Giant Windcatcher Power Plant
Nowadays, you can see quite large wind turbines. The floating Windcatcher is big as well but at the same time, it works similarly to large segmented mirrors of telescopes. It should provide cheaper, more durable, and more efficient wind power for the future.
Credit Wind Catching System
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Our planet is full of energy. One of the more easily available ones is stored in wind. All we need to do is to come up with as effective systems as we can that can mine that energy. Recently, the Norwegian company Wind Catching Systems (WCS) introduced the world to an incredible floating system called Windcatcher that does this very well. It’s truly colossal and its power production is many times better than the largest wind turbines while being much cheaper.
With a height of 324 meters, the Windcatcher is higher than the Eiffel Tower in Paris. You can place many rotors – 117 based on available information – on its construction. On top of that, it can be run by people experienced with mining crude oil and natural gases on the ocean. According to WCS, the rotors of the Windcatcher provide two times the active surface area compared to the currently largest available wind turbines.
Another benefit of Windcatcher is the fact that its small rotors work better at wind speeds above 40 – 43 kph when large turbines have to reduce their operations to prevent damage. All of this should lead to a single Windcatcher providing enough power to run 80,000 average European households.
Yet, the Windcatcher comes more advantages such as its modular construction made from a number of smaller parts that can be more easily constructed, transported, and finalized compared to large wind turbines. So, once the floating part of the Windcatcher is installed on the ocean the construction can be easily finalized right there. And because of its modularity, it is also easier to maintain thus providing it with a longer lifespan of about 50 years compared to the 30 years a traditional wind turbine is estimated to work for.
While Windcatcher is still more expensive while making electricity compared to terrestrial wind-parks and solar power plants it is much cheaper compared to current ocean-based systems. Another possible factor is that the current estimates of the costs came only from the initial cost of the system. So, if you want to expand on the system in the future the costs will further decrease compared to current systems.
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Here it seems to apply the phrase the bigger the better, this will be a colossal way to generate energy, let's hope it can really be efficient and competitive to generate a real solution to the energy problem.
@kralizec it is interesting what you present. Providing energy is a critical point for some time now. Using different actions to achieve it is a challenge. This immense work is an example of it. Thanks for sharing.