He's serious: "Siva has 19 years of industry experience including 13 years in Texas Instruments in Germany and 6 years in Infineon Technologies Germany - have more than 30 patents." www.devdiscourse.com/article/business/693410-we-humans-are-on-the-wrong-path-for-energy-risking-existence-ceo-sunplower
Windmills are big noisy, with lots of vibration and lots of maintenance. Horizontal blades is an interesting idea, but I can imagine why it hasnt been implemented, weight, vibration
Hey, I've got a great idea. Wireless wind power! We'll just attach magnets to birds and train them to fly through big coils of wire. If you make the coils big enough you can capture flux from entire flocks as they migrate seasonally. Disruptive!!!
Don't listen to this sleazy hack and fancy flying flare. My tried and true hamster wheel is and has been the only true animal-powered generator proven, in theory, to work. :)
The MPPT tracking software would have a fit, it's just not designed for that sort of update rate. Would have to use PWM, and live with even less efficiency. Also what about the slip rings to conduct power from the solar blades to the tower electronics, it's not going to like try to break DC voltage constantly.
@@station240 let me guess, instead of using slip ring to send the electricity down, they'll use the solar power to help spin the main generator with a smaller motor :^)
Totally. I came up with something similarly ridiculous when I was maybe 8 years old. I called it the earth mill. A mill that ran off of falling dirt instead of falling water. Totally stupid and impractical, but this is somehow even DUMBER.
I own a RF service and Tower Climbing company. Everytime we add antennas to a tower we have to calculate the wind load and make sure we don’t overload the tower. Most tower companies rent space rather then service providers owning the tower they could give a crap about tenants power costs!!!! Most of the time coverage is much more important then anything so $ wise your only going to see antennas on towers in a populated area! Stupid idea and I don’t want service the stupid thing! If you put the solar panels on the ground and a wind turbine in the same tower foot print on a separate pole sure that’s fine but on the tower no!
Yeah. This looks a partially legit product, if it works well, but not for the claims they make. Like advertising a solar torch as a football spotlight.
According to their Google map, they're located in the "Valentin Musäum" (sic), a museum dedicated to the famous Munich comedian and jokester Karl Valentin.
@@userPrehistoricman No need to. I believe you. Why shouldn't there be a study about the value (or otherwise) of feminism to the glacial (or any) sciences? Now, where are the Bulgarian millions?
@@wthornton7346 Just two quick examples: www.theguardian.com/world/2018/nov/02/eu-border-lie-detection-system-criticised-as-pseudoscience www.ngo-monitor.org/in-the-media/eu_research_funds_wasted_on_amnesty_s_hollywood_style_csi_adventure/ And here a more general publication: www.foeeurope.org/billions-EU-funds-wasted-020212 Also good to mention this: fullfact.org/europe/did-auditors-sign-eu-budget/
But flapping around in the breeze implies so type of aerodynamic flow. I'd expect the SunPlower turbine on a moderately windy day to rock back and forth about 10 degrees, on a really windy day it will certainly produce a lot of power, in the 5 minutes before the incompetently chosen mounting bolts shear off due to the excessive wind loading.
@@EEVblog What they are doing is basically reinventing the "cyclogyro" which is essentially a voith-schneider mechanism for air, although their mechanism is a worse version of it. Cyclogyros have successfully been used in aircraft and even for small VTOL models (search cyclocopter on youtube). They have higher efficiency than propellers at low speeds and can adjust thrust direction, but since the mechanism has to withstand high stress large VTOL cyclogyro aircraft are hard to build. Also this concept requires a very light symmetrical airfoil in order to be efficient and not break, so making the airfoil a solar cell is out of question.
I used to make parts for helicopter swash plates and the linkages, they are very complex and maintenance intensive systems. You would need at least something like that to get the blades to continually pitch to the wind, that’s without all the supporting mechanisms to make it happen. So for all this trouble what problem does it solve? There is a reason why it hasn’t been done yet.
Even if it did work, it's way too complicated for nothing. Simple is better. Think of all the moving parts that need to be involved to make this work, and imagine trying to maintain this thing from the top of a cell tower! It makes way more sense to put a normal wind turbine on the ground, along with a solar array. People have to stop finding weird ways to use solar and wind.
Yeah the worst thing about it will be the fact it needs some way to make contacts between the solar panels and the pole... A disaster both in efficiency and maintenance
The business model is to sell a marginally plausible idea to some dumb VC who has more dollars than sense. You take the millions, file for a few bogus patents and then go out of business because you were unable to sell your bogus idea to anyone, but the VC is still satisfied as money well spent as they believe they made out with a portfolio of patents. Then you go on to start another business with another half-brained idea, lather, rinse, repeat.. This is why you should never work for a startup... Been there, done that, got the T-shirt and the crap-ton of non-tradeable "stock options" (as the company never went public)... Never again..
Red flags: (other than the obvious): Maps plugin in french, centered on the Valentin Museum in Munich, (Famous Troll) Voith Schneider spelt wrong (unusual error for a German)
@@Schaelpy I think I'd prefer it to be real. Although turning up at a conference with a fan and a bladed microphone stand would be an impressive length to take a joke
Genius dude from a company I was doing an internship at had the great idea to outfit cars and trucks with propellers to generate power from the Fahrtwind (German for the wind you feel when driving... which is ofc actually drag, but the German word makes it seen like it is a kind of actual wind) engineers had a good laugh about it xD
The kinds of cell tower installations you'd need to have an on-site power source to power are the ones that are out in the middle of nowhere away from the grid, which means you will be needing the upper end of the power range of such things because you need to connect via high-bandwidth radio links and probably cover more area with the cellular signal than the default cell tower of the same generation. Putting a big spinning metal object on the cell tower itself sounds like a recipe for messed up signals in a large zone. If you put it a distance away then it might create a zone of bad signal, but it will be much smaller and you can pick where that zone will be more easily, including making sure it hits ground somewhere that doesn't matter, like in the next tower's coverage area.
Crazy idea I know, but couldn’t you just strap the cell wireless equipment to a much stronger wind turbine “tower”? Say 3/4 of the way up or something? That seems like a much easier way to power off the grid cell infrastructure if it were somehow required.
You can’t power a 5kw BTS from a 5kw wind turbine. You need at least 20kw and a pile of battery storage. Not to mention a diesel generator for when the turbine blows up during a storm. Worked in the industry controlling and monitoring renewable power on cell sites in remote areas. One of our colleagues was nicknamed ‘the Turbinator’ as they frequently seemed to blow up when he was involved!
yeah another scam buster 😍 Never heared of it. Greetings from Germany :-) They don't even have a Imprint on their website wich is required by law ... but according to the map on their website they are based in Munich, not far from me :-D
That map only shows the generic location of "Munich, Germany". The entry on the World Alliance for Efficient Solutions site shows them being located in Unterschleißheim, which is a bit north of Munich proper.
@EEVblog - at 2:35 - 3:13 you actually got it incorrect. They never said that their propeller design could be used to propel ships and boats. What they did say, which you did highlight, was that their design was more efficient than the ONE VSP propellers.
I get the impression that some of the inventors involved in this are the type of people that will ask how they can go about changing the laws of physics to work better with their dumb idea.
In the video you show with smaller unit being driven by fan, the blades are in fact actively rotating. Unless I am missing something? Surely this sort of design is more efficient than static horizontal blades? The blade facing the wind direction is flat whilst the blade returning against the wind has turned allowing less resistance to the wind travelling along the blade. I am not an engineer in any way and definitely agree about the solar gimmick! Just interesting how the blades change direction to suit path of minimal resistance.
Fun fact, their site is missing an "Impressum" (Disclaimer), which is required for any .de domain. It would need to contain a valid address and contact but I can't find any. Also odd that there is no German content, even if they aim for international reach its pretty common to have some German content as well. Seems they just have some headquarters in Germany but their main place is still in India, really odd. Makes you wonder if they are just in Germany to snag some of the solar/wind funding. (Not sure if there is anything like that going on at the moment to be honest.) The linkedin entry claims 35 people while the solar impulse foundation site says 4. You mostly see the "CEO" in the events and I think in the one video its him as well. Also note those oddly placed German flags. Something is fishy.
@@MariusEidem I love debunks and it's ok to laugh at the more ridiculous things, but this was different. There was more pointing and laughing than science and debunking I felt.
@@redsquirrelftw But with software we currently fail a lot. This new kind of engineering you know :-D I guess we were known for beeing good, but then we got a bit lazy on it. So we now have to work bit harder again.
The demonstration would have been much better if they used a laminar flow element after the fan. As it is the fan produces a scattered thrust direction and the breeze is difficult to gather energy from.
I've had once an exchange with some idiot who claimed that wirless drone charging is a thing, after a few minutes he suggested that drones can be tethered to the ground station.
I get the feeling that these people have never been up a cell tower before. At least in my experience there's really not a whole lot of structural margin to go hanging a regular properly engineered turbine off the top end of one. Let alone this goofy contraption.
15:14 This reminds me of those goofy videos from the early days of aviation before the Wright Brothers came along. You can probably find "aircraft?" that have the same design from this time period.
@@Marci124 The Cyclogyyro is a little big different than what they show in that video. The Cyclogyro has horizontal blades while the one in their video has blades that look like they're at 45 degree angles to the axle. I can imagine that that can pretty well affect the airworthiness of the thing. Nit-pick.
Ha ha. Yeah you mean film of the early days but I get you. This "demo" is hilarious, I am sure you could build this thing with tinker toys and it would work better.
The reason turbine blades are curved is to optimize the angle of attack along the blade. This is needed as the airfoil section in the center of each blade has a slower airflow than at the tip, thus the angle of attack needs to be changed in proportion to the relative velocity along each blade. This coupled with variable pitch maintains the optimal flow profile along the blade.
My head hurts because I can't decide whether someone is stupid enough to try and scam investors with this or whether there are investors stupid enough to be scammed by this.
Imagine how upset NASA is going to be when they find out about this new disruptive technology; and that they just wasted millions engineering an "ordinary" helicopter for Mars.
15:24 I'm still not sure how these propellers are gonna propel the drone forward? they can move the drone horizontally but where is the lift coming from?
Would it just be that it has a collective in it to pitch the blades in and out? It would still need to be small but it would be good to see the inside of the housing
I would be legit curious about this myself. On the surface it does sound like something viable, but if you account for the energy required to create the bio fuel, is it really viable?
@@maelgugi the dutch wanna go full mad max and turn pigshit into natural gas. Its nothing new, its just in the media because there is a pig shit problem after some law changes. has been done with all kind of wastes for years.
As a German I want to apologize for my countrymen. Sometimes our engineers are so preoccupied if they COULD do something, that they forget if they SHOULD do it in the first place.
When I saw the Sanskrit quote about Sun Worshipping, I was thinking, Probably Indian Folks or Nazis misappropriating Indian stuff. Probably the former, obviously.
That demo video LOL. Put that industrial fan in that kind of wind and it would probably capture more power than that dingus was capturing. This is more hilarious than the shonky solar moisture vaporator Kickstarters.
Past decade's three biggest issue in R&D are: - The engineers work (calculations, schematics, code, ...) is incomprehensible for management and investors. - The designers deliver fancy 3D simulations that amazes management and investors with unrealistic expectations. - Most of today's managers have bigger ego's than ever before in history, so they decide to believe their designers rather than their engineers. End result: - Designers playing engineers! Which then eventually results in: - Solar roadways - Theranos - Hyperloop - Zero Mass Water - SunPlower - Self filling water bottles - Waterseer - Juicero - And so on...
Dave you were focused on the active pitch, but never even addressed it wasn't generating power. As soon as that load kicked in it would have come to a near stop
You all have it wrong, we need to cover all the roads in mirrors. That way we can attach solar panels to the bottom of cars as well and double the effective solar panel surface area, bringing forth the solar powered car! *Flies off to Kickstarter in his SunPlower powered drone*
If you shove something like that above cellular panel antennas you will get all sorts of signal reflections which will screw up the sectorisation (if you are lucky). If you are unlucky you will also get all sorts of intermodulation effects from the PV cells and moving joints. A real bad idea, even assuming you get any useful power from the contraption.
Well their demo sold me. Next time there are hurricane force winds I might actually get enough power out of it to charge my cell phone! I am kind of curious what the scaling on the wind speed out of that fan is, but I'm to lazy to figure out the model, look up it's specs, figure out what the scaling on their model is, and do the math.
Their homepage does not even have a legal notice (company name, address, ID) ... That‘s illegal in Germany. They can be sued any minute. If companies like that get money from the Renewable Energy programs it is not surprising that we have the highest electricity prices all over the world in Germany.
Not to mention the problems with moving the high current DC from the spinning blades to the tower. What was the plan there? Slip-rings? DC-AC conversion in the blades? What about servicing?
This looks like it's straight out of a 4th grade science fair, before the kids properly understands physics. All we can do encourage them to explore their passion
I do the maths and I do fun. I'm currently moored (dry now :P ) in a marina with 2 (launched at the weekend) *solar* boats. I'd plan to do the same for my small plastic one if possible (gotta budget it), and it *does* work (day I turned up someone else did a self build outa scrap/spares of solar panels and batts, but I think the solar controller was new). The small self build boat is not fast, but is fun/quiet/simple. The larger commercially built boats are heavy (normal lead batteries IIRC), but got the nicety of a silent and partially environmentally friendly power. However, my little hacked 4x solar panel phone pack charger takes about 4 weeks to charge a battery. LOL! So panel size, battery size, charge/discharge cycles are all important!
Voith Schneider is amazing. But this thing... I can't facepalm hard enough. Don't they know solar panels are fragile and don't like vibration? Micro-cracks much?
Nothing says professional like some hearty paragraphs of denglish at least until we get a company website that says "powered by squarespace" at the bottom.
There actually are some more or less flat and symmetric airfoil cross sections similar in shape to the blades on the prototype. But they are mainly for supersonic applications, and for applications where you need symmetric operation for both positive and negative angles of attack (for example the vertical stabilizer and rudder of an airplane).
Greetings from Germany =D Matt here as a german I'm sorry for my fellow citizens to come up with such - as we, the mighty germany, are known for things like our cars, precision, and stuff ... but yea, even some of us sometimes come up with weird ideas ... in fact: there'Re a lot of those free-energy-people here =/
He's serious:
"Siva has 19 years of industry experience including 13 years in Texas Instruments in Germany and 6 years in Infineon Technologies Germany - have more than 30 patents."
www.devdiscourse.com/article/business/693410-we-humans-are-on-the-wrong-path-for-energy-risking-existence-ceo-sunplower
Who is SIVA?
Windmills are big noisy, with lots of vibration and lots of maintenance. Horizontal blades is an interesting idea, but I can imagine why it hasnt been implemented, weight, vibration
Infineon is getting dumb, although they have cool stuff.
I wonder the effect these thing will have as antenna elements.
18:42 looks like they photoshopped linksys routers lol ,,,
Hey, I've got a great idea. Wireless wind power! We'll just attach magnets to birds and train them to fly through big coils of wire. If you make the coils big enough you can capture flux from entire flocks as they migrate seasonally. Disruptive!!!
Send me your bank account to deposit your first million
to Kickstarter!
@@EEVblog Oh no! I just got sued for patent infringement by the magnetic-squirrel guy.
@EEVblog and beyond!
Don't listen to this sleazy hack and fancy flying flare. My tried and true hamster wheel is and has been the only true animal-powered generator proven, in theory, to work. :)
The solar MPPT controller: OH GOD WHAT'S GOING ON
The solar module: Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!
That is pretty much what would be going on lol.
Precisely my thoughts.
The MPPT tracking software would have a fit, it's just not designed for that sort of update rate.
Would have to use PWM, and live with even less efficiency.
Also what about the slip rings to conduct power from the solar blades to the tower electronics, it's not going to like try to break DC voltage constantly.
@@station240 let me guess, instead of using slip ring to send the electricity down, they'll use the solar power to help spin the main generator with a smaller motor :^)
Sounds more like a school project, when the student has been asked to use their imagination to create some future product.
Ah yes, I invented a flying fire truck when I was 10... Kickstarter!!!
that thing reminded me a hole lot of a classmates school project from a few years back where we had to come up with some renewable energy idea.
Yeah, for april fools day.
Totally. I came up with something similarly ridiculous when I was maybe 8 years old. I called it the earth mill. A mill that ran off of falling dirt instead of falling water.
Totally stupid and impractical, but this is somehow even DUMBER.
School project gets me vote, too.
I own a RF service and Tower Climbing company. Everytime we add antennas to a tower we have to calculate the wind load and make sure we don’t overload the tower. Most tower companies rent space rather then service providers owning the tower they could give a crap about tenants power costs!!!! Most of the time coverage is much more important then anything so $ wise your only going to see antennas on towers in a populated area! Stupid idea and I don’t want service the stupid thing! If you put the solar panels on the ground and a wind turbine in the same tower foot print on a separate pole sure that’s fine but on the tower no!
Right lads up the tower! Yeah, of course we will switch the whirling blade-choppy thing off at the top, no worries...
Just you wait, Tyler. One day your tower will be gone. Whisked away in the dead of night, by a single silent solar plowered drone.
Cool, do you ever go for a piss off the top? :)
Yeah. This looks a partially legit product, if it works well, but not for the claims they make. Like advertising a solar torch as a football spotlight.
bigjoeangel it takes 2 hours to get down the tallest towers we service 500ft 😕
SOLAR FREAKING WINDMILLS
Oh boy.I I really need one of these suckers.
Why stop there: SOLAR FREAKING AIRPLANE WINGS!
@@GirtonOramsay ..thats actually a thing thats been proven to work! :P
SOLAR FREAKING TRUCKS.
Sharks with freaking turbines on their heads... since, you know, lasers didn't work...
According to their Google map, they're located in the "Valentin Musäum" (sic), a museum dedicated to the famous Munich comedian and jokester Karl Valentin.
This should be "most relevant" it's got to be a hoax!
I bet the antenna designers will be delighted with the modulation that results when this thing is rotating in the near field.
This is the sort of thing my local city council would put on their HQ building so they can boast about going green.
As long as it's visible and looks "techy"!
@engineer99 lol no
"Cool Cat: Goin' Grink"
We laugh, but projects like these get millions in EU development funds to build them in places like Bulgaria.
And worse still, they insist of a diverse of employees such as female engineers etc.
Wow. Can you provide links? You are very specific, so just links to the Bulgarian examples would be great. Thanks.
I once saw a grant of tens of thousands of dollars to a team doing "feminist glaciology". Look it up!
@@userPrehistoricman No need to. I believe you. Why shouldn't there be a study about the value (or otherwise) of feminism to the glacial (or any) sciences?
Now, where are the Bulgarian millions?
@@wthornton7346 Just two quick examples:
www.theguardian.com/world/2018/nov/02/eu-border-lie-detection-system-criticised-as-pseudoscience
www.ngo-monitor.org/in-the-media/eu_research_funds_wasted_on_amnesty_s_hollywood_style_csi_adventure/
And here a more general publication:
www.foeeurope.org/billions-EU-funds-wasted-020212
Also good to mention this:
fullfact.org/europe/did-auditors-sign-eu-budget/
Can't wait to see these drones and things flapping around in the breeze.
I sooooo want to see it try and fly...
that project will never get off the ground!
@@masteryoda394 glad someone got it! :P
But flapping around in the breeze implies so type of aerodynamic flow.
I'd expect the SunPlower turbine on a moderately windy day to rock back and forth about 10 degrees, on a really windy day it will certainly produce a lot of power, in the 5 minutes before the incompetently chosen mounting bolts shear off due to the excessive wind loading.
@@EEVblog What they are doing is basically reinventing the "cyclogyro" which is essentially a voith-schneider mechanism for air, although their mechanism is a worse version of it. Cyclogyros have successfully been used in aircraft and even for small VTOL models (search cyclocopter on youtube). They have higher efficiency than propellers at low speeds and can adjust thrust direction, but since the mechanism has to withstand high stress large VTOL cyclogyro aircraft are hard to build. Also this concept requires a very light symmetrical airfoil in order to be efficient and not break, so making the airfoil a solar cell is out of question.
The blades were actively pitching at 5:15, they are feathered at the top of the cycle and side onto the fan at the bottom.
Definitely is pitching going on. Still not a great concept overall however 😬
I used to make parts for helicopter swash plates and the linkages, they are very complex and maintenance intensive systems. You would need at least something like that to get the blades to continually pitch to the wind, that’s without all the supporting mechanisms to make it happen. So for all this trouble what problem does it solve? There is a reason why it hasn’t been done yet.
I work as a helicopter maintainer and you are 100% correct
Even if it did work, it's way too complicated for nothing. Simple is better. Think of all the moving parts that need to be involved to make this work, and imagine trying to maintain this thing from the top of a cell tower! It makes way more sense to put a normal wind turbine on the ground, along with a solar array. People have to stop finding weird ways to use solar and wind.
Yeah the worst thing about it will be the fact it needs some way to make contacts between the solar panels and the pole... A disaster both in efficiency and maintenance
This looked like a high school science project at first
The business model is to sell a marginally plausible idea to some dumb VC who has more dollars than sense. You take the millions, file for a few bogus patents and then go out of business because you were unable to sell your bogus idea to anyone, but the VC is still satisfied as money well spent as they believe they made out with a portfolio of patents. Then you go on to start another business with another half-brained idea, lather, rinse, repeat..
This is why you should never work for a startup... Been there, done that, got the T-shirt and the crap-ton of non-tradeable "stock options" (as the company never went public)... Never again..
This sort of stuff can keep you employed for decades :-D
Red flags: (other than the obvious): Maps plugin in french, centered on the Valentin Museum in Munich, (Famous Troll) Voith Schneider spelt wrong (unusual error for a German)
Please let it be a joke
@@Schaelpy I think I'd prefer it to be real. Although turning up at a conference with a fan and a bladed microphone stand would be an impressive length to take a joke
I'm no linguist but that looks like Portuguese.
@@Graham_Langley indeed it does, don't ask me how I went for French. The accent maybe?
They are definitely Indians(myself too). Their name Siva Raghuram and the Hinduistic language about sun say so.
Genius dude from a company I was doing an internship at had the great idea to outfit cars and trucks with propellers to generate power from the Fahrtwind (German for the wind you feel when driving... which is ofc actually drag, but the German word makes it seen like it is a kind of actual wind) engineers had a good laugh about it xD
It retains the problems of both horizontal and vertical wind turbines and adds some new ones. True innovation.
The kinds of cell tower installations you'd need to have an on-site power source to power are the ones that are out in the middle of nowhere away from the grid, which means you will be needing the upper end of the power range of such things because you need to connect via high-bandwidth radio links and probably cover more area with the cellular signal than the default cell tower of the same generation.
Putting a big spinning metal object on the cell tower itself sounds like a recipe for messed up signals in a large zone. If you put it a distance away then it might create a zone of bad signal, but it will be much smaller and you can pick where that zone will be more easily, including making sure it hits ground somewhere that doesn't matter, like in the next tower's coverage area.
Crazy idea I know, but couldn’t you just strap the cell wireless equipment to a much stronger wind turbine “tower”? Say 3/4 of the way up or something? That seems like a much easier way to power off the grid cell infrastructure if it were somehow required.
I was also thinking that there would be signal interference problems. The term "picket fencing" comes to mind.
You can’t power a 5kw BTS from a 5kw wind turbine. You need at least 20kw and a pile of battery storage. Not to mention a diesel generator for when the turbine blows up during a storm. Worked in the industry controlling and monitoring renewable power on cell sites in remote areas. One of our colleagues was nicknamed ‘the Turbinator’ as they frequently seemed to blow up when he was involved!
yeah another scam buster 😍 Never heared of it. Greetings from Germany :-) They don't even have a Imprint on their website wich is required by law ... but according to the map on their website they are based in Munich, not far from me :-D
I am based in Munich too, let’s visit them for a live demonstration 😁
That map only shows the generic location of "Munich, Germany". The entry on the World Alliance for Efficient Solutions site shows them being located in Unterschleißheim, which is a bit north of Munich proper.
They use a ".de" domain, maybe the German DENIC authority might want to hear about the legal issue you raised. (www.denic.de)
@@ikocheratcr They don't care ...
@@AjimaruGDR Greetings from Auxburg :-P
@EEVblog - at 2:35 - 3:13 you actually got it incorrect. They never said that their propeller design could be used to propel ships and boats. What they did say, which you did highlight, was that their design was more efficient than the ONE VSP propellers.
"Scales to any size" -- pretty big red flag as nothing scales to any size.
But fraud does scale to any size..... so they're partially correct
@@mhamma6560 Nicely said!
I get the impression that some of the inventors involved in this are the type of people that will ask how they can go about changing the laws of physics to work better with their dumb idea.
You should make this a regular feature, Dave. Your audience loves your brand of technical debunkery...
In the video you show with smaller unit being driven by fan, the blades are in fact actively rotating. Unless I am missing something? Surely this sort of design is more efficient than static horizontal blades? The blade facing the wind direction is flat whilst the blade returning against the wind has turned allowing less resistance to the wind travelling along the blade. I am not an engineer in any way and definitely agree about the solar gimmick! Just interesting how the blades change direction to suit path of minimal resistance.
I'm not convinced that it isn't a spoof. I certainly hope it is because it's hilarious! "No risky hinges" and "no fish cutting!"
I suspect those sayings were lost in translation. I think they're serious.
@@EEVblog You're most likely right. But I can still hope it's a spoof! :D
Fun fact, their site is missing an "Impressum" (Disclaimer), which is required for any .de domain.
It would need to contain a valid address and contact but I can't find any.
Also odd that there is no German content, even if they aim for international reach its pretty common to have some German content as well.
Seems they just have some headquarters in Germany but their main place is still in India, really odd.
Makes you wonder if they are just in Germany to snag some of the solar/wind funding. (Not sure if there is anything like that going on at the moment to be honest.)
The linkedin entry claims 35 people while the solar impulse foundation site says 4. You mostly see the "CEO" in the events and I think in the one video its him as well.
Also note those oddly placed German flags.
Something is fishy.
This was a bit off-putting. Half the video was pointing and laughing and just felt... I dunno. Uncomfortable.
Just me?
No, I hate these too. Would be a much better video if all of that was edited out
@@MariusEidem I love debunks and it's ok to laugh at the more ridiculous things, but this was different. There was more pointing and laughing than science and debunking I felt.
I feel ashamed that one of this scams comes from my country 😓
It's OK. I feel ashamed that this idea comes up from a member of the human race!
@@brucermarino Yeah that is kind of a relief...😅
@@brucermarino Reminds me about that documentary called idiocracy.
I feel most Germans are probably ashamed of this. Germany is known for it's good engineering... then there's this. lol.
@@redsquirrelftw But with software we currently fail a lot. This new kind of engineering you know :-D
I guess we were known for beeing good, but then we got a bit lazy on it.
So we now have to work bit harder again.
The demonstration would have been much better if they used a laminar flow element after the fan.
As it is the fan produces a scattered thrust direction and the breeze is difficult to gather energy from.
They left out probably the largest energy harvest potential. It looks like it could double as a lightning rod.
This actually isn't a terrible idea. It probably isn't efficient enough, but it's functional. Dave is pissing in his own coffee.
I've had once an exchange with some idiot who claimed that wirless drone charging is a thing, after a few minutes he suggested that drones can be tethered to the ground station.
For the next disruptive technology, include 1 engineer on the team
I get the feeling that these people have never been up a cell tower before. At least in my experience there's really not a whole lot of structural margin to go hanging a regular properly engineered turbine off the top end of one. Let alone this goofy contraption.
They probably have never seen a cell tower collapse! I saw a tower fold over at its midpoint once
15:14 This reminds me of those goofy videos from the early days of aviation before the Wright Brothers came along. You can probably find "aircraft?" that have the same design from this time period.
Yeah, except they built working prototypes: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclogyro
@@Marci124 The Cyclogyyro is a little big different than what they show in that video. The Cyclogyro has horizontal blades while the one in their video has blades that look like they're at 45 degree angles to the axle. I can imagine that that can pretty well affect the airworthiness of the thing. Nit-pick.
Ha ha. Yeah you mean film of the early days but I get you. This "demo" is hilarious, I am sure you could build this thing with tinker toys and it would work better.
Video. th-cam.com/video/sF8TV2PVWlI/w-d-xo.html (Little diferent, but I presume this is the only way to make it work)
It seems bumblebees have a higher power to weight ratio than cyclocopters:
th-cam.com/video/gbn0Bnt3iDs/w-d-xo.html
The reason turbine blades are curved is to optimize the angle of attack along the blade. This is needed as the airfoil section in the center of each blade has a slower airflow than at the tip, thus the angle of attack needs to be changed in proportion to the relative velocity along each blade. This coupled with variable pitch maintains the optimal flow profile along the blade.
My head hurts because I can't decide whether someone is stupid enough to try and scam investors with this or whether there are investors stupid enough to be scammed by this.
My house windows are flat...maybe I should put the "optional" solar panels on them? Sounds like a great idea to me!
You could. Alternatively, you could replace them with curved windows which give your home better lift.
Physee do PowerWindows or something, like little panels round the edges to catch the sun 🤔😀
The model does have active pitching, BTW. If not, it wouldn't turn at all.
No Dave, it's for AC, they spin the panels to make AC directly, at 50hz because of the adjustable angle, it's genius!!! 🤓🤓🤣🤣🤣
7:47 It looks like a project for the next Mars rover
Imagine how upset NASA is going to be when they find out about this new disruptive technology; and that they just wasted millions engineering an "ordinary" helicopter for Mars.
I am not buying into the idea, but could there be a swashplate to accomplish the active pitching?
Me: That's the dumbest idea ever!
SunPlower's engineer: Haha, the solar panel goes brrrrrrrr!
15:24 I'm still not sure how these propellers are gonna propel the drone forward? they can move the drone horizontally but where is the lift coming from?
The Voigt Schneider propellers are commonly driven by 2000+ HP diesel engines in tug boats.
Yeah, but tug boats wouldn't need such a large engine if they put solar panels on the propellers!
Would it just be that it has a collective in it to pitch the blades in and out? It would still need to be small but it would be good to see the inside of the housing
Perfect project for kickstarter.
please make a video about the biomass power plants. in the Netherlands they are obsessed with this
I would be legit curious about this myself. On the surface it does sound like something viable, but if you account for the energy required to create the bio fuel, is it really viable?
Are they burning it directly? If that's the case that doesn't sound too bad, otherwise...
@@maelgugi the dutch wanna go full mad max and turn pigshit into natural gas. Its nothing new, its just in the media because there is a pig shit problem after some law changes.
has been done with all kind of wastes for years.
AFAIK they are usable, and can eek out a net positive advantage.
Is it worse as a solar installation or a wind installation?
"No bird, insect or fish cutting" --- 😂🤣😂
Just punting them into next week!
@@truckerallikatuk Kind of a wildlife relocation scheme
Let's make mobile phone antennae spin like a vertical air-turbine!
As a German I want to apologize for my countrymen. Sometimes our engineers are so preoccupied if they COULD do something, that they forget if they SHOULD do it in the first place.
Would it make more sense putting a solar panel under a windmill?
Don't tell them that. They'll try burying them.
When I saw the Sanskrit quote about Sun Worshipping, I was thinking, Probably Indian Folks or Nazis misappropriating Indian stuff. Probably the former, obviously.
Just need a kill-a-watt meter on that floor fan that's running flat out to get that small sunplower to turn slowly.
That demo video LOL. Put that industrial fan in that kind of wind and it would probably capture more power than that dingus was capturing. This is more hilarious than the shonky solar moisture vaporator Kickstarters.
Also how are the solar panels wired? Are they going to be brushed?
They should collaborate with Dahir Insaat, the SunPlower needs cannons! A weapon to surpass Metal Gear!
How fast would they have to spin to lift a vehicle?!?! Some of the very first helicopter designs were more hopeful than this!!
Past decade's three biggest issue in R&D are:
- The engineers work (calculations, schematics, code, ...) is incomprehensible for management and investors.
- The designers deliver fancy 3D simulations that amazes management and investors with unrealistic expectations.
- Most of today's managers have bigger ego's than ever before in history, so they decide to believe their designers rather than their engineers.
End result:
- Designers playing engineers!
Which then eventually results in:
- Solar roadways
- Theranos
- Hyperloop
- Zero Mass Water
- SunPlower
- Self filling water bottles
- Waterseer
- Juicero
- And so on...
Dave you were focused on the active pitch, but never even addressed it wasn't generating power. As soon as that load kicked in it would have come to a near stop
Why would it come to a stop when loading the solar? Assuming of course you can reliably get the solar off the rotating blades in the first place.
@@EEVblog sorry i was slightly distracted while watching and was focused on the wind mill generator
That fan blowing the prototype reminds me of Stonehenge in Spinal Tap for some reason.
You all have it wrong, we need to cover all the roads in mirrors. That way we can attach solar panels to the bottom of cars as well and double the effective solar panel surface area, bringing forth the solar powered car! *Flies off to Kickstarter in his SunPlower powered drone*
Put mirrors on the road _and_ on the car and then wait for all the light to get stuck between them! That will solve the problem of energy storage!
18:42 looks like they photoshopped linksys routers lol
What's even crazier than this stupid idea is the people that buy into this insanity. Humans never seize to amaze me.
If you shove something like that above cellular panel antennas you will get all sorts of signal reflections which will screw up the sectorisation (if you are lucky). If you are unlucky you will also get all sorts of intermodulation effects from the PV cells and moving joints. A real bad idea, even assuming you get any useful power from the contraption.
Best part is the issues would be super intermittent because the blades move. Nothing like intermittent issue troubleshooting in telecom lol.
Pretty sure I could listen to an 8 hr mix of Dave chuckling in glee at snake oil videos...
At least it's not a drone that flies around the Earth to follow the sun 24 hours a day. That's what it looked like to me from the thumbnail
At the start it felt like "This is kinda weird, but I guess you could maaaybe make it work somewhat". Then I saw the drone...
Nein! Nein! Nein!
Excessive rotational inertia fail.
9:11 Yeah, but I don't think such force is applicable to this contraption.
Goodbye monetization, you played the kickstarter video.
“Weight carrying capacity” is what gets me.
Or is that actually how it is used to describe things?
These guys make renewable look bad makes me sick
The propellers will probably sound like the sunplower CEO: *"renewables waffle waffle waffle waffle waffle waffle"*
Well their demo sold me. Next time there are hurricane force winds I might actually get enough power out of it to charge my cell phone!
I am kind of curious what the scaling on the wind speed out of that fan is, but I'm to lazy to figure out the model, look up it's specs, figure out what the scaling on their model is, and do the math.
Their homepage does not even have a legal notice (company name, address, ID) ... That‘s illegal in Germany. They can be sued any minute.
If companies like that get money from the Renewable Energy programs it is not surprising that we have the highest electricity prices all over the world in Germany.
Air taxi! 😂
EEVblog is on the track, video after video, like 👍.
8:49 Debunking part of the video starts here.
Not to mention the problems with moving the high current DC from the spinning blades to the tower. What was the plan there? Slip-rings? DC-AC conversion in the blades? What about servicing?
Details, details...
This looks like it's straight out of a 4th grade science fair, before the kids properly understands physics. All we can do encourage them to explore their passion
He's got 30 patents and has worked at TI and Infineon *facepalm*
I do the maths and I do fun. I'm currently moored (dry now :P ) in a marina with 2 (launched at the weekend) *solar* boats. I'd plan to do the same for my small plastic one if possible (gotta budget it), and it *does* work (day I turned up someone else did a self build outa scrap/spares of solar panels and batts, but I think the solar controller was new). The small self build boat is not fast, but is fun/quiet/simple. The larger commercially built boats are heavy (normal lead batteries IIRC), but got the nicety of a silent and partially environmentally friendly power.
However, my little hacked 4x solar panel phone pack charger takes about 4 weeks to charge a battery. LOL! So panel size, battery size, charge/discharge cycles are all important!
Photoshopped !? More like Microsoft Paint. The version that came with Win 3.1 !
OK, it's disruptive, I'll grant you. But is it nimble? Is it robust?
Voith Schneider is amazing. But this thing... I can't facepalm hard enough. Don't they know solar panels are fragile and don't like vibration? Micro-cracks much?
Nothing says professional like some hearty paragraphs of denglish
at least until we get a company website that says "powered by squarespace" at the bottom.
energy calculation: Fan on floor consuming = 500 watts. SunPlower generation from wind rotation = 5 mw (expected). energy efficiency = 0.001%
Yes, love the debunking.
Powering mobile phone towers? I doubt it could _charge_ a mobile phone.
can you do a debunk on the Bedini Simple school girl circuit. i can seem to find any info debunking it.
There actually are some more or less flat and symmetric airfoil cross sections similar in shape to the blades on the prototype. But they are mainly for supersonic applications, and for applications where you need symmetric operation for both positive and negative angles of attack (for example the vertical stabilizer and rudder of an airplane).
That animation on wikipedia showing how the Voith Schneider propeller works is wrong.
Hmm, I don't see hydro
That only kicks in once it starts to rain.
I'd be _really_ impressed if the wind/solar propeller was used on submarines
lol @ them using an industrial fan to simulate hurricane winds to get the prototype to spin slowly. The drone is definitely completely silly alright.
Greetings from Germany =D Matt here
as a german I'm sorry for my fellow citizens to come up with such - as we, the mighty germany, are known for things like our cars, precision, and stuff ... but yea, even some of us sometimes come up with weird ideas ... in fact: there'Re a lot of those free-energy-people here =/
Holy Bat-drop crazy, Batman!
Dave, are we sure this isn’t a real-life version of Flappy Bird?
😂😂😂
I want to see the drone try and fly, it would be spectacular!
EEVblog lol! Someone ought to get a huge flyswatter ready.