Carnot wrote:Lucky... I spend a lot of my expensive time analysing processes, and because of the quest to decarbonise I do much as you do an assess unreliables ( sorry renewables). I am in near complete agreement with your assessment of unreliables.
A detailed and informative post, thanks Carnot. I haven't delved at all into the mechanics behind wind power generation so it was good to have a synopsis of the critical issues from you. I have a fairly broad background science wise so the concepts of,
Power increase with the square of the rotor diameter, come naturally to me, though I hadn't though of them in this context. Typically only in that of reflecting telescope mirror sizing. The effects on bearings are interesting too, I have never heard of that.
Brinelling results in indentations in the bearing races due to gravitational and other stress loads, particularly when stationary. Makes me want to move my motorcycles more often lol. What am I laughing for? I will! But more for the tires sake.
Motorcycle bearings are not the same though, they don't run all day every day under extreme loading. As for the variableness of wind, my only experience with that is the vane on my weather station, which I know from experience is always flicking back and forth. I don't believe those huge turbines could hope to keep up with those variations, they would always be out of sync, always correcting and over-correcting, or more likely, ignoring changes until they crossed a certain threshold, though you know doubt have knowledge of this.
It's clear to me that all corporations are pathological liars now, even to their basic financials which are steeped in manipulated accounting practices. Nothing they say can be taken at face value so when one make assurances about how great a wind farm will be for "the people" I just shake my head. As for government proclamations about all this? Forget it.
There is certainly a lot of technology dependent on more technology in these generators and I wonder if many of them would have been built at all had not government gotten involved and funded a lot of it on and off the book. (off the book where politicians accept bribes to push things through) Like those tragic Abrams tanks the government of the US ordered from Chrysler simply to help out the struggling corporation. They looked good until the Gulf war too, but a gas-turbine in a desert environment proved to be a nightmare maintenance wise.
https://www.allpar.com/threads/xm-1-and ... ks.227812/The first Chrysler bail-out; the M-1 tank
https://www.thefreelibrary.com/The+firs ... -a04696991On a July afternoon ten years ago, Lt.Colonel George Mohrmann sat at his desk on Capital Hill awaiting a phone call. As head of the Army's congressional liason office, he was ready to deliver a stack of sealed letters to members of Congress announcing the winning contractor in the multi-billion dollar competition to build the Army's M-1 tank.
The two competing contractors, Chrysler and General Motors, offered a clear choice. Chrysler had built its tank around a radically different and unproven tank engine, the turbine; GM had used a more conventional diesel engine. The two tanks had undergone months of head-to-head trials at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland. GM had won.
The Army, it seemed, was not going to risk adding the M-1 to its growing list of overly sophisticated weapons that cost too much and don't work. "We were sitting there poised to deliver [the envelopes],' Mohrmann recalls. "The decision to select GM had been made. We were just waiting for the Secretary of Defense to be briefed.'
The call, however, was surprising. The Pentagon told Mohrmann not to deliver the letters. The next day, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld ordered a whole new round of competition. A week later, Rumsfeld turned the M-1 tank program upside down. He mandated that the tank be redesigned to incorporate the turbine engine. Four months later the award--which promised to generate $20 billion in sales--went to Chrysler, and the Army was on its way to getting a weapon suited more for a paved interstate than a battlefield.
I wonder what bribe Donald Rumsfeld took for this one? bribes come in many forms.
Donald Rumsfeld was an American politician and businessman who had a net worth of $200 million at the time of his death in June 2021 When not in the public sector, Donald Rumsfeld earned a fortune in the private sector. He served as the CEO and Chairman of a company called G. D. Searle & Company, championing its turnaround before being sold to Monsanto. He served as Chairman and CEO of General Instrument Corporation from 1990 to 1993. From 1997 until being sworn in as Secretary of Defense in 2001, he served as...
https://www.celebritynetworth.com/riche ... net-worth/Plus whatever was hidden in Cayman accounts...
Look forward to more of your posts Carnot.
