OK here’s a photo I just went out and took, of the 10 kW turbine out back, powering this message.
Note the 120-foot steel lattice tower with 3 levels of steel guy wires. And everything is arranged so the blades don’t hit the guy wires or tower. So all that is 100% normal. We have maybe 150 of these installations in my area. My SuperTwins of course avoid the blades being anywhere near the tower, since the driveshafts project outward, fore-and-aft.
I like the kiteX design, including the forward pole with guy wires, an old idea from Denmark I think it was - we’ve discussed it before - Gedser?.
For whatever reason, it’s one more “new” old idea, that was somehow bypassed or discarded in the past. Anyway, my experience tells me that a kite-X turbine on high tower in a strong wind resource might not last even a day. Maybe not even an hour. A minute? Especially if the wind really started blowing. Those are the conditions when you find out what the problems are.
Anyway, I was trying to imagine why they ever stopped using guy wires at utility scale for wind turbine towers. I’ve come up with a few:
- Safety - trucks and cranes are driving around all the time. Do they want to hit a guy wire and bring down a turbine?
- Sabotage: Anyone with a wrench can undo a bolt and bring the whole thing down in a minute. Or a cutting torch… Or bolt cutters…
- Visual appearance: Windfarms suffer from visual clutter as it is - guy wires might be seen as more clutter. A big part of getting projects approved is making nearby residents and even passersby happy with the appearance. Tubular towers have a cleaner look than lattice or probably guyed tubular towers.
As far as what I heard listening to the video, the towers seem way too tall for smaller turbines, and you’d need too many towers, no matter how cheap. The guy wires would overlap and cross-cross, and, really, we’re seeing so many combined new ideas, or old ideas presented as new, it becomes quite a confusion to me. Maybe I need to watch the video again, cuz I was doing something else when it was on and only caught a few tidbits.