vertical turbines make the most sense because they will take the wind from any direction, the other ones will only take the wind from one direction. but here is the major issue, we are storing this electricity with batteries, the batteries we are using currently have a 2 to 3 years of cycles and they will get more expensive as the resources to create these batteries are nearly depleting and the process has become more expensive than what it used to be. so your car may be getting power from green energy, but your battery on your car will only become more expensive to replace, even Elon Musk has admitted this, he says our current batteries are not good and we need a much better alternative, but other alternatives exist in the form of hydrogen, hydrogen has infinite cycles because your just using gas and the resource is plentiful, it's literally in everything on earth. yes you lose some of that power creating the stuff, but that's just a small part of the process for this endless fuel.
Funny how this is talked about today but we made this in Australia 18 years ago.... Wonder how much they paid our government for the designs and patients they sold from our company!? i can tell you the flaws in their design and how we planned to fix it! What a joke that something we build to save the world decades ago is still not mass adopted!
As someone who worked in maintenance on offshore rigs, I give absolutely zero trust in something that depends on moving parts underwater. Saltwater, biological damage, electrochemical corrosion, erosion, mud intrusion, tidal surge, the list of things that can damage moving materials underwater is too long to list. There's a reason there's no old submarines in service, why ships have to be pulled out every few years. You'd have more reliability if you designed a machine that hits itself with a sledgehammer every hour.
I hate to reply to my own comment, but this is probably the least efficient way to generate power with mechanical generation also. It would be more efficient to lift and drop a giant turbine, that way you're generating on the lift and the drop, or just put it on a giant above water tank and mechanically pump and release water into hydroelectric generator storage, timing the pump and release with the tides would even make it more efficient and you have the same energy storage without water turbulence losses.
Thank you for your perspective. I was thinking of floating offshore oil rigs to what degree they need to deal with it. Though they will have a few anchors that require maintenance, while generating stupid amounts of money, so even high maintenance will be worth it.
I was thinking of different variations on the same concept. Use a wind-powered pump to push water up a hydro-electric dam. Lift a weight up and down a giant tower, no water involved. Dig a deep hole and lift a weight up and down the hole. I'm wondering what your take is on wave powered generation, since those seem to all involve moving parts in the ocean.
@@plebiansociety I hate to state the obvious but while I was prepared to listen to you based on your offshore rig experience, you lost all credibility with the post. If you can't or won't do the calculations, you're just being yet another emotional luddite.
The weakest part of their design seems to be their "energy storage" device. I'm ex-Navy, so I KNOW how corrosive a salt-water environment is going to be to all of those exposed moving parts. I vaguely recall a similar idea that seems more feasible, using compressed air as the energy storage medium.
Yes, I recall an inflatable bladder under water that gets pumped full of air to charge and is deflated when discharged. But question: would any moving parts in these VAWTs be somehow any more susceptible than moving parts already on HAWTs? wouldn't they just use the same type of devices and material?
@@jonjohns8145 They're a LOT closer to the salt water and spray than the HAWTs. Remember the normal turbines have to be mounted high enough so the blade tips can't be caught by a big wave at high tide. It looked like the VAWT is designed to be mounted on essentially a big raft.
No wind turbine expert of any certification auditor would even consider to give this designs power curve any review. This even fails on paper unless you are an absolute fool not even checking the most fundamental basics in wind enrgy biz. Let's be clear any fundor bank seeking to invest in a wind farm is asking for a valid power curve certificate from an shipping / oil&gas auditor as a mandatory step of their due dilligence process. There is no improvements over existing better HAWT designs. The auditor would flat out refuse to waste lab days and simple wirte a single page of nah. This is clearly dismal in like 20 days of operation out of 365. Where a HAWT has 350 out of 365 days to generate revenue and turn a profit. This is just pump & dump influencer marketing. That's just The Wolf Of Wallstreet Aerotyne technology sales spin. That stuff above the waterline would not even crank that weight from the ground in 11 out of 12 month. Agreed, after 11 month muck & sealife would have it permanently stuck on the seafloor and created an artificial reef. An expensive but not terribly scenic place for seagulls to create guano fertilizer.
A few major disadvantages that I see are first, moving parts underwater are famously unreliable, and second the wind speed rises substantially with getting higher off the water. So these turbines will get much less power from the wind as they are low to the water. Finally, having moving blades just a couple of meters off the water will be a huge problem in rough weather, and even in calmer weather the salt spray will compromise any moving element.
Way too many moving parts, and especially they are underwater, and complicated. The eggbeaters will make great fish habitat when they sink, and that is A certainty
Don't trust their CGI for scale. The animated "waves" make the turbines look tiny. But there are all sorts of other issues - moving parts in sea water being a big one that others here have already mentioned. Another limitation, sparked by your rough weather comment, is storm waves - even mild ones. Since the turbines float on the surface but are de-facto tethered to the sea floor by their "battery" mechanism, any substantial waves or storm surge are likely to disturb, submerge or even topple the floating platform. They could try to use adaptive tether length using high speed winches to pay-in/out their tethers to allow riding the waves, but now we're talking about even more complexity on at least a couple of fronts - Electromechanical systems to operate the winches in time with waves at the very least, plus eating up their own power output just to stay on the surface. Of course they could actually design it to NOT have to "float" directly on the surface... but that's what their "only exists in CGI" shows us. Which tells me their idea IS NOT at "level 6" as Guy Undoubtedly Looking For Money said. They're at the "played with shiat in the shop and paid for some animations" phase.
@@matpegheata Was that the one they call Gravity Battery or something? Yea. That's clearly a project thought of some grade schooler. I'm surprised people even thought that'd work.
The best part is no part. Placing all those mechanical parts in a sea environment does not look like a good idea. Maintenance requirements would be high, which is already something that conventional wind turbines are trying to reduce because offshore maintence is a costly process (and offshore underwater maintenance would be even costlier!)
I can only think about ocean water corrosion and biofouling of the cables and wheels. I bet that in 24 months nothing moves anymore. Gravitational potential energy is also ruthless in how little energy it holds in any kind of realistic weights. Even a 1000 metric ton weight hanging in air from 1 km high holds only about 10 GJ of potential energy. Not considering reduction of efficiency due to buoyancy issues, discharge that energy in one hour, and you get 2,7 MW of power for one hour. Sounds great but considering the amount of materials and hardware needed I don't know how this will work out. Sure the oceans are deep but corrosion and biofouling would necessitate the use of 316L stainless steel rope or polymer rope. A kilometer of two inch fiber core steel wire rope weighs around 10 tonnes and has a safe loading capacity of 30 tonnes. The length of rope you would need to hang even one 1000 ton load from one turbine float is quite considerable. I would call this anything but a huge breakthrough. Build a one quarter scale prototype that works in 500 meters of open ocean water, operate it for a year and then get back to us with the results.
It was a surprise to me, but off shore wind farms despite their larger size and greater output actually cost more on a per kilowatt hour basis than on shore wind farms. because of the higher maintenance costs for off shore wind farms.
Very good point. I'm all for renewable energy. We are not there yet. windmills are good, but not in a big scale. For a homes ok, industrial not so much. Windmills on the water🤔 Before windmills was killing birds next fish too. When the windmills break down they'll probably just let it sink, These big industries don't care.
Also, buoyancy and viscosity of water wouldn't allow for this "battery" to be anything near to cost or energy efficient. Those things don't even work effectively on land, why would they work underwater. To me it seems like another really poorly thought out tech made by graphical designers rather than engineers.
I don't think the physics of this works out. Presumably it operates through some sort of mechanical gears? If it is anchored by cables, how does it deal with large waves?When they are lowering the weight, is the wind turbine still producing electricity? How much weight is required to produce a significant amount of energy? I think the real tell here is there are no pictures of actual machinery, just CGI stuff.
@@xntumrfo9ivrnwf Yes similar but this is not an energy storage solution but rather a wind power generation energy system with inbuilt storage that has significant advantages in terms of the quality of power that is produced
@@hydrowindenergy Yes, but the efficiency and durability questions still remain. There are solid counterweights and moving parts operating inside the sea, which could be quite difficult to maintain and repair.
You mentioned with rough seas, as the turbine is bobbing with the waves, while the weight in the water is stationary. If they are dropping the weight to produce electricity, it will not be a constant output. Like bouncing a lure on a fishing pole
Two things jump out at me as a engineer, more complicated means more problems, more moving parts means more maintenance and a lot of it under water?! Gravity storage gives it on a demand component, which was always a problem for renewables.
Sounds far too complicated, all that maintenance. Be interested to know how this works with large ocean waves, say 20m. Either a huge problem or add the wave energy.
They need energy storage, they need renewable energy, and they need a way to regulate the amount of energy produced. If they make this system into modules, then the repair problems might become less.
I agree. I'm a mechanical engineer. I think it might be better to use the turbines to compress air into seafloor anchored airbags. The air can power turbines to drive generators. No moving parts exposed to seawater. You wouldn't even need to have the same number of wind turbines, airbags, and generators. For example, 50 turbines could feed 10 airbags and a single generator for economies of scale. Downsides are: 1) The need for seafloor construction. Anchors, nets, and weights to constrain the airbags. 2) Seafloor ecological disruption.
Completely forgot about the effects of waves during storms, that is a very good point, 20m waves are nothing to sneeze at. I was more concerned with the complex pulley system and how it would be affected by sea life growth. We have sensors at our plants that have to be cleaned every few months in brackish water due to biofouling, I can't imagine the maintenance nightmare a whole farm of these things would need to keep running for reliable steady state power to the grid.
Gravity has low energy density and you also encounter high fluid friction under water, not to mention the difficulty involved in fouling from seawater and other debris.
So this is Gravitricity in the sea. Interesting. I wonder how the density of water influences the energy return. But still interesting idea. For me, the biggest problem is durability of the cables in the sea environment - sea creatures tend to try to live on such semi-static locations and mess-up all the mechanics. But still worth testing.
Indeed, and not good having the generators and cables on the sea bed. Generator could equally be placed at the top, and cables suspended below buoys. Performance would be even less than gravitricity because of buoyancy and available joules would be low.
If the weight was shaped right the drag coefficient shouldn’t be too bad but these weights aren’t moving too quickly anyways it will be interesting to see their data once they get a test rig out on the water.
@@scotteverett5932 The idea isn’t entirely unreasonable. They could always give the pontoons a ballast system, and sink them temporarily for storms. Not sure what the engineers are thinking, but that is the solution I would probably shoot for, since they are tethered to the surface.
@@ahaveland The buoyancy is not a major problem, just add more mass. Magnetite mineral have a density of 5,6 and are low cost. An extra 20% will more then weigh up for the loss to buoyancy . The major problem is that wind speed 10 meter above the surface are a lot less then at 110-150 meter and it is also more turbulent. The result is that wind turbines like shown will only produce as small fraction of what large wind turbines. Lots of units with complex systems close to salt water is also a recipe for high cost when maintaining the system.
I'm all for more renewables but only feasible ones. This one's maintenance would be a nightmare. All long term under ocean devices have as little moving parts in contact with the ocean as possible. This one has a bunch of pulleys and in use wires sitting in the ocean. This with a power system where every percent of inefficiency is usually accounted for. How in the "barnacle" do they expect this to work long term. Solar panels are considered scrap after they get to 80% efficiency after 25+ years, this would reach that in months.
I like the idea of combining generation with storage to balance demand, my only concern would be the build-up of aquatic life on the undersea parts of the turbine, like barnacles. Man I hate barnacles.
Don't worry they will spend millions trying to figure that out. Eventually coming to the conclusion that they need to spend millions more because they are sooo close to figuring it out.
Cables under a lot of tension are pretty much just poles. I mean, yeah, you'll get seaweed growing on them, but I suspect that's pretty low down the list of problems. You'd want to maximize the weight and minimize the water drag, deal with corrosion... unless you have trawlers trying to fish next to them I think tangling won't be too big an issue.
This made me think that standard windmills could take advantage of this same concept. They already have a ginormous vertical tube that would shelter the load being lifted/dropped. The height may be much less, but maybe with the correct gearing and weight, it could be feasible.
I wondered the same thing, and also the weight could be powered on shore. But I guess that ignores the other advantages of lack of wake and support for higher wind speed. I wonder if these are also more bird friendly? Certainly they would be less visible if grouped together well off shore, as that is a major concern in many countries
I estimated the cost of this project to be 2500$ / kWh. Battery storage is already $400 / kWh and Pumped Hydro is $120 kWh..... It turns out that gravity is a really weak force and is bad for energy storage. Pumped hydro gets away from it because its moving a fluid and not a solid.
Gravity storage just has disappointingly low energy density. If you would lift a 300 ton weight up a 100 meter tower, you can store about 84 kWh, which allows you to store only 1 single minute worth of production from a 5MW turbine. For the same reason the technology presented in this video does not make any sense.
Been waiting for years for the return of vertical axis rotors. They should have already been on many tall buildings for decades. Great ideas to combine weights for storage. Move to on land wind capturing and weights underground to eliminate water complexities and accelerated maintenance issues mentioned. Always think with the end in mind to make best, most efficient and elegant (simplest) choices best for future generations. Bravo! .
Interesting, but why not simplify the system and have your VAWT connect with a simple mechanical pump pushing sea water along a pipe to a central hydraulic accumulator/ accumulators with a central floating or land based generator. The hydraulic fluid then either powers a generating turbine directly or via the displaced air in the accumulator during the fill & discharge part of its cycle. London was dotted with accumulator towers & pre-electricity there was a hydraulic network under London powering lifts (elevators), machinery & theaters, Tower bridge's bascules were powered in this way. So this would not be a new technology. This would allow for there to be simplicity at the wind turbines, with the generating infrastructure centralized. You could still have your moving weights if you so desired but they would be in a centralized location.
That's not simplifying anything, that's adding one more huge inefficiency by converting power. You start with wind power spinning a turbine in order to convert it to hydraulic power to spin a 2nd turbine which converts that to electric power in your scenario. None of these turbines are anywhere near 100% efficient.
@@blakebrown534 VAWT is converted directly by simple mechanical gearing to the hydraulic pump, no electricity is generated at this point. The pump might be a simple impeller or a reciprocating pump. So for a field of say 10 VAWTs you would not need 10 sets of electric motors/generators as this is all done at a central floating or land based hub. The intelligence & control for the system is in the hub rather than devolved to each VAWT.
@@blakebrown534 Efficiency isn't terribly important out in the ocean where the energy density is high and scalability is infinite. The key is the complexity of the equipment in the ocean that requires servicing. A bunch of floating mechanical pumps connected to a giant hose to shore lets you easily swap, shut down or service individual floating units and all of your other equipment is on shore.
Another option is to use hollow piles and pump air into them forcing water out of the bottom. Wind energy can be stored as air pressure and tapped on demand. This puts more of the equipment and moving parts above the surface and not subject to corrosion.
Make the piles into 2 separate chambers so you can fill and discharge them concurrently, alternating between them so at all times the given function is available.
Well, it all looks good on models. But what happens when there are large waves? What would keep that guiding system up straight? Didn't we fall for computer model videos often enough ?
... I think the idea has merit my only concerns are the durability of the moving parts especially at sea and how easy this would be to maintain. Also, the LCOE may be cost-prohibitive once you factor in the extra costs involved compared to standard wind turbines and other forms of energy storage.
Just read into the facts about VAWT performance. Every certification body will discourage banks and funds from investing into such a devices power curve based on only 20 out of 365 days of operation. Where a HAWt would have 350 out 365 days to turn a profit.
I am so glad people like you are spreading the word. I have a couple of companies you should check out and do a video on. CATL is a company that is producing sodium batteries (lithium, copper and cobalt free) also Quaise Energy imagine using sea water as their water source equaling more fresh water then the last one is Kiverdi Inc. just check them out I will leave it there. Again thanks so much for what you’re doing.
Well done, you've highlighted some immense weaknesses in offshore wind that politicians in the UK and EU fail to accept. The hydro wind system is compelling, however, it is at risk of being disproved by the developers of traditional wind and solar, regrettably. They like disrupting industries, but don't like to be disrupted!
I really think finding the best way to harness tidal forces that are such predictable behavior, it's as promising of a natural energy source as geothermal energy
The poles of conventional wind turbines could also house a gravity weight to make the power more constant. Maybe if the wind turbine would have 10min storage as weight it would help. Wondering if anybody has tested that idea. The weight could spin the same generator. It would be like a hybrid car making constant energy in gusty winds
No. 1) You would have to build the pole much stronger to hold significant additional weight. 2) The stored energy capacity is abysmally tiny. 3) The additional cost is not worth it. There are hundreds of engineers who have thought through this exact idea already and concluded it is not worth it, otherwise we would have seen gravity weights in the poles since 25 years ago.
@@ProjectPhysX Yeah, and you can make a system identical to offshore wind with this underwater gravity storage, so this VAWT design needs to stand on its own
To store 10 minutes of production from a 6 MW turbine in a 100 meter high shaft you will need a weight of 4000 tons that even if you used lead the volume would be nearly 400 m3.. That would be like a weight with a diameter of 10 meter and a height of 5. Or a solid lead weight the size of a house.
in the animation they don't show a mooring system, unless thei intend to use the cables guiding the weight as mooring , which seem not very efficient: when wind is blowing at high speed the floating turbine would be shifted by several meters, so the cables would not be vertical anymore, and I believe that would stop the weight from going up and down
Or, hear me out here, use the hollow tube of the tower versions to house a weight that you can move up and down to store and release energy, all above water and in a controlled environment. Doesn't solve for the narrower wind speed band, but would let individual and collections of them to smooth out energy production and be more responsive.
i work in onshore wind, in the planning application stage, we are currently encountering similar problem in relation to supply and demand synchronisation, the solution to this is always some form of energy storage. this can be achieved through battery energy storage system (BESS) that charges from turbines and releases to grid on demand. where grid connection is not feasible, either due to lower scale, remote locations or lack of grid capacity, localised hydrogen production can be used. A possible alternative to this system could be offshore platform locations for Battery Energy Storage Systems or Coastal locations.
If VAWT turbines can store energy in undersea weights, so can HAWT. We haven't seen any HAWT designs with underwater gravity storage, what reason would there be that this design works but those don't? It seems to be combining 2 sub-par technologies to make the other appear better. Unless the LCOE is low, I'm going to remain very skeptical
It's just like cooking a sauce. There is never just one ingredient. Combining different technologies to compliment each other and revisiting older technologies and modernizing them is the way forward. The world is a big place with lots of variation and no one solution will work everywhere. Its great to see creative strategy being applied. Hydro in particular is so untapped and could be used in conjuction with wind and solar in many ways, we just need the research and development.
Just wondering how the mass is lifted? If it's with an electric motor it would probably be better to run a cable to land and lift a mass there. Way easier to maintain.
I assumed it is mechanical for efficiency. But since it sends electricity ashore there has to be generation capability in the unit. Far easier to convert to high voltage, send it ashore and combine it with one of the mass lifting energy storage projects (moving trains of concrete up a mountain or lifting concrete blocks into a giant tower structure). I guess though their thought is to offshore - literally - the place where the mass lift storage happens because real estate at sea is cheap. If you really want to do that all at sea then why not have a central dedicated mass lifter and have the nearby turbines send their power to it. Another solution could be to pull a big buoyant structure to the bottom and release it. That way you aren't reliant on the buoyancy of the turbine structure to keep whatever mass you're lifting afloat. But as with the original design putting complex mechanical structures in the ocean... you're going to have a hard time making that work and keeping it working.
Fascinating concept. I just wonder about the cost/benefit analysis of installing, and after that, the upkeep. The practical cable management for the weights, removing/deterring barnacles, wear and tear, not just from use but also from salt water corrosion...
i remember a record from an old guinness book i have, from 2005 i think. the world's largest wind turbine; it had 2 50m long blades. that's nothing compared to these modern turbines
The only kind of gravity storage that works is pumped hydro because its easy and cheap to move and store large amounts of water. I did the math for using a 500 ton mass in a 100m mineshaft and a typical Danish 2MW land based windmill that on average produces 5000 MWh in a year - it could store about 15 MINUTES of average production of the windmill. If you think this scheme is better do the math - and dont forget to reduce the energy stored in the mass by its flotation.
I would imagine building inverted turbines would be a best idea. Ocean currents are constant and consistent. Make a turbine that uses ocean currents to turn their blades in conjunction with an external wind turbine so you have two sources for consistent use, and the current based blades can be used when the wind gets too heavy.
This looks great, but you could do it the other way around as well, and submerge something very light/buoyant and rigid pull it down to let it's buoyancy lift it up. This seems like it would use a lot less material and be able to provide an exponentially large battery with depth. That's because it is the ratio of the internal and external pressure that does the work. So something at 1 atmosphere at a depth of 2M is pulling up 2G, but something with 1G pressure at 90M with a ratio of 10:1 will pull up at 10G
Seeing how they're anchored in place, I think they should put a linear motion wave generator on the anchor lines, for cogeneration, which will also help level out there highs and lows
I really like the HydroWindEnergy design. Hopefully, they will be able to actually produce these. It seems to only be in the design phase. The images are just renderings, not actual units. I checked out the company info, and they have zero employees listed and only a small amount of startup capital, as of the posting date in 2021. Perhaps they have more funding and/or employees now. I'll keep an eye on this company for possibly investing in the future. Wishing them luck.
one problem with this type are the dont get the higher and more constant windspeed that are higher up. The storage can be solved better with batteries when they come down in price.
on the high wind thing, i thought that out decades ago. the blades have springs that hold them in place. as the pressure increases, the pressure itself feathers the blades by working against the springs. with the right preload, the springs begin to feather at marginally excessive wind, and go all the way to fully feathered when the wind is dangerously fast. you might be able to be 95% feathered in a hurricane, still generating power. take some played out oil production platforms. instead of tearing them down, put these wind turbines on them, and use the energy to pump sea water through the existing pipelines that used to carry the oil, and on shore, run the water into a storage pond well above sea level if you have the spot. then the generators run off the pond water.
thank you youtube for suggesting not only a channel that is given me a long ass ad of something thats only CGI, but also doesn't even want to tell me that.
A good idea for conventional turbines. Have the weight inside the tower. Good for land based turbines too. But NOT in water, it would be a maintainence nightmare.
This is a bad idea for conventional turbines, because lifting any sensible weight would require a tower of enormous strength, increasing its cross-section and hence its wind shadow area, thus affecting efficiency of turbines downwind.
There is a reason why VAWT's are not in widespread use, they are at such a disadvantage from a power generation point and their self destructive nature. Being close to the water surface would only accelerate the wear and damage to the rotor . Also the effect on fish, whales and dolphin's would be significant due to harmonics generated by the anchor and winching cables .
Interesting, why not do the same thing with a traditional turbine but encapsulate the weight inside the tower? This way it would be somewhat protected from the elements. Or have a cable going to an underwater battery bank. The only issue I see with the weight being anchored and being directly in contact with the water.
It isn't designed to work, it is only designed good enough to get money for "research" that never amounts to anything. If they wanted it to work they would junk the weights in the ocean and put them in bore holes in the ground. Functioning completely separate. But if they did that anyone could calculate it's in/efficiencies. That makes it harder to scam people. They make it over complicated so you can't see the forest for the trees.
It looks like you can put both types of WT interspersed with each other to extract more energy. If the wind speed gets too high, by careful positioning of the VAWT, you can put the HAWT into its "wind shadow" and protect the HAWT from damage. Under even higher wind speed, you can pull the VAWT under the surface of the water, where it would be protected. When the normal wind returns, let it pop back up above the surface.
Good idea, but the thing is, if you pair the intermittency of traditional offshore wind turbines with a stabilising energy storage device (like onshore pumped hydro, gravity storage etc.) then the same effect is acheived. The vertical turbines just do the whole thing in one place. But the capacity to handle multiple windspeeds and to be clustered closer together is a definite plus.
A joule is amount of work done when a force of 1 newton displaces a mass through a distance of 1 metre in the direction of the force applied. This achieved in a second is a Watt if work done. Example: A 2-ton vehicle going down a lift into a parking slot 3 m below would generate 60 kW power for a second, which in practical terms is 1kVA for a minute, or 1000/6 W for 10 minutes. This is useful power in large parking areas with multiple floors.
Here is a feasible proof of concept experiment for this. The proposed height in their illustration is 100 meters. Many wind turbines are mounted to towers that size. Mount their vertical windmill on top of an old one with the weight, generator, and cable apparatus inside to raise and lower the weight in an enclosed environment. No corrosion or currents to affect the equipment. Plus you have a height advantage to get the better wind speeds.
The concept seems to be correct. Stable power is what you need. That means you will always need a storage device. A gravity battery would be the most cost-effective means of doing that. All you have to do is cut a round slot, lining the inner and outer edges with steel and concrete as you go down. Once reaching the desired depth for the amount of mass you desire, run cables through the bottom center, back up to a pully on the other side, linking all pullies in a circular geared system. To feed the grid, let the weight settle by spinning the connected motor/generators. To add generated storage, lift the weight. This eliminates the need to "dig a hole". This should be dramatically cheaper than a chemical battery. You could replace a cable without shutting down the system.
Very interesting. After reading many comments stressing the corrosive effects of salt water I wonder if they are looking into a land-based version of this system. It seems to me that putting these in Sub-Saharan Africa on the Savannah would greatly benefit the people there.
There are factors missing: - !. The available energy in the wind increases with altitude above the surface. 2. There will need to be considerable sea bed infrastructure to support the generation and transmition. 3, Can these be pitched among existing HAWT to scavenge and store more energy on an existing grid ? 4. Maintenance on the sea bed is very expensive in deep water. 5. The sea depth varies 2 cycles a day so engineering for that is complex. 6. What is the down wind power reduction of these VAWT and therefore the spacing needed ? 7. Things installed at sea corrode and foul up quickly. 8. All moving machinary will degrade, fail and need maintainance and replacement. Just a few issues :-)
Interesting concept... They could also run an air hose to the sea bed and pump a bladder or "diving bell" full of air to raise the weight. Or they could compress air into the weight while it was on the surface and when the weight hit the bottom it would be released into a bladder. I'm not sure which method would be more efficient. Pumping the air to the bottom wouldn't be free but I'd imagine that it's less energy to reach buoyancy and then take a free ride to the top rather than pull the weight up the entire way.
Pumping air down is equivalent to pulling a weight up. There is no free energy. The question is the efficiency of the pump vs the efficiency of the motor
I am impressed by your channel. You ask for comment, here's an observation. a) EV's are big batteries on four wheels, b) there are millions of rooftops, c) roof tops are on buildings which are connected to the grid. Ergo; there is already an embryonic collection, storage and distribution system to potentially handle massive amounts of electricity. In order to realise the potential there would need to be a scheme to incentivise roof top solar and EV ownership on a grand scale. Roof owners would need to sign into the scheme, which would have clever algorithms at it's heart. They would be required to agree to sell an negotiable amount of their electricity from their EV batteries to the grid. Problem solved. There is a lot of detail to be worked out, beyond my resources. However, 'I had a think' and I think that on the face of it, what could possibly go wrong?
Fully agree with you! I was looking at the images of a complex built machine sitting on the surface with all kinds of technology underneath - in sea water???
Given the works involved in piling plus the cabling wind turbines should include underwater turbines to double function When such a device is not producing energy due to lack of windspeed the power from tidal flow would supplement energy production
Nice idea. Like it would keep a bunch of students busy. Gravity is not really a good storage mechanism. Its low energy density is reduced further by bouyancy in water. And Barnacles will mess with anything underwater ! But the fact that the "blade" has a wider wind speed range than standard wind turbines might be useable. Electronics can easily convert that to a useable electricity source, charging on-land batteries. So although these are less efficient, they can use higher wind speeds, which could make them useful in gale prone areas. Then it's simply (ha-ha !) a case of making them sturdy enough...
This is a really fascinating plan! It looks better to power an off grid location near the sea than a full on grid though. It looks like an ocean adaptation of the old rusty water pumping wind mills that you see in the deserts of the world. Certainly maintainence is needed with any wind mill
The Big battery in South Australia, smoothed wind farm and solar so that the extra available electricity supplied, paid off the cost in two years. Battery smoothing can increase the efficiency by some five percent.
The boyant force from water would cause a huge loss in the energy storage capacity. The system would be much more efficient, as well as much more durable if it was encased in a sylinder of air extending from the turbine down to the ocean floor, since air is much less dense causing less efficiency and storage capacity loss, and does not cause nearly as much corrosion as salt water and marine life.
If you have a customised bag made from the same material that is used for sinking vessels and connected to the seabed, put air from the turbine into the bag and use a pipe to run an electrical turbine to generate electricity. After the turbine uses the power of the sea and feeds 1/2 of the airbag to the bag again using valves. Or the air moves from one bag to another bag inside each bag spring to equalise the sea pressure, but this spring should lose its ability by the click of a switch so it could be hydraulic, in this way we have a cycle with lost that can be provided by the air turbine.
Has any work been done on how the vertical turbines perform in turbulent air? It sounds like they should do better and also smooth out turbulence down stream. This could allow joint wind farms with vertical turbines allowing for greater density of horizontal turbines. Has any work been done on it?
it seems to me the biggest overlooked aspect of offshore energy is the transmission of that power, which requires expensive and costly to maintain infrastructure. one work around is to instead use that energy at its source. floating wind powered processing plants; desalination, waste processing, etc. perhaps with a battery recharging station for electrically powered shuttles which go to and from the rigs.
Getting closer! How about instead of lifting weights we pressurize water? Desalinate it and then add a high pressure line to shore where we get fresh water at a high enough pressure to convert it to electricity on shore. You should even be able to get some pretty significant cooling from it as well.
Again...combining functionality will be a good answer for renewable energy. The conventional wind turbines need a massive strong structure fixed to the ocean floor and to combine this with tidal wave generators fixed to these structures will allow the costs to come down relative to the amount of energy generated per pole structure. Cables can be shared to convey the energy created to shore and the maintenance can be shared per 'pole'. These up and down generators may also be fixed to these 'poles'. Like a submarine system the ballasts can be filled with water as to sink and spin the pulley generators and once at the bottom, some of the tidal and wind created energy can pump out the water as to make it rise again.
We need everyone’s ideas. These are fresh, groundbreaking, and very exciting. All amazing inventions required dedicated people who believed the world could be better for their work and to try it. Let’s try this.
So this is a very reasonable wind generation proposal. The critiques of ocean maintenance stand, but aren't sufficiently prohibitive. The breakthrough is coupling VAWT with mechanical energy storage, to smooth and take advantage of high variability.
I’d love to see something similar for onshore wind turbines. Swap out weights for water being pumped from low to high kinetic states during low demand, then use the water to create electricity during high demand. It may be that there are more compressible fluids that could be used, too, so less of it would be necessary. Just spitballing but I could see such a thing supplementing solar for off-grid use.
Floating wind turbines, including floating vertical turbines that are far above the waterline, are the way to go. Oceans beat the heck of equipment at sea, particularly at the waterline and certainly below the waterline. Anything under the waterline will be quickly be covered with organic growth.
VAWTs are dismissed for being less efficient than HAWTs,but with this setup,that matters less,as whatever output they produce is stored onsite. They save by eliminating the need to be turned to face the wind.
Reciprocating weight could be replaced by reciprocating buoy (large concrete hollow sphere) anchored to bottom with pulley block so cable returns to surface generator. Patented already.
Increase energy storage with scuba tank on weight. Air released at bottom lifts weight. Full tank exchanged for empty tank at top, and down cycle begins again.
You forgot to address why the storage couldn't be integrated into conventional windmills As well as how the storage+production costs compare to other storage+production options Since storage like this likely won't be compared against non storage
Never mind hurricane force winds, how about hurricane waves? The CGI shows calm water. But the ocean isn't always calm, especially when it's windy. As the floating turbine moves up on a wave, the load on the cables increases as it pulls the weight up. Then the floating turbine drops, and the weight also drops, with considerable momentum. then the turbine rises again, and suddenly it's fighting against the downward momentum of the weight. This is called "snap loading" and leads to excessive fatigue on the cables and/or pulleys involved. And it happens with *every* wave that passes under the floating turbine. Plus, every wave makes the turbine rock side to side, which probably can't help efficiency, and again stresses the vertical axis. Food for thought....
Using mechanical energy for air storage in a water column would allow for less linear power storage, up to a practical limit. Multiple systems could be linked to store physical energy at successively deeper reservoirs. The biggest challenge is affordable materials that are indifferent to corrosion and barnacles.
While I concur with the many concerns expressed in other comments, I still think this is a really interesting approach. What tweaked my curiosity is the potential to capture wave-motion energy as an added power source. Also, regarding the harsh operating conditions - how much worse is the environmental challenge to the horizontal turbine, compared to the vertical? I speculate not much. I think it is the complex under-water power storage-regulator system that would be the major challenge to moving this technology to large scale deployment. How would a large cluster of these horizontal systems compare to the vertical turbines on cost, install, and performance? I don’t think the vid addressed that specific question. I guess I’ll have to watch it again!
All that wind exposure stuck to something tethered at the bottom is a recipe for broken masts, ripped sails, etc but the 3D model looks great, I am sure the simulations are really reliable
I have an idea journal I keep. Many years ago I had the idea of building an entire house on a lift system that slowly lifted the house in the air. When power was needed it would use the lowering of the house to generate power. Always reasons NOT to do this and safety issues but why not?
This is a cool idea, but boy oh boy do they have an uphill climb ahead of them to be cost competitive with onshore wind, Solar, or nuclear. Fingers crossed they’re able to make it work!
The animation at 9:05 seems to demonstrate that they have no idea what they are doing: The variant with two weights show one way moving up, one weight moving down, at the same rate at the same time. Moving up increases the potential energy. Moving it down with the same speed decreases the potential energy at the same rate. The system gains no energy, there are only losses. The wind can make cogs and cables move, but there is no reason to expect electrical output from that movement. The system does make sense if the upwards and downwards movement are on a different speed: One weight can be lifted with a lot of jitter, even standing still, while the other one drops at a constant speed, generating constant electrical energy from the potential energy gained from the changing wind speed before. The animation shows the one possible situation that does not make sense at all. If they make this animation, it means the person animating it did not know how it works, no problem. But if anybody from the company sees the animation and noes not notice it, that does not build trust for me.
Great concept, but it can be even better if a larger more complimentary view is taken. Deploy these low VAWT/Storage units under the monster HAWTs. Increase the storage capacity on the Hydro Wind units and filter the HAWT output through the Hydro Wind units to create grid compatible power right at the generation location. The VAWT and HAWT wind profiles do not interfere with each other increasing the wind collection efficiency of the wind farm site, colocation shares maintenance access/capability and the local storage fixes the main problem with variability of the existing HAWTs.
I'm happy to see any new ideas on solving the problem we have generating electric I pray that someone finds the real answer soon so we can stop feeling guilt for plugging in all the great gadgets we have available now
Anyone that has worked in an industry that revolves around maintaining equipment in harsh environments or maintaining rotating equipment, in general, knows how much time it takes to repair and keep this equipment running. Then factor in downtime on equipment due to failures, part availability, or lack of resources to maintain the equipment you've got a big hurdle on your hands.
As for the egg beater type of turbine, Laurentian Universities research students were experimenting with this technology in the 70's. It was considered practical but obviously rejected by the big players in this game.
