Wind Turbines With No Blades 164
An anonymous reader writes: Wired has a profile of Spanish company Vortex Bladeless and their unusual new wind turbine tech. "Their idea is the Vortex, a bladeless wind turbine that looks like a giant rolled joint shooting into the sky. The Vortex has the same goals as conventional wind turbines: To turn breezes into kinetic energy that can be used as electricity." Instead of relying on wind to push a propeller in a circular motion, these turbines rely on vorticity — how wind can strike an object in a particular way to generate spinning vortices of air. Engineers usually try to avoid this — it's what brought down the Tacoma Narrows Bridge. But this Spanish company designed the turbine computationally to have the vortices occur at the same time along its entire height. "In its current prototype, the elongated cone is made from a composite of fiberglass and carbon fiber, which allows the mast to vibrate as much as possible (an increase in mass reduces natural frequency). At the base of the cone are two rings of repelling magnets, which act as a sort of nonelectrical motor. When the cone oscillates one way, the repelling magnets pull it in the other direction, like a slight nudge to boost the mast's movement regardless of wind speed. This kinetic energy is then converted into electricity via an alternator that multiplies the frequency of the mast's oscillation to improve the energy-gathering efficiency."
If it works (Score:5, Interesting)
If it works as well as hoped this will save a lot of
big birds from an early demise.
Big fans rotating like heck are an astounding challenge to keep intact
and maintain. Not that these will be any easier but "Big Bird's" yellow
feathers will be safer (one can hope).
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Cats kill at least an order of magnitude more birds than windmills do.
Re:If it works (Score:5, Insightful)
Cats kill at least an order of magnitude more birds than windmills do. [implication: it's not worth worrying about wind turbines killing birds]
Almost every time bird-killing wind turbines are discussed, someone posts this non-argument.
Let's apply well-known Slashdot troll NatasRevol's logic to other things:
- Heart disease kills at least an order of magnitude more people than diabetes. [implication: it's not worth worrying about diabetes killing people]
- Windows runs on at least an order of magnitude more personal desktops than Linux. [implication: it's not worth being concerned about the Linux desktop experience]
- Slashdot user BarbaraHudson posts at least an order of magnitude more troll posts than NatasRevol. [implication: it's not worth being annoyed at NatasRevol shitposting]
And then there's this: how many eagles and other large threatened and endangered birds are cats killing?
Federal Court Rules Massive Wind Energy Project in Violation of Endangered Species Act [prnewswire.com]
Bird killers (Score:5, Informative)
Cats kill at least an order of magnitude more birds than windmills do. [implication: it's not worth worrying about wind turbines killing birds]
Almost every time bird-killing wind turbines are discussed, someone posts this non-argument.
It's a bit badly formulated, but the argument isn't that much flawed.
- Indeed, although cats are a rather random example, there are TONS of human made things which kill a lot more birds than wind turbines. If you want to save birds, better concentrate on these bigger causes first.
The "birds" argument tries simply to say in a humoristic way: Even "putting hi-tech bird saving contraptions(tm)" (a.k.a.: bells on their collar) on house cats will be much more efficient than scratching your head about wind turbines.
More seriously: even if it is spectacular (because its a new technology, because these are big impressive devices, and because the bird "victims" tend to pile up in a limited place) wind turbine are far from the most dangerous things to birds.
I would strongly suspect (but don't have precise numbers) that pollution is among the highest bird-killing human-made factor. (But it's a lot less mind grabbing: we're used to polution, it's a boring subject for refular people. Also birds dead by it would be spread allover the region instead of forming a nice pile at the feet of the turbine).
Given that wind turbines tend to lower pollution (even more in countries that would otherwise burn fossils to produce their electricity), it might happen that the bird-killing machine would be actually saving birds life at the larger scale.
- Also there's another smaller factor not to forget:
Darwin's law, and evolution. Birds do adapt.
There's a very impressive example: glass. A few decades ago, our industry progress to the point of being able to produce huge glass pannels. Instead of small window, big glass walls started to appear. Problem: birds couldn't see or even notice the glass. You had accounts of lots of city birds hitting their head on glass walls. And poor city birds trapped inside big glass building (in the cafeteria) trying desperately to fly against this huge "invisible (to them) forcefield" (the glass wall).
Fast forward to now: there probably a couple of city birds happily living in your building's cafeteria. Feasting on left-overs, and hidden from predators.
There's such a huge advantage (avoid death, avoid getting lost, free shelter, free food, etc.) at slightly tweaking the visual system until glass become noticeable that city birds have evolved to the this point.
If it's so deadly to them, birds will probably slightly tweak their brains until able to grasp the concept of "big huge mass of turning metal" (it's not impossible it's totally within the realm of their capabilites). When you look at it, some members of the corvidae family have grasped the concept of cars as "big heavy metal box which blindly follow roads". They don't run away scared. The use car as nut opener: leave them on the road and wait patiently at the road side until a car smashes the nut open (whereas their great-gand-parents need to fly way up and crack them by dropping them from a high altitude onto a rock. Or onto the occasional bald greek theatrical author). Compared to that, grasping the concept of a wheel turbine is well within the realm of possibilities.
Let's apply well-known Slashdot troll NatasRevol's logic to other things:
- Heart disease kills at least an order of magnitude more people than diabetes. [implication: it's not worth worrying about diabetes killing people]
(Ob. car analogy: "Traffic incidents kill at least an order of magnitude more poeple than car collisions")
Uh. No. You're completely bogus on this one.
YA*N*AMD, whereas I*A*AAMD.
With diabetes, in the long term, the things that most likely will kill you (baring an accidental hypo glycemia due to treatment error) is the slow and progressive destruction of the blood vessel.
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But if a few hundred California condors die to windmills, then we have serious problems.
Problems (Score:5, Insightful)
But if a few hundred California condors die to windmills, then we have serious problems.
Yes you'll have *a* serious problem. But this problem isn't specifically the wind mills.
The problem is the whole range of human activities that drove their population down to the point that a hundred of dying condors is significant.
(I suspect, mainly massive changes in their natural habitat, big disruption of the ecological equilibrium, esp. in regards of the prey they usually feed on. Probably environmental pollution. Maybe a little bit of hunting too.)
Banning windmills is only a surface problem. The few condors that might die because of them probably won't. But it doesn't solve the actual main big problem that condors are endangered.
Protected wildlife reservation might help more, for example.
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Regardless of which end of the problem you focus on it's not prudent to build the windmills. Putting up a potential known hazard to an endangered species, regardless of if you're addressing the root causes is not a good way to help encourage population growth. The windmills being dangerous to condors is only a non-issue if the condor population is stabilized and healthy enough to not be considered endangered.
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It's pretty simple logic.
Briefly, your logic looks like this: "I like windmills, so condors can fuck themselves." That's not how the real world works, bro.
Nitpick they don't slightly tweak their brain (Score:2)
Short cut (Score:2)
The arugment OTOH could be "those with a brain allowing them to see glass pane, do get a survival and reproduction advantage, those who don't , have a higher chance of dying before reproduction thus the glass window generate a natural selection of birds".
"...and random mutation add to genetic variability, feeding in more differences that could be furter selected this way". /. we all know how evolution actually works (no "big plans" or "intention" involved).
Thus as condition shifts, a new local minima can be reached.
Yup on
Also I am doubtful of that. I do not recall any study showing that bird start to see reflective surface as glass pane rather than continuation of their habitat. Would you have a cite ?
Hmm... I've come accross some statistics being done this way (proportion of death of birds hitting their head on glass diminishing in the bird population, etc.). No actual bird-brain studies.
Haven't the reference at hand right now. Will co
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- Slashdot user BarbaraHudson posts at least an order of magnitude more troll posts than NatasRevol. [implication: it's not worth being annoyed at NatasRevol shitposting]
That got a lol.
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How about you compare to the amount of birds and other life killed by coal power, instead?
1) Habitat destruction from mining coal
2) Pollution from mining coal
3) Pollution from burning coal (carcinogenic particulates, acids, mercury, etc)
4) Death toll from global warming
etc
Just maybe windmills save the lives of birds, on average.
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I find it hard to think that birds can't evade turbine blades, given that the latter are large and slow moving compared to other things that birds can outmanoeuvre.
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Okay, try this. Coal kills many more birds than wind. Nuclear kills about the same number per gigawatt. It's unfortunate, but still one of the safest and least deadly forms of electricity generation.
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And of course most man caused bird deaths - about 1 to 3 million a day (USA) die flying into ordinary household windows. When's the last time you heard someone ranting about the danger of windows to birds?
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Full circle
http://photography-on-the.net/... [photography-on-the.net]
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I am not the AC, and I don't know anything about raptor mortality WRT wind turbines, but a simple google got me this [bpa.gov] as the first link. (Search: altamont wind new vs old turbines)
Raptor Mortality at Altamont Pass (CA) - Reported raptor mortality at Altamont Pass (CA), has ranged from 0.05 to 0.10 fatalities per turbine per year (Erickson et al . 2001). Pre- construction raptor use is generally lower at other wind projects compared to the Altamont area. Approximately 50% of the turbines currently in operation at Altamont Pass (CA) (approximately 3,000 out of 5,400) are Kenetech 56-100 turbines equipped on 18 m lattice towers, with rotor diameters of 18 m, down-wind blades spinning at approximately 60 revolutions per minute (rpm), with tips within 9 meters of the ground. These turbines are located in a high density and clustered arrangement within the 60 mi 2 WRA. Recent studies suggest the 56-100 turbines may cause higher golden eagle mortality than other turbine types (Hunt 2002). The cause of the higher raptor mortality at Altamont is likely a combination of several factors including those listed above (turbine types and confi gurations), as well as raptor use of the area.
Data Used in This Analysis Erickson et al. (2001) recently summarized the operational fatality monitoring data available through the middle of 2001. This report contains a meta-analysis 1 that extends the Erickson et al. (2001) mortality summary to include both baseline data on avian and bat use 2, raptor nesting 3 , and operational avian and bat fatality monitoring data, including recently collected data at the Foote Creek Rim (WY), Stateline (OR/WA), Klondike (OR), and Buffalo Mountain (TN) wind plants. Over 30 study areas from 15 Wind Resource Areas (WRA) were used in at least one of the following components of this synthesis: avian mortality, avian use, raptor nesting, bat mortality and bat use.
Re:If it works (Score:5, Funny)
Cats kill at least an order of magnitude more birds than windmills do.
... while generating very little usable power. Practical cat-based renewable energy [youtube.com] is at least 30 years away from commercial use.
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Thank you. I needed that.
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Who cares?
If we have an option between "windmill that kills birds" and "windmill that does not do that", the second has a bit of merit because of that fact. It's in the discussion. Certainly, the decision to expand new windmills is affected by the bird-death argument: we could probably stand to use an order of magnitude more windmills, after all, and by your estimate, they would then by tying the cats.
Cats are atopical. I'm sure a bunch of crap kills birds aplenty. This is a discussion about windmills.
Cats vs windmills (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, but the majority of those cats eat the birds. I haven't seen a windmill that can do that.
Even if it were true that the cats eat the birds (and I'm not convinced that it is) why is that relevant? They aren't (usually) hunting birds out of actual need to eat and the bird is just as dead regardless of what happens to it later.
I wonder if windmill ground bird compost will be acceptable for organic farms. If so, it sounds like a win-win.
Perhaps you haven't looked at windmills up close recently but there isn't exactly a pile of dead birds sitting below them. Windmills are not a particularly severe danger to our avian friends.
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Perhaps you haven't looked at windmills up close recently but there isn't exactly a pile of dead birds sitting below them.
Did you happen to hear that whooshing sound? It wasn't from a windmill.;-)
Re:Cats vs windmills (Score:5, Funny)
That's because they have armies of cats on the ground collecting them. Those commie renewable energy types are very ingenious in an evil, bird-killing sort of way.
You know what you do find on the ground around windmills? Piles of dead anti-renewable energy talking points.
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Well played sir, well played indeed!
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"Don't work"?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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In case you haven't noticed this before, part of a cat's natural prey is small birds, along with rodents, lizards and large insects. Also, cats are hunters, and in the wild they only hunt for food. House cats may, of course, play with their catch or bring it back to show off but that's because they're hunting more to satisfy their instincts than because they need to. I do assure you, however, that even well-fed house
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Many will, especially when younger. However, I have seen angry blue jays break cats of that habit.
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Uh no. Cats hunt for food AND for fun. It does not matter if they are wild or domesticated.
In addition, a well-fed cat will NOT eat the animal. They will play with it until they decide to kill it. In fact, I see this same behavior with zoo animals. I have seen a tiger and polar beer catch and play with birds and they do NOT eat them. But they sure as heck kill them.
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When you opened the door, if he ran past, it meant that he had a gift for us and 9 out of 10 x, it was very live.
These were Birds, Squirrels, Fish, Chipmunks, Rabbits, baby raccons (very dangerous for that car), 1 small hawk, and even 1 adult Canada Goose (live, but flyer could not carry him in fast enough; easy to stop).
I saw him toying with a number of animals and when I came to rescue, he would snap their necks (grab by the head and whip th
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I had a neutered male cat who from about 9 months old spent all day, every day, killing gophers. Within a few months he'd completely exterminated them within about half a mile of my house. He only ate part of the first gopher of the day, far as I ever saw.
Most predators kill for fun as well as for food and for training their young; it's not at all unusual. -- That's the real problem with wolves vs domestic sheep; it's so much fun to shoot fish in a barrel that they wind up killing a whole flock just for jol
Re:Cats vs windmills (Score:5, Funny)
The majority of cats don't eat the birds.
http://theoatmeal.com/comics/cats_actually_kill [theoatmeal.com]
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My cat brings them to me as trophies.
lrn2hunt plz (Score:2)
Perhaps if you learned to hunt better, kitty wouldn't feel the need to drag so much stuff in. See #1 of Matthew Hayden's 6 Adorable Cat Behaviors With Shockingly Evil Explanations [cracked.com].
Re:If it works (Score:4, Insightful)
Mine too, and he gets rewarded for it. When he first brought one home, he came up to the door, and waited for me to open it and showed me the mouse. I told him that he was a good boy and he promptly pounced on it and devoured it.
If you think your cat is acting weird (not you, PopeRatzo, just in general), it's probably you that needs adjustment. Cats are remarkably clear about what they want and what makes them happy or displeases them.
Re:If it works (Score:5, Funny)
I have no doubt that I need adjustment.
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Cats only eat a relatively small % of the birds they kill. I'm a cat owner, but the numbers don't lie.
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It is mostly another anti-AGW myth that large numbers of big birds are being killed by wind generators. One site has a serious issue and others have a small issue.
Now, with that said, BATS do suffer greatly at this. Not any particular bat, but all of them seem to not see the blades even though they have the ability to track small fast things. This might help save them.
Personally, I would be far more interested in seeing what the $/KW are on
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I should rate you as overrated, but will answer you instead.
It is mostly another anti-AGW myth that large numbers of big birds are being killed by wind generators. One site has a serious issue and others have a small issue.
Now, with that said, BATS do suffer greatly at this. Not any particular bat, but all of them seem to not see the blades even though they have the ability to track small fast things. This might help save them.
Personally, I would be far more interested in seeing what the $/KW are on this, along with what kind of winds are required to move it.
I learned something... the bats issue is new to me.
Yes the $/WK and towers per acre seem important.
Another remarked that Altamont pass is worse in this regard than most
other locations. It seems to me that Towers with confirmed bird problems
could be replaced with this as an alternative iff it works well.
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This cannot possibly be true (Score:2)
Well may be it can be true but it takes some explaining. The central problem I see is the crossection is smaller. SO how can it extract energy from wind that does not pass through its crossection? For that to be true then it implies that somehow the energy depleted wind is sucking energy from the surrounding windfeild as it passes by. I could imagine this is potentially possible. For example if you were to picture the wind like water piling up behind your hand in stream then it's the up stream water pus
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You must go nuts at people who install windows in their houses because:
Windows may kill up to 988 million birds a year in the United States | Science News [sciencenews.org]
Well, do you? And what about cats and radio towers?
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You must go nuts at people who install windows in their houses because:
Windows may kill up to 988 million birds a year in the United States | Science News [sciencenews.org]
Well, do you? And what about cats and radio towers?
Yes the world is a difficult place.
The big wind farms that I drive past are also the best location for
large soaring birds to get their lift before they fly out over the flatter
areas with good hunting So as correct as you are the big raptors suffer
from some installations out of measure.
Closer to home I have noticed a hawk lurking in a tall tree to swoop down and
gobble doves. For dessert he has been observed grabbing a hummingbird on the wing.
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If it works as well as hoped this will save a lot of
big birds from an early demise.
Big fans rotating like heck are an astounding challenge to keep intact
and maintain. Not that these will be any easier but "Big Bird's" yellow
feathers will be safer (one can hope).
Presumeably, if the vibration is intense, it could be transferred to the ground. And the description of that shape is such that it may have a directional fog-horn effect, amplifying the vibration sound multifold times.
Still, I agree with you, its better than spinning blades and better than focused mirrors that kill birds that fly through the mirror's focus path.
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Dyson have a bladeless fan (http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadget.com/media/2009/10/dyson-fan-pr-1.jpg). I've wondered why the reverse of this doesn't work for electricity generation.
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For the purposes of avian depopulation, the dyson doesn't have blades. The air current pushed out by them generates a breeze through the hoop. I expect the efficiency of this is pretty poor, and that attempting the reverse wouldn't generate enough power to make it worthwhile.
Gauging interest (Score:2)
There’s enough interest, Suriol says, that he fields upward of 200 emails a day from people inquiring about the turbine.
How many of those are from bloggers and other online tech writers?
Seriously, though - this actually does look interesting. Current wind tech brings some pretty glaring issues along with the benefits.
Help me Obi-Wan Kenobi (Score:3)
I sped read through the drivel (article) until I got to this and then quit reading.
So many words to say so little by someone who doesn't understand science.
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Yeah; I thought the same thing, and then my inner devil's advocate came along and said "yeah, but if they're converting wind into kinetic motion via magnetism, that's not really an electric motor, is it?"
And I responded with "This kinetic energy is then converted into electricity via an alternator" -- the only "kind of" is that it is only a part of the generator being described at that point.
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On the contrary: beating is usually a reciprocal motion.
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What do you call device that imparts motion without using electricity?
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engine and motor are essentially synonyms in modern usage.
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engine and motor are essentially synonyms in modern usage.
I don't think much has changed from older usage. The terms "motor car", "motor vehicle", "motor boat", "motorway", "motorbike", etc aren't new.
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That's still the modern usage. Once upon a time motor meant "to move" and engine meant a contrivance to do something or just a physical device. "search engine" is that old usage in modern vernacular.
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motor
noun
noun: motor; plural noun: motors
1. a machine, especially [but not exclusively] one powered by electricity or internal combustion, that supplies motive power for a vehicle or for some other device with moving parts.
A car engine is a motor.
Nimby's (Score:2)
My 2nd thought was that this looks like a field of dicks. It may be a way to win over powerful nimby types who look and find that there's something, er, aesthetically pleasing about them.
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Or turn it into an art installation. Get someone old school like Andy Warhol. If you got someone modern they *would* paint them like dicks.
Street light variant (Score:3)
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Can you imagine driving where all of the streetlights are violently vibrating?
Threat (Score:5, Funny)
This is a Spanish company.
As everybody knows, the main danger for traditional wind turbines in Spain is a crazy luddite riding his horse.
He is usually followed by a small, fat man on a donkey.
Hence the motivation for building wind turbine without blades.
The Doomsday Machine (Score:2)
Tacoma Narrows Bridge (Score:2)
Sheerwind "bladeless" wind generators (Score:4, Informative)
Has anyone heard of these? They built a demonstration model in Chaska.
It basically looks like an enclosed tower with an opening at the top and a "tail" at the bottom. The web page says it tunnels moving air and utilizes the venturi effect to increase the wind velocity. The actual turbine is enclosed at the end of the "tail".
It claims to have a number of advantages -- extremely low cut-in speed (2 mph), no cut out speed, lower maintenance costs, multiple turbines per tower possible, and no external moving parts.
The web site says there are several projects commissioned, albeit somewhat smaller (200-400KW).
It looks interesting and since I've actually seen a full-size unit (the size of maybe a small water tower) I know it's not complete BS. It does kind of set off my bullshit meter a little, though, simply because if the design concept was so good I wouldn't every single wind generator look the same.
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This Sheerwind Invelox sets off my BS meter as well. The Venturi effect (a special case of the Bernoulli principle) won't magically let you harvest more energy then what was already in the airflow. In a Venturi device, flow velocity increases temporarily in exchange for a pressure drop (to less than atmospheric pressuee). Downstream, the velocity lowers and the kinetic energy exchanged back into pressure, reaching atmospheric pressure. If you were able to harvest the kinetic energy, you would end up with a
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"No cut out speed" is bullshit. "Will survive all earth storms since recorded history" is more logical, although I wouldn't guess it would pass that bar. Supersonic storms will kill it.
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Bullshit meter vindicated:
Yes and no.
Both your quoted article link and another posted by another reply to my original post critical of alternative wind generator designs were written by the same person.
I'm still skeptical, but my BS meter also says that one guy with an axe to grind shouldn't be the only source of criticism of something, too.
Now that (Score:2)
I know I'm going to get disappointed though when somebody has something to complain about it.
Advantages? (Score:2, Insightful)
So they're not half as efficient as turbines, meaning you need more than twice as many of them to produce the same power, but they "should" be quite a bit cheaper than turbines due to their simplicity. At best it sounds like they're a draw with current methods, at worst they're a step back. About the only real advantage seems to be that they may prevent the few birds/bats kills by turbines from taking place and may help quell SOME of the NIMBY complaints (noise, blade shadows).
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How many more can you fit in the same footprint as a traditional windmill, though? And could one build them at different heights to take advantage of more vertical windspace? And then could you hook them up to a keyboard and have some mad scientist play them like a pipe organ?
Re:Advantages? (Score:4, Informative)
No. TFA states the new turbines cost half as much and can be spaced twice as dense as conventional blade style turbines. They capture 30% less energy than a conventional turbine, but considering you can put 2 in the same spot for roughly the same price as just one conventional turbine, you should get more energy for the same cost and land space.
In theory, lower total cost of ownership as well given the lack of moving parts to replace... but who knows what real-world issues the structure may see. Maybe the materials don't hold up as well as thought under heat, light, and vibration and will require maintenance or degrade their performance over time.
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I am not convinced by the wind turbine syndrome [wikipedia.org] but some are and they seem have dug their heels in. If the only two options are putting one of these in or not putting in any wind turbines at all due to community resistance, then their advantage is quite significant.
Oh, please, yes. (Score:2)
Oh, please, yes. I really hope this design turns out to work well. I'd love to have a wind energy mechanism that puts an end to the "kills birds" and "strobe light" arguments against wind turbines. I imagine that it's probably quieter, too.
You had me at 'Hello' (Score:2)
Backyard use? (Score:2)
I know very little about windmills so this may sound naive, but it seems to me that this might be the sort of thing you could put in your backyard: it's tall, but with a fairly small footprint. On the other hand, if it's vibrating all the time it will create sound waves: I wonder how loud it gets?
Re:As An Engineer... (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah, definitely.
Something like these vertical windmills seems more sensible.
http://www.windspireenergy.com... [windspireenergy.com]
http://www.helixwind.com/en/ [helixwind.com]
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Re:As An Engineer... (Score:5, Funny)
This makes me wince. Vibration and oscillation are never good, it feels like something is going to fatigue and wear out very quickly.
You're wife disagrees.
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This makes me wince. Vibration and oscillation are never good, it feels like something is going to fatigue and wear out very quickly.
You're wife disagrees.
She's on EverReady's Christmas card list.
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And if you have ever seen how much mechanical intricacy there is in one of those blade turbine nacelles, the more you will appreciate a concept this simple. Each "stem" may be a lot less efficient, but you can get so many more of them into the same space. And, each one of so much less complex. This design might even pacify more NIMBYs.
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As do trees and flagpoles. I think AC's engineering credits might be a bit suspect.
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Don't tell my piano that.
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Why does everything have to do with weed? It could be a pipe, a cigarette, but no it has to resemble a joint. -- Is Slashdot a bunch of potheads?
When you're stoned, you go with the flow. Joints are much easier to model using Blender (or similar programs) than complex structures like pipes and needles. The mockup in TFA is rather eerie - 80 foot high joints balanced over a moody desert scene. You half expect Johnnie Depp to come running on to the stage shooting randomly at non existent bats.
Maybe that will be in the trailer.
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Maybe that will be in the trailer.
Coming, This October...
"Field of Dreams 2"
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"Ceci n'est pas une joint"
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Streisand effect: let's see how many mj references we're going to get now because of the AC's mini-rant. Conversely, perhaps he's a tokin' troll.
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And yes, Slashdot is a bunch of potheads. Smoke weed every day!
Terminology (Score:2)
Re:Replaced the moving parts (Score:4, Informative)
Most bearings in your car are just solid metal.
E.g. Plain bearings, journal bearings, and bushings.
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Ever heard of "springs".