Wind Power Operating, Maintenance Costs Drop 38 Percent
11/28/2012
The costs of wind power are falling, not only for turbine cost and performance, but also for operating and maintaining wind farms. Shown here, Siemens service engineers work in a wind turbine's gondola. (Source: Siemens)
Ann, that is an interesting point you raise. As costs come down, the payback period will shorten.
Actually, I was visiting a cousin who has a farm in central Illinois. As we were driving to lunch one day I noticed the one wind turbine in the area. On asking him about it, he said the problem was the payback period on them. I guess some people get paid rent to allow tuebines to be sited on their land (like farming rents) while others get involved in the financing of the turbines. Even for turnines to power the farm itself, he said that these are way too expensive to be worth it. These guys are very practical and hard headed. If it does not make sense they don't do it. They are also generally well educated, informed and tech savvy these days. They have to be.
On a related issue, I asked him about corn stalks for ethanol production. They were all still laying around his farm and all the others in the area. I guess the problem is that they have to bundled to be sold to the processors. As long as crop prices are so high because of international demand it will not be worth the extra time and effort for the farmer to do this.
The 100-percent solar-powered Solar Impulse plane flies on a piloted, cross-country flight this summer over the US as a prelude to the longer, round-the-world flight by its successor aircraft planned for 2015.
GE Aviation expects to chop off about 25 percent of the total 3D printing time of metallic production components for its LEAP Turbofan engine, using in-process inspection. That's pretty amazing, considering how slow additive manufacturing (AM) build times usually are.
A $1,500, hand-operated, bench-model, plastic injection machine crowdsource-funded via Kickstarter can be used to mold small, quality, plastic parts inexpensively, on demand.
The federal government is launching competitions to kickstart three more manufacturing innovation institutes, including one focused on Lightweight and Modern Metals Manufacturing Innovation.
The airframe of Airbus's A350 XWB consists of a bigger proportion of carbon-fiber-reinforced composite structures than any other commercial jet to date: over 53 percent by weight.
From Dell / Intel® New Paradigms in Design Work Scott Hamilton, vertical market strategist for Dell Precision workstations, 5/2/2013 5
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For industrial control applications, or even a simple assembly line, that machine can go almost 24/7 without a break. But what happens when the task is a little more complex? That’s where the “smart” machine would come in. The smart machine is one that has some simple (or complex in some cases) processing capability to be able to adapt to changing conditions. Such machines are suited for a host of applications, including automotive, aerospace, defense, medical, computers and electronics, telecommunications, consumer goods, and so on. This radio show will show what’s possible with smart machines, and what tradeoffs need to be made to implement such a solution.
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