Hurricane vs windmill

[Mosquito]

Just a small (set of) question(s) for those who knows something about these things, or are smart enough to think up some reasonable response

A hurricane has a huge, enormous amount of energy. They are coming along the Mexican Gulf rather regularily in the summer months.

A windmill, as we all know, collects energy from wind and converts it to work/electricity. This process zaps some of the energy out of the wind.

Would it be possible to use, admittedly huge, windmill farms in the gulf in order to convert wind energy to electricity/other useful work? Or are the winds and waves of such strength that this just can't be done?

I realize that such a farm would not be able to stop or significantly reduce a hurricane, but it might allow us to at least get something useful from them.

For maximum effect, the farm(s) should be mobile, since the hurricanes move about and have varying trajectories.

So, can windmills handle the conditions of a hurricane? Can they get enough useful work out of them to be worth building to the spesifications neccesary to manage? How much usefulness could we, with today's tech (or what we could reasonably easily come up with) get out of such farms?

Now I'll go back to do my penultimate day of work.


Mosquito - glad I'm not in NO, and that we, so far, haven't had any (real) problems here.

 

[DaveW]

Due to mechanical limitations, windmills will shut down long before the wind gets up to hurricane strength. Then quite a few would likely be damaged and/or destroyed in the excessive winds.

 

[Soapy Sam]

The windmills could power generators , to run air conditioners to drop the temperature and kill the storm.
If they were on wheels and fitted with sails, they could be the core of a largescale land yacht sport, which would possibly even fund the whole business.

They might be fitted with droppable concrete blocks to stop them blowing away in hurricanes. The blocks could be used as sea walls when not anchoring windmills...

OK jokes aside, the problem is scale of course- the energy in storms like this is just colossal. Still, energy is energy. There must be some way to extract large quantities of work from a storm like this- or from the disparities which give rise to it.

Maybe it's time we started thinking about engineering on this scale.

 

[drkitten]

So, can windmills handle the conditions of a hurricane? Can they get enough useful work out of them to be worth building to the spesifications neccesary to manage? How much usefulness could we, with today's tech (or what we could reasonably easily come up with) get out of such farms?

Windmills are usually designed to handle a certain range of wind speeds; too slow and they don't turn at all (and don't generate power), too fast, and the generator can't handle it and is likely to be damaged.

I suppose one could design a windmill to take advantage of hurricane-force winds, but it would almost certainly be the size of a large building and for all intents and purposes immobile. (Even oil tankers stay the hell out of hurricanes.) So the amount of useful work we could get out of such a creature would be essentially zero.

 

[Mosquito]

Re: Re: Hurricane vs windmill

Windmills are usually designed to handle a certain range of wind speeds; too slow and they don't turn at all (and don't generate power), too fast, and the generator can't handle it and is likely to be damaged.

I suppose one could design a windmill to take advantage of hurricane-force winds, but it would almost certainly be the size of a large building and for all intents and purposes immobile. (Even oil tankers stay the hell out of hurricanes.) So the amount of useful work we could get out of such a creature would be essentially zero.

So, in order to be strong enough to handle the hurricane conditions, it would have to be huge. I can live with that, but are you sure they would be immobile? If on the sea, they should be mobile "whatever the size". Oil-rigs in the North sea are HUGE structures, and they are not built on-site, but towed there from the construction site. They are also rather tough, though real hurricanes are probably a little over the top for them. No reason they couldn't be built to handle it, though.

I guess the real issue is if such a monster-mill would be able to get enough work done to defend building it. Oil-rigs pump up huge amounts of oil, 24/7, which pays for the show. A monster-mil may have only a few days/weeks of useful work each year. Could it be cost-effective? It would not need a lot of human effort (on a day to day basis), but I guess the bill for the materials alone would be rather huge.

Could it be built for multiple speed winds? Or would that require blades and generator/gear-problems that are technically unfeasible to deal with?


Mosquito - building some over land, at strategic locations, may help a little in defending cities, but I guess it would be easier to just build a dome or something.

 

[uruk]

oil rigs were heavily damaged by Katrina.

http://www.rigzone.com/news/article.asp?a_id=24921

 

[drkitten]

Re: Re: Re: Hurricane vs windmill

So, in order to be strong enough to handle the hurricane conditions, it would have to be huge. I can live with that, but are you sure they would be immobile? If on the sea, they should be mobile "whatever the size". Oil-rigs in the North sea are HUGE structures, and they are not built on-site, but towed there from the construction site.

They're also anchored to the ocean floor using sites carefully prepared over a matter of months or years -- for example, using cable anchors sunk into the ocean floor.

If you, um, want to try this process in a few hours in the face of an impending cat-4 hurricane, I suppose I can't stop you. I just hope that none of your work gang have families....

 

[Jon.]

Re: Re: Re: Hurricane vs windmill

I guess the real issue is if such a monster-mill would be able to get enough work done to defend building it.

That would be part of it. The other part would be whether the energy you reap would even come close to matching the energy required to move such a huge structure, quickly, in to the (somewhat unpredictable) path of a hurricane.

 

[Mosquito]

Construction cost : Huge
Mobility : Low
Need for Speed : Higher
Hurricane prediction requirements : Rather more precise.
Gains : Low or less


Aaaargh!


Reality always messes up my good ideas.

Now I need something sweet to un-depress me.


Mosquito - if only the world was more, um, magic?

 

[normdoering]

Would it be possible to use, admittedly huge, windmill farms in the gulf in order to convert wind energy to electricity/other useful work? Or are the winds and waves of such strength that this just can't be done?

The real answer to your question will require sophisticated computer models and different kinds of windmills than we currenly use. It's not a quick fix.

Some people fear that wind farms are already altering our weather patterns:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/3811551.stm

However, if it's possible at all to alter wind patterns then wind farms, if we get our data right, might be able to alter those weather patterns in ways that benefit us while we get energy from them. The placement will be key - it may not be in the gulf.

Your idea isn't wrong. It's just too early to give you an answer.

People who are giving you answers now are being lazy and stupid.

 

[Soapy Sam]

Let's not cofuse drilling rigs with production platforms.
A PP is purpose built for one position and designed to fit there. It may be anchored and floating, it may be a solid structure standing on the seabed, it may be a riser tensioner job- essentially a vertical suspension bridge.

A drilling rig, even the biggest semi-submersible rig- is a far smaller structure. On the scale of a storm system that covered three states, no rig or platform is big enough to extract a significant amount of energy. It's a cork in an olympic pool.

But there's no fundamental reason, besides cost, why vastly bigger structures are not possible, Linking a network of rigs with catenary anchor chains would be possible- and some arrangement might be made to extract energy from the relative movement of "nodes" in such a net, extracting it from the storm.

I'd stress that the time to do it is before the storm gets started.

If I wanted to create a truly humungous structure though, I would not use engineering. I'd use biology.
I was thinking about SkepticJ's thread on extracting oil from plants. Why not just extract energy from the movement of plants, or from some system involving evaporative cooling of moist air through a network of plants?

I'm thinking Sargasso Sea sized bioengineering. A seaweed (algae) mat , extending over thousands of square miles; a thermal blanket for the ocean that slowed evaporation and snuffed hurricanes before they started.

Can't see Greenpeace loving the idea mind you.

More practical perhaps is not to destroy coastal marshes which absorb the energy of storms. Impose a ban on the destruction of marshland for building. No houses within three miles of a threatened coastline.

Incidentally, for those of us this side of the pond who seem to think this is an American problem, I have a word;-

London.

 

[fishbob]

OK jokes aside, the problem is scale of course- the energy in storms like this is just colossal. Still, energy is energy. There must be some way to extract large quantities of work from a storm like this- or from the disparities which give rise to it.

Maybe it's time we started thinking about engineering on this scale.

A less maintenance intensive approach might be to harness the sea surface water temperature differential out in the hurricane birthplace areas. Harvest some of the energy that develops the high winds.

Of course, as always, the 'how to' part of the question remains to be figured out.

 

[Soapy Sam]

Absolutely- timing is critical. Snuff it before the positive feedback loop gets started.
The use of junk to build structures that would float and provide a substrate for algal growth might actually solve a few rubbish disposal issues. Mind you, I can't see a supertanker skipper taking kindly to square miles of semi permanent floating debris.

ETA- actually, here we are, bleating about energy shortages and gas prices, while simultaneously worrying about the atmosphere and oceans becoming more energetic.

Seems like we may have our head on backwards, yes?

 

[Mosquito]

I was mostly thinking of generating energy, either in the form of electricity or for some on-site work (whatever that may be). For this, it seems to me that having windmills in the actual hurricane is the thing to do, as that is where we'll find most of the energy density.

For reducing/eliminating a hurricane, a solution that kills it in the birth would be better. It is a question of what we want to achieve. A combination may be able to kill the hurricane and allow windmills to harness the remaining storms or less.

About extracting the energy in the temperaturedifference between warm and cold water. This requires no new tech. Only the capacity to deploy known tech on huge areas. Even something as simple as some metal wires entwined can produce current from heat differentials (though not very efficiently).


So, the solution could be something like strategically placing some algea-production sites where the hurricanes are born, the algea will eat the energy otherwise fuelling the hurricane, harvest the algea for some purpose (food?), set up some windmill farms for the remaining low winds and get both the hurricane protection and some energy produced.

This will still require huge engineering and somebody with more dough than me.


Mosquito - maybe there will be more magic tomorrow?

 

[Soapy Sam]

I'm not suggesting seaweed would eat the energy- just absorb it mechanically. If the algae is usable as a feedstock , so much the better.

Clearly , a lot of thought is needed, but if a natural process, iusing no equipment whatever, can produce energy of this intensity, surely we can do likewise on a smaller scale?

 

[Mosquito]

I'm not suggesting seaweed would eat the energy- just absorb it mechanically. If the algae is usable as a feedstock , so much the better.

Well, if they absorb the sunshine (the energy in question, I believe), using it to build more seaweed/algea, there would be less energy left for warming the water and building weather systems. If they just absorb it mechanically, they'll just warm up, and no gain for anything. Better to let them use it for growth.

I am sure that somebody will be able to convert the resulting plant biomass into something we can eat (or some other product). If McSeaweed doesn't moisten your oral orifice, maybe the cows will eat it, and you get a regular McMoo.


Well, it's a thought, no?

Mosquito

 

[Soapy Sam]

It is indeed. I've just suggested to SkepticJ that drilling the Yellowstone Basin would solve America's energy problems.
I think I've done enough environmental damage for one night. I'm off to bed.

 

[normdoering]

... more seaweed/algea, there would be less energy left for warming the water and building weather systems. ... sure that somebody will be able to convert the resulting plant biomass into something we can eat (or some other product). If McSeaweed doesn't moisten your oral orifice, maybe the cows will eat it, and you get a regular McMoo.

Massive sea farming in the equatorial region where hurricanes are born might help. Microbes, algae and sea weeds that use sunlight for energy would absorb some of the heat energy and cool the top layer of the ocean if they're grown on the top layer. They'll simply block the sunlight too.

The trick is to find or create a sea-life that people would invest in to farm. People aren't flocking to sea weed restaurants and you can’t artificially create a demand for a product not many want. Cows and other farm animals already have pretty cheap food.

However, Craig Venter, the guy who pushed the Human Genome Sequencing Project to an early completion, is now circumnavigating the globe collecting microorganisms from the ocean. He wants to sequence their DNA, analyze their metabolisms, and see if they hold the answers to our future energy needs.

The DOE is interested in creating a microbe that can make hydrogen. One microbe of great interest to DOE is called, I'm not kidding, "R pal," short for Rhodopseudomonas palustris. This bacterium, which can be grown in many different ways, could possibly be manipulated to produce hydrogen efficiently and take up carbon dioxide from the air, slowing the buildup of a greenhouse gas. It may hold the key to generating a near-infinite amount of clean energy.

Venter thinks the microbe would have to be engineered because existing species we know about do not naturally produce hydrogen in the abundance and efficiency that we need. However, while collecting ocean microorganisms in the Sargasso Sea, which is a low nutrient environment, he discovered 1.3 million new genes and somewhere between 1,800 and 47,000 new microbial species.

Also among Venter's many projects trying to make a completely synthetic form of life, a so-called "designer microbe." If a microbe for hydrogen production could be engineered you might have something worth farming.

 

[Johnny Pneumatic]

For making a wind turbine that could survive a hurricane, why not just give it smaller blades; or even just one. A single blade turbine would have a counter weight to it doesn't shake itself to pieces from the vibration from having so much unbalanced mass rotaing on an axis. Has everyone forgotten about gear reduction to slow the speed the generator is spun at?