Momentum is building! There is room for lots of VAWT solutions!
Bringing the use of WIND back down to Earth!
In this post:
Outlook for electricity 2020 -2030
Funded
Does it still make sense to review other ways of thinking?
More R&D
Crowdfunding…?
….VAWT posts on Wasterush.info
Above image: https://windharvest.com/projects_and_sales/simpson-ridge-wind-farm/
What is working and what is not working…………………….
HAWT – Wind Turbine Plan in Northern Israel Rejected Over ! Environmental Impact !
A plan to build nine large wind turbines with an electricity producing capacity of 32 megawatts was scrapped due to damage to the landscape, risk to several rare birds and possible noise hazards. [Avoiding bird deaths requires not putting windmills in bird migration pathways.]
(HAWT) Wind turbine blade waste in 2050
2017 – Wind energy has developed rapidly over the last two decades to become one of the most promising and economically viable sources of renewable energy. Although wind energy is claimed to provide clean renewable energy without any emissions during operation, but it is only one side of the coin. The blades, one of the most important components in the wind turbines, made with composite materials, are currently regarded as unrecyclable.
With the first wave of early commercial wind turbine installations now approaching their end of life, the problem of blade disposal is just beginning to emerge as a significant factor for the future.
I keep bringing back this quote:
“In economics, things take longer to happen than you think they will, and then they happen faster than you thought they could.”
Rudiger Dornbusch
Is a new path about to be lit?
October 2020 – In advanced economies, electricity demand will recover to pre-crisis levels by 2023 and then rise by 0.8% per year through to 2030, driven by the electrification of mobility and heat. In developing markets / emerging economies, rising levels of ownership of household appliances and air conditioners, together with increasing consumption of goods and services, underpin strong growth, exceeding pre-crisis levels by 2021. A handful of countries including Ghana, Kenya, Senegal, Ethiopia and Rwanda are on track to achieve universal access to electricity by 2030, but in the STEPS (Stated Policies Scenario) – 660 million people still lack access in 2030 – including 33% of all people in Africa.
Renewable sources of electricity have been resilient during the Covid-19 crisis and are set for strong growth, rising by two-thirds from 2020 to 2030. Renewables meet 80% of global electricity demand growth during the next decade and overtake coal by 2025 as the primary means of producing electricity. By 2030, hydro, wind, solar PV, bioenergy, geothermal, concentrating solar and marine power between them provide nearly 40% of electricity supply. China leads the way, expanding electricity from renewables by almost 1 500 TWh to 2030, which is equivalent to all the electricity generated in France, Germany and Italy in 2019.
WIND POWER – VAWT
There are a lot of aspects of Circular Economics that have already taken hold or are being talked about. Who can say that VAWTs are going to take off tomorrow, but technologies that are closer to planet Earth are being funded!
Study of Wind Energy Generation Potential Along North Carolina Highways
January 2020 – The North Carolina Department of Transportation (NCDOT) provided funding to the N.C. Clean Energy Technology Center (NCCETC) to research this project. The intent of the study was to determine the potential for highway traffic to generate [ enough] wind energy to support small highway electrical loads such as roadside lighting, signage and emergency signals.
The NCCETC worked with Onyx, LLC, to deploy anemometers on carefully-selected heavily-traveled highways in three NCDOT Highway Divisions. The anemometers collected data continuously from each site for approximately two months. Once a sufficient amount of data was recorded, the NCCETC modeled the energy potential using a 300, 1,500 and 3,000 watt Vertical Axis Wind Turbine (VAWT) from Colite Technologies, of Columbia, South Carolina. The potential energy production varied widely from site to site. The project team found that a single 3,000-watt VAWT at the site with the best potential could generate 818,000 watt-hours of electricity annually. The annualized cost to generate wind energy from the 3,000-watt VAWT was in the range of $50 per kWh – which [presently] exceeds the equivalent generation of renewable solar energy…. …“There’s definitely potential there,” said Art Samberg, Principal Investigator of the project and Clean Power & Industrial Efficiency Assistant Director at NCCETC. “The study showed there is potential to generate electricity from the passing vehicles. The question is, what will it cost? …”
This is not VAWT, but it is Wind Near planet Earth!
Do we call it a roboat?
An autonomous sailboat successfully crosses Atlantic Ocean
2018 – The first unmanned and autonomous sailboat has successfully crossed the Atlantic Ocean, completing the journey between Newfoundland, Canada, and Ireland. The 1,800 mile journey took two and a half months.
It was part of the Microtransat Challenge for robotic boats, and bolsters the possibility of unmanned boats being used for long-haul missions. This could include everything from ocean research to surveillance.
“This has never been done before,” David Peddie, CEO of Norwegian-based Offshore Sensing AS, which built the vessel, told Digital Trends. “The Sailbuoy [robotic boat] crossed this distance all by itself without incident. The significance of this is that it proves that one can use unmanned surface vehicles to explore the oceans for extended periods and distance. This greatly reduces the cost of exploring the oceans, and therefore enables a much more detailed knowledge of the oceans than is possible using conventional manned technology.”
Introducing Oceanbird – the wind powered cargo vessel
September 2020 – Oceanbird is a new concept that makes it possible to harness the wind to power the largest ocean-going vessels, the ones transporting heavy cargo over long distances for long periods of time. It is being developed in close collaboration between Wallenius Marine, KTH Royal Institute of Technology and SSPA.
The wind helped us discover our planet – now it can help us preserve it
7,000 cars – can be carried in the cargo hold
90% – lower emissions than a vessel with a diesel engine
5 rigs – with 80 metres tall wing sails for forward propulsion
12 days – to cross the Atlantic with the wind as energy source
SeaTwirl selected by the EU as a winner
in the SME Instrument program
June 2019 – SeaTwirl has received €2.48 million from the European Innovation Council’s SME instrument.
The grant will help fund the development and commercialisation of our innovative, floating “SeaTwirl S2” wind turbine; a full-scale, 1-MW, Vertical Axis Wind Turbine (VAWT) ready for installation in 2022.
S2 is a 1MW floating offshore VAWT with the potential to save up to 4,117 Tonnes of CO2 per turbine and year. SeaTwirl’s obtainable target market is approximately 3,000 turbines with a sales revenue of €2.8 Billion.
Lower production and life cycle costs of renewable energy from vertical wind power
SeaTwirl, a Swedish company developing an innovative vertical axis wind turbine,
floating wind turbine of the VAWT type
SeaTwirl is developing a floating wind turbine for the ocean. SeaTwirl’s wind turbine is easier to build, install and maintain than traditional offshore wind turbines.
Floating turbine
Easy access
Lower costs
Innovation for a Cleaner Planet Invest in Flower Turbines
1,633 Investors raised $1,069,533.77 from a $10K – $1.07M goal
2019 – Small wind energy production is part of the energy future, and we believe it has yet to realize its potential. A few working turbines have been sold, and the company is ready to commercialize. The current stage of the company is early sales with proven prototypes. This could be the small wind turbine company that addresses a large market.
One of the key technologies is the cluster effect. Normally, wind turbines need to be widely spaced because they interfere with each other. Flower Turbines actually make their neighbors, when spaced correctly, produce 20-50% more electricity than when alone.
The Easy, Modern Way to Find Investors
StartEngine
A disaster support agreement between Ishigaki City,
and Challenergy was signed on January 27, 2020.
Last September 2019, Typhoon No. 18 hit Ishigaki Island, Japan with heavy rains recording ~ 120mm per hour and a storm with a maximum instantaneous wind speed of 43.2 meters. The typhoon caused communication failures, preventing the inhabitants from using landlines, mobile phones, and Internet. Flights were also cancelled and airport functions were stopped at the New Ishigaki Airport. However, at that time, the vertical axis Magnus-type wind turbine installed in Ishigaki Island operated without any problems, and the power and communication lines were maintained by continuously supplying the satellite antenna with power.
A EIC-SMEInst-2018-2020 – SME instrument
Wind turbine for city rooftops
2018 – An EU-funded initiative has developed a wind turbine capable of exploiting the low-velocity turbulent wind conditions found in urban environments.
EU contribution € 50 000, of Overall budget € 71 429
The EU-funded Horizon 2020 EOLI FPS project has developed and patented a rooftop vertical axis wind turbine (VAWT) specifically designed to work under low windspeed conditions found in the urban environment. “Its internal rotor design facilitates the creation of vortexes out of the wind turbulence that drastically increases the driving force of the laminar wind,” says project coordinator Sergio Pedrosa. “Furthermore, it is safe, noiseless, does not vibrate and fits into the urban landscape.” “EOLI FPS technology is specially designed to work under low-speed turbulent winds and thus the only reliable, cost-effective, safe option for urban environments,” explains Pedrosa. “Thanks to its permanent magnet generator technology the VAWT can start producing electricity at only 2 m/s wind speed. Its height is 125 cm, the diameter 180 cm and it weighs 143 kg,”
Cheaper, greener energy The wind turbine offers the customer energy at a cost of EUR 0.05 per kilowatt hour (kWh) produced, which compared to the current European average cost of EUR 0.21 per kWh for the electricity network amounts to a saving of EUR 1 102.50 per year (for an electricity consumption of 9 922 kWh/year).
BE-WIND EVOLUTION OF WIND TECHNOLOGY
The BE-Wind product line is the only dual vertical wind system with a Deflector (Diversion) shield on the market today. This design has come about after many years of development and testing. The patented design is going to revolutionize the Function and the way we approach small wind technology.
1) The same wind that creates rotation on any vertical system also creates resistance. The fact that the parabolic drive side has a larger volume of air flow and force, creates their rotation.
2) The Solution to overcome this situation is to block or divert the air flow from the opposing force side of
the blade. But it is not as simple as placing a wall in front of the blade. There are many factors to the position and size of this deflector.
3) The solution was to apply a dual turbine to allow for balance, increased performance and inadvertently solve 2 other issues with one modification.
a) An Automatic alignment to the wind. ensuring the system stays optimal with max wind force from all directions.
b) A perfomance increase by naturally creating a Venturi effect between the turbines.
Currently at BE-WIND LLC, we seek to continue to attract a green and renewable customer base, which will allow us to setup manufacturing and development of new green technologies. We also seek to develop technology to further support an emerging and ever growing small wind market. We currently have functional and developmental turbines located in the United States, Canada, Germany, England, Nicaragua, and Belize.
On Tue, Oct 27, 2020 at 3:06 PM BE-WIND <[email protected]> wrote:
Thank you for your response.
Currently we are under 2 large contracts and cannot share the details or direction of these contracts, but shortly the Rest of the world will have an opportunity to recognize our turbines and technology in action.
One of the major contracts is in the EU and will defiantly change the perception of small wind as we see it.
So thank you for your interest in our company and technology.
Thank you,
MICHAEL BERDAN
BE-WIND LLC
PO BOX #336, 720 MULLET RD. STE N, CAPE CANAVERAL, FL, 32920
www.be-wind.com
My point here is that there are quite a number of VAWT projects that are being funded of late……”faster than you thought they could.”?
Where Is your design development? Ready to take off? Or would it still make sense to review other ways of thinking?
Have your heard of Mr. Peter A. Sharp?
I wonder if there is still something to learn from his ideas…. He says that no one has been interested in his Vertical Wind mill approach. It might be worth a review…. Like other people around the world, Mr. Sharp has also spent a lot of time imagining and designing his own versions of VAWT; Bird Windmill and Sharp Cycloturbine.
“I have found that my two windmills are NOT of interest to people in the VAWT world. Perhaps the most important reason is that I am not trying to sell a product. I did patent my Sharp Cycloturbine in 1982. Nevertheless, because my windmills are simple to make they seem to be ignored.
A secondary reason might be that my windmills require extremely complex math to describe them and to simulate them on a computer.
Another reason might be that my windmills involve a lot of “relative motions” while they are operating. Relative motions are very hard for most people to visualize. I’m good at visualizing and yet it has taken me decades to figure out most of how the relative motions of my windmills interact.
I’ll be lucky if I can just make a series of videos demonstrating how powerful models of my windmills are and much cheaper. Feel Free to contact me to get my technical papers on the windmills: [email protected]
The Sharp Bird Windmill
“The Bird Windmill is an extremely inexpensive, vertical axis wind pump with a single, unbalanced, self-pitching blade. The blade is suspended on shock cords and consistently moves at twice the speed of the wind. It uses centrifugal force to transmit energy to the pump via pull-cords. The blade orbit expands as the wind speed increases so as to limit the RPM and to avoid shaking. The blade self-starts easily under a heavy load because there is a built-in clutch-action. The mechanical advantage can be easily adjusted by selecting the tilt angle of the rocking tower above the pump. Overspeed control is simple: the blade is caused to stall if the orbit diameter becomes too large. The pump can be located a long distance from the windmill. A simple energy accumulator (a hanging weight) — on the opposite side of the windmill from the pump — increases the power (limited to about 1 to 2 kW) transmitted to the pump.”
Here is the paper about how the Bird Windmill works.
The Sharp Cycloturbine
“The Sharp Cycloturbine is a very low-cost, vertical axis wind turbine that uses very simple. self-pitching blades (straight or V blades) to produce good starting torque and a high efficiency. The blades move at 3 to 4 times the speed of the wind. The torque peaks at a tip speed ratio of about 2 due to the use of a new principle, so the torque curve is unusually broad. That helps to capture more energy from wind gusts. The wind turbine can be scaled up. For overspeed control, it is allowed to tip away from the wind. The wind turbine can also function as a mechanical wind pump due to its strong torque.”
Here is the paper about how the Sharp Cycloturbine works.
Watch the light, light-up………………
Maybe there is something to what Mr. Sharp says and thinks, even to re-evaluate his work if you have run into it before. Lots of developments in the VAWT world.
And For Example…..even when one looks over what I have mentioned in this post, the height of the project below, seems a bit much…………..
James Allison receives funding to develop floating wind turbines
September 2019 – Professor James Allison, Department of Industrial and Enterprise Systems Engineering (ISE) at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign joins dozens of U.S. researchers to radically redesign floating offshore wind turbines under the new $26-million DOE ATLANTIS program. …[The] focus is on implementing new design approaches in the research.
The ATLANTIS program aims to design new floating offshore wind turbines and their system controls. …
“It’s all focused on improving the economic competitiveness of floating offshore wind turbines, but there are all sorts of different things that feed into that, like different technologies and different design methods,” Prof. Allison says.
Allison joins the UT-Dallas team, led by researcher Dr. Todd Griffith, as a co-principal investigator to fundamentally redesign the wind turbine — by pointing it upward. …The UT-Dallas researchers are developing a vertical-axis wind turbine (VAWT). It will sit on a small flotation platform that is tethered to the seabed by cables.
The UT-Dallas team’s VAWT design will stand about 600-900 feet tall — about two to three times taller than the Statue of Liberty — but it will be stationed 20 miles from the coast, Griffith says.
Really, what is wong here, why so high???????
https://www.maritime-executive.com/index.php/article/funding-approved-for-new-floating-wind-turbine-concept
Turbines powered by Traffic
– in Trials
These Wind Turbines Attached to Highway Street Lights Are Powered By Traffic
Revolutionary’ new design means that lamp posts can be powered by traffic
A new design for onshore wind turbines that can be attached to lamp posts and powered by traffic has been unveiled. The company behind the new concept, that can be retrofit installed along motorways, believes they will help hit renewable energy targets in the UK and beyond because they do not rely on natural wind. The turbines, fixed to existing lamp posts, would use the wind created by vehicles speeding past to generate electricity to power the street lights and eventually a lot more.
Barry Thompson, CEO of Alpha 311 said the company is currently in talks with a UK local authority to trial the technology on their roads. A number of small US cities are also trialling the technology from Alpha 311.
Our Vision
We want to power every streetlight in the world using free, clean energy.
The UK spends £900m each year on street lighting. Italy spends €1.7bn.
Imagine how much money we can save across the world.
We can see a future where the roads are filled with electric vehicles, powered by Alpha 311 turbines.
As those cars move, we collect their energy and the cycle continues.
And that’s just for starters; contact us to learn more about our global timeline.
How is Alpha 311 different?
>Retrofit design means our turbines can fit onto existing lighting columns
>Smaller than traditional turbines
>Cheaper to build and install 360° blades harvest energy from all angles
>Recyclable
>Generates energy without natural wind
>Smart sensors can gather granular, localised data
Twitter round-up: Mike Hudema’s tweet on vertical-axis turbine
most popular tweet in September 2020
23 October 2020 (Last Updated October 25th, 2020 13:17)
Power Technology lists ten of the most popular tweets on wind power in September based on data from GlobalData’s Influencer Platform.
Mike Hudema, director of communications at CanopyPlanet, a non-profit organisation focused on protecting the climate, shared a video of World Economic Forum (WEF) on vertical-axis wind turbine developed by Stanford University.
Vertical axis wind turbines –
Good enough to blow away the competition?
January 2020 – In the last 10 years there has been a surge in the number of patents granted relating to vertical axis wind turbines. From 2009 to 2019 there has been an increase of more than 500%. Top applicants include wind power giants such as Vestas and General Electric who combined have more than 200 vertical wind turbines patents between them. …
…An increase in patent activity gives a good indication of the direction of the industry. With increased adoption of vertical wind turbine technology from large wind generation companies such as MHI Vestas and General Electric we may also see small and mid-sized companies invest in development in the coming years. More importantly, we may see increased use of vertical wind turbines in areas that are unused and would otherwise be unsuitable for horizontal turbines.
Is it time to take your design to the big HAWT companies?
Funding – Crowdfunding…?
Comparing The Top Online Fundraising And Crowdfunding Platforms
Crowdfunding is a way to raise money for an individual or organization by spread ing awareness, people can reach more potential donors than traditional forms of fundraising.
Kickstarter campaigns for VAWT:
I have included the unsuccessful projects here, for you to think about what worked in such campaigns and what did not.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/155208900/solar-array-wind-turbine-hybrid-generator?ref=discovery&term=wind%20turbine
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/rmrdtech/a-small-wind-turbine-for-a-big-difference?ref=discovery&term=wind%20turbine
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/43717383/airenergy-3d-a-3d-printed-opensource-mobile-wind-t?ref=discovery&term=wind%20turbine
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/justinchambers/windpax-portable-wind-turbines?ref=discovery&term=wind%20turbine
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/skajaquoda/trinity-the-portable-wind-turbine-power-station?ref=discovery&term=wind%20turbine
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1237548793/flutter-worlds-first-portable-wind-turbine-for-usb?ref=discovery&term=wind%20turbine
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1665462161/wind-turbine-powered-boat?ref=discovery&term=wind%20turbine
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/citywindmills/city-windmills-windlightingtm?ref=discovery&term=wind%20turbine
there are lots of unsuccessful campaigns on Kickstarter. Some of them have been “saved”. Seems like there is room for more people to try.
Success begets success in crowdfunding?—
but so does falling just short, study shows
2020 – phys.org – Entrepreneurs looking to raise money on crowdfunding sites are better off following in the footsteps of ideas that fell just short of their fundraising goals than coming in behind projects that enjoyed modest success, according to a University of Alberta study that proposes the role of the entrepreneur might be to grow the pie for all and not just grab their piece.
“There is this sense that past entrepreneurial successes somehow have a spillover effect, a tide that lifts all boats and helps future entrepreneurs, but that has been very difficult to test,” said U of A entrepreneurship researcher Joel Gehman, who supervised the study conducted by Jean-François Soublière as part of his Ph.D. dissertation. …
Top 15 crowdfunding sites for small businesses
With crowdfunding, just about anybody can pitch in to back your business.
April 2020 – Since the emergence of more and more online crowdfunding platforms, there can be a lot to sift through to find the one that’s right for your business. The 15 websites listed here should give you a good overview of your top options. Be sure to consider the fees the website charges before setting up a campaign in order to avoid surprises once the money starts coming in.
Can VAWT Investors and Developers Make a Profit?
https://arborwind.com/our-technology/
VAWT posts on Wasterush.info:
I Say The Future Is VERTICAL Axis Wind Turbines!
WIND POWER Back Down To Earth – VAWT
CLEAN AIR – IS, ALREADY – IN OUR GRASP!
Thank you for posting information about the Sharp Cycloturbine. I can add that its unusually high torque is due to combining Active Lift with the pitch control. I can send a summary of how it works to anyone who is interested. Peter Allen Sharp [email protected]