New low cost idea for wind power

That is really great. I'm guessing that this set up for harnessing wind power could be less obtrusive than that of the huge wind turbines.

I just wonder how long it will take to bring this to market, or will current technology find a way to bury it in the sand, so to speak.

Karl
 
Flutter

Nice post.

Just so happens I am looking into a small Savonius Rotor wind generator for a friend deep in the Amazon (not the online book place). A Savonius turbine is a vertical shafted rotor as in a 55 gallon drum cut in half and the two pieces welded together to make an "S" shaped rotor.

The wind flutter device in the movie - Good luck finding a material that can hold up long term to the flutter movement! Also for a given wind speed there is only so much power in every sq foot of area. That device has very little wind exposure and will at best make very little power. I know, very little power in some remote locations is very nice to have.

If I get anywhere with the Savonius rotor I will keep you posted.
 
Talk about taking a problem and solving it in a very basic manner!

I wonder if instead of scaling this up, what about creating an aray of smaller ones? Basically like how solar cells are put in to panels. Hmmmm........:huh:
 
It's not clear how well this would scale up, but 40 milliwatts for household use is pretty small - in fact, it's tiny. As he shows, you can power a LED, or a clock, and maybe even a radio, but when you get beyond that you have to start thinking of some way to store the energy so that you can release it in larger amounts. You could put a bunch of these on a house, but you'd need 25 of these to get a single watt. So to light a 60 watt light bulb you'd need 1,500 of these generators.

Alternately, the household could convert to LED lighting but that adds cost to the system solution. Even with LEDs you'd need a bunch of these things to provide any significant lighting (one LED doesn't provide that much light).

And even then, you'd probably need to gather the energy during the day and store it in batteries so that you could use it at night - and when there's no wind. The cost of the batteries, and the maintenance of the battery system might make it a difficult solution for third world countries.

Mike
 
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Nice post.

Just so happens I am looking into a small Savonius Rotor wind generator for a friend deep in the Amazon (not the online book place). A Savonius turbine is a vertical shafted rotor as in a 55 gallon drum cut in half and the two pieces welded together to make an "S" shaped rotor.

The wind flutter device in the movie - Good luck finding a material that can hold up long term to the flutter movement! Also for a given wind speed there is only so much power in every sq foot of area. That device has very little wind exposure and will at best make very little power. I know, very little power in some remote locations is very nice to have.

If I get anywhere with the Savonius rotor I will keep you posted.

I looked into these myself. I am too engrossed in my new home addition to do anything with this yet, but I am looking at building a windmill probably next spring.

Personally, I love the VAWM or Vertical Axis Windmills. They are super easy to hook up and don't care which way the wind is blowing, but they do have some problems.

The S-rotor windmill I fabbed up out of 55 gallon drums worked, but was not very efficient. It started well at low speeds, but the weight and power ratio was not so good. So bad I decided not to bother trying to hook it up to any sort of generator.

I have been brain storming with a guy at work and we have been getting some great ideas on how to improve the VAWM idea. I like the idea of air scooped vanes myself versus the s-shaped rotors, and I plan on using a fairly big flywheel, a car alternator, and some batteries to get my windmill to power up. Nothing fancy for sure, but I am not disillusioned with getting off the grid...I just think it would be cool for my wife to tell her students that we use x% of power from our windmill. (she teaches about alternative energy to her 5th graders).

For what it is worth, my uncle commercial windmill was a complete failure...it will take at least 12 years to recoup his money for the windmill. Anyway here is a picture of the windmill design I liked...

L2_flying.JPG
 
I seem to remember that vertical axis windmills are not as efficient as bladed designs - but that was a couple years ago, so I couldn't quote you any figures. I always wanted to use a low speed, high torque set up like you see on water wells out here to run an air compressor. Probably wouldn't work, but it would be fun to mess around with.
 
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