Well, Blow Me Down! 650 foot wind turbine blades!
Gigantic Wind Turbine With 650 Foot Blades Will Channel the Power of Hurricanes
The DOE wants to step up its wind energy game in a big way. And I mean big. Sandia National Laboratories has been tasked with the challenge of designing an offshore wind turbine that can spin out 50 megawatts of carbon-free juice—using 650 foot blades that harness the fiercest winds on Earth.
Take a second to try and picture that. 650 feet is just shy of two football fields. It’s a hundred feet higher than the Washington Monument. And it’s about five times longer than the rotor blades of most offshore wind turbines today, which produce power in the 1-2 megawatt range. (Japan is currently a leader in massive offshore wind structures, with a 7 megawatt beast of a turbine that sports 270 foot-long blades.)
It sounds damn ambitious, but if we want to start generating wind energy at scale, we need to dream big.
For one, the turbine would stand on a lightweight, segmented trunk that bends in the breeze without snapping. The blades will also be segmented, allowing them to fold in at high wind speeds to minimize the risk of damage. On calmer days, the turbine would fan out to its jaw-dropping, 1300-foot span in order to maximize energy production.
The entire system is similar to a palm tree, which, by shuttering up and facing the wind during hurricanes, can withstand gusts of up to 200 miles per hour. Today, regions of the world that experience severe storms—and the strongest, most energy-rich winds—are dangerous for turbines.
My initial concern was the injuring/killing of migrating birds. They can not possibly be protected 100%.