While the Netherlands is the country most known for its windmills, they were originally invented by the Persians. More surprisingly, some of them are still turning after 1,000 years.
The ancient world holds many wonders of technology, and some are only now coming back to the surface like the Antikythera Mechanism. Milling grain with wind power probably started around DATE in Persia, but in Nashtifan, Iran they’ve been keeping the mills running generation-to-generation for over 1000 years. [Mohammed Etebari], the last windmill keeper is in need of an apprentice to keep them running though.
In a world where vertical axis wind turbines seem like a new-fangled fad, it’s interesting to see these panemone windmills are actually the original recipe. The high winds of the region mean that the timber and clay structure of the asbad structure housing the turbine is sufficient for their task without all the fabric or man-made composites of more modern designs. While drag-type turbines aren’t particularly efficient, we do wonder how some of the lessons of repairability might be used to enhance the longevity of modern wind turbines. Getting even 100 years out of a turbine would be some wicked ROI.
Wooden towers aren’t just a thing of the past either, with new wooden wind turbines soaring 100 m into the sky. Since you’ll probably be wanting to generate electricity and not mill grain if you made your own, how does that work anyway?
But a thousand year functional product is bad for the bottom line!! Planned obsolecense?!
Bte what date is DATE? Placeholder left behind?
Don’t worry, it’s more than likely that over those 1000 years some major repair have taken place. Perhaps it could be very profitable to have a 1000 year service contract. You know, build a cheap but crappy device people can’t afford to loose and than cash in on the repairs costs. A bit like printers or razor blades.
You might even wonder if it’s the same thing that was put up 1000 years ago. Think of “The Ship of Theseus Paradox”, anyway, that’s not important. What’s cool is to see that the method of harvesting wind was used this way long long ago.
I wonder though, hackaday is about hacks isn’t it? From a technical perspective the video isn’t interesting at all. It more feels like I’m watching the history channel?!? I wonder when we see a video about the wheel. I’m sure it won’t take long before someone discovers that it was also discovered long long ago too… where does it end?
society has alzheimer. so it ends in the heath death of the universe. people have been reinventing things for as long as the roamed the earth.
and about not interesting at all: n=1. Nobody forced you to read the article. get over it.
Annual maintenance costs tend to increase over the age of the device, which is why traditional turbines have a technical life of 20-25 years.
Politically, they have a lifespan of 10-15 years since that’s the common length of the subsidy period in most regions, after which the turbine would have to sell at plain market rate without price guarantees or tax breaks. When it’s windy, the spot prices drop towards zero or below and you don’t make any profit. These turbines are then left without maintenance and let to rot until they break and get replaced with new turbines with new subsidy contracts, or even abandoned entirely by some owners who don’t want to pay to dismantle them.
Much depends on where the turbine is located. If it’s in a good spot with steady winds, it can still turn profit, but if it’s in a location with unsteady winds and built simply to harvest the subsidies, it will get abandoned.
To understand the issue: the probability distribution of wind speeds in a typical location is such that 15% of the running hours produce 50% of the kilowatt-hours, but those few hours are also when all the other turbines around are turning because it’s usually associated with large weather fronts up to 1000 km in size. When everyone is producing at the same time, you get oversupply and the prices fall.
That’s why the rate subsidies were originally installed: to insulate the investment into wind turbines from the market disturbances that wind power causes. To force profitability despite not meeting market demand.
E.g. if your limit for profitability is 5 cents/kWh but you are forced to sell half of your power at 2 cents because of insufficient demand, then the other half must be priced above 8 cents to keep the average selling price at 5 cents.
For the typical wind turbine, that 8 cents per kWh or $80/MWh would apply for 85% of the time. Meanwhile, the rest of the market averages well below $80/MWh, which is why the subsidies are needed to pay the difference. Without them, or without some sort of bulk purchase deal with a large utility corporation, you just can’t turn profit out of wind.
(This is producer prices before transmission, retail and tax – not what you end up paying as a consumer.)