11 Responses

1. I am assuming it will use some type of cryocooler to maintain the
   superconductors at a low temperature. I am also assuming the cryocooler
   will be powered by the wind turbine. I don’t know what will happen if the
   wind turbine stops when there is no wind.

2. Nice idea. Bullshit numbers.
   Turbines are already 45+% efficient and the maximum possible is 59.3%. This
   can’t be 1000 times better.
   The gearbox is only 10% of total project costs. This can’t come even close
   to reducing costs by 67% even if it was free (or at least not made from
   expensive material). Permanent magnet generators, and hybrid drives will
   totally eclipse superconductors.
   Also offshore is decades away from happening in Australia, we still have
   loads of world class wind sites onshore.
   Oh! Also cryogenic coolers are probably only 30% efficient. And cryogenic
   bearings would cost a lot.

3. That material requires −234 °C. So instead of quite robust and conventional
   technology of gearbox(which is not anymore used at least in Vestas
   windmills.. just note) you will have gryo system in the 150m above sealevel
   which doesn’t naturally need maintenance.. wait or perhaps it needs little
   bit once in a while. Also the saved energy from copperlosses (from
   windings) is lost by the energy required by the gryo system. Also there is
   never loss free system so iron losses, joule losses, windage losses are
   always there. Just note to every one thinking this will save their world
   … sorry to be pessimistic on this but this time it’s good to be
   realistic.

4. Nice idea, but how is possible to cool windmil to -160? It will take so so
   much energy…

5. Dr Hossain says that 10 MW-class #windturbines will require up to 200 km
   (124 mi) of superconducting coil to generate electricity, with each
   HTS-based coil costing between AUD$3 to $5 million (US$2.5 to $2.4 million)
   to manufacture. However, he claims that the same length of magnesium
   diboride superconducting coil would cost just AUD$180,000 (US$153,000),
   with that figure expected to drop significantly.

   Dr Hossain says the cryocooler system will run with ambient temperature
   helium gas supplied by compressors and entering into the rotor and
   returning through a rotary coupling in a closed loop.

6. Oh hells yes. Keep at it.

7. Sounds like a Great Ideaâ„¢ that’ll never truly surpass its competition. We
   got a few choices for clean energy infact that do work in theory and
   practice, this does neither.

8. Low cost, super efficient offshore wind turbines …:
   http://youtu.be/I-XsRxjBnss

9. “1,000 times more efficient” than what? Standard turbines already convert
   around 45% of the kinetic energy of the air flowing through the turbine
   into electrical energy. The theoretical limit (Betz’s Law) is 59.3%. This
   is an extremely silly claim.

10. Gosh, folks: low temperature is a thermodynamics problem: problem solved.
    Maintaining low temperature is a heat transfer problem: problem (in the
    21st century) trivial.