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Author Topic: Why are all the wind generators so big ?surely miniturisation is the way forward  (Read 19211 times)

mmuuzzyy

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Surely a lange bank of something similar (but more robust) to these would create enough juice as a larger unit but get round all the planning permission problems... what do you reckon ?

 http://www.firebox.com/product/2111/HY-Mini-Wind-Turbine

utilitarian

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Surely a lange bank of something similar (but more robust) to these would create enough juice as a larger unit but get round all the planning permission problems... what do you reckon ?

 http://www.firebox.com/product/2111/HY-Mini-Wind-Turbine

Are you being serious?  Wind energy is harnessed through physical contact.  The more surface area you have, the more energy you can capture from the wind.  So yes, you can have smaller turbines, but at the cost of less energy production.

infringer

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    • mopowah
Short answer yes it'll work surely a bank of smaller wind turbines will work...

However, the power that you are able to generate greatly increases with larger turbines...

You need to at least generate 12v.

You want it to furl and hold up in a storm nothing like hard work being ripped apart by a good wind and talk about a spoil work and money gone with the wind literally...

The other issue you may run into is the if you wanna hook it up to the electric lines using net metering you'll have tons of wire to bury and it may get more expensive to have a device to do the energy conversion...

But if you are looking just for a simple project just to test out a turbine use a small hobby motor and make a mini turbine with a battery charging circuit then charge your batterys for free good cheap starter project entry level wind turbine project. I used a motor from an old floppy disk drive ...

There is tons of info out there and all of them point to the fact that bigger is better.

I prefer the axial flux design by hugh piggot (probably spelled that wrong)...

I have an idea for wind turbines which I havent quite seen yet myself but to try to explain it is impossible I would have to draw something hrmm ...

Hey think less of the common design of the spinning blades is my suggestion you can capture wind in many differnt ways look into it it is amazing the things they do to harness wind power and if you come up with a good idea please share.

-infringer-

-infringer-

JamesThomas

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PhiScience

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 As the population of wind farms increases so will the population of mosquitoes and harmful insect pests.
The low pressure behind wind turbine blades is causing the lungs of bats to hemorrhage and kills the bats.

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=wind-turbines-kill-bats
http://www.fort.usgs.gov/BatsWindmills/

Hopefully this will not put massive extra expenses on the renewable energy industry. 

erickdt

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Considering the fact that the main complaint (justified or not) about wind turbines is their large size and visual impact on the landscape I'd say that more smaller turbines would be a good solution to everyone's problems. That said, to me, it would be worth it to invest the extra time and money to make it happen. In the long run, smaller turbines would be much easier to service and replace.

SomedayIsle

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The following merely scratch the surface on wind energy scale and efficiency improvements:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZ0v-CK63-4

http://www.selsam.com/



Yortuk Festrunk

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The question is: "Why are all the wind generators so big ?"

The answer is: "Economy of Scale".

The sheer mass of the wind generator produces great torque and momentum once it gets turning. The larger the unit. the less speed required to produce the torque required to generate electricity.

The same goes for hydroelectric: giant dams holding back millions of tons of water to turn the turbines. You aren't going to generate much useful electricity from the little stream behind your house.

This will also be the case for a gravity wheel. a little table-top model won't do much, but something the size of a Ferris wheel will be necessary to generate the torque required to produce usable electricity.

jadaro2600

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Everyone's posting someone else's idea as a youtube link or a website... surely someone has something unique to bring to this thread!?

like:  I'll just have to get 1000 miniature wind turbines and mount them on my house ..and I shall call it "The Bee Hive"

Mark69

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You can use a squirrel cage as a vertical turbine, then you dont have to worry about the wind direction.  Can find these fairly easily, look for someone throwing out a a/c window unit.  Also, I was going to attempt to build this type of wind generator, but modify it to have 1 generator on each side.

Mark

http://video.google.ca/videosearch?q=The+Nonturbine+Wind+Alternative&emb=0&aq=f#

SkyWatcher123

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Hi folks, heres an old idea, how about mounting pinwheel propellers or equivalent with generators attached to them and mount these at periphery of a rotor so when we rotate this rotor with a motor or equivalent the pinwheels rotate and provide electric current while not reflecting the lentz load back to source drive motor. only down side is having to use a commutator. could work very well, maybe. anyway heres a few pics of some other peoples ideas that are simple but interesting. Theres nothing wrong with bringing up old or others ideas, why, because nearly everything good has been suppressed thats why, unless thats what you want us to do is forget about all the other good ideas. Why reinvent the wheel.

SomedayIsle

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Quote
Everyone's posting someone else's idea as a youtube link or a website... surely someone has something unique to bring to this thread!?


lol. 


I bet Jadaro has something to share with us......don't you....?


As for me, I posted links to 2 products which are simple to replicate and quite unique.



SomedayIsle

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Gotta say, Skywatcher, that Electric Junta vortex cannon idea is fraught with implications.....brings to mind some of the DWFTTW stuff that's all the rage.



jadaro2600

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When it comes to miniature energy devices, nothing's quite as stupid or expensive as this: http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2062564