Might take the CGI with a grain of salt though. AFAICT the company has existed for 4 years, has 7 employees and no actual office address. They own zero physical assets. Seems most likely they're trying to do just enough to get some patents so they'll be bought out by one of the large offshore service companies and make a nice profit.
(It re-opens in April, if anyone happens to be in New York and hasn't visited Storm King, I really cannot recommend it enough, it's a lot of fun, Dia too, Earth Room and Beacon are magic but honestly they're all amazing, so fun! https://www.diaart.org/visit/visit-our-locations-sites)
I was thinking more towards the strandbeest series (https://www.strandbeest.com/), although those have entirely too many legs to be spiders and are also not made out of aluminium.
You're not unreasonable for expecting something at least vaguely spider-like. This just looks like a big crane for assembling big wind turbines.
Is the "spider" part supposed to be the web-like aluminum frame of the crane? That seems like a stretch, but it's the most charitable interpretation I've got.
Floating wind turbines can power themselves, and therefore, as long as there is at least a little wind, and they have some small propellers on the bottom, get anywhere in the world.
That seems to make installation and maintenance super cheap - you can build them anywhere in the world, command them to sail themselves to the right place, and just have a ship come by and hook them up to the power grid in perhaps an hour per turbine.
Large ones are higher up and windy gets faster the higher you go. Though I think even if that wasn't the case it's more efficient to build a few big turbines than many small ones.
In addition to the other replies, bigger rotors achieve their power at lower rpm. That's because blade tip speed needs to stay well below the speed of sound, at all sizes. Where small, hectic rotations are annoying, the large ones appear majestic. They are seen very far, but blend in much better. The small turbines are the ones that are catching the eye.
You can spend many hours with a mix of different turbine sizes in view perceiving that difference without really being able to put a finger on it. But when you do realize how that plays out, you will never ever consider two smaller turbines where a larger would do. Chances are you'd even prefer a larger one over a single smaller.
Anyway, neat crane idea.
https://collections.stormking.org/Browse/objects
(It re-opens in April, if anyone happens to be in New York and hasn't visited Storm King, I really cannot recommend it enough, it's a lot of fun, Dia too, Earth Room and Beacon are magic but honestly they're all amazing, so fun! https://www.diaart.org/visit/visit-our-locations-sites)
https://www.diaart.org/collection/collection/bourgeois-louis...
Storm King also had a Louise Bourgeois. To me, if we're talking giant spiders, it's always always Louise Bourgeois.
Is the "spider" part supposed to be the web-like aluminum frame of the crane? That seems like a stretch, but it's the most charitable interpretation I've got.
We have our space elevator!
Out of context, that sounds like a kite. Can it be used in locations that are not very windy (like, for example, space)?
https://wiki.factorio.com/Spidertron
I have to say… WindSpider is a pretty weird name for this. If anything I'd say it looks a bit more like an abstract bird/crane.
That seems to make installation and maintenance super cheap - you can build them anywhere in the world, command them to sail themselves to the right place, and just have a ship come by and hook them up to the power grid in perhaps an hour per turbine.
When edge cases become catastrophic, engineering gets hard.
https://evil.fandom.com/wiki/Spider_Tank_(Wild_Wild_West)
Or heck, even go for "Spider Web Crane" if they love the word "spider" so much.
Fascinating tech, very nicely done. I love it.
This article has a good summary: https://www.energy.gov/eere/articles/wind-turbines-bigger-be...
* 89ft - 0.2mw
* 173ft - 0.9mw (2x radius, 4.5x power)
* 410ft - 3mw (2.5x radius, 3x power)
* 820ft - 17mw (2x radius, 5.5x power)
You can spend many hours with a mix of different turbine sizes in view perceiving that difference without really being able to put a finger on it. But when you do realize how that plays out, you will never ever consider two smaller turbines where a larger would do. Chances are you'd even prefer a larger one over a single smaller.