Home Trending Latest threads New posts Developer diaries

Wind power?

Jump to latest Follow Reply
  • We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.
Surviving Mars 1631 Bug Reports 2626 Suggestions & Feedback 916 Modding & Resources 289 Console Edition 136
U

unmerged(186320)

Recruit
1 Badges
Dec 27, 2009
3
0
www.n3podcast.com
  • Majesty 2
I have seen the trailer, and am quite excited about this game! I hope it will be fairly realistic.

I did notice something in the trailer which gave me pause though - there are rotating towers which I take to be wind turbines for power generation purposes.
I find this to be somewhat odd - the atmosphere on Mars is very very thin (~600 Pa) - I have operated electron microscopes at higher pressures, and they require what we would consider vacuum to work. Since the atmosphere is so thin, is the inclusion of wind power a decision that was made due to game mechanics - or is it an oversight from the developers?
When it comes to the domes, which have other potential issues, I am more willing to suspend disbelief - new materials and engineering might make those plausible. But wind turbines in a de-facto vacuum? I have some issues here, and wonder if you have run some rough calculations to see if it is feasible power generation approach on Mars given some future improved technology.
 
I am satisfied with the wind turbines they have; having the blades twist the way they do maximizes the surface exposed (as opposed to propeller-like blades). The amount of energy created will be much smaller than you could expect on Terra, but advances in technology constantly seem to reduce the power required to operate things. I'd like to add in a passive methane extractor inside the domes (humans pass methane, especially after the odd burrito) to increase available resources.
 
keynes2.0 said:
About half.
Click to expand...

He's pulling up speculation and hopes of advancement to get to that number. The dynamic pressure and, therefore, the work exerted by the wind on a similar turbine, is about a ninth on Mars compared to what it is on Earth for the same wind speed (discounting altitude variations and so on). The average wind speeds are actually kinda similar around 10m/s.

That gives you about 11% of the available work to make use of in ideal conditions, but this is discounting the fact that wind turbines actually have a "cut-in" level under which they don't produce at all. This is where your efficiencies and technical improvements will make a lot of difference, in allowing the turbines to actually make use of these low-energy states.

On the up side, you're not going to have to shut them down due to excessive wind like you often have to on Earth.
 
I think you all are looking at that from wrong side. The question shouldn't be: Why wind turbines are so bad. Instead you should ask: Why are other alternatives even worse.

Water: No water on Mars
Fossil: Expensive to import.
Atom: Huge amount of waste heat.

Don't know about other possibilities, but I think there will be serious drawbacks too.
 
Orlunu said:
In a situation where one of your major challenges is the extremely cold environment?

Tbh various types of nuclear are the obvious go-to.
Click to expand...

Actualy air pressure is problem. Thanks to lower pressure, heat conductivity is lesser. Also cannot evaporate stuff, because its expensive.

Later nuclear energy (or fusion) will be the way to go (when infrastrucutre is up and running), but in the beginning nuclear energy is too complicated to be used.
 
Orlunu said:
He's pulling up speculation and hopes of advancement to get to that number.
Click to expand...

No he does not. That is purely the velocity and the density. If anything, he understates things because he isn't factoring in how much lighter martian wind turbines could be and that mass savings would really matter.

Svobi111 said:
Later nuclear energy (or fusion) will be the way to go (when infrastrucutre is up and running), but in the beginning nuclear energy is too complicated to be used.
Click to expand...

I'm actually convinced that the devs got this backwards. Nuclear energy ONLY makes sense at the start. A stirling generator is expensive and heavy but could be useful at the very start when your energy needs are very low. However as soon as you start making fuel, you need solar/wind because the energy demands for that are way higher then just keeping a few humans alive.

On the industrial scale, nuclear isn't going to be built on Mars for the same reason it is being phased out on Earth, it's too expensive. They make optimistic projections but they never pan out. Solar and wind on Mars will have a 50% penalty compared to earth but that's only equal to a few years of price drops.

Plus there is the part where shipping all the stuff you'd need to start building a nuclear industry on Mars would just be an insanely large amount of cargo.
 
keynes2.0 said:
No he does not. That is purely the velocity and the density. If anything, he understates things because he isn't factoring in how much lighter martian wind turbines could be and that mass savings would really matter.
Click to expand...

For a brief section he talks purely in terms of velocity and density, yes, but even then when he puts numbers to it he stacks it artificially by using skewed numbers; picking a very low Earth number for use in the velocity cubed comparison magics up his factor of 25 advantage to Mars when just using planetary averages puts it even and realistic site selection pushes it into Earth's favour, for instance. He even admits that his choice of comparison is off. This keeps it solidly in terms of speculation because he is abandoning the constraints of the real life current data to speculate on how it would extrapolate to these conditions.



His final "10 to 20% as efficient" number is factoring the advances and improvements in terms of weight and so on, and is only a little too optimistic given that we assume all the little things like getting them to keep spinning at all under so little pressure are sorted out. How big are the wind farms intended to power industrial scale mining and the like supposed to be, given that we're talking 10 times or more the size of the equivalent on Earth (already not small)? Yes, wind power could have some applications, but when you compare it to nuclear it does not compete. You mention expenses as the reason people turn away from nuclear on Earth, but the reason is fear of nuclear incidents. When the studies have been done on it, again and again they show nuclear to be less expensive than wind; if you factor in taking away the disaster insurance costs, a lot of the fuel-disposal costs, and a 90% output decrease in the competing methods...
 
Orlunu said:
For a brief section he talks purely in terms of velocity and density, yes, but even then when he puts numbers to it he stacks it artificially by using skewed numbers; picking a very low Earth number for use
Click to expand...

No, he actually picked a pretty typical location
WindspeedRsz.jpg

https://www.climate.gov/maps-data/dataset/average-wind-speeds-map-viewer

He said that Houston isn't a good comparison *because they dont put wind turbines in typical locations*. But it's not like people on Mars are going to go putting wind turbines on top of the Viking lander. They are going to place them in local high wind areas.

You accuse the video of being misleading and then you make extremely misleading statements about it's contents.

Orlunu said:
When the studies have been done
Click to expand...

Yeah, nuclear does great in studies. Meanwhile in that pesky real world, Westinghouse went bankrupt, Toshiba is fleeing nuclear as fast as it can and even the French are planning to allow their nuclear portfolio to gradually age in a slow phase out. So nuclear is so cheap that the three leaders in the industry think it's doomed.
 
Last edited:
Horses for courses. Nuclear on Mars isn't affected by thin atmosphere or weak sunlight, and the kilowatt reactors NASA is developing are quite a different kettle of fish to big Gigawatt installations.

https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/spacetech/feature/Powering_Up_NASA_Human_Reach_for_the_Red_Planet

On Earth solar and wind are far more effective than on Mars due the the denser atmosphere and closer proximity to the sun respectively, organic fuels (fossil or otherwise) are plentiful, and the water cycle allows for hydroelectricity. Nuclear struggles to be worth it against cheaper and easier energy sources. Mars has different ground rules in this regard.
 
Surely the best way to go would be Tiberium reactors with ruddy big harvesters? surly mars must be covered in tiberium crystals?

i will get my coat....
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top Bottom
Back