Earlier there was a thread about a new wind turbine. I can't find it now.

[Jackpine Radical]

Anybody got it? I searched DU as best I could & googled around with no luck.

[Straight Shooter]

1. At your service

turbine link:

http://pubs.acs.org/subscribe/journals/esthag/41/i03/html/020107news6.html

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x154708

:hi:

[Jackpine Radical]

2. That's it, exactly.

Lovely looking little critter, no?

[Sal Minella]

3. I want one of those with a garage at the base so I plug my car in at night

and in the morning she's ready to go and the solar panels on the windmill stem heat or cool the house when there's too little wind to turn the blades, and why in the name of all that's good an beautiful don't we all have one of these already in our back yards.....

[Straight Shooter]

7. I think it looks like modern sculpture.

Now if I could just manage to save that $9K to $12K ... :)

[mod mom]

13. Speaking of Wind turbines and sculpture, have you ever driven out of LA to Joshua Tree?

That is a sight to behold!

[Straight Shooter]

21. I haven't.

Do you have a link to a pic?

:hi:

[mod mom]

23. here is a link:

http://www.oceanlight.com/lightbox.php?x=wind_turbine__energy__science_and_technology__subject&pg=2

[karlrschneider]

6. That's pretty cool but why 1/2 acre? What does the area have to do with it?

Also that's about a 15 to 18 year payback not counting maintenance. It won't appeal to very many people with those numbers.

[karlrschneider]

4. Try Googling Limbaugh Speeches

:evilgrin:

[Wiley50]

5. I Want One Small Enough To Hang On My Boat

A marine Air-X machine costs almost a thousand bucks though

I need one for $200

[rockymountaindem]

8. I've always said that someone needs to invent one that lies flat

That may or may not be possible. I'm the farthest thing from an engineer, but it seems to me that if we could get some kind of scoop to face into the wind and force it onto the turbine, we might be able to make copies of these that are no taller than an average person or a one-story house or something along those lines. I think that would be a fine improvement, because a lot of people are put off by wind turbines because they do rather marr the landscape. If we could make some that lie flat we could overcome that problem.

I'm just thinking out loud here, I have no idea if that would work. But, I guess if we could fly to the moon we could develop a flat wind turbine.

[karlrschneider]

10. It's complicated to explain but to gather usable energy from low velocity winds

you have to use large airfoils (reverse-propellors, you might say).

Maybe you're thinking of something like a large anemometer, the windspeed measuring instrument that has (usually) 3 'cup-shaped' elements arranged in a horizontal configuration...? The problem with those is that they are way too inefficient to be useful. Your idea would be fine if wind blew up and down instead of across, but unfortunately it doesn't. :-)

[rockymountaindem]

11. Not quite

I was thinking of something that looks exactly like a regular wind turbine, but lies flat. Then there would be some kind of sail that would redirect the wind onto the blades.

[karlrschneider]

12. Well, the airfoils don't work if the wind isn't blowing perpendicular to the plane

of the turbine blades. Maybe I'm not exactly getting your suggestion...are you talking about something that would sort of 'funnel' the wind in a downward direction? That would have to be really large...

[rockymountaindem]

14. Yeah, that's what I was suggesting

How large would it have to be?

[karlrschneider]

15. Well, to be even reasonably efficient, it would have to be as big as the

diameter of the blade circle, and when you 'turn' a large amount of airflow that way, a lot is lost from friction and turbulence. Also the turbine blades would have to be pretty far above the ground, at least 1/2 their own diameter to minimize compressive effects when the airstream dead-ends at the surface which would also decrease the ability of the air to freely flow downward. I love to hear new ideas so don't give up thinking outside the box, though! :D

[rockymountaindem]

16. Bummer

I sort of concieved that the scoop or whatever would have to be as large as the blades. The important thing for me would be to have it lying flat or buried just under the surface with the scoop sticking up over the ground. The motivation for this idea came from my travels in Europe this summer, when I saw several huge turbines towering over some beautiful countryside. They're really distracting. Moreover, Colorado would be the best place to exploit this kind of technology since it's so darn windy in CO all the time, but nobody wants the turbines to clash with the mountains. I can't say I blame them.

How's solar energy looking? My tech-obsessed friend said there's some new battery technology on the horizon which would replace the 70's era batteries we're working with now. That would be an improvement.

[karlrschneider]

19. Yeah, the cosmetic aspect sure does enter into it as we've seen in the

Northeast U.S. Some of that is the NIMBY mindset which I certainly appreciate if regrettably disagree with mostly but that's a whole nother discussion.

The thing about batteries is promising but doesn't avert the inescapable necessity for energy to
-charge- them. Even if we could invent 100% efficient batteries, we'd still have to pump as much
into them, somehow, as we can hope to get back. It has to come from somewhere.

What we need is a connection to the 'other world' a la Heinlein's _Waldo_. If you like to read,
try to find it. :D

[rockymountaindem]

22. As far as the batteries:

My friend and I were discussing ways to store energy created by solar panels on individual homes. He said more people would be willing to invest in the panels if there were more efficient batteries. That's how we were thinking of charging them.

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

17. What about...

Savonius Rotors?


http://www.pell-innovations.com/projects.html

[karlrschneider]

18. Well, I will be very (and happily) surprised if they ever get those up to 40% efficiency.

In any case they will still have to be high enough above the surface to minimize boundary-layer turbulence and friction effects, so I don't see that as a real alternative absent some amazing aerodynamic breakthrough/discovery. The biggest inhibiting factor in any sort of design is obviously just how much energy actually -exists- in a moving mass of air. There's a lot of it but it's so
"spread out", to put it one way, it just takes a lot of interfacing to extract it...much the same way as it's difficult to get a lot of power from solar radiation, there's only -so much of it- in any given
area...around 100 watts per meter ^2. So far we haven't figured out a way to extract more than exists.

[Gabi Hayes]

9. aaaaaa

[PADemD]

20. There is also this article...

Mini-Windmills Generate Power in the Dark

http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20070207/sc_livescience/miniwindmillsgeneratepowerinthedark

[Warren DeMontague]

24. Yeah, I found that cool, too. Combine that with a solar roof

and you're good to go! :thumbsup: