turbineless wind-power
- Thread starter hermanntrude
- Start date
one immediate improvement I could suggest is to put the solenoids in the middle, where the oscillation is greatest instead of at the ends. Although they might disrupt wind-flow....
Nice idea. Going to be some interesting engineering problems in scaling that up. I don't know much about fluid flow, but it's got to be turbulence that makes that mylar ribbon flap, which I presume would be induced by the slot the wind is forced to pass through and the ribbon itself. It might have to be adjustable in several ways--the gap between the slots and the tension on the ribbon come to mind--to get it to flap at different wind speeds. I wonder what the relationship is among wind velocity, tension, gap size, and frequency. Be a bit of a nuisance if the thing produces a variable frequency AC current. I can see problems with materials too, as in, how long would it take for that ribbon to flap itself to pieces. But those are engineering problems, there's no new science involved, I'm sure that guy's bright enough to figure it out. I wish him well.
i think the idea is not to scale it up but to make it cheap and available to the masses so people can run their radios and some lights and such. A scaled up version would be incredibly noisy
I'm interested in that frequency problem, the little axial flux turbine I built a while ago is three phase variable frequency. I'v got to have 10mph wind to get 180 rpm to get over the 12.5 volts or so before the battery starts to charge. I'm assuming the frequency problem would be the same.
I saw a very large wind farm near Dundalk Ont. As close as I could get to it I couldn't hear anything. They were in a farm field. I thoulght they were majestic and elegant. They are supposed to be putting them up around here. I can't wait.
A larger model needn't be made of thin plastic tape. I can imagine an airfoil that would, in sufficient airflow, increase it's angle of attack to the stalling point and start again, but for significant power delivery, a more conventional turbine might be a better answer.
I should imagine that the Tacoma Narrows bridge could have been made a lot stronger and still collapsed. A way has to be found to limit the destructive resonance to the point where the forces could be harnessed. I've thought a bit about this and I can't help feeling that more conventional wind turbines, adapted for varying wind velocities would be the way to go.
There is a lot of kinetic energy there and all kinetic energy eventually turns to heat at some point, but I have no idea how it might be harnessed.