There was a show, islands of the future, on Netflix now, that had a large scale demonstration and explanation of it, used to store wind energy and power an island.
Unfortunately, I don't know of a comparison with batteries with concrete numbers.
I think you hit the nail on the head with what you said about efficiency, but for large scale storage, it has to be better when you factor in the energy costs of making, replacing, and disposing batteries, even including the cost of replacing the turbines.
...and all that ignores the ecological issues, where ponds beat battery factories hands down.

Yeah. Also one thing awesome about this is the atheletes often dress in whatever is comfortable for them, and will wear glasses that sometimes have sighting lenses. So couple that with the super-customized guns and you get great photos of shooters looking like the pirate captains of some future space ships - http://images.indianexpress.com/2016/07/prakash-nanjappa-759.jpg - Here is the current world champ with his amazing looking pistol- http://www.trbimg.com/img-57ab598f/turbine/la-sp-sn-shooting-oly-2016-rio-20160810/600 - 10 meter air rifle competition is similar, but they wear some protective gear - http://accurateshooter.net/pix/ginwin1601.jpg

There is so much wrong with this video I don't even know where to start. First, there are only two types of aircraft engines, piston and turbine. When a turbine is used to drive a propeller, it's called a turbo prop. When he is talking about turbo props, he shows pictures of a piston driven propeller aircraft (Cessna 41x), and piston engines are the most common type of engine used on propeller driven aircraft, not turbo props.

He mostly gets it right about turbo jets, except again, every aircraft he shows when talking about turbo jets uses a turbo fan (the F-15 and F-16 both use afterburning turbofan engines). They get their thrust from the hot expansion of exhaust gasses, but he gets it wrong with turbo fans, which get most of their thrust from the bypass air from the fan.

One reason it's statistically safer is because wind turbine repair workers often tell drivers to look up when they see a wind turbine.

I also thought it looked extremely unstable, and has way too much noncaptured motion to work long term. It looks like it would shake itself apart in under a week. I hope that is not how they intend the final version to operate, but the pole was already much larger than a similar size bladed turbine would need. Maybe good for direct to structure/ground mounted systems, but likely not for pole mounts without some serious redesign.

Interesting but seems gimmicky. Im no engineer but that pole shaking alone seems extremely problematic. How efficient comparatively to regular turbines, and long term ware on the equipment(all the shaking). Also can it size up. Be interesting to see if they are successful. Call me skeptical.

I'm curious about how much noise they produce. One of the problems with the traditional wind turbine design is they are quite noisy.

These look cool and would work great for generating localized power. But I don't see exactly how they fix the problem with the giant wind turbines. They don't even discuss how well they might scale to provide not just localized power but enough to power towns & cities like turbines do.

Thank you, Thor and C'Thor, for protecting us with your wind turbines -- and for secretly engineering a device to one day unleash thunder and lightning upon the enemies of humanity.

Would be interested to see the total life cycle efficiency of these.

One of the problems with wind turbines is the energy cost of the foundations. Most large wind turbines require a lot of concrete to be mounted on. Concrete is a horrible material in terms of CO2 production, so a wind turbine actually has to operate for several years before it becomes carbon neutral.

This looks like it might solve that problem, but on the other hand, I'm unsure if it would scale well.

I dunno, I'm not an engineer, so happy to listen to someone more knowledgeable on this.

It's a guess, but I think because the blades are so short and wide, they produce more torque at much lower speeds, so yes, likely gearing is needed, but most turbines have some sort of transmission these days. Because the blades are so short and wide, they also don't go as fast under strong winds, there's more air resistance and far less tip speed. That means far less vibration and stress on the hub/trans.

That was my first thought as the problem this fixed. Because it's a solid cylinder visually, birds would be far less likely to get caught, rather than by the fast-moving blades of a normal turbine that chop through apparently clear sky.

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Ouch, looks like wind turbines are only good for your carbon footprint when they're not on fire.