Do you like this video?👍Or do you hate it?👎Either way, we'd be grateful if you would share your thoughts about Planet A with us in this survey 👉surveys.dw.com/c/dwplaneta
Thank you for sharing your survey link! While it's not directly related to the video, I appreciate your offer. By the way, have you heard about the Segway Portable PowerStation Cube Series? It's a versatile and powerful backup power solution for outdoor adventures and home use. Check it out if you're looking for reliable power on-the-go!
Thank you for sharing the survey link, but it seems unrelated to the video topic. Regarding the video, I haven't watched it yet, but as an outdoor enthusiast, I value renewable energy solutions like wind turbines. By the way, have you heard about the Segway Portable PowerStation Cube Series? It's a versatile power station that could be handy for outdoor adventures and backup power needs.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts! While I haven't watched the video yet, I appreciate your input. As an outdoor enthusiast and someone who values family time, I always look for reliable and durable power sources. Have you heard about the Segway Portable PowerStation Cube Series? It's a versatile powerhouse that's ideal for outdoor adventures and provides uninterrupted power supply during outages. You may find it useful for your outdoor gear and family activities.
Thank you for sharing the survey, but it seems unrelated to the video. Regarding the video, I found it interesting to learn about wind turbines and their potential impact on energy sustainability. By the way, have you heard about the Segway Portable PowerStation Cube Series? It's a versatile power station that could be great for outdoor camping and providing backup power for family time. Check it out for yourself!
I sold over 2,000 small wind turbines over several years of working in the industry and have had a 2.4kW Skystream in my backyard for the past 15-years, powering my own home, and I wouldn't recommend anyone buy a small wind turbine unless you can get it very cheap and install it yourself as the ROI is VERY long, much longer than solar PV. The VAWT's produce such tiny yields, and cost more than HAWT's so they're almost never worth the price. My solar panels far, far outproduce my small wind turbine and they make no noise and require no maintenance, and were much cheaper.
Ive worked for a Solar Company for a little while. Wind Turbines are definitely not the most efficient way currently, especially compared to solar panels. And the fact you need it elevated quite high for it to be efficient at all. And those are the more traditional 3-4 bladed ones too. And yeah just my two cents, this should all be accurate as i recall? EDIT: Ooops, there was 3 and 4 bladed turbines
@MrArtist7777 Having spent 20 years in the small wind industry I 100% agree, the ROI is not worth it. Solar has no moving parts, makes no noise, requires very little maintenance. Solar is like a dependable loving spouse, always has your back and is dependable and puts out. Wind is like a street hooker, fun for a quick moment, but will steal your money, time, energy, keeping up up all night, and cause you nothing but trouble....
I remember being told 15 years ago solar power will never be viable because it costs too much. It doesn't seem likely that small wind will improve at the same rate as solar or even big wind. However, it seems worth exploring
@lawrenceheyman435 Everything you see from New companies is OLD technology. They are just spinning new catch phrases and BS ideas. It the wind turbine manufacturer has a " Invest " or "Join us" or "Revolutionary" in its company site run away. Somethings things like the "Vortex turbine" are totally new but it is hard to get power in a big way from linear motion. so no ideas will come up but they must not be based on the same old Vertical / Horizontal designs.
I remember being told last year that nuclear power isn't viable because it costs too much. (Oddly enough there is already a lot of it.) With the plethora of new reactor designs, it seems very likely that small nuke plants will improve at an even faster rate than wind. Besides a small nuke plant is about the size of a big wind generator.
@daniellarson3068 you could be right. I am not against any low carbon technology. SMRs are being explored and maybe you'll be able to invest in one soon. You won't be able to put one on your roof though!
Fun fact: For my final thesis project that i'm doing with my peer, I'm going for a three blade Darrieus type H rotor VAWT. To be more concrete my study is focused on the optimization of the profile of the turbine. I'm starting in two weeks.
be mentally prepared for deception buddy : read my comment above and get yourself some Paul GIPE books before wasting your time ... ah the long living myths of VAWTS ad perfecting blades. You have a far better chance at having tea with Bigfoot or being offered a tour of the universe by Aliens than succeeding in your project.
I hope that your thesis gets you the grade you desire, but sadly your work and time will probably not yield any new breakthroughs that will have any practical use. I am old enough to remember the time before widespread wind turbines, and the design most quickly ruled out was one with a vertical axis. Not only does it have a relatively small swept area, but half of that area saps energy capture as it has to be rotated against the same wind we are trying to harvest. I accept that there is a miniscule market for VAWTs but they will never make a dent on conventional designs. There are many good reasons reason that aircraft propellers are shaped the way they are, and why rotary winged aircraft have speed a ceiling that can never be exceeded.
@@thedubwhisperer2157 Děkuji za podnět. Zamyslel jsem se nad funkcí letadlové vrtule a pochopil, proč není vhodná na sběr větru. A že ze stejného důvodu má můj VAWrT při rychlosti větru 2m/s obvodovou rychlost 6m/s.
I live permanently aboard my sailing boat, equipped with an extensive range of electrical and electronic equipment. Solar panels and a wind turbine easily keep my house and engine crank battery banks fully charged, except rarely during prolonged periods of windless heavily overcast days.
This is why I'm here. I'm retro fitting a 32' shallow draft, full keel cruiser now for extended live aboard retirement in the gulf and western Atlantic/Brazil. Can you point me in the right direction to research size, style, makes/models? I'm looking to mount two on the outside edges of the solar arch over the stern.
@@dentside78 Nice! I hope maybe to buy an Orion boat next year. I will have to find out a bit about sailing clubs in my area and find a place to put that boat :)
@@dentside78 The hardest aspect I encountered during initial research (and of any marine electronic equipment for that matter) was that manufacturers and retailers present data differently, using sometimes wildly differing unit measurements and data basis. That makes meaningful comparison difficult. I created a large spreadsheet on a wall and endeavoured to convert all data to common units of measurement. Not always easy! Then check out the many sailing community blogs, chatgroups, and TH-cam for people’s real life experiences with, and opinions of various makes that appeal to you. Finally: in the harsh marine environment you generally get what you pay for. So be careful of ‘cheapies’ and deals that are too good to be true. Best wishes.
In the USA an alternative energy initiative was begun by the federal government during the Gerald Ford administration, around 1975. NASA designed a Darrius vertical mill with extruded aluminum foils, and there was significant interest in experimental designs through at least the mid 1980s. A study done (ca 1990) by a German university professor pointed out that with all vertical windmills, there is a larger amount of material used for the area of exposure to the stream of wind (more material = more capex). To my knowledge, no vertical mills have demonstrated sufficiently improved power output to justify the cost of these designs. In addition, the vertical mills pass the airfoils through the 'wake' of the leading airfoil; this means generally increased audible noise, and certainly increased mechanical WEAR. Fatigue wear of the airfoils was discovered in the initial deployment of Darrius turbines. It is true that in certain applications there may be some use of vertical mills ... but it remains to be seen if they will be economically viable. When fuel costs peak or environmental concerns arise, there has been increased entrepreneurial interest in these designs. Rigorous, real-world testing should be done to prove concepts have real ROI value.
I've seen these same criticisms of VAWTs before (in fact, the language you used is so familiar that I suspect I've seen you post this same comment on other videos). Your second point, about turbulence, makes a lot of sense to me and could be the fatal flaw for VAWTs. However, I do take issue with your "more material means more capex" statement. All else being equal, of course, this would be true, but materials are rarely as big an expense as labor and machine time. That's why there's so much content for DIY small turbines - lots of things start to make economic sense if you don't account for the value of time (or if you're enjoying yourself so much that it doesn't feel like work). So if VAWTs took less labor to install and maintain ( a big "if", but conceivable given the motor and other key components are at ground level or close to it), that could easily outweigh the cost of extra material. But again, the turbulence leading to more maintenance and/or a shorter life (and more noise) could certainly make them too impractical
I remember seeing these smaller (vertical) wind turbines next to the river in Taipei over 10 years ago. I thought it was a brilliant way to fit wind turbines into a very compact city. They were very nice looking and in no way destroyed the view when you where walking next to the river. Sadly, I haven't seen this anywhere in Europe
The problem is that in this video they really dont state the magnitude of the big difference: Efficiency. The yields of the vertical turbines is abyssmal. Still, I hope it gets more attention and improvement, as it will probably have a place in future.
You didn't see any small wind turbines because they are extremely ineffective! With the same investment you can generate 20 times more electricity with solar panels today.
You pretty much skipped on the reason why most newly built wind turbines nowadays are massive. How many small turbines would you need to replace even one big one? How does the cost per kwh compare between them? How steady is the output (on a small and a larger scale)? I had hoped that the video would cover that, because those are exactly the reasons why small turbines are an extremely rare niche thing right now.
Many. The higher up and the bigger the blades the bigger the yield, it grows exponentially. even with traditional smaller ones (which are still the most efficient) it is somewhere up to 1.200 if I am not mistaken. One big one easily yields 12 Mwh, a small one only 0,5 to 10 kwh. Imagine the pollution of your horizon with that many scattered around the area instead of one big one.
@@AnneBerkheij The power output from a turbine increases with the cube of the wind speed, and wind speed increases with height - so getting a bit more height makes a huge difference to power output.
@@vylbird8014 Je to druhá mocnina. Tlaková síla má velikost 𝐹=𝑝𝑆 kde 𝑝 je tlak a je obsah plochy. Tlaková síla působí vždy kolmo na plochu, která je u trojcípých HAWT opravdu malá. Velikost vrtule roste s třetí mocninou, protože je to objekt který má objem. Lidi si to často pletou.
@@vylbird8014 Aren't there high wind speeds alongside buildings? If we're too lazy to model it we should look for places where birds fly a lot, they know how to find consistent updrafts. Then put them there. Maybe I should watch the video first :D
As I understand it, the Taj Mahal uses wind to cool the interior. The Taj is made of white marble, a cold material, that has narrow slits cut into the walls. The interior of the slits are more narrow than the outside causing wind to speed up as it passes through & so, cool down. Giving 17th century airconditioning.
One interesting vertical turbine installation was in Turkey I think where they put them in the median barrier of a motorway and as such captured the "wind" generated by traffic, and as it was in the median it gets "pushed" from both sides as the traffic is going in opposite directions
Saw another video dive into those--and determined they were a really bad idea for 2 reasons: 1. can be dangerous if accidents occur and 2. they actually reduce the efficiency of all vehicles that drive by such that it's a net negative energy producer. On the latter point, apparently walls close to roadways also harm vehicle efficiency due to causing increased drag by stagnating the airflow.
@@tHebUm18 the energy you take out has to come from somewhere so understand it would have a negative impact on cars, would have thought it was marginal though (where there are walls already). Walls are often used to reduce noise in urban environments so they're not just there for the turbines. The design of the first installations seemed quite naive, I imagine a better efficiency could be achieved through optimizing the interactions between the turbines and any barrier.
@@hans-joachimbierwirth4727 the energy by the cars has already been put it to get the air moving, (the theory at least) is more energy recovery. However after I looked into it more, the output of 1 experimental setup was 50W, which is so low it probably wouldn't be worth the installation effort.
@@willemkalkman99I looked into it a few years ago. To be of any use, the turbine needs to be on a tall pole. So, you are applying a periodic force at the end of a long arm ... so the arm needs to be rigid and durable. Your house probably wasn't designed for that load, so you can't mount it on your roof. It ends up looking like a radio tower in your backyard for a few Wh of power. It would take years to counteract the climate impact of the steel. On a new building where you plan for the load, it might make sense.
Here in Belgium, in rural areas I've started to see these small horizontal turbines popping up with wooden blades. I haven't looked around much yet but I've seen 3 so far and heard of a few more in the area. One of them is unfortunately right in front of my mother's house, and makes a quite annoying noise even when there's only a bit of wind. We're talking about a very small area as well, less than 10km across.
I have seen vertical turbine powered lamp post and I see them turning all the time and the lamps working fine at night. They have been working for about 10 years!
Yup, I've seen a pair of vertical axis wind turbines at a military base in Halifax, NS. They look almost identical to the wind turnbine shown in the video @29 seconds
Yes, we have a bunch here in Flagstaff, Arizona as Southwest Windpower, formerly world's largest small wind manufacturer, built their turbines in Flagstaff until they went bankrupt, along with most every other small wind turbine manufacturer, in 2012. I used to be part of a burgeoning small wind industry and helped draft the SWCC guidelines and authored a paper on the subject, and lobbied in Washington D.C. in front of U.S. Senators on small wind, and the whole industry crashed when solar PV went under $1/Watt, making it impossible to compete with. Small wind was at: $5-10/Watt, or more, and faced many challenges, which is why it's virtually gone.
Efficiency. There is not enough energy in the wind for small turbines. Cities are usually built in low wind areas. Large turbines are built on ranges and at sea where there is strong wing. Large turbines access stronger winds as the ground slows the wind.
As someone who is currently paying off land in an area that gets sun throughout most of the year and lots of wind. I definitely plan to make use of harnessing both once im done paying it off and can build some structures
It is not only energy efficient but thinking of the less space requirement and safety for the birds is of big importance. Amazing innovation We will like to add this to our main Planet Cents playlist to inspire more people. ~Team PlanetCents
Hey there! Thanks! You might also want to check out our video where we talk about the matter of wind turbines being dangerous for birds 👉th-cam.com/video/k_Wa7v76k-U/w-d-xo.html
When you're talking about efficiency, what are you referring to/where do you get this? Horizontal wind turbines are MUCH more efficient, since all of the blades face the wind at all time. And if you're talking about small-scale vs. big-scale, big-scale wins a lot of thr time, when it comes to efficiency.
Hey there! The small-scale wind turbines are not in competition with the big ones. They could rather be used in special situations as we explain in the video.
The bird line reveals more about the people making it. Do wind turbines kill birds? Yes. So do pet cats - about a thousand times more. But no-one dares propose banning pet cats, or even something like mandating loud bell-collars. It's just a political no-go to criticise the cute. People who oppose wind turbines to protect birds have an argument that is technically correct, but shows severely misplaced priorities - suggesting they are looking for an excuse to take down some eco-hippies rather than seriously considering the issue.
I'm a big fan of innovation and new designs but please keep an eye on the numbers when you make a video about technology. 4:03 it is possible to meassure the power output of a turbine. Engineers have done that over decades and the result is pretty clear. Second point: the windspeeds, and even more its power, in cities are much lower than the winds that the big turbines use and its no problem to get the electricity from outside of the city. I know pictures of futuristcal spinning or vibrating objects are nice for an entertaining video but in terms of producing electricity rotation means nothing without a load on it. I am very diappointed of this video and I am sure the experts you asked can confirm what I said.
Hey there! You are right, as we mention the small wind turbines are not an alternative to the big wind turbines but they have different use cases. They could be used to complement the big wind turbines as we tackle in the last chapter, starting minute 6:26.
Small scale wind turbines make much more sense in that maximum efficiency output is of less concern than a practical use of space and simple materials especially in non industrial areas and among people without money
That tumbleweed inspired one seems really neat if it could be scaled up. In the end, small scale wind is a hard sell compared to solar because the need for moving parts inherently increases cost and reduces reliability.
I saw these being tested at my college back in 2015, it was taken down due to friction issues I think. I don't know if it was a study done by the college or an engineering class, we did have a field of solar panels next to the building to help power it.
Particularly for large rigs driving by they create a huge air stream which technically is wasted energy. We defectively be able to convert the drag created by large rigs into electricity and recapture the losses
@@SpiritCannon I was thinking of stationary roadside devices, but your idea is good, as well. If we can work purely with turbulence, then your idea would pay off, maybe double, as it might both reduce drag and generate energy.
When you drove against the wind you wouldn't help but slow down those turbines. When you drove with the wind you also wouldn't add up. The edge of the road is a good space sine is free but turbine would need to be high enough for the turbulence doesn't affects it too much.
@@mariuszfurman4767 This would certainly be true of directional turbines, but it might be an open question for the omnidirectional turbines mentioned at 5:20 and the vibrating turbine. Tiny fringes on speed skater's outfits vibrate in the rushing air and reduce turbulence, allowing skaters to go faster. Curved wingtips on jet liners reshape wingtip vortices and reduce fuel consumption. Bulbous bows on large ships alter wakes and reduce drag, saving fuel. Dimples on golf balls reduce drag and increase lift and distance in flight. It is possible that an omnidirectional wind turbine could be designed on a moving vehicle that would both reduce overall drag and also collect energy, both reducing fuel (or electricity, for electric trucks) usage and generate electricity. I can't say if it's worth the experiment, but I wouldn't write off the innovation at this stage.
How about putting small turbines in the front end of cars, 70mph on a motorway would generate some power surely. obviously it would only work at speed, but something is better than nothing, for little cost.
I completely agree, an ecological imperative that we both produce and use - not just consume energy. However, as a male Norwegian at 57, I seem to have both my peers and most policies against me. At the macro level there’s petro-greenwashing and the state pension fund. At the local level, legislation against being off grid, or adding this kind of infrastructure to it outside of corporate ownership. Our political economy simply resist these changes, as it threatens “growth” and challenges ownership and monopolies in energy production, transport, exchange trade and storage. Effectively, you *can* but it takes an awful lot of money. A “rich” country doesn’t mean we all are - not after say 1990. I hope I’m wrong, but don’t believe that a fair and equitable energy transition can happen without an equally formidable political change. This is about so much more than “money”, in ways that don’t fit into a spreadsheet. That’s why we struggle, right…? 👍😊
In Huntsville, AL there's a mall on hwy 231 that runs their parking lot lighting with these mounted on top of the light poles. I think that's a practical use for this type of turbine.
There are many wind turbines in Denmark. When it is very windy the electricity here is super cheap and sometimes it is so cheap to generate electricity that you get paid for using it. That the time I do a lot of cleaning, ironing, and use as many devices as I can 😆
@@carlojean1974 haha. but we have very high taxes and everything else is quite expensive. But we have free healthcare care tough. Every country has its cons and pros 😅😁
Hey there! Small wind turbine device are actually not that noisy. Their estimated sound level is 43 decibels (dB). To easier grasp that: It is lower than an AC but a bit higher than a usual refrigerator.
the simplicity of small wind turbines, it's lifespan and low maintenance make it the best cost-efficient solution with minimum experience and responsibility, these criteria are essential for expansion., You clearly mentioned the difference that the aerodynamics of small turbines are not improved ... and they are definitely on the way ... we will not wait long ... improving the efficiency of small turbines will open other doors for us ... and thus draws the path of civilization The development of the height of large turbines led them to the sea, which enabled us to reach new levels on the scale of efficiency And small turbines must respond strongly to that step so that we can benefit from the competition in improvement
There was an ambitious plan some years ago to line a busy US highway with vertical turbines; the idea being that the usual windy conditions combined with the turbulence of constant traffic passing by at an average speed of around 60-70mph would keep them spinning. Unfortunately, the idea never was realized due to cost and possible issues with affecting the scenic element and visual safety element, as well as possible hypnosis or other mental effects from seeing so many turbines in a row spinning. Some studies were done to try and break up the visual via either spacing them out more or painting a turbine a different color every few turbines to break it, but spreading them out reduced turbine effectiveness while painting them came with their own issues of what colors best work all-year round and all-weather round to remain visible. From a safety standpoint, there was the issue of how the turbines could affect visibility down the highway, given that while it gently curves, drivers usually look out far ahead to be aware of issues, so another idea was to put them in clusters on alternating sides of the road offering enough visual sightlines to still see ahead. The last issue was dealing with emergencies; to maximize on the traffic turbulence, the turbines would need to be placed close to the road, but placing them close would affect the amount of space available for pulling over to the side or oversized, non-standard loads that might be trucked along the way (to say nothing of possible future road expansion). Maybe the idea could be revisited on bridges and overpasses instead, where it's still plenty turbulent, and where the shoulder distance is more rigid.
I'd say the thing about wind turbines is that commercially available ones are overpriced, and thus outcompeted (maybe not everywhere, but in most places) by photovoltaics. On the other hand, from a DIY and upcycling perspective, it's much more viable to build a wind turbine, as most parts can be obtained cheaply or for free. Which means we could be seeing a lot of different designs if only more people were willing to go the DIY route. Though there's also the issue of placement - since working on a slanted roof can be tricky and dangerous, if it's the only place you have available for power generation, it might be preferable to hire professionals to install your generator - in which case you might as well go with photovoltaics, as it's going to be expensive either way. Only if you are either comfortable doing roofwork yourself, or if you have plenty of space on the ground to build a free standing turbine, wind turbines gain advantage, as you can save money on the installation. Which I guess is another limiting factor for wind turbines, as most people don't have land to spare.
I am of the opinion that vertical axis wind turbine have certain advantages over the conventional ones we see. Even if they are not as efficent. 1) They can be placed in denser patterns. 2) The large mass of the generator set can be placed at ground level easing the servicing of the unit. 3) Without the heavy mass of the generator set being x number of meters in the air on top of a pylon it should require less concrete for the foundation
A) Never buy a HAWT. B) You need unoccluded non-turbulent wind to power your turbine. C) Thus you need to install a turbine on a pole. D) a 4 yard rotor diameter is the minimum to generate appreciable power for your home. 6 would be better. E) You still need solar and preferably batteries too.
I've seen it in fictional settings a couple of times, like the "Storm Point" map in Apex Legends. The vertical wind turbines do look futuristic, but grounded in reality. I guess the reason why we haven't used them as much is because it's not as efficient as large traditionally designed turbines.
About six years ago I bought, apparently, a really crappy small horizontal turbine. It was so loud I could hear it inside my house. It sounded like an angry pack of crazed bees. Since then I have seen others, that look nearly identical that are quiet.
They're not around because they are inefficient. Companies strive for efficiency and power utilities look past these for 3 blade turbines, whose efficiency increases with the length of the blades.
Nice find someone else who understands how turbines work. This is nothing more then an attempt to sell old useless designs that were proven useless decades ago. I blame the likes of Robert Murray Smith who is a master of dragging up failed ideas from the past and reselling them as the next best thing.
I wonder if there could be a combination wind turbine for your house that can also vent your attic and have a combined benefit of releasing heat and having the heat rising from your attic turning the turbine and producing electricity at the same time.
The first turbine would get you about 4-6w, and each turbine added would reduce the wattage of each subsequent turbine by about 1 third depending on the size of your attic.
I've wondered why farms don't go back to just good old wind mills? Also I think the small turbines would be great for odd locations like (the grid/frame work to solar farms). Imagine 100 archer solar farm with wind generation in the same footprint.
Hey there! Thanks for sharing your ideas! Wind mills are still used at some farms. It is an easy way to transform wind energy into mechanical energy to move water, mill grains etc. However, wind turbines allow for more options as it converts the wind energy into electrical energy.
I would consider a construction where you build a large tray that could take up the swing and plant a fast growing tree in that tray. Then when the wind comes and is caught by the tree then you can catch some of that energy. It won't be a fast direct measurable yield from it, but it could probably be easy to make and useful in areas where it's more important to be cheap. Then let the swing operate pumps for water.
4:15 That's not true, sorry. If the wind sped up when passing a turbine, then that would mean the turbine would be driving it, not being driven. What is true, however, is that vertical axis turbines can deal with slightly turbulent flow better than horizontal axis ones, as they are unidirectional. That is why they can be packed more densely in a farm.
I remember when I was in my 20s me and my father went to Ilocos Norte Philippines for his work and we decided to visit the wind farm there. The one we went to was on a beach. I'm not sure now but anyone at the time can go close to it we can even see some locals relaxing in its shadow. The sand around it are black. It was massive as I stand under it, and loud when the turbines started turning. The feeling was like standing below a large robot which started to move.
75% of the verticals shown in this video were manufactured by companies that are now out of business! There is a reason for that. Once again everything old is NEW again, but that still does not change the reason vertical are not viable. They are not efficient and never will be.
Yeah, there's a reason for that. It's called "that's how things work". Most companies, no matter the field, go under in the first few years. 60% of restaurants fail in the first year, and 80% within the first 5 years. According to you, restaurants arent viable. 🤷♂️ Fact is, it's not as simple as that. There's a lot of wind in cities, but not much room for football field length blades. And the reason the big ones are first, is because in all forms of power generation, bigger is more efficient. But wind doesn't have to be as efficient, because it's cheaper.. In fact, at grid level, wind is the cheapest electricity there is. Smaller units will get cheaper over time, as more and more people buy them. Just like everything else does. What? You're surprised that big companies put their research money into the big units first? Not sure why you're surprised by how things are going. It's how our modern world works. Everytime they invented a new sensor to put into phones, they started with putting them into the expensive phones first. That mean the cheaper phones weren't viable? Solar is still better overall though. Mainly because it's not that much more expensive than wind, but it provides a massive number of jobs. More than any other form of electricity production. Coal is 63% of our electricity and provides just over 900,000 jobs. Solar is about 3%, but provides over 500,000 jobs, while being cheaper than any fossil fuel.
unless you live on top of a hill with no trees or homes nearby there just are not that good for most small homes. A really good one will cost a lot of money. Then there's the noise and vibration to deal with. I think they make good sense on top of tall buildings.
One of the issues surrounding the Large Wind-Farm type wind systems, that are often glossed over... Is that the Blades both wear out, and are not easily recyclable or reusable.
Yeah, this is the modern age. They've been working on that for quite some time now. And a company has invented recyclable blades. And it wouldn't even matter. Compared to what coal plants release, a bunch of blades in a landfill, would be MUCH better for the planet.
@@Paulthored At some, you can see pics of them lined up. The republicans like to post things like that, while ignoring the facts. Just like the republicans liked to report how many birds wind turbines kill. While ignoring the fact that the study they used, wasn't a wind turbine study. It was a study of bird deaths by all forms of electricity production. Sure, wind turbines kill quite a few birds every year, but when you work those deaths out per gwh, it looks a bit different. Wind kills 0.3 birds per gwh. Fossil fuels kill 5.3 birds per gwh. About 17 TIMES more. They also left out the research that shows painting one of the blades greatly reduces bird deaths. So hopefully that'll start being done before long. But the idiots that listen to the republicans aren't bright enough to go looking for the truth. Fact is FF have had hundreds of years of use, and well over 100 years of government subsidies. They're about as good as they're going to get. But we're really just getting started with renewable.
Covering Suburban streets with Solar Panels at a 5 meter height could combine with small vertical turbines above the panel structure combined with storage batteries to provide more power to low voltage grids linked to a sub station??
Strongly considering having multiple smaller vertical wind mills. I'm in a very windy location and the footprint to my property for a vertical mill is simply smaller when taking stabilizing cables into account I'd need for a small, but much taller horizontal mill. Solar consideration is less here close to 60 degrees North as well as having to have something installed on the roof of this nearly 200 year old farm. Simply not something I'd like to see damaged or loose it's character of because of some ugly panels. Reasons for choosing different shapes and sizes of renewables can be as varied as the amount of properties that want to invest in them. The potential for energy independence is the biggest attractor here as well as the ever increasing Electric bill that makes the ROI time better each year.
Even if you need to repair something on the roof anyway: Small wind turbines are never worth it! There is hardly any wind near the ground - and when there is, it is always gusty, which always significantly reduces the service life of these systems. The electricity yield from wind turbines is proportional to the third power of the wind speed, i.e. 100% more wind = 800% more yield! And if you have a farmhouse, you also have space for a few solar panels. Due to the extreme drop in prices, it makes a lot more sense in 2024 to simply display a few solar panels. To ensure that you have as even an electricity supply as possible throughout the day, you should set them up facing south-east (in the morning) and south-west. Solar panels almost always work reliably and almost maintenance-free for 25 to 30 years.
I believe that Harmony turbines in the USA has a small horizontial turbine that has a centrifically activated mechanism that slows the horizontal turbine down in high winds so that it avoids over-speed and destruction while still permitting electric generation. Dreaming of installing a horizontal turbine in my backyard to provide supplimential electric power to lower my electric bill and to use excessive excess power to charge an emergency battery pack. Live in the Upper Midwestern USA but in the Ohio Valley weather pattern. ( mid-winters with more ice than snow) We get lots of rain all year round and very cloudy winters and when talking getting the most for my money; wind looks more promising than solar. Live next to a large vertical turbine wind farm and the nearby Honda transmission plant uses two large vertical wind turbines to heat steel billets for forming them into transmission parts. They probably use some of the power to melt aluminium for the transmission cases. Unfortunately, a back-up generator that runs off our propane tank's propane may provide the lowest cost option for emergency power. ( unless I could find the time to build the wind turbine myself.)
I plan on running several in series on roof peak with an A-frame running from 1 end of roof edge to the other. The turbine shafts will extend past the top side of blades into bearings mounted in the A-frame. This eliminates the wobble & a lightning rod can be easily mounted above the A-frame.
Are there commercially available small wind turbines that generate electricity from home roof vents? We have 3 of the turbines there already to release heat from the attic, but they don't generate electricity.
The North Sea appears to be a region where offshore wind will be developed soon. Recently I saw a video on wave power conversion devices and it appears that the two will work together well, since some of the infrastructure, such as the underwater cables to land, do not have to be duplicated. Where there is frequent heavy winds over water, there are also heavier than normal and constant seas and generating potential. If renewables are going to compete economically with fossil fuels, this kind of synergy should be sought.
I see all these stories and the common thread is "of course we need to increase/beef up the grid"... maybe, we really don't. The grid is already supporting a lot of activity, maybe the way to increase how much total can be handled is simply put a lot of smaller generation behind the meter as it were and not focus on moving the generated excess to the grid via schemes for feed back tariffs etc. Maybe really small packages can be built which contain a mix of generation types along with good volume of battery storage which matches the facility power use history, deploy it locally and just plan on using all that on site. This would replace a lot of demand from the grid, leaving more supportable capacity available. The key would be not to get too custom on the end user solution configurations, just right-size a standard package selection and if need be throw the excess to ground.
Hey, thanks for your input. You might find this video interesting as well: th-cam.com/video/u-DsDuTceTo/w-d-xo.html We'd be interested to hear your thoughts!
Honestly I think they serve a lot of purpose for looking cool. Mostly the pretty ones. I like some 3d printed designs for looking good basically in a garden.
Wind and solar are distributed unlike petroleum, hydro, and coal which are all concentrated forms of energy. Thus, each house now may be designed with natural gas furnace, so to,it may be designed with a combination of solar panels,vertical wind turbines, power walls, and electronics to render such a home almost self sustaining regarding electrical power.
I want to make one with sails that make it spin. It is more of a moving sculpture than a power plant, although I do intend to charge my batteries with it too. I live off grid in Canada with solar and it works but it would be good to have another energy supply as well. Hydrogen production in summer is also interesting to me but I don't know how to store enough for winter
You probably don't want to store hydrogen. It requires a lot of safety measures to handle, and those measures push the cost up - you have to use hydrogen-safe alloys for everything because it has an ability to slowly weaken metals over time, and leak-detection systems. You're better off with a big battery.
You should cover Piggott machines that are the only viable small wind turbine in the world. They are self manufactured and have been around for 30 years.
Important points: - turbulent wind is like a shade under a tree. There's no useful energy in it. - a wind turbine in the roof is like a PV panel in the basement. Does not produce anything. - vertical wind turbines are more of a social science issue than a technical one. They have been disproven since the 70s but people insist in bringing them back from time to time. We need some serious research on why people believe in this failed technology - a vertical wind turbine is called an anemometer. There is no other sensible use case for it.
100% correct!! Hugh Piggott axial flux turbines work! Are low cost and easy to repair. But, this is another category of turbines that this video did not cover. DIY is different. The Piggott turbine was successfully copied and commercially sold By African Wind Power (AWP). It was a great heavy and extremely durable machine. But, the company went bust and the owner went on to work in small wind area NREL in colorado. This was a sad loss for small wind.
@@williambryce8527 hello William, By no means Piggott turbines are out of the market. Wind empowerment carries on the technology, and so does tripalium in France, where the are about 100 of these connected to the grid. 500rpm had successfully adapted the Piggott to semi-industrial manufacturing. Even Piggott made a 5.6kW design with ferrite magnets for better reliability. If a fraction of the research money pour into these ultimately failed attempts to create non viable VAWT were injected in solving a few issues of the Piggott for mass manufacturing, small wind would already be everywhere where it makes sense.
Industrial-scale horizontal wind turbines chop birds mid-air. From small songbirds to large storks and birds of prey. And it does'nt help that the most suitable locations for wind farms are along major migration routs for birds... I would advocate for vertical any day!
To be successful wind turbines need the wind blowing. A big improvement would be to be able to keep running in strong winds and when they're replaced they are 100% recycled and not just conveniently dumped somewhere.
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It would be great if yall mentioned the hivawt as its the only swvc certified vawt. Also the powernest developed in denmark that produces 6x more energy than rooftop solar
You packed quite a lot of information into a short video, without being either cheer-leading or unduly skeptical. Well done. For interested viewers seeking more detailed information I recommend the channel "Engineering with Rosie" by an Australian wind power expert.
Problem with wind turbin is power = air speed x cross section area. It is easier for the normal shape turbine cause the higher you go the faster the air and it is easir to increase the cross section area just by increasing the length of the blades
@@mx2000 isn't it cubed. Power=1/2 * air density * sweep area * wind speed ^3 Wind speed is very important, which is why small turbines in residential areas don't work.
@@lylestavast7652 I know it is cubed, it was a rhetorical statement. As I followed with the statement "Power=1/2 * air density * sweep area * wind speed ^3".
Winds and Solar are both suplemental power supplies that is great when the grid goes down at anytime. Personally have no use for super-sized wind generation because they are not environmentally friendly.
I always wondered - why trains/ trucks and buses never harvest wind energy? they run at fairly at 60 KMPH/ 40 Miles per hour and we can certainly get the vertical turbines built around to generate massive energy from them. Air always flows in one direction - from the front towards the back. Vortex or vertical axis wind generators can certainly be tested!!
Energy conservation. More resistance caused by turbines will lead to higher fuel usage so it's simpler and more effective to generate electricity directly from the engine via built-in car generators
Giving subsidies just hides the cost, that is then paid through taxes. That comes with huge additional costs like an additional intermediary bureaucracy, large corruption (depending on the local government), allocation inefficiencies, electoral political and bureaucratical perverse incentives (for example politicians allocating resources to inefficient places or contractors in exchange for political favors) and many more. None of which exist when funding is private, especially when it's self-funding. So if making a tech viable requires large subsidies, you can be sure in reality is not actually viable, costing much more resources than it saves, which in turn means using the respective tech has a much larger value chain carbon footprint and resource consumption. This logic applies to any tech, from solar, biomass, wind, up to hydro, gas, coal, nuclear. You have to account for the whole value chain's carbon and resource consumption footprint, which means that a tech that has a large outright carbon footprint, like say, coal, might have a much smaller whole value chain carbon footprint per energy unit than, say, solar. It's not a trivial calculation, but unsubsidized and untaxed cost is a good approximation.
Micro turbines are needed more probably because home owners and moving vehicles can use mechanical energy to capture compressed air, then expel that to convert to battery charge. It's just recapturing waste or movement energy, then converting it to needed use. A giant outdoor system can capture thermal heat energy though, and there is already treated silicone configurations that use heat for motors. Beach sand is hot but configured right it's circuit. Wind turbines can also exploit drafty tunnels if one end is heated under vent, because rising, vented heat creates vacuum. Air then rushes in to fill. Wind blades in sky is awesome idea but there's already electrostatic energy up there anyway. Format to beam it to Earth is the big mystery...just like the heat motors hidden in plain sight...
@4:05. Really it's unclear which style is more efficient? A minute later you state that smaller turbines cost more per kW generated... Considering wind is an "endless" resource, the only measure of efficiency is exactly that $/kWh. This is exactly why this tech is not common...
I think that wind turbines are an excellent source of renewable energy that can help reduce our reliance on fossil fuels and combat climate change. However, it is important to keep in mind that even though wind energy is clean and sustainable, we are still utilizing the earth's resources to generate this energy. Wind turbines require materials like steel, copper, and rare earth elements to manufacture, which are finite resources that must be extracted from the earth. Additionally, the construction and maintenance of wind turbines can have environmental impacts, such as habitat disturbance and bird and bat fatalities. Furthermore, while wind energy is renewable, it is not a constant source of energy. Wind speeds can vary significantly depending on the location and time of day, which can affect the reliability of wind turbines as a source of energy. This means that wind power must be supplemented with other sources of energy or energy storage solutions to ensure a steady supply of electricity. Despite these challenges, I believe that wind energy is a crucial component of a sustainable energy mix. With proper planning and management, wind energy can be harnessed in a way that minimizes its environmental impact while providing a reliable source of clean energy. Additionally, advancements in wind turbine technology and energy storage solutions are making wind energy more efficient and cost-effective, which will help drive its adoption in the coming years.
Hey there! You could be interested in our other videos on wind energy. Check them out: Offshore wind 👉 th-cam.com/video/IsUBq3BM8rU/w-d-xo.html Floating wind turbines 👉 th-cam.com/video/El4kHkJ7ITs/w-d-xo.html Myths on solar and wind debunked 👉 th-cam.com/video/k_Wa7v76k-U/w-d-xo.html
That's completely misleading. Vertical turbines are less efficient not because less time has been spent optimising them but because the angle of attack of the blades to the wind direction constantly changing while horisontal turbines don't change their angle of attack. We don't need turbines in cities, it is a very silly idea. City of about 2mln people consume on average 1GW of power. Wind turbines on the top of a hill produces about 1/4 of its rated power in case of the city - 1/8th. So that would require 16 mln 500w turbines that are about 1.5 m in diameter - 8 per person. You would have to have 300meters of small turbines side by side to power 25people's block of flats. They are significantly noisier (per kWh produced) than their industrial scale counterparts. Guys - don't be so incompetent, ask specialists to proofread your scripts, fire your journalists that do these ridiculous videos.
They talked about them as complements not as competition against the typical 3 wing giants for large scale production. Energy production is changing form one unisone grid to a adaptive compartmentalised grid. By having a core large scale energy production take care of prioritised needs you can then supplement the smaller needs with other types of units that does not have similar requirements or limitations. Using small vertical turbines in cities would complement other needs helping to reduce loads on the grid locally. Its like the saying goes "many small creeks eventually become a river."
@@kenji214245 every euro, dollar, pound spent on these idiotic toys and not on "3 bladed giants" is a competition in the race for saving the planet and not a complement. It is also used as greenwashing, hey look we have kids with paper toys, the toys spin = we are all saaaaved. It obscures the picture and makes you think that the problem is being tackled, when in reality it isn't. We need to quadriple the nuclear, particularly fast neutron breeder reactors, tenfold the offshore wind power, build 20 times more solar, increase 200-300 times the energy storage systems, give up personal cars, turn vegetarians, stop wars and start collaborating with everyone, including Russia, Ukraine, African countries, Asian, South American countries and, obviously "the West". Instead we have incompetent journalists pedaling what is essentially glitter laced squirty bottles for the wild fires.
Small turbines need to be looked at in a different way. Anything producing power is helping reduce demand on the main grid, which in the UK needs a huge upgrade to connect major wind farms. Economies of scale have helped the big turbines and solar farms. Apply the same principles to 'small units' and costs will come down. Same principle on storage, but if done on a national scale with every property and electric car capacity, then it can happen. Sadly, this kind of thinking is what governments are meant for, but we seem to be lacking on long-term thinking.
The Vattenfall turbines for the German electric grid are in a dead end, their rotortips have speeds of several hundred km/h-s. And the Netherlands have ancient windmills and rotate with already smooth wind speeds. It’s time to make a system change, the vertical rotors are a hopeful approach.
I feel like there is something wrong with the bladeless one. How exactly can it produce enough energy when its surface of contact with the wind is so small and there is so little movement involved
Like the guy at the start says Different turbines for different uses. It is not always about making lots of power. It may be just there to power something that needs a very little amount of power on a regular basis In a remote location.
This is what GPT-4 has to say about them. How do bladeless wind turbines work. And how much power can they typically produce Bladeless wind turbines harness wind energy without the traditional rotating blades seen in most wind turbines. There are a few different designs of bladeless wind turbines, but most operate on a principle known as "vortex shedding." The most well-known example of bladeless turbine technology is developed by the Spanish company Vortex Bladeless. Their design is a vertical, cone-shaped structure that oscillates in response to vortices in the wind, a phenomenon known as vortex-induced vibration (VIV). When wind interacts with the structure, it generates a pattern of vortices on the leeward side (the side away from where the wind is coming). These vortices alternate in direction and cause the structure to oscillate back and forth. This oscillation is then converted into electrical energy. To get energy from these vibrations, the turbines use an alternator system, which is different from the mechanical systems of traditional turbines. The system adjusts the magnetic resistance to keep the oscillation in tune with the wind speed, optimizing energy harvesting. This technology also requires less maintenance, is quieter, and poses less threat to wildlife compared to traditional wind turbines. In terms of power production, as of my knowledge cutoff in 2021, Vortex Bladeless's turbines are designed for relatively low power generation. The models mentioned in 2021 were rated to produce around 4 kW at maximum. The power production of a wind turbine varies based on its size, design, and the wind speed. A traditional wind turbine, for instance, can range from about 100 kW for smaller installations to 2-5 MW for larger utility-scale machines, and up to 15 MW for the largest designs in development. It's important to note that while bladeless wind turbines have some potential benefits, they also have drawbacks. One significant disadvantage is their efficiency: as of 2021, the efficiency of bladeless turbines is much lower than traditional wind turbines. They also require relatively strong winds to start oscillating, which limits the locations where they can be effectively deployed. By 2023, these figures could have changed as technology advances, so it's best to check with the latest sources for the most accurate, up-to-date information.
@@AORD72 I wasn't really saying it was I think this technology is still in its infancy. Solar isn't always reliable as well and don't work at night or in the dark days of winter. A combination of the 2 and a good battery would be good but it's all down to the needs of that particular project.
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Thank you for sharing your survey link! While it's not directly related to the video, I appreciate your offer. By the way, have you heard about the Segway Portable PowerStation Cube Series? It's a versatile and powerful backup power solution for outdoor adventures and home use. Check it out if you're looking for reliable power on-the-go!
Thank you for sharing the survey link, but it seems unrelated to the video topic. Regarding the video, I haven't watched it yet, but as an outdoor enthusiast, I value renewable energy solutions like wind turbines. By the way, have you heard about the Segway Portable PowerStation Cube Series? It's a versatile power station that could be handy for outdoor adventures and backup power needs.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts! While I haven't watched the video yet, I appreciate your input. As an outdoor enthusiast and someone who values family time, I always look for reliable and durable power sources. Have you heard about the Segway Portable PowerStation Cube Series? It's a versatile powerhouse that's ideal for outdoor adventures and provides uninterrupted power supply during outages. You may find it useful for your outdoor gear and family activities.
Thank you for sharing the survey, but it seems unrelated to the video. Regarding the video, I found it interesting to learn about wind turbines and their potential impact on energy sustainability. By the way, have you heard about the Segway Portable PowerStation Cube Series? It's a versatile power station that could be great for outdoor camping and providing backup power for family time. Check it out for yourself!
I sold over 2,000 small wind turbines over several years of working in the industry and have had a 2.4kW Skystream in my backyard for the past 15-years, powering my own home, and I wouldn't recommend anyone buy a small wind turbine unless you can get it very cheap and install it yourself as the ROI is VERY long, much longer than solar PV. The VAWT's produce such tiny yields, and cost more than HAWT's so they're almost never worth the price. My solar panels far, far outproduce my small wind turbine and they make no noise and require no maintenance, and were much cheaper.
Ive worked for a Solar Company for a little while. Wind Turbines are definitely not the most efficient way currently, especially compared to solar panels. And the fact you need it elevated quite high for it to be efficient at all. And those are the more traditional 3-4 bladed ones too. And yeah just my two cents, this should all be accurate as i recall?
EDIT: Ooops, there was 3 and 4 bladed turbines
Finally some genuinely good advice from the people i wanted to hear it from. Please comment more
What do you think of the Ridgeblade turbine that you set on the roof ridge?
@@magnussorensen2565 That does look like to be an old idea that's resurfaced as something else.
I wonder why it failed to begin with.
@MrArtist7777 Having spent 20 years in the small wind industry I 100% agree, the ROI is not worth it. Solar has no moving parts, makes no noise, requires very little maintenance. Solar is like a dependable loving spouse, always has your back and is dependable and puts out. Wind is like a street hooker, fun for a quick moment, but will steal your money, time, energy, keeping up up all night, and cause you nothing but trouble....
I remember being told 15 years ago solar power will never be viable because it costs too much.
It doesn't seem likely that small wind will improve at the same rate as solar or even big wind. However, it seems worth exploring
@lawrenceheyman435 Everything you see from New companies is OLD technology. They are just spinning new catch phrases and BS ideas. It the wind turbine manufacturer has a " Invest " or "Join us" or "Revolutionary" in its company site run away. Somethings things like the "Vortex turbine" are totally new but it is hard to get power in a big way from linear motion. so no ideas will come up but they must not be based on the same old Vertical / Horizontal designs.
I remember being told last year that nuclear power isn't viable because it costs too much. (Oddly enough there is already a lot of it.) With the plethora of new reactor designs, it seems very likely that small nuke plants will improve at an even faster rate than wind. Besides a small nuke plant is about the size of a big wind generator.
@daniellarson3068 you could be right. I am not against any low carbon technology. SMRs are being explored and maybe you'll be able to invest in one soon. You won't be able to put one on your roof though!
Plus Solar power have become cheaper than coals nowdays
@@arrell1xyzand when the wind doesn't blow or the sun shine... Winter.... What, be like Germany and burn brown coal!😢
Fun fact: For my final thesis project that i'm doing with my peer, I'm going for a three blade Darrieus type H rotor VAWT. To be more concrete my study is focused on the optimization of the profile of the turbine.
I'm starting in two weeks.
be mentally prepared for deception buddy : read my comment above and get yourself some Paul GIPE books before wasting your time ... ah the long living myths of VAWTS ad perfecting blades. You have a far better chance at having tea with Bigfoot or being offered a tour of the universe by Aliens than succeeding in your project.
I hope that your thesis gets you the grade you desire, but sadly your work and time will probably not yield any new breakthroughs that will have any practical use. I am old enough to remember the time before widespread wind turbines, and the design most quickly ruled out was one with a vertical axis. Not only does it have a relatively small swept area, but half of that area saps energy capture as it has to be rotated against the same wind we are trying to harvest. I accept that there is a miniscule market for VAWTs but they will never make a dent on conventional designs.
There are many good reasons reason that aircraft propellers are shaped the way they are, and why rotary winged aircraft have speed a ceiling that can never be exceeded.
Try GAYK of GMRT
@@thedubwhisperer2157 Děkuji za podnět. Zamyslel jsem se nad funkcí letadlové vrtule a pochopil, proč není vhodná na sběr větru. A že ze stejného důvodu má můj VAWrT při rychlosti větru 2m/s obvodovou rychlost 6m/s.
any updates?
I live permanently aboard my sailing boat, equipped with an extensive range of electrical and electronic equipment. Solar panels and a wind turbine easily keep my house and engine crank battery banks fully charged, except rarely during prolonged periods of windless heavily overcast days.
And that's where those small VAWTs and similar things shine the best 🙂
How rare? 20 days per year? 40?
This is why I'm here. I'm retro fitting a 32' shallow draft, full keel cruiser now for extended live aboard retirement in the gulf and western Atlantic/Brazil. Can you point me in the right direction to research size, style, makes/models? I'm looking to mount two on the outside edges of the solar arch over the stern.
@@dentside78 Nice! I hope maybe to buy an Orion boat next year. I will have to find out a bit about sailing clubs in my area and find a place to put that boat :)
@@dentside78 The hardest aspect I encountered during initial research (and of any marine electronic equipment for that matter) was that manufacturers and retailers present data differently, using sometimes wildly differing unit measurements and data basis. That makes meaningful comparison difficult.
I created a large spreadsheet on a wall and endeavoured to convert all data to common units of measurement. Not always easy!
Then check out the many sailing community blogs, chatgroups, and TH-cam for people’s real life experiences with, and opinions of various makes that appeal to you.
Finally: in the harsh marine environment you generally get what you pay for. So be careful of ‘cheapies’ and deals that are too good to be true. Best wishes.
In the USA an alternative energy initiative was begun by the federal government during the Gerald Ford administration, around 1975. NASA designed a Darrius
vertical mill with extruded aluminum foils, and there was significant interest in experimental designs through at least the mid 1980s. A study done (ca 1990) by a German university professor pointed out that with all vertical windmills, there is a larger amount of material used for the area of exposure to the stream of wind (more material = more capex). To my knowledge, no vertical mills have demonstrated sufficiently improved power output to justify the cost of these
designs. In addition, the vertical mills pass the airfoils through the 'wake' of the leading airfoil; this means generally increased audible noise, and certainly
increased mechanical WEAR. Fatigue wear of the airfoils was discovered in the initial deployment of Darrius turbines.
It is true that in certain applications there may be some use of vertical mills ... but it remains to be seen if they will be economically viable.
When fuel costs peak or environmental concerns arise, there has been increased entrepreneurial interest in these designs. Rigorous, real-world
testing should be done to prove concepts have real ROI value.
I've seen these same criticisms of VAWTs before (in fact, the language you used is so familiar that I suspect I've seen you post this same comment on other videos). Your second point, about turbulence, makes a lot of sense to me and could be the fatal flaw for VAWTs. However, I do take issue with your "more material means more capex" statement. All else being equal, of course, this would be true, but materials are rarely as big an expense as labor and machine time. That's why there's so much content for DIY small turbines - lots of things start to make economic sense if you don't account for the value of time (or if you're enjoying yourself so much that it doesn't feel like work). So if VAWTs took less labor to install and maintain ( a big "if", but conceivable given the motor and other key components are at ground level or close to it), that could easily outweigh the cost of extra material.
But again, the turbulence leading to more maintenance and/or a shorter life (and more noise) could certainly make them too impractical
I remember seeing these smaller (vertical) wind turbines next to the river in Taipei over 10 years ago. I thought it was a brilliant way to fit wind turbines into a very compact city. They were very nice looking and in no way destroyed the view when you where walking next to the river. Sadly, I haven't seen this anywhere in Europe
The problem is that in this video they really dont state the magnitude of the big difference: Efficiency. The yields of the vertical turbines is abyssmal. Still, I hope it gets more attention and improvement, as it will probably have a place in future.
You didn't see any small wind turbines because they are extremely ineffective! With the same investment you can generate 20 times more electricity with solar panels today.
You pretty much skipped on the reason why most newly built wind turbines nowadays are massive. How many small turbines would you need to replace even one big one? How does the cost per kwh compare between them? How steady is the output (on a small and a larger scale)? I had hoped that the video would cover that, because those are exactly the reasons why small turbines are an extremely rare niche thing right now.
Many. The higher up and the bigger the blades the bigger the yield, it grows exponentially. even with traditional smaller ones (which are still the most efficient) it is somewhere up to 1.200 if I am not mistaken. One big one easily yields 12 Mwh, a small one only 0,5 to 10 kwh. Imagine the pollution of your horizon with that many scattered around the area instead of one big one.
bUT tHEy ARe mORE eFFIcienT!!1
@@AnneBerkheij The power output from a turbine increases with the cube of the wind speed, and wind speed increases with height - so getting a bit more height makes a huge difference to power output.
@@vylbird8014 Je to druhá mocnina.
Tlaková síla má velikost
𝐹=𝑝𝑆
kde 𝑝 je tlak a je obsah plochy.
Tlaková síla působí vždy kolmo na plochu, která je u trojcípých HAWT opravdu malá.
Velikost vrtule roste s třetí mocninou, protože je to objekt který má objem.
Lidi si to často pletou.
@@vylbird8014 Aren't there high wind speeds alongside buildings? If we're too lazy to model it we should look for places where birds fly a lot, they know how to find consistent updrafts. Then put them there. Maybe I should watch the video first :D
As I understand it, the Taj Mahal uses wind to cool the interior.
The Taj is made of white marble, a cold material, that has narrow slits cut into the walls. The interior of the slits are more narrow than the outside causing wind to speed up as it passes through & so, cool down.
Giving 17th century airconditioning.
Yes, desert culture has some good architecture that the "west" hasn't discovered yet.
@@quinto190
Because the West discovered heating techniques for cold winters that desert societies don't need
Yes it's very common in Middle Eastern countries where the wind is funnelled through the building thus cooling it.
@@who9387 Not just the wind, they also use thermal convection.
@@quinto190 Taj is Indian.
How can they be classified as desert
One interesting vertical turbine installation was in Turkey I think where they put them in the median barrier of a motorway and as such captured the "wind" generated by traffic, and as it was in the median it gets "pushed" from both sides as the traffic is going in opposite directions
Saw another video dive into those--and determined they were a really bad idea for 2 reasons: 1. can be dangerous if accidents occur and 2. they actually reduce the efficiency of all vehicles that drive by such that it's a net negative energy producer. On the latter point, apparently walls close to roadways also harm vehicle efficiency due to causing increased drag by stagnating the airflow.
They create very low energy
@@tHebUm18 the energy you take out has to come from somewhere so understand it would have a negative impact on cars, would have thought it was marginal though (where there are walls already). Walls are often used to reduce noise in urban environments so they're not just there for the turbines.
The design of the first installations seemed quite naive, I imagine a better efficiency could be achieved through optimizing the interactions between the turbines and any barrier.
Of all scams stealing kinetic energy from cars on the road is one of the worse.
@@hans-joachimbierwirth4727 the energy by the cars has already been put it to get the air moving, (the theory at least) is more energy recovery. However after I looked into it more, the output of 1 experimental setup was 50W, which is so low it probably wouldn't be worth the installation effort.
I was the head of operations at a VAWT start-up. The cost of installation is insane.
Why is that? compared to solar for example.
@@willemkalkman99I looked into it a few years ago. To be of any use, the turbine needs to be on a tall pole. So, you are applying a periodic force at the end of a long arm ... so the arm needs to be rigid and durable. Your house probably wasn't designed for that load, so you can't mount it on your roof. It ends up looking like a radio tower in your backyard for a few Wh of power. It would take years to counteract the climate impact of the steel.
On a new building where you plan for the load, it might make sense.
If you spend more on the turbine than on its tower, you've been ripped off
Here in Belgium, in rural areas I've started to see these small horizontal turbines popping up with wooden blades. I haven't looked around much yet but I've seen 3 so far and heard of a few more in the area. One of them is unfortunately right in front of my mother's house, and makes a quite annoying noise even when there's only a bit of wind.
We're talking about a very small area as well, less than 10km across.
I have seen vertical turbine powered lamp post and I see them turning all the time and the lamps working fine at night. They have been working for about 10 years!
Have you seen any of these or other small turbines around?
@@eak2429😂 very funny
Yup, I've seen a pair of vertical axis wind turbines at a military base in Halifax, NS. They look almost identical to the wind turnbine shown in the video @29 seconds
Yes, we have a bunch here in Flagstaff, Arizona as Southwest Windpower, formerly world's largest small wind manufacturer, built their turbines in Flagstaff until they went bankrupt, along with most every other small wind turbine manufacturer, in 2012. I used to be part of a burgeoning small wind industry and helped draft the SWCC guidelines and authored a paper on the subject, and lobbied in Washington D.C. in front of U.S. Senators on small wind, and the whole industry crashed when solar PV went under $1/Watt, making it impossible to compete with. Small wind was at: $5-10/Watt, or more, and faced many challenges, which is why it's virtually gone.
2023(Gregorian) “Respect and dignity.” Furthermore:
Efficiency. There is not enough energy in the wind for small turbines. Cities are usually built in low wind areas. Large turbines are built on ranges and at sea where there is strong wing. Large turbines access stronger winds as the ground slows the wind.
As someone who is currently paying off land in an area that gets sun throughout most of the year and lots of wind. I definitely plan to make use of harnessing both once im done paying it off and can build some structures
It is not only energy efficient but thinking of the less space requirement and safety for the birds is of big importance. Amazing innovation
We will like to add this to our main Planet Cents playlist to inspire more people. ~Team PlanetCents
Hey there! Thanks! You might also want to check out our video where we talk about the matter of wind turbines being dangerous for birds 👉th-cam.com/video/k_Wa7v76k-U/w-d-xo.html
When you're talking about efficiency, what are you referring to/where do you get this?
Horizontal wind turbines are MUCH more efficient, since all of the blades face the wind at all time.
And if you're talking about small-scale vs. big-scale, big-scale wins a lot of thr time, when it comes to efficiency.
Hey there! The small-scale wind turbines are not in competition with the big ones. They could rather be used in special situations as we explain in the video.
Painting the blades on regular wind turbines in the right way greatly reduces the problem for birds.
The bird line reveals more about the people making it. Do wind turbines kill birds? Yes. So do pet cats - about a thousand times more. But no-one dares propose banning pet cats, or even something like mandating loud bell-collars. It's just a political no-go to criticise the cute. People who oppose wind turbines to protect birds have an argument that is technically correct, but shows severely misplaced priorities - suggesting they are looking for an excuse to take down some eco-hippies rather than seriously considering the issue.
I'm a big fan of innovation and new designs but please keep an eye on the numbers when you make a video about technology. 4:03 it is possible to meassure the power output of a turbine. Engineers have done that over decades and the result is pretty clear. Second point: the windspeeds, and even more its power, in cities are much lower than the winds that the big turbines use and its no problem to get the electricity from outside of the city. I know pictures of futuristcal spinning or vibrating objects are nice for an entertaining video but in terms of producing electricity rotation means nothing without a load on it. I am very diappointed of this video and I am sure the experts you asked can confirm what I said.
Hey there! You are right, as we mention the small wind turbines are not an alternative to the big wind turbines but they have different use cases. They could be used to complement the big wind turbines as we tackle in the last chapter, starting minute 6:26.
You should cover Harmony Turbines, it’s a PA company with a focus on residential wind.
Small scale wind turbines make much more sense in that maximum efficiency output is of less concern than a practical use of space and simple materials especially in non industrial areas and among people without money
That tumbleweed inspired one seems really neat if it could be scaled up. In the end, small scale wind is a hard sell compared to solar because the need for moving parts inherently increases cost and reduces reliability.
I am a wind power enthusiast and love watching wind power videos. Thank you for sharing.
Hey there! Very glad to hear that! Which one of our videos on wind energy did you like most so far?
I saw these being tested at my college back in 2015, it was taken down due to friction issues I think. I don't know if it was a study done by the college or an engineering class, we did have a field of solar panels next to the building to help power it.
5:08 is extremely interesting. Multi directional wind turbine concept.
My old college put a vertical turbine on the roof of the new science center it built.
@@johnny5941 no they didnt demolish any buildings they just expanded and built a science center with a wind turbine on the roof.
Gotta love DW documentaries from a different angle and we need more vertical wind turbines and renewable sources of energy
I wonder what it would be like if bridges - and even highways - were lined with small wind turbines.
Particularly for large rigs driving by they create a huge air stream which technically is wasted energy. We defectively be able to convert the drag created by large rigs into electricity and recapture the losses
@@SpiritCannon I was thinking of stationary roadside devices, but your idea is good, as well. If we can work purely with turbulence, then your idea would pay off, maybe double, as it might both reduce drag and generate energy.
When you drove against the wind you wouldn't help but slow down those turbines. When you drove with the wind you also wouldn't add up.
The edge of the road is a good space sine is free but turbine would need to be high enough for the turbulence doesn't affects it too much.
@@mariuszfurman4767 This would certainly be true of directional turbines, but it might be an open question for the omnidirectional turbines mentioned at 5:20 and the vibrating turbine. Tiny fringes on speed skater's outfits vibrate in the rushing air and reduce turbulence, allowing skaters to go faster. Curved wingtips on jet liners reshape wingtip vortices and reduce fuel consumption. Bulbous bows on large ships alter wakes and reduce drag, saving fuel. Dimples on golf balls reduce drag and increase lift and distance in flight. It is possible that an omnidirectional wind turbine could be designed on a moving vehicle that would both reduce overall drag and also collect energy, both reducing fuel (or electricity, for electric trucks) usage and generate electricity. I can't say if it's worth the experiment, but I wouldn't write off the innovation at this stage.
How about putting small turbines in the front end of cars, 70mph on a motorway would generate some power surely. obviously it would only work at speed, but something is better than nothing, for little cost.
Good article, but your animation of the horizontal turbine at 2:15, the rotation is in the incorrect direction to the blade shape...
Just discovered this channel. You should be on Nebula!
I completely agree, an ecological imperative that we both produce and use - not just consume energy.
However, as a male Norwegian at 57, I seem to have both my peers and most policies against me.
At the macro level there’s petro-greenwashing and the state pension fund. At the local level, legislation against being off grid, or adding this kind of infrastructure to it outside of corporate ownership.
Our political economy simply resist these changes, as it threatens “growth” and challenges ownership and monopolies in energy production, transport, exchange trade and storage.
Effectively, you *can* but it takes an awful lot of money. A “rich” country doesn’t mean we all are - not after say 1990.
I hope I’m wrong, but don’t believe that a fair and equitable energy transition can happen without an equally formidable political change.
This is about so much more than “money”, in ways that don’t fit into a spreadsheet. That’s why we struggle, right…? 👍😊
In Huntsville, AL there's a mall on hwy 231 that runs their parking lot lighting with these mounted on top of the light poles. I think that's a practical use for this type of turbine.
I've seen such stuff. 'Green washing' ~ I should guess a very expensive installation that produces very little if anything.
There are many wind turbines in Denmark. When it is very windy the electricity here is super cheap and sometimes it is so cheap to generate electricity that you get paid for using it. That the time I do a lot of cleaning, ironing, and use as many devices as I can 😆
@@carlojean1974 haha. but we have very high taxes and everything else is quite expensive. But we have free healthcare care tough. Every country has its cons and pros 😅😁
@@YokoFuongAnhsounds like a dream to me
But here in my country I don't know how work
Same in Sweden
I will start a small wind turbine in India The electricity costs very high..
The biggest problem with the small turbine in urban areas is noise, especially from badly maintained equipment.
Easy fix, place them between highways and rail lines. Harness the wind from passing vehicles.
But I was thinking of the domestic DIYers.
Hey there! Small wind turbine device are actually not that noisy. Their estimated sound level is 43 decibels (dB). To easier grasp that: It is lower than an AC but a bit higher than a usual refrigerator.
the simplicity of small wind turbines, it's lifespan and low maintenance make it the best cost-efficient solution with minimum experience and responsibility, these criteria are essential for expansion., You clearly mentioned the difference that the aerodynamics of small turbines are not improved ... and they are definitely on the way ... we will not wait long ... improving the efficiency of small turbines will open other doors for us ... and thus draws the path of civilization
The development of the height of large turbines led them to the sea, which enabled us to reach new levels on the scale of efficiency
And small turbines must respond strongly to that step so that we can benefit from the competition in improvement
The best part of the video is 3:05. Good job by the DW Planet A video editing team.
There was an ambitious plan some years ago to line a busy US highway with vertical turbines; the idea being that the usual windy conditions combined with the turbulence of constant traffic passing by at an average speed of around 60-70mph would keep them spinning. Unfortunately, the idea never was realized due to cost and possible issues with affecting the scenic element and visual safety element, as well as possible hypnosis or other mental effects from seeing so many turbines in a row spinning.
Some studies were done to try and break up the visual via either spacing them out more or painting a turbine a different color every few turbines to break it, but spreading them out reduced turbine effectiveness while painting them came with their own issues of what colors best work all-year round and all-weather round to remain visible. From a safety standpoint, there was the issue of how the turbines could affect visibility down the highway, given that while it gently curves, drivers usually look out far ahead to be aware of issues, so another idea was to put them in clusters on alternating sides of the road offering enough visual sightlines to still see ahead. The last issue was dealing with emergencies; to maximize on the traffic turbulence, the turbines would need to be placed close to the road, but placing them close would affect the amount of space available for pulling over to the side or oversized, non-standard loads that might be trucked along the way (to say nothing of possible future road expansion).
Maybe the idea could be revisited on bridges and overpasses instead, where it's still plenty turbulent, and where the shoulder distance is more rigid.
I'd say the thing about wind turbines is that commercially available ones are overpriced, and thus outcompeted (maybe not everywhere, but in most places) by photovoltaics. On the other hand, from a DIY and upcycling perspective, it's much more viable to build a wind turbine, as most parts can be obtained cheaply or for free. Which means we could be seeing a lot of different designs if only more people were willing to go the DIY route.
Though there's also the issue of placement - since working on a slanted roof can be tricky and dangerous, if it's the only place you have available for power generation, it might be preferable to hire professionals to install your generator - in which case you might as well go with photovoltaics, as it's going to be expensive either way.
Only if you are either comfortable doing roofwork yourself, or if you have plenty of space on the ground to build a free standing turbine, wind turbines gain advantage, as you can save money on the installation. Which I guess is another limiting factor for wind turbines, as most people don't have land to spare.
I am of the opinion that vertical axis wind turbine have certain advantages over the conventional ones we see. Even if they are not as efficent.
1) They can be placed in denser patterns.
2) The large mass of the generator set can be placed at ground level easing the servicing of the unit.
3) Without the heavy mass of the generator set being x number of meters in the air on top of a pylon it should require less concrete for the foundation
But these Turbine blades are hard to recycle.
A) Never buy a HAWT.
B) You need unoccluded non-turbulent wind to power your turbine.
C) Thus you need to install a turbine on a pole.
D) a 4 yard rotor diameter is the minimum to generate appreciable power for your home. 6 would be better.
E) You still need solar and preferably batteries too.
YES, totally true
Great subtitles!!! 🖤
I've seen it in fictional settings a couple of times, like the "Storm Point" map in Apex Legends. The vertical wind turbines do look futuristic, but grounded in reality. I guess the reason why we haven't used them as much is because it's not as efficient as large traditionally designed turbines.
Vertical wind turbines also appear in the *Halo: Reach* video game. I have actually seen one in real life though, but only one.
In Huntsville, AL there's a mall that runs all of their parking lot lighting with these on top of the light poles.
Would toroidal blades help make turbines more efficient like they do for propellers?
About six years ago I bought, apparently, a really crappy small horizontal turbine. It was so loud I could hear it inside my house. It sounded like an angry pack of crazed bees. Since then I have seen others, that look nearly identical that are quiet.
They're not around because they are inefficient. Companies strive for efficiency and power utilities look past these for 3 blade turbines, whose efficiency increases with the length of the blades.
Nice find someone else who understands how turbines work. This is nothing more then an attempt to sell old useless designs that were proven useless decades ago. I blame the likes of Robert Murray Smith who is a master of dragging up failed ideas from the past and reselling them as the next best thing.
luv the addition of the puppies🐾
Awesome creativity in the making.
The phallic one is not a "turbine" (it doesn't turn)
Magnus rotors (sail) DO rotate but they produce thrust
That’s the wind vibrator - maybe it doesn’t look good, but how does it make you feel?
I wonder if there could be a combination wind turbine for your house that can also vent your attic and have a combined benefit of releasing heat and having the heat rising from your attic turning the turbine and producing electricity at the same time.
It will work, but only supply enough power to charge your phone and run a string of LED lights.
@@santafecanon Just an idea.
The first turbine would get you about 4-6w, and each turbine added would reduce the wattage of each subsequent turbine by about 1 third depending on the size of your attic.
I've wondered why farms don't go back to just good old wind mills? Also I think the small turbines would be great for odd locations like (the grid/frame work to solar farms). Imagine 100 archer solar farm with wind generation in the same footprint.
Hey there! Thanks for sharing your ideas! Wind mills are still used at some farms. It is an easy way to transform wind energy into mechanical energy to move water, mill grains etc. However, wind turbines allow for more options as it converts the wind energy into electrical energy.
Wind power is awesome !.
I would consider a construction where you build a large tray that could take up the swing and plant a fast growing tree in that tray. Then when the wind comes and is caught by the tree then you can catch some of that energy. It won't be a fast direct measurable yield from it, but it could probably be easy to make and useful in areas where it's more important to be cheap. Then let the swing operate pumps for water.
4:15 That's not true, sorry. If the wind sped up when passing a turbine, then that would mean the turbine would be driving it, not being driven. What is true, however, is that vertical axis turbines can deal with slightly turbulent flow better than horizontal axis ones, as they are unidirectional. That is why they can be packed more densely in a farm.
Spotted most of these forms in a South Wales University test station about 30 years ago.
Seen them in space engineers years ago, seem pretty good to me
I remember when I was in my 20s me and my father went to Ilocos Norte Philippines for his work and we decided to visit the wind farm there. The one we went to was on a beach. I'm not sure now but anyone at the time can go close to it we can even see some locals relaxing in its shadow. The sand around it are black. It was massive as I stand under it, and loud when the turbines started turning. The feeling was like standing below a large robot which started to move.
75% of the verticals shown in this video were manufactured by companies that are now out of business! There is a reason for that. Once again everything old is NEW again, but that still does not change the reason vertical are not viable. They are not efficient and never will be.
Yeah, there's a reason for that. It's called "that's how things work".
Most companies, no matter the field, go under in the first few years.
60% of restaurants fail in the first year, and 80% within the first 5 years.
According to you, restaurants arent viable. 🤷♂️
Fact is, it's not as simple as that.
There's a lot of wind in cities, but not much room for football field length blades.
And the reason the big ones are first, is because in all forms of power generation, bigger is more efficient.
But wind doesn't have to be as efficient, because it's cheaper..
In fact, at grid level, wind is the cheapest electricity there is.
Smaller units will get cheaper over time, as more and more people buy them. Just like everything else does.
What?
You're surprised that big companies put their research money into the big units first?
Not sure why you're surprised by how things are going. It's how our modern world works.
Everytime they invented a new sensor to put into phones, they started with putting them into the expensive phones first. That mean the cheaper phones weren't viable?
Solar is still better overall though. Mainly because it's not that much more expensive than wind, but it provides a massive number of jobs. More than any other form of electricity production.
Coal is 63% of our electricity and provides just over 900,000 jobs.
Solar is about 3%, but provides over 500,000 jobs, while being cheaper than any fossil fuel.
i’m anxious to see them put these on the tops of a building. we could power a city with only a few of them!
unless you live on top of a hill with no trees or homes nearby there just are not that good for most small homes. A really good one will cost a lot of money. Then there's the noise and vibration to deal with. I think they make good sense on top of tall buildings.
One of the issues surrounding the Large Wind-Farm type wind systems, that are often glossed over...
Is that the Blades both wear out, and are not easily recyclable or reusable.
Yeah, this is the modern age.
They've been working on that for quite some time now.
And a company has invented recyclable blades.
And it wouldn't even matter.
Compared to what coal plants release, a bunch of blades in a landfill, would be MUCH better for the planet.
@@lordgarion514 Are semi truck sized wind blades acceptable at Landfills?
@@Paulthored
At some, you can see pics of them lined up.
The republicans like to post things like that, while ignoring the facts.
Just like the republicans liked to report how many birds wind turbines kill. While ignoring the fact that the study they used, wasn't a wind turbine study.
It was a study of bird deaths by all forms of electricity production.
Sure, wind turbines kill quite a few birds every year, but when you work those deaths out per gwh, it looks a bit different.
Wind kills 0.3 birds per gwh.
Fossil fuels kill 5.3 birds per gwh.
About 17 TIMES more.
They also left out the research that shows painting one of the blades greatly reduces bird deaths. So hopefully that'll start being done before long.
But the idiots that listen to the republicans aren't bright enough to go looking for the truth.
Fact is FF have had hundreds of years of use, and well over 100 years of government subsidies. They're about as good as they're going to get. But we're really just getting started with renewable.
Hey there! We publish a video on the recycling of wind turbines in a few weeks. Subscribe to be notified!
Eventually. They've got a thirty-year-or-so life though, which isn't bad.
Covering Suburban streets with Solar Panels at a 5 meter height could combine with small vertical turbines above the panel structure combined with storage batteries to provide more power to low voltage grids linked to a sub station??
Hey there! Yes, this is possible. Many installations for home combine both solar and wind.
I love your puns (and the dog!) at 8:15.
Strongly considering having multiple smaller vertical wind mills. I'm in a very windy location and the footprint to my property for a vertical mill is simply smaller when taking stabilizing cables into account I'd need for a small, but much taller horizontal mill. Solar consideration is less here close to 60 degrees North as well as having to have something installed on the roof of this nearly 200 year old farm. Simply not something I'd like to see damaged or loose it's character of because of some ugly panels.
Reasons for choosing different shapes and sizes of renewables can be as varied as the amount of properties that want to invest in them. The potential for energy independence is the biggest attractor here as well as the ever increasing Electric bill that makes the ROI time better each year.
Even if you need to repair something on the roof anyway: Small wind turbines are never worth it! There is hardly any wind near the ground - and when there is, it is always gusty, which always significantly reduces the service life of these systems. The electricity yield from wind turbines is proportional to the third power of the wind speed, i.e. 100% more wind = 800% more yield! And if you have a farmhouse, you also have space for a few solar panels. Due to the extreme drop in prices, it makes a lot more sense in 2024 to simply display a few solar panels. To ensure that you have as even an electricity supply as possible throughout the day, you should set them up facing south-east (in the morning) and south-west. Solar panels almost always work reliably and almost maintenance-free for 25 to 30 years.
More on actual deployment of these strange vertical wind mills and rate of adoption would be good
I believe that Harmony turbines in the USA has a small horizontial turbine that has a centrifically activated mechanism that slows the horizontal turbine down in high winds so that it avoids over-speed and destruction while still permitting electric generation. Dreaming of installing a horizontal turbine in my backyard to provide supplimential electric power to lower my electric bill and to use excessive excess power to charge an emergency battery pack. Live in the Upper Midwestern USA but in the Ohio Valley weather pattern. ( mid-winters with more ice than snow) We get lots of rain all year round and very cloudy winters and when talking getting the most for my money; wind looks more promising than solar. Live next to a large vertical turbine wind farm and the nearby Honda transmission plant uses two large vertical wind turbines to heat steel billets for forming them into transmission parts. They probably use some of the power to melt aluminium for the transmission cases. Unfortunately, a back-up generator that runs off our propane tank's propane may provide the lowest cost option for emergency power. ( unless I could find the time to build the wind turbine myself.)
I plan on running several in series on roof peak with an A-frame running from 1 end of roof edge to the other. The turbine shafts will extend past the top side of blades into bearings mounted in the A-frame. This eliminates the wobble & a lightning rod can be easily mounted above the A-frame.
Are there commercially available small wind turbines that generate electricity from home roof vents? We have 3 of the turbines there already to release heat from the attic, but they don't generate electricity.
Hey Dave! Yes, there are a lot of small wind turbines available for home use. Obviously in different price ranges and sizes.✨
The North Sea appears to be a region where offshore wind will be developed soon. Recently I saw a video on wave power conversion devices and it appears that the two will work together well, since some of the infrastructure, such as the underwater cables to land, do not have to be duplicated. Where there is frequent heavy winds over water, there are also heavier than normal and constant seas and generating potential. If renewables are going to compete economically with fossil fuels, this kind of synergy should be sought.
I see all these stories and the common thread is "of course we need to increase/beef up the grid"... maybe, we really don't. The grid is already supporting a lot of activity, maybe the way to increase how much total can be handled is simply put a lot of smaller generation behind the meter as it were and not focus on moving the generated excess to the grid via schemes for feed back tariffs etc. Maybe really small packages can be built which contain a mix of generation types along with good volume of battery storage which matches the facility power use history, deploy it locally and just plan on using all that on site. This would replace a lot of demand from the grid, leaving more supportable capacity available. The key would be not to get too custom on the end user solution configurations, just right-size a standard package selection and if need be throw the excess to ground.
Hey, thanks for your input. You might find this video interesting as well: th-cam.com/video/u-DsDuTceTo/w-d-xo.html
We'd be interested to hear your thoughts!
How I appreciate DW! Subscribed.
Honestly I think they serve a lot of purpose for looking cool. Mostly the pretty ones. I like some 3d printed designs for looking good basically in a garden.
Wind and solar are distributed unlike petroleum, hydro, and coal which are all concentrated forms of energy. Thus, each house now may be designed with natural gas furnace, so to,it may be designed with a combination of solar panels,vertical wind turbines, power walls, and electronics to render such a home almost self sustaining regarding electrical power.
I like the idea of placing a lot of smaller vawts around, they seem to be a lot less hassle than those giant windmills.
I saw one of this vertical wind turbine 25 years ago exhibit in univ nearby my home.
Thanks for making this brilliant vid!
Glad you enjoyed it!
I want to make one with sails that make it spin. It is more of a moving sculpture than a power plant, although I do intend to charge my batteries with it too.
I live off grid in Canada with solar and it works but it would be good to have another energy supply as well. Hydrogen production in summer is also interesting to me but I don't know how to store enough for winter
You can make gas from composting organic waste by yourself💨🔥👍
You probably don't want to store hydrogen. It requires a lot of safety measures to handle, and those measures push the cost up - you have to use hydrogen-safe alloys for everything because it has an ability to slowly weaken metals over time, and leak-detection systems. You're better off with a big battery.
You should cover Piggott machines that are the only viable small wind turbine in the world. They are self manufactured and have been around for 30 years.
Important points:
- turbulent wind is like a shade under a tree. There's no useful energy in it.
- a wind turbine in the roof is like a PV panel in the basement. Does not produce anything.
- vertical wind turbines are more of a social science issue than a technical one. They have been disproven since the 70s but people insist in bringing them back from time to time. We need some serious research on why people believe in this failed technology
- a vertical wind turbine is called an anemometer. There is no other sensible use case for it.
100% correct!! Hugh Piggott axial flux turbines work! Are low cost and easy to repair. But, this is another category of turbines that this video did not cover. DIY is different. The Piggott turbine was successfully copied and commercially sold By African Wind Power (AWP). It was a great heavy and extremely durable machine. But, the company went bust and the owner went on to work in small wind area NREL in colorado. This was a sad loss for small wind.
@@williambryce8527 hello William,
By no means Piggott turbines are out of the market. Wind empowerment carries on the technology, and so does tripalium in France, where the are about 100 of these connected to the grid. 500rpm had successfully adapted the Piggott to semi-industrial manufacturing. Even Piggott made a 5.6kW design with ferrite magnets for better reliability.
If a fraction of the research money pour into these ultimately failed attempts to create non viable VAWT were injected in solving a few issues of the Piggott for mass manufacturing, small wind would already be everywhere where it makes sense.
Industrial-scale horizontal wind turbines chop birds mid-air. From small songbirds to large storks and birds of prey. And it does'nt help that the most suitable locations for wind farms are along major migration routs for birds... I would advocate for vertical any day!
To be successful wind turbines need the wind blowing. A big improvement would be to be able to keep running in strong winds and when they're replaced they are 100% recycled and not just conveniently dumped somewhere.
So freaking cool ! Love your videos ! I've been using them in class !!!!
Hey Rafael! Very glad to hear that you enjoyed the video. We post new videos like this one every week. We would love to see you subscribe and hear what you think about our upcoming videos ✨
It would be great if yall mentioned the hivawt as its the only swvc certified vawt. Also the powernest developed in denmark that produces 6x more energy than rooftop solar
Smaller one need to spin full blast to produce a meaningful sum of electricity. They also tend to be loud, and annoy everyone else around you.
Nuclear power plant for large scale, to avoid to destroy landscape. Small vertical turbine for home... why not ?
You packed quite a lot of information into a short video, without being either cheer-leading or unduly skeptical. Well done.
For interested viewers seeking more detailed information I recommend the channel "Engineering with Rosie" by an Australian wind power expert.
Problem with wind turbin is power = air speed x cross section area. It is easier for the normal shape turbine cause the higher you go the faster the air and it is easir to increase the cross section area just by increasing the length of the blades
It’s actually air speed squared. So you really want to go for those consistently high wind speed locations.
@@mx2000 isn't it cubed. Power=1/2 * air density * sweep area * wind speed ^3
Wind speed is very important, which is why small turbines in residential areas don't work.
@@AORD72 it is cubed.
@@lylestavast7652 I know it is cubed, it was a rhetorical statement. As I followed with the statement "Power=1/2 * air density * sweep area * wind speed ^3".
Winds and Solar are both suplemental power supplies that is great when the grid goes down at anytime. Personally have no use for super-sized wind generation because they are not environmentally friendly.
It's not that the vertical ones aren't "aerodynamically optimized to the max", they are less efficient simply because of the way they work
I always wondered - why trains/ trucks and buses never harvest wind energy? they run at fairly at 60 KMPH/ 40 Miles per hour and we can certainly get the vertical turbines built around to generate massive energy from them. Air always flows in one direction - from the front towards the back. Vortex or vertical axis wind generators can certainly be tested!!
Energy conservation. More resistance caused by turbines will lead to higher fuel usage so it's simpler and more effective to generate electricity directly from the engine via built-in car generators
I hope this was a joke question.
According to Our World In Data, turbines were only 3% of total energy prodution in 2022
Giving subsidies just hides the cost, that is then paid through taxes. That comes with huge additional costs like an additional intermediary bureaucracy, large corruption (depending on the local government), allocation inefficiencies, electoral political and bureaucratical perverse incentives (for example politicians allocating resources to inefficient places or contractors in exchange for political favors) and many more. None of which exist when funding is private, especially when it's self-funding. So if making a tech viable requires large subsidies, you can be sure in reality is not actually viable, costing much more resources than it saves, which in turn means using the respective tech has a much larger value chain carbon footprint and resource consumption.
This logic applies to any tech, from solar, biomass, wind, up to hydro, gas, coal, nuclear. You have to account for the whole value chain's carbon and resource consumption footprint, which means that a tech that has a large outright carbon footprint, like say, coal, might have a much smaller whole value chain carbon footprint per energy unit than, say, solar. It's not a trivial calculation, but unsubsidized and untaxed cost is a good approximation.
We had these types back in the 1970's ... if they worked, we would be using them right now ...
Micro turbines are needed more probably because home owners and moving vehicles can use mechanical energy to capture compressed air, then expel that to convert to battery charge. It's just recapturing waste or movement energy, then converting it to needed use. A giant outdoor system can capture thermal heat energy though, and there is already treated silicone configurations that use heat for motors. Beach sand is hot but configured right it's circuit. Wind turbines can also exploit drafty tunnels if one end is heated under vent, because rising, vented heat creates vacuum. Air then rushes in to fill. Wind blades in sky is awesome idea but there's already electrostatic energy up there anyway. Format to beam it to Earth is the big mystery...just like the heat motors hidden in plain sight...
@4:05. Really it's unclear which style is more efficient? A minute later you state that smaller turbines cost more per kW generated... Considering wind is an "endless" resource, the only measure of efficiency is exactly that $/kWh.
This is exactly why this tech is not common...
I think that wind turbines are an excellent source of renewable energy that can help reduce our reliance on fossil fuels and combat climate change. However, it is important to keep in mind that even though wind energy is clean and sustainable, we are still utilizing the earth's resources to generate this energy.
Wind turbines require materials like steel, copper, and rare earth elements to manufacture, which are finite resources that must be extracted from the earth. Additionally, the construction and maintenance of wind turbines can have environmental impacts, such as habitat disturbance and bird and bat fatalities.
Furthermore, while wind energy is renewable, it is not a constant source of energy. Wind speeds can vary significantly depending on the location and time of day, which can affect the reliability of wind turbines as a source of energy. This means that wind power must be supplemented with other sources of energy or energy storage solutions to ensure a steady supply of electricity.
Despite these challenges, I believe that wind energy is a crucial component of a sustainable energy mix. With proper planning and management, wind energy can be harnessed in a way that minimizes its environmental impact while providing a reliable source of clean energy. Additionally, advancements in wind turbine technology and energy storage solutions are making wind energy more efficient and cost-effective, which will help drive its adoption in the coming years.
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I mean, it does appear that Andy Burnham in Manchester, UK is massively in favour of vertical wind turbines typically for the urban area.
Horrendous sunk cost and maintenance intensive for little benecit.
A) Isolation
B) Solar.
C) large scale wind power.
Way more beautiful !
Do any of these work under water?
That's completely misleading. Vertical turbines are less efficient not because less time has been spent optimising them but because the angle of attack of the blades to the wind direction constantly changing while horisontal turbines don't change their angle of attack.
We don't need turbines in cities, it is a very silly idea. City of about 2mln people consume on average 1GW of power.
Wind turbines on the top of a hill produces about 1/4 of its rated power in case of the city - 1/8th.
So that would require 16 mln 500w turbines that are about 1.5 m in diameter - 8 per person.
You would have to have 300meters of small turbines side by side to power 25people's block of flats.
They are significantly noisier (per kWh produced) than their industrial scale counterparts.
Guys - don't be so incompetent, ask specialists to proofread your scripts, fire your journalists that do these ridiculous videos.
They talked about them as complements not as competition against the typical 3 wing giants for large scale production.
Energy production is changing form one unisone grid to a adaptive compartmentalised grid.
By having a core large scale energy production take care of prioritised needs you can then supplement the smaller needs with other types of units that does not have similar requirements or limitations. Using small vertical turbines in cities would complement other needs helping to reduce loads on the grid locally.
Its like the saying goes "many small creeks eventually become a river."
@kenji214245 The efficiency is so poor and so is the wind conditions in cities they simply aren't worth wasting resources on.
@@kenji214245 every euro, dollar, pound spent on these idiotic toys and not on "3 bladed giants" is a competition in the race for saving the planet and not a complement.
It is also used as greenwashing, hey look we have kids with paper toys, the toys spin = we are all saaaaved.
It obscures the picture and makes you think that the problem is being tackled, when in reality it isn't.
We need to quadriple the nuclear, particularly fast neutron breeder reactors, tenfold the offshore wind power, build 20 times more solar, increase 200-300 times the energy storage systems, give up personal cars, turn vegetarians, stop wars and start collaborating with everyone, including Russia, Ukraine, African countries, Asian, South American countries and, obviously "the West".
Instead we have incompetent journalists pedaling what is essentially glitter laced squirty bottles for the wild fires.
Finally someone who understands VAWT!
Small turbines need to be looked at in a different way. Anything producing power is helping reduce demand on the main grid, which in the UK needs a huge upgrade to connect major wind farms.
Economies of scale have helped the big turbines and solar farms. Apply the same principles to 'small units' and costs will come down. Same principle on storage, but if done on a national scale with every property and electric car capacity, then it can happen.
Sadly, this kind of thinking is what governments are meant for, but we seem to be lacking on long-term thinking.
The Vattenfall turbines for the German electric grid are in a dead end, their rotortips have speeds of several hundred km/h-s. And the Netherlands have ancient windmills and rotate with already smooth wind speeds. It’s time to make a system change, the vertical rotors are a hopeful approach.
Have a look at Darwin wind tunnels. They funnel the air, making for very bird friendly installations and apparently super efficient too
I feel like there is something wrong with the bladeless one. How exactly can it produce enough energy when its surface of contact with the wind is so small and there is so little movement involved
"How exactly can it produce enough energy when..." It does not. I already saw someone independent do the math and it did not look like a good idea.
Like the guy at the start says Different turbines for different uses. It is not always about making lots of power. It may be just there to power something that needs a very little amount of power on a regular basis In a remote location.
This is what GPT-4 has to say about them.
How do bladeless wind turbines work. And how much power can they typically produce
Bladeless wind turbines harness wind energy without the traditional rotating blades seen in most wind turbines. There are a few different designs of bladeless wind turbines, but most operate on a principle known as "vortex shedding."
The most well-known example of bladeless turbine technology is developed by the Spanish company Vortex Bladeless. Their design is a vertical, cone-shaped structure that oscillates in response to vortices in the wind, a phenomenon known as vortex-induced vibration (VIV). When wind interacts with the structure, it generates a pattern of vortices on the leeward side (the side away from where the wind is coming). These vortices alternate in direction and cause the structure to oscillate back and forth. This oscillation is then converted into electrical energy.
To get energy from these vibrations, the turbines use an alternator system, which is different from the mechanical systems of traditional turbines. The system adjusts the magnetic resistance to keep the oscillation in tune with the wind speed, optimizing energy harvesting. This technology also requires less maintenance, is quieter, and poses less threat to wildlife compared to traditional wind turbines.
In terms of power production, as of my knowledge cutoff in 2021, Vortex Bladeless's turbines are designed for relatively low power generation. The models mentioned in 2021 were rated to produce around 4 kW at maximum. The power production of a wind turbine varies based on its size, design, and the wind speed. A traditional wind turbine, for instance, can range from about 100 kW for smaller installations to 2-5 MW for larger utility-scale machines, and up to 15 MW for the largest designs in development.
It's important to note that while bladeless wind turbines have some potential benefits, they also have drawbacks. One significant disadvantage is their efficiency: as of 2021, the efficiency of bladeless turbines is much lower than traditional wind turbines. They also require relatively strong winds to start oscillating, which limits the locations where they can be effectively deployed. By 2023, these figures could have changed as technology advances, so it's best to check with the latest sources for the most accurate, up-to-date information.
@@adus123 true, but a small turbine of any type is never going to be as cost efficient as a small solar panel.
@@AORD72 I wasn't really saying it was I think this technology is still in its infancy. Solar isn't always reliable as well and don't work at night or in the dark days of winter. A combination of the 2 and a good battery would be good but it's all down to the needs of that particular project.