this video is sponsored by VIN fast the worldwide thirst for electricity is absolutely immense and
with people like me opt in to ditch natural gas in favor of heat pumps and driving electric cars that
demand is only going to increase I talk about solar all the time but global wind generation
is about twice that of solar according to our world and data in 2019. studies even suggest
that offshore wind energy alone could power the entire world in fact 80 percent of the world's
wind resources is offshore in deep Waters so why isn't every country building offshore wind farms
as fast as they can and why aren't they everywhere when you think about wind turbines you're probably
picturing something like this massive horizontal axis wind turbines or hawts but a company called
Hydro wind energy believes that they have a novel solution to the offshore wind problem
by using these vertical access wind turbines but some very interesting properties eighty percent of
the world's wind resource is available offshore not unsure the question is ultimately how do we
harness that and turn it into a usable form of energy our approach is that we're using wind
solely for mechanical lift but before we get into that let's talk about conventional offshore wind
turbines if we look at offshore wind speed data 70 kilometers off the coast of Rona in Scotland
here's what an hourly average for the entire year looks like first of all it should be pretty clear
just how variable and intermittent wind speeds really are but if we average it by season we
can get a little more clarity interestingly the strongest wind speeds come in Winter which is
good news because that's when solar energy is at its lowest and before you think the wind speeds
are super constant throughout the day remember this is an average this is the first major issue
of offshore wind it's unpredictable and varies throughout the day there's no way to increase
or decrease production to match what people are actually using or even know what you can expect
hour by hour Spanish German wind giant Seaman gamessa is preparing to deploy 60 of its latest
generation turbines of this variety by 2024. each of the 60 turbines will produce 14.7 megawatts
which the world record they'll feature blades that are 108 meters long about the size of the football
or soccer field and a rotor diameter of 222 meters about 45 Tesla Model S's parked bumper to bumper
it's pretty mind-boggling stuff there are issues though as cost increased dramatically as the blade
size increases both in larger molds and cast to create the blades but also the logistics of
larger support towers and anchoring them safely to the sea floor using monopiles a monopod is a
steel cylinder piled into the sea floor by a special hydraulic ram as these wind turbines
continue to grow in size these monopoles will have to get bigger too to support that massive
size and resulting moment of inertia now while there are some floating platforms being worked
on these turbines will largely be limited to about 50 meter C depths which will restrict where they
can be installed the second problem with offshore wind turbines is that they aren't really able to
harness the entirety of the wind's potential large wind turbines like these require about 5
meter per second air speeds to start spinning and have to shut down when wind speeds reach about 25
meters per second their ideal operating range is around 10 to 15 meters per second and that's where
the gearing generators and Power Electronics are sized to operate more modern turbines like
the Siemens commissa 14.7 megawatt turbines make use of the technology called high wind
ride through which will help with this but that's a topic for another day speaking of another day
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vinfast and you for supporting the show being so massive these turbines actually affect the
laminar flow of air impacting other turbines downwind in an offshore Farm I had a chance to
chat with Mark spieler at Nvidia a company doing amazing things using digital twins Ai and computer
simulation to determine optimal turbine placement we are leveraged a lot in the design and build
not only of the wind turbines themselves but also in identifying the best place for placement once
they're out in the field and then optimizing the wind weight coming off of uh of a turbine
not only for individual optimization of a single turbine but in a perfect world how do we optimize
the entire Wind Farm what we're seeing with the increase in compute capacity is people are now
simulating much broader aspects of a wind farmed offshore and using what what we call physics and
four neural networks we can actually take true physics create a simulated model what we do is
we we take data points that that they are able to collect and we can recreate the the physics of the
simulation using what's called pins or physics and form neural networks it really allows people
to to see and visualize and simulate what's going to happen in the real world before they actually
start according to an article by the American Society of mechanical engineers written by
Michael Abrams while horizontal wind turbines can be 50 efficient turbines downwind can see
their outputs decreased by 40 percent to avoid the turbulence of a 10 megawatt upwind turbine with a
rotor diameter of 150 meters a downstream turbine would need to be installed three kilometers away
and these large distances means production density is lowered maintenance times would be higher not
to mention all the cabling and connections between them so massive conventional turbines operate best
in a small range of wind speeds are costly to install and require more space But as they get
bigger and bigger the cost per megawatt produced continues to drop making them cost competitive
in more and more regions throughout the world but what about those vertical axis turbines or vawts
I mentioned earlier well Hydro wind energy has created this the ocean Hydro Omni and it
functions in a completely different way than other horizontal or vertical axis wind turbines you know
they've existed but one of the big questions is why haven't they been commercialized and
the reason is ultimately because if we were converting it directly to electrical energy
conventional wind turbines would actually be much better to do that but if you're doing it the way
we're doing it we're harnessing more of the wind resource right up to 40 meters per second which is
you know very close I mean it is almost hurricanes hurricane wind while hawts have efficiencies of 50
vawts are only around 35 to 40 percent efficient this is largely due to the fact that the wind hits
both the collection side and the side coming back into the wind slowing its spin but unlike
hawt's vawts generate a funnel-like wake which stretches like a contrail and the wind is less
turbulent after it passes through meaning they can be installed much closer together but that's
not what makes Hydro wind energies Omni turbine special unlike all other wind turbines the ocean
Hydro Omni doesn't produce electricity directly from the wind now instead it uses the wind to
lift a heavy mass then when energy is needed the weight can be dropped powering a generator this
has some really interesting benefits for one the Omni can operate in a much wider range of wind
speeds because they don't have Delica electronics and generators attached to the turbines they can
lift the weight faster or slower through a much wider range of wind speeds also unlike traditional
wind turbines the ocean Hydro Omni can respond to grid need either storing or releasing energy
on demand if the winds are high and demand is low they can lift the weights and stand by when
demand Rises they can release the weights at a set speed and create uniform power output when we're
lifting it we're absorbing the variability of wind power if it's connected directly to a generator
that means you have fluctuating power and our approach is that during the lifting process of
lifting that mass by the submerged height you're absorbing that variability of wind whether it's
three meters per second 5 meters per second or six meters per second if you ask the grid they don't
really like Renewables because it's it's just fluctuating power coming into the grid that's
very difficult to manage imagine also that if you have two masses so as one is being dropped one
is being lifted and then if you think of an array that's when it becomes more significant one would
be intermittent but if you have it you know four or five these then you can actually get constant
power output to the Grid it's on demand power wind and solar cannot provide on-demand power
because one of the things that's missing to a future powered by Renewables is energy storage
the energy of storage potential of the ocean Hydro Omni is a function then of the seed depth and the
weight of the mass the mass of the weight you know what I mean for this reason the first pilot plant
scheduled for the second half of 2022 will be installed at a depth of 300 meters far deeper
than most traditional wind turbines the Omni then isn't just an offshore wind energy generator it's
also a battery and a smart grid enabled device to see just how valuable this could be let's compare
the Omni to a traditional 10 megawatt wind turbine over the course of a day using our data for RONA
from earlier and factoring average and maximum wind speeds we can approximate true wind speeds
for a day for the traditional wind turbine power output will increase with wind speeds until about
15 meters per second then from 15 to 25 meters per second the traditional turbines will change
its rotor pitch angle to slow down and maintain a constant output when wind speeds rise above
25 meters per second the turbine has to do a safety shutdown to prevent over speeding
and damage to itself this is what I mean by not harnessing the entirety of the wind potential plus
the traditional turbines can't do anything about matching demand it just produces energy whenever
it can based on wind in comparison the ocean Hydro Omni can safely operate in wind speeds between 4
and 40 meters per second which means the entire day it's able to harness the wind speed to lift
the weights but it can lower them back down in a controlled way throughout the day in Cycles
now a single Omni probably won't be able to produce as much power as a traditional wind
turbine but because they can be grouped closer together cost less per turbine they can still
provide similar power output over an entire wind farm and interestingly if it was built
with the same surface area they'd actually generate at least four times as much energy
because of the faster wind speed but where things really get interesting is when we look at Power
output as a function of grid demand again the traditional turbine can't do much to vary its
output it's just a function of one speed the hydro when energies turbines can act as an
on-demand device build enough omnis and it would be possible to meet an entire Grid's demand no
matter what time of day a lot of the ideas they've employed aren't New Vertical access wind turbines
gravity batteries but their unique packaging definitely has me excited but Hydro wind energy
isn't in the clear just yet where are you guys in the development process do you have these systems
out in the wild or are they coming online soon well accordingly where technology Readiness level
six which means we've actually built um you know prototype tested components and sub-components
integrated the system as well but onshore the next step for us is to actually finalize a sub-scale
system and test it in a real offshore environment to move this to technology Readiness level seven
uh and we're going to be deploying that in 750 meter sea depth so we'll it's not a big rotor
that we're going to be using but it's it's a system that will kind of validate you know in
terms of the almost a proof of concept uh of what we're working on the data gathered there will feed
back into their engineering design and eventual final production model they'll need to prove their
concept can withstand gale force winds out in the deep ocean show that their systems can last 20 to
30 years like a conventional wind turbine and come up with maintenance procedures and
intervals to ensure their turbines reach full life this data will be critical to determine
the true levelized cost of electricity if they can win on their strategy of smaller vertical
turbines that can be built closer together in deeper waters with energy storage built in
think they have a winner on their hands so are we going to stop seeing bigger and
bigger conventional offshore wind turbines not at all in fact there's more interest in larger
conventional wind turbines than ever but the benefits of the ocean Hydro Omni will be a new
tool in our toolkit allowing greater renewable energy generation and greater flexibility their
design will be a grid operator's best friend able to produce electricity when they need
it regardless of wind speeds if we're going to move away from stable but dirty forms of energy
production like coal and natural gas we'll need every tool we can get and if renewable energy
the Achilles heel is predictability on demand generation like the Omni can provide will be
huge not only to produce energy but lower the need for grid storage but what do you think are
you excited for vertical access wind turbines with gravity battery storage as I am what percentage
of future offshore wind projects will use this approach sound off in the comments below alright
so that is a look at offshore wind turbines with battery storage built in not to be confused with
title generators which are underwater and we have video to that which we think you'll like here as
well all right I'm Ricky DaVinci thank you so much for watching we'll catch you next week