated by moving the “loop” through a magnetic field so that a current flows in it).
“But superconducting materials generate no electrical resistance, which means they’re able to store electricity with no loss of energy. The current is also able to circulate over and over indefinitely, even if power is turned off”.
(This is true under certain conditions but is totally irrelevant to what goes on in a wind turbine, even one that uses superconductors somewhere. Why it is included is a mystery, beyond that it sounds impressive. Store electricity with no loss? Current circulates indefinitely? Yeah, a real BS sandwich there—don’t partake without some Tums handy)
Perhaps there is something to this idea, but this article and the video clip don’t show it. For now, it’s not even good enough to compete with Solar Roadway in the race to extract $$$$ from the gullible. (Sorry, Redsky—-don’t get upset, but the science compels me to say that).
Put on your thinking caps, kiddies. Here’s one of the most realistic TED talks I’ve ever experienced. British science teacher David McKay really likes doing the numbers, and shows why unthinking faith in renewable energy sources is definitely out in sugar-plum-fairy land.
Please do catch his calculation about how nuclear power is fifty times more energy dense than even the best of our solar or wind systems. Plus, ta da, nuclear is 24/7. Don’t even think about how we’d match that with the renewables portfolio.
[Aside: Short on attention span? Start then at Minute 7:35 for the comparison of different energy generation systems.]
“nuclear power is fifty times more energy dense than even the best of our solar or wind systems”: hence the oft-cited criticism of nuclear – “its like swatting a fly with a sledgehammer”
The energy density of nuclear is not an advantage, unless you’re in orbit around Neptune. In near-Solar orbit, Solar makes a lot of sense, and so do the other technologies designed to absorb nuclear fusion energy 9 light-minutes from where all this Solar Systems nuclear fusion FUEL is all sequestered. POSSIBLY, MacKay is promoting fission power because it has an easily monopolized fuel source? like fossils? Jest sayin’
I don’t know if you are aware of the book MacKay has put together with an online version available here:
Sustainable Energy Without the Hot Air
If it gets a mention in the video sorry but my net connection hangs soon after starting any YouTube, (on three different computers with three operating systems and I run a tracerout based logging software which shows the drop outs).
Sounds like you’ve got the wrong ISP? 🙂
Maybe, but choice be limited.
“And so it goes on. MacKay produces a litany of false claims and bizarrely pessimistic assumptions directed at renewable energy, while offering the most rose-tinted view of nuclear energy.”
Case in point. In his calculation, McKay assumes the same energy is used for a EV based transportation system as the current ICE system. Thats one of many “math” errors.
Face it. Its just not peer reviewed scientific literature. Its popular journalism with a science facade. Hot air.
http://thisbluerock.wordpress.com/2011/05/16/david-mackays-sustainable-energy-without-the-hot-air-perhaps-a-little-hot-air-2/
A lot of newer wind turbines are direct drive and have no gearbox. This makes them lighter, less expensive and more reliable.
The 1,000X more efficient claim screams to be debunked.
The fact that renewable energy is all over the place is a big advantage.
The sun already powers EVERYTHING on earth, all the time. The energy from the sun that strikes the earth in one day could power all human needs for twenty seven years.
So all we have to do in capture about 1/10,000th of it and we’ll be fine. Or we can get part of the energy from wind, wave, tides, biomass, etc. and by having a diverse and distributed multiple energy sources, we will be fine.
Nuclear is a lousy thing, because we still have not figured out what to do with the waste.
And no waste is what we gotta’ do. That is how nature does it – and we need to do the same.
Live without producing any waste.
Well said, but I would argue with two parts:
“Nuclear is a lousy thing, because we still have not figured out what to do with the waste”.
That’s not true. We DO have a workable plan for dealing with it. It’s quite compact, and all we have to do is embed it in huge casks made of concrete and steel and park it in some out-of-the-way place for 10,000 years. It will do far less harm than the CO2 we are pumping into the atmosphere, and maybe in 10,000 years we will have figured out a better plan (provided we have survived the CO2 and are still here,which seems less likely all the time).
“And no waste is what we gotta’ do. That is how nature does it – and we need to do the same. Live without producing any waste”.
The way nature deals with “waste” is to either turn it into “gold” for some other part of the biosphere to use productively (although that’s not strictly true—-some natural “waste” is simply harmful to some parts of the biosphere and has negative impacts thereon) or “bury” it somewhere through chemical or physical sequestration. It is a somewhat a sign of anthropocentrism that we speak of “nature doing it”. The laws of physics, chemistry, and biology govern what occurs, and all the “waste” that modern humans have produced is working through those laws to produce our extinction—–“nature” is unable to deal with the “waste” to prevent that..
Neil,
You wrote: “The sun already powers EVERYTHING on earth, all the time.”
True enough regarding fossil fuel, hydro, wind and solar.
Just not the case with nuclear fission, based on the death throes of a star in this region of the galaxy which blew itself into a cataclysm before our solar system got organized 4.7 Billion years ago. The uranium we use to power our bombs and generator station is a fossil fuel from a previous generation of stars. 🙂
And as Carl Sagan so perceptively put it, we’re all star stuff, too.
“Nuclear is a lousy thing, because we still have not figured out what to do with the waste.”
There are solutions but it rather depends on the history of civil nuclear power of any particular country.
Because of its early adoption, the UK has been difficultly placed and the de-regulation of electricity industries has not helped with capitalisation of new nuclear projects, the dead hand of politics again.
Nuclear Renaissance: Technologies and Policies for the Future of Nuclear Power by William J. Nuttall
A Google on Nuttall will throw up other interesting items.
The advantage for wind power of superconductivity lies in the power density and weight. Bigger turbines need lower weight generators for lower cost. It also lies in the the “power per tower”. With offshore, you want the least mass up in that nacelle at the top of the tower. Gearless has already been done, but it tends to make the generator heavier, negating some of the benefit of losing the gear mass. Mostly, gearless has resulted in better efficiency. Research into superconducting generators has been going on around the globe. Sea Titan is one of the superconducting wind turbines in development.
http://www.windsystemsmag.com/article/detail/241/superconductors-on-the-high-seas-
You get the feeling some of the specifics got garbled in the press releases, I have no idea where they got the “1,000 times as efficient” figure from.
My impression is the researcher’s goal is to come up with a cheap process for making the magnesium diboride wire.
Magnesium diboride wire still has to be cryocooled to become superconductive (Wikipedia says around 39K). So a cryocooler will be required – he mentions they can avoid using liquid helium.
It will be impressive engineering if they can get it to work.
Here is everything you wanted to know about wind technology but were afraid to ask. The paper is a little old, but it contains a good description of the physical and mechanical limits to wind technical improvements, and shows how engineers are making progress.
http://20percentwind.org/report/Chapter2_Wind_Turbine_Technology.pdf