Even as more offshore wind projects launch and the turbines they use get bigger, there are questions around offshore wind’s economic viability. Unsurprisingly, hauling huge equipment with multiple moving parts out to deep, windy sections of ocean, setting them up, and building lines to transmit the electricity they generate back to land is expensive. Really expensive. In our profit-driven capitalist economy, companies aren’t going to sink money into technologies that don’t deliver worthwhile returns.
A Swedish energy company called SeaTwirl is flipping the offshore wind model on its head—not quite literally, but almost—and betting it will be able to deliver cheap renewable energy and make a profit along the way. SeaTwirl is one of several companies developing vertical-axis wind turbines, and one of just a couple developing them for offshore use.
A quick refresher on what vertical axis means: the turbines we’re used to seeing (that is, on land, at a distance, often from an interstate highway or rural road), have horizontal axes; like windmills, their blades spin between parallel and perpendicular to the ground, anchored by a support column that’s taller than the diameter covered by the spinning blades.
Ruotsalaiset yrittävät kehittää uudenlaista tuulimyllyä. Tällainen mylly voisi olla nyky myllyjä tehokkaampi.
Ei kommentteja:
Lähetä kommentti