Comment by shrubble
11 hours ago
You get 42MW inside the footprint of what looks like 2 truck trailers, that you can park in the parking lot next to the electrical transformers. Virtually no permitting or installation required.
11 hours ago
You get 42MW inside the footprint of what looks like 2 truck trailers, that you can park in the parking lot next to the electrical transformers. Virtually no permitting or installation required.
Yes...ish, I largely agree that the footprint is smaller per MW and quite a boon.
But 42MW energy doesn't come from nowhere, fuel needs to be considered. And there everyone has their own constraints.
The AI companies will likely care about $ and little else.
Engineers will point out that 42MW fuel takes up space and supply on an ongoing basis.
Other people will be worried about the externalities of burning 42MW of something vs solar panels and batteries etc.
You can't please all of the people.
Decent for large scale backup perhaps? Or remote plants (almost always mining in the middle of nowhere). Remote plants have fuel logistics already.
Another fit might be somewhere like singapore which is very space poor but very trade connected. But they're currently building a ocean power cable to Australia where they will tap a massive solar farm or existing grid.
It probably fits some use cases better than any alternatives, but for powering cities and suburbia I think renewables still make heaps of sense when space is available somewhere that can join the grid.
I think a 42MW turbine might run into some permitting issues regarding safe noise levels.
Yes yes, we will surround entire turbine in piezoelectric substrate and extract energy from vibrations. It is solved problem. Then we use energy to distill fuel from CO2 in air, making it carbon neutral. Resulting fuel we will put in turbine. Zero loss generator. Can build it in cave with scraps.
Look, you can't write stuff like that any more. It took me three minutes to figure out you where joking.
Possibly, but I suspect mobile turbines (aircraft) are unquietened (noisy) by design because they don’t really need to be quiet at 35000ft.
Presumably a static turbine is minimizing noisy thrust in exchange for torque while also exhausting through an expansion chamber surrounded by deflective earthworks or some other shielding. (Although the one in the article is indeed all outside in the open.)
No, they’ve been intentionally designing them to be quieter for decades because they are in hearing distance for quite a lot of miles during takeoff and landing. I suspect you can better insulate one on land though since you’re less constrained on size and weight.
actually they've down much quieter in the past 40 years. e.g. the 787 dreamliner has wavy bits on the exit of the nozzle that reduce efficiency by 1% in exchange for quieter operation because making the engine quieter reduces the amount and weight of noise insulation in the cabin
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> Virtually no permitting or installation required.
I hope that isn’t correct.
Noise, emissions, fuel storage, heat. There are issues that would have me annoyed if that thing appeared next door.
How does the fuel get to it?
Building roads and running tankers is expensive. Ditto pipelines unless very close to suitable sources.
Especially when the moment these go online at any scale the price of natural gas starts getting jacked even further.
A site already needed backup generators.
Presumably there's some benefit there too.
Not getting permits, and no permits required are two different things.
Unless you got cash, then it’s the same.