Will wind turbines become the new wind chimes? Or should city slickers seek their renewables elsewhere? Use code 50UNDECIDED to get 50% OFF plus free shipping on your first Factor box at bit.ly/3BRkS87! If you liked this, check out How This Mechanical Battery is Making a Comeback th-cam.com/video/YrXw4CmxljA/w-d-xo.html
I think it has a serious shot, and for both apartments and home owners. Pairing wind and solar, helps to offset their "intermittent" nature. If it is light enough the wind speed can be slower, and still turn the turbine. This is clearly an emerging technology, and we don't yet know what the mature technology will look like. I hope you keep following the developments in this field, no matter what strange twists blow through its development.
After two power outages in one month, and living where it is often windy at night, this wind “chime” would be unobtrusive and fill the solar gap of cloudy days and night time. It seems size and shape would keep it stable at high rotation. I wonder if height could be adjusted by either moving it up and down a pole, or moving a pole up or down to achieve maximum output. Also could this be engineered to hold more than one collector on a mast?
I think the idea is brilliant, but if we believe the photoshopped GIFs in your video, the ideal placement would be in corporate spaces. So the ROI will need to appeal to large landowners who will hang the omni directional SWT off there apartment complexes and deal with the NIBism. I just can't see anyone attaching one to a balcony in a condo, not because it is technically infeasible, just most HOA would actively oppose such visible change to the building.
I think it would be more popular in urban spaces if they put LEDs along all the leading edges and enabled it to do 3D animated displays. That would not use much power and could be aesthetic, informational, or commercial.
Put a wind turbine where I live on the north east coast of Scotland and you’ll have all the free energy you need. Some places are better suited than others, especially in winter with that cold Arctic breeze blowing from the north for 4 months!
There could be 400 of the Omni installed hidden in the deck structure of the Golden Gate Bridge. By hiding them in the deck truss there will be much less concern about the visual impact. The are significant winds moving through the gate that would have a high percentage of power production every day, week, month and year. It is easy to think of other truss structures exposed to wind. For example the towers that carry high tension power lines could have omni installed. Utility power poles could have omni.
Useful to know as in the UK you can take a pretty average 4 bedroom detached house and power it up for between 3,000 kWh and 4,000 kWh per year even if all your cooking is electric. It will be more if you have a air source heat pump and an EV but given solar in even our meagre climate will lead to plenty of nett exports in the year and we have cheaper overnight tariffs I would love a system like this or something in our windy areas.
Here in Australia we have an energy storage problem. Through the day there is more than enough energy being produced by all the roof top solar. The energy managing authorities now want a way to turn off the output of roof top solar indicating there is too much energy available. Opinion: Energy transition is really wealth transfer.
9:39 For normal people that's like 230-570W. Watt, joule x second, volt x apm… ehhh. LED bulb takes about 5-10W, a decent gaming PC can take about 500W during the game. Air conditioner ~ 2kW. Well, what can we say if "everyone" uses such a turbine? This is not solar energy, which is evenly distributed over the area. The more turbines, the less "free" wind. Although any wind turbines disrupt natural wind flows, which can negatively affect natural processes. How much does one nuclear power plant generate... perhaps centralized energy supply is not such a bad thing.
For apartment dwellers, having their own source of renewable energy would be great (likewise, I'm still waiting for a an apartment--sized heat pump), but apart from the efficiency issues others have mentioned, the thorniest issues--integrating the electicity from a wind turbine with an apartment's electrical system, as well as storage--have been unaddressed in this article
The Omni will induce a torque on the support structure. If dozens of Omni are installed on a structure, if half rotate CW and half rotate CCW then the overall torque on the structure will be much less.
Big difference is that the EU doesn't use electricity for heating or cooling. The USA uses electricity for heating and cooling, with exception to the north which can get by with just heating and uses some kind of gas like Europe.
This addresses something that's bugged me for a long time - the near-exclusive focus on single-family detached houses when the topic of residential power production comes up. As an urban apartment-dweller myself, I want to know how us "city slickers" can harness the energy that's all around us.
Can't we put smaller wind turbines on top of wind turbines' blades, then attach these tiny ones on top of them etc. to make a fractal like wind turbine? 😀
I've got a small house with three large trees on the south side, so while it's great for keeping the place cool and the air fresh, solar panels wouldn't be very useful. This type of thing attached to the chimney would be great in this sort of situation.
Before going down the route of trying something innovative like this, I think it is better to exhaust cheaper potential efficiency gains from more conventional technologies first as these are cheaper. I have long term (20 plus years) of energy consumption data from my current house. In that time I have reduced natural gas consumption by 68% and electricity consumption by 52%, just by doing the easy things, such as replacing the gas furnace with an efficient modern one, fitting thermostatic radiator valves, increasing the insulation in the walls and roof of the house and replacing the windows with triple glazed sealed units and also buying the highest efficiency rated domestic appliances. My next step is to hire a thermal camera to identify externally the parts of my house that are leaking heat to the environment during the winter. 👍 Don't ignore the basics maximizing the efficiency of what you already have before trying something new and potentially inconsistent.
At some point, the way to advance to more efficient power sources, is to have countries require upgrades to the power system that takes the burden off of the consumer and instead, benefits all. We went from porcelain electrical fixtures and unprotected wire for modern wiring due to safety. A more efficient and less environmentally damaging power production is good for the safety of everyone and everything. We shouldn't have to wait until something is burning down before we move forward with progress.
Ideally we would have something like this thats comparable to consumer solar panels that can act as a supplemental power source to existing micro scale solar setups. Preferably they would even have the small solar power connectors to make integration as easy as possible
I think one factor that wasn't mentioned was wind energy available in the area. Where I live, the wind level is less than 5mph on most days, and there's just not that much power in a 3mph breeze, especially for a turbine this small. Less than one watt, I'd guess.
The only viable turbines for power generation are Horizontal Axis Wind Turbines (HAWT's). You get the maximum wind swept surface area (that's why the blades on those monsters are so large) which is a key variable in the Betz equation. But that said, they have to be giant machines that are insanely expensive to engineer and build and only generate if there is wind. Solar is vastly cheaper and more effective.
highly efficient, best windturbine is the horizontal 3blade design. small turbines dont power houses, only good for electronics and emergency lighting, not running AC motors and home appliances.
SWTs: Why cant we put one of these on EVERY power poll across the country? change high power transit lines into large generators. The tower is already there. The transmission lines are there. Put in Step up transformers and turbines. You can do the same with the single post Carriers that most rural farms have multiple of near them.
Because you don't understand electricity. You can't just plug a wind turbine which is low voltage into grid high voltage. Transformers are vastly expensive. It doesn't work.
If their figures are correct, they may just about be viable in very windy cities. That said, only for new buildings where the structure is designed to take the load and provide fixings. And in those locations, nearby full sized turbines will be a far better option. So if they come to anything, only a niche market. A suitable sized one would be great on a boat, if quiet and vibration free.
With strategic placement of the omni they could have a cumulative effect to reduce static and dynamic wind load on the structure while at the same time generating power.
Such a difficult market. I feel we are not quite there, but I so want us to be. Here in the UK, flipping from solar to wind as a summer winter tactic could eradicate bills to zero over the year and probably reduce the need for large batteries.
This is neat. Even if it doesn't work, it takes people like this to keep developing and trying new things for the tech to move forward. I have always wondered why skyscrapers don't have wind turbines on their roofs given their elevation. I know a small few do, but I wonder what keeps all of them from getting turbines or retrofitting them after the fact.
Why is it so big? I want 100 of these, that fit in the palm of my hand! Wire them together; a 5 year old could work that out. This is a salesman, selling as much product as he can, a money-grabber. Matt, you should have questioned his motivates for making it so large.
Scale it down to less than a meter and I could see one of these at the top of every street light pole in a suburban city. Small enough and cheap enough, thousands of them could be installed in a medium sized city. Even if the efficiency for each is lower at that size, at scale it could be huge.
I live in the Caribbean and don't have ac and my power use is usually 6-10kwh per day depending on laundry and stuff like that so while this wouldn't power my home it would probably cover most of my need but it's almost certainly prohibitively expensive, otherwise they would have mentioned a price.
Uk homes dont have AC which is very power hungry. Plus most houses have gas combi boiler. My 3 bedroom house uses 3300 kwh per annum with only 2 occupants. However, with heatpumps & EVs we can expect electricity use to increase over the next decade.
In Portland, Oregon we experience an almost daily phenomenon we call the east winds, which are a function of the Venturi effect through the Columbia River gorge. I wonder if this degree of reliability would make Portland a good candidate for this type of tech.
As someone who lived in NYC for a decade, I wonder about safety infrastructure. Will there be some kind of fail safe to catch it if it breaks off? What will the insurance for that be? Will that make it cost prohibitive? But I'd love to see fully functional and implemented design.
i use about 14.2MWH/yr. I want wind as PART of my power solution, not as the whole solution. I have 8kw of solar already. Wind can work when you need extra power the most, during storms and overnight. If I could add 3 or 4kwh of wind production, I'd be set i think.
Even if one turbine wont be able to power a kondo, its still better then nothing. It can off-set the use and still decrease the electricity bill to half. Its same as Solar. Solar also needs to be in a certain range that makes it 100% green.....but it doesnt and during night and winter is mostly useless. Same is with this turbine. It wont make wind farms useless, its just ads a surplus of energy that can be used, to the already running system, and giving a hand in to more green energy production, while lower electricity bills.
for a real test, these need to be installed in Australia. this country's climate brings so many inventions undone. they mention about no birds, no nests, etc. well in summer, our mud wasps will find a way. they always do... unless you can keep this rotating 100% of the time to not give them a chance to establish a nest. there's a heavy emphasis on city usage in this vid, but not much on rural usage. also what's the average lifespan of the bearing used in this to keep it spinning? it would need to be exceptional, which would only add to the cost.
Tho commenters that are negating this because of similar previous proposals are working with old data. There are 1Bn people in the world whose domestic electrical baseline needs have gone from zero to levels that now include several LED lights, charging capacity for devices that are now no longer optional. In a county like Cambodia, where I've spent a fair amount of time, this has been a major capital expense in power generation (by coal), and transmission infrastructure. Meantime, in cities like Phnom Penh, energy consumption is rising quickly, and the national grid is subject to frequent failures. So a solution that eliminates need for upgrading infrastructure by segmenting in particular low-voltage requirements and thus reducing grid demand, is a huge factor in things like reducing expansion of fossil fuel use for those 1 billion. And most Americans and Europeans have a pretty hazy idea about the rate of modernization in the developing world, which is much larger than 1 Billion: closer to 4 or 5 Billion, depending where you set the line. So why not solar? It could be, and often is. But dependence on solar increasingly means competition for what are rapidly becoming the costliest elements commercially available, putting impoverished farmers in a bidding war with American consumers who want more solar on the yacht to allow them an induction cooktop. Who do you think will win?
Aerodynamics 101: All wind only travels horizontally along the ground. Seriously: By far the strongest vector of wind near the ground is horizontal. That said, buildings translate many wind vectors to vertical, ergo the invention works!
3 years ago I bought a 10kW windturbine from AliExpress and it produced a whopping 125 kWh in one year. We have enough solar panels on our roofs to cover most of the year, but at the edge of our garrden there is a small run (stream) that starts running from September/October to about April maybe May, so I created a waterwheel and using a CVT transmission I connected the watersheel to the turbine and last year the construction produced 1700kWh and it generated enough energy in the winter months and in 2023 we pulled 230 kWh from the grid, so far this year we keeping it at zero. I created a funnel which for about 6 feet reduces the width of the stream with 60%, making the water flow faster which is probably why we're still at 0 and we have the added benefit that unlike a traditional windturnbine, our waterwheel turbine is not visible from the yard which I think is a big advantage...
if the wind-turbine is 10kW, is it hourly, daily, monthly? If it's monthly then fine, 125kW is a lot, but otherwise it's just like 10 days worth of power used by an average home - peanuts really. The waterwheel generator is another matter as 1,7MWh is in the ballpark of a usable solution but then again, who has access to flowing water? Hardly anybody. Not to deny one can setup a home system using zero or almost zero external power. That's certainly doable, but solutions of 150-300 kWh are not viable unless they are dirt cheap and can be scaled when needed. You can setup a lot of solar panels but you cannot set too many wind-turbines on a given area as they will suffocate each-other.
@@vaakdemandante8772 It's maximum output is 10kW, but it needs a hurricane in order to produce that. It's like the maximum output of your solar panels, only obtainable in perfect conditions. The turbine can reach 10kWh if it is spinning at the maximum rpm for an hour. It required a 8 m/s wind to start spinning, but about 9m/s to sustain it. Wind power is useless, it was almost never spinning. It spun sometime late autumn to early spring, but not enough to generate real power. Still, the 1700 kWh is nothing compared to the 13.500+ kWh generated by the solar panels, but it is enough for the winter months to help out with the lack of sun power. I started testing first with the waterwheel directly attached to the shaft of the windturbine (as a replacement of the wind propeller) and a garden hose. Did not work, then I started playing with different gear ratio's. We had a defunct scooter and I converted the CVT for use with the wind turbine. On the propeller shaft there is a white marking and a RPM meter is reading that figure, an arduino is controlling a servo that is changing the gear ratio of the CVT. It's typical range is between 400 and 900 wH. Our typical annual power usage is 14-15 mHw and I wanted to make minimal changes to our daily routines (family of 6). The turbine was quite expensive, so I started tinkering in the hope I gout recuperate some of my money. It works, but I agree not suitable for most other people ;-)
@@vaakdemandante8772 if it is 10 kW, than this would be the maximum power output at the maximum allowable wind speed. (it must be a rather big wind turbine for a private person...) When you have these 10 kW for 5 hours, then you get a total of 50 kWh accumulated energy. That would be a full EV charge. But when the wind is too low (like at my place) then it could not deliver anything for most of the time. (except when a cold front rushes through, but when it's over then it's over... at my place...). Solar typically delivers more, but only during the day. 10 kW peak solar power would be a small installation for a house roof. 20 or more would be more typical.
Solar with battery backup is more reliable, more cost effective, and getting cheaper every year. There may be some cases at home where wind is better due to extended periods of cloudy weather and short daylight hours, to compliment solar. Some countries with relatively small land areas may benefit from offshore wind. Solar is superior in most cases
What do I think? I think that the biggest barrier to small scale wind-turbines adoption, is regulations, and not their lack of output. Will cities allow them, that is the question & problem. It doesn't matter if they only produce a fraction of a homes power needs, wind is an excellent compliment to solar power. If a small wind turbine only produces half of the power you need, install enough solar for the other half. If it only produces one quarter of the needed power, install two, and enough solar for the other half of your power needs. Or stay grid-tied, and just use a small turbine to reduce your power bill.
Winds this invention could most use in cities can vary from stiff to level one hurricanes. The invention is great BUT the securing of the unit and its generated resistance forces may place unforeseen loads on a portion of the building upon which it is secured. Add to that load, a scenario where a sheet of material gets embedded or covers its surface, the result could be catastrophic destruction of a whole installation. Site selection and worst case planning is paramount in high density city/suburb environments.
I don't like wind it generaly because it has inconsistent and unpreditable power output which leads to issues keeping grid energy stable, which includes using up excess energy to prevent infrastructure damage. This focus is on residential energy generation which requires a lot of extra infrastructure for inverters and contracts to sell energy back to the grid, and just generally takes up space. Because of this I think centrallized energy methods is better. but having a few of these around wouldn't be bad for disaster situations.
Hi Matt, first off I love your show! I was wondering if you would be interested in covering Superhot Geothermal Energy? I found this article from the Clean Air Task Force, it’s outlining the potential challenges and benefits of this kind of energy source. I have another topic one related to REE’s; 2.34BN metric tons of rare earth minerals discovered in Wyoming.
I would have like to have heard what happens in storm strength winds? And another question is salt air in costal cities (where a lot of the population are) ... degredation?
I would say- son, soccer is not just a game; its a matter of energy which means life and death. I couldn't locate the generator though, is it also spherical in shape or hidden somewhere in the supporting structure...
I'd say noise is irrelevant in a city. Even if they're louder than standard wind turbines no one will notice it over the sound of people, traffic and so many others there
interesting technology... what is missing is planning. the mounting of these on existing buildings is not trivial. what is being done to require new buildings to have "hooks" for wind? and incentives to update existing buildings?
Will wind turbines become the new wind chimes? Or should city slickers seek their renewables elsewhere? Use code 50UNDECIDED to get 50% OFF plus free shipping on your first Factor box at bit.ly/3BRkS87!
If you liked this, check out How This Mechanical Battery is Making a Comeback th-cam.com/video/YrXw4CmxljA/w-d-xo.html
I think it has a serious shot, and for both apartments and home owners.
Pairing wind and solar, helps to offset their "intermittent" nature.
If it is light enough the wind speed can be slower, and still turn the turbine.
This is clearly an emerging technology, and we don't yet know what the mature technology will look like.
I hope you keep following the developments in this field, no matter what strange twists blow through its development.
After two power outages in one month, and living where it is often windy at night, this wind “chime” would be unobtrusive and fill the solar gap of cloudy days and night time. It seems size and shape would keep it stable at high rotation. I wonder if height could be adjusted by either moving it up and down a pole, or moving a pole up or down to achieve maximum output. Also could this be engineered to hold more than one collector on a mast?
The combined top 100 most populated cities in the U.S. only holds 19% of our population
I think the idea is brilliant, but if we believe the photoshopped GIFs in your video, the ideal placement would be in corporate spaces. So the ROI will need to appeal to large landowners who will hang the omni directional SWT off there apartment complexes and deal with the NIBism. I just can't see anyone attaching one to a balcony in a condo, not because it is technically infeasible, just most HOA would actively oppose such visible change to the building.
thanks
Yes please.
These kinds of companies shouldn't be selling wind turbines,... they should be selling electricity.
Your background 'music' makes the discussion harder to follow!
Looks easy to 3D print.
I want one!
Every little bit helps
It’s worth a try. We need to keep innovating with wind. Home sized would be nice. We don’t get sun so wind would be nice.
Smaller vertical wind turbines are the way to go.
Chuck it into a WITT generator. And as the wind changes direction the WITT will move too.
Look beautiful
Very interesting invention.
9:49 I would like to see more effort in reducing energy needs than efforts to meet those unnecessary needs.
That is exciting news, and it is a beautiful design as well. The man is truly a genius.
Battery ST in downtown Seattle is a freaking wind tunnel. One block over and it’s all fine. It Will power the whole city.
The ball would be great as a flat pack, tab A - slot B. A couple of friends and beer for a fun time afternoon.
Cities certainly need to address their entry and materials imbalance. Hope this works!!
Neat!
Those could be mounted in between divvied highways. Getting air movement form Wind and vehicles.
One day the perfect energy maker will be invented,, this could be it,,
3:21 Accelerbrates??
I like these, they could work well with existing solar panels in urban environments 👍
Yay, vertical axis wind generators.
I think it would be more popular in urban spaces if they put LEDs along all the leading edges and enabled it to do 3D animated displays. That would not use much power and could be aesthetic, informational, or commercial.
great thing is people like Robert Murray Smith tell you how you can make your own.
Put a wind turbine where I live on the north east coast of Scotland and you’ll have all the free energy you need. Some places are better suited than others, especially in winter with that cold Arctic breeze blowing from the north for 4 months!
Love from India 🇮🇳🇮🇳🇮🇳
There could be 400 of the Omni installed hidden in the deck structure of the Golden Gate Bridge. By hiding them in the deck truss there will be much less concern about the visual impact. The are significant winds moving through the gate that would have a high percentage of power production every day, week, month and year.
It is easy to think of other truss structures exposed to wind. For example the towers that carry high tension power lines could have omni installed.
Utility power poles could have omni.
Useful to know as in the UK you can take a pretty average 4 bedroom detached house and power it up for between 3,000 kWh and 4,000 kWh per year even if all your cooking is electric. It will be more if you have a air source heat pump and an EV but given solar in even our meagre climate will lead to plenty of nett exports in the year and we have cheaper overnight tariffs I would love a system like this or something in our windy areas.
I can see them adding a bunch of Magnets around it & outside of it a cage of wires to collect more juice without blocking air flow.
Nice, let’s see it at scale.
Here in Australia we have an energy storage problem. Through the day there is more than enough energy being produced by all the roof top solar. The energy managing authorities now want a way to turn off the output of roof top solar indicating there is too much energy available. Opinion: Energy transition is really wealth transfer.
9:39 For normal people that's like 230-570W. Watt, joule x second, volt x apm… ehhh.
LED bulb takes about 5-10W, a decent gaming PC can take about 500W during the game. Air conditioner ~ 2kW.
Well, what can we say if "everyone" uses such a turbine? This is not solar energy, which is evenly distributed over the area. The more turbines, the less "free" wind.
Although any wind turbines disrupt natural wind flows, which can negatively affect natural processes.
How much does one nuclear power plant generate... perhaps centralized energy supply is not such a bad thing.
For apartment dwellers, having their own source of renewable energy would be great (likewise, I'm still waiting for a an apartment--sized heat pump), but apart from the efficiency issues others have mentioned, the thorniest issues--integrating the electicity from a wind turbine with an apartment's electrical system, as well as storage--have been unaddressed in this article
painting sphere shaped turbines in flat black so you cant see them spinning might help making them less distracting.
Make them hurricane proof and install them along the beaches, gulf, oceans. They look more durable.
Winnipeg has the windiest intersection in Canada at the intersection of Portage and Main (downtown), they should come here to test.
The Omni will induce a torque on the support structure.
If dozens of Omni are installed on a structure, if half rotate CW and half rotate CCW then the overall torque on the structure will be much less.
Solar has one huge advantage: It can double as roofing. Mounting wind on a roof on the other hand is a huge ordeal.
I don't have AC but my heater is set to 72 all winter in the Bay Area and I used 2134 KWh last year
Big difference is that the EU doesn't use electricity for heating or cooling. The USA uses electricity for heating and cooling, with exception to the north which can get by with just heating and uses some kind of gas like Europe.
This addresses something that's bugged me for a long time - the near-exclusive focus on single-family detached houses when the topic of residential power production comes up. As an urban apartment-dweller myself, I want to know how us "city slickers" can harness the energy that's all around us.
Can't we put smaller wind turbines on top of wind turbines' blades, then attach these tiny ones on top of them etc. to make a fractal like wind turbine? 😀
Add a few reflective surfaces and a handful of color changeable LED lights and you could generate power and give a decorative light show
Might be great for parks, outside concerts and other urban/city areas in need of a festival atmosphere
Other countries have regulations about construction and insulation that reduce energy consumption, but lobbyists here make sure we don't.
I've got a small house with three large trees on the south side, so while it's great for keeping the place cool and the air fresh, solar panels wouldn't be very useful. This type of thing attached to the chimney would be great in this sort of situation.
Before going down the route of trying something innovative like this, I think it is better to exhaust cheaper potential efficiency gains from more conventional technologies first as these are cheaper. I have long term (20 plus years) of energy consumption data from my current house. In that time I have reduced natural gas consumption by 68% and electricity consumption by 52%, just by doing the easy things, such as replacing the gas furnace with an efficient modern one, fitting thermostatic radiator valves, increasing the insulation in the walls and roof of the house and replacing the windows with triple glazed sealed units and also buying the highest efficiency rated domestic appliances. My next step is to hire a thermal camera to identify externally the parts of my house that are leaking heat to the environment during the winter. 👍 Don't ignore the basics maximizing the efficiency of what you already have before trying something new and potentially inconsistent.
At some point, the way to advance to more efficient power sources, is to have countries require upgrades to the power system that takes the burden off of the consumer and instead, benefits all. We went from porcelain electrical fixtures and unprotected wire for modern wiring due to safety. A more efficient and less environmentally damaging power production is good for the safety of everyone and everything. We shouldn't have to wait until something is burning down before we move forward with progress.
Ideally we would have something like this thats comparable to consumer solar panels that can act as a supplemental power source to existing micro scale solar setups. Preferably they would even have the small solar power connectors to make integration as easy as possible
I need a few of these!
But much smaller in size. Not 7 feet diameter. More like 1-2 feet. For my roof.
I think one factor that wasn't mentioned was wind energy available in the area. Where I live, the wind level is less than 5mph on most days, and there's just not that much power in a 3mph breeze, especially for a turbine this small. Less than one watt, I'd guess.
The only viable turbines for power generation are Horizontal Axis Wind Turbines (HAWT's). You get the maximum wind swept surface area (that's why the blades on those monsters are so large) which is a key variable in the Betz equation. But that said, they have to be giant machines that are insanely expensive to engineer and build and only generate if there is wind. Solar is vastly cheaper and more effective.
Wow
highly efficient, best windturbine is the horizontal 3blade design. small turbines dont power houses, only good for electronics and emergency lighting, not running AC motors and home appliances.
fun fact: the venturi effect is used in automatic gas pumps to detect when the tank is full somehow.
SWTs: Why cant we put one of these on EVERY power poll across the country? change high power transit lines into large generators. The tower is already there. The transmission lines are there. Put in Step up transformers and turbines. You can do the same with the single post Carriers that most rural farms have multiple of near them.
Because you don't understand electricity. You can't just plug a wind turbine which is low voltage into grid high voltage. Transformers are vastly expensive.
It doesn't work.
If their figures are correct, they may just about be viable in very windy cities.
That said, only for new buildings where the structure is designed to take the load and provide fixings.
And in those locations, nearby full sized turbines will be a far better option.
So if they come to anything, only a niche market. A suitable sized one would be great on a boat, if quiet and vibration free.
I have been thinking putting wind on sky scrapers for years. That high up, they have their own wind patterns
With strategic placement of the omni they could have a cumulative effect to reduce static and dynamic wind load on the structure while at the same time generating power.
Such a difficult market. I feel we are not quite there, but I so want us to be. Here in the UK, flipping from solar to wind as a summer winter tactic could eradicate bills to zero over the year and probably reduce the need for large batteries.
This is neat. Even if it doesn't work, it takes people like this to keep developing and trying new things for the tech to move forward. I have always wondered why skyscrapers don't have wind turbines on their roofs given their elevation. I know a small few do, but I wonder what keeps all of them from getting turbines or retrofitting them after the fact.
Why is it so big? I want 100 of these, that fit in the palm of my hand! Wire them together; a 5 year old could work that out. This is a salesman, selling as much product as he can, a money-grabber. Matt, you should have questioned his motivates for making it so large.
You should look into the SunZia project in New Mexico
I miss the old intro music.
Scale it down to less than a meter and I could see one of these at the top of every street light pole in a suburban city. Small enough and cheap enough, thousands of them could be installed in a medium sized city. Even if the efficiency for each is lower at that size, at scale it could be huge.
Nice new intro
I live in the Caribbean and don't have ac and my power use is usually 6-10kwh per day depending on laundry and stuff like that so while this wouldn't power my home it would probably cover most of my need but it's almost certainly prohibitively expensive, otherwise they would have mentioned a price.
I wonder how it would handle snow?
Uk homes dont have AC which is very power hungry. Plus most houses have gas combi boiler. My 3 bedroom house uses 3300 kwh per annum with only 2 occupants. However, with heatpumps & EVs we can expect electricity use to increase over the next decade.
Will buildings need to be redesigned to accommodate the increased drag by installing these?
In Portland, Oregon we experience an almost daily phenomenon we call the east winds, which are a function of the Venturi effect through the Columbia River gorge. I wonder if this degree of reliability would make Portland a good candidate for this type of tech.
Why do US apartment dwellers use so much more electricity than elsewhere ???
As someone who lived in NYC for a decade, I wonder about safety infrastructure. Will there be some kind of fail safe to catch it if it breaks off? What will the insurance for that be? Will that make it cost prohibitive? But I'd love to see fully functional and implemented design.
i use about 14.2MWH/yr. I want wind as PART of my power solution, not as the whole solution. I have 8kw of solar already. Wind can work when you need extra power the most, during storms and overnight. If I could add 3 or 4kwh of wind production, I'd be set i think.
Even if one turbine wont be able to power a kondo, its still better then nothing. It can off-set the use and still decrease the electricity bill to half.
Its same as Solar. Solar also needs to be in a certain range that makes it 100% green.....but it doesnt and during night and winter is mostly useless.
Same is with this turbine. It wont make wind farms useless, its just ads a surplus of energy that can be used, to the already running system, and giving a hand in to more green energy production, while lower electricity bills.
Clean wind = laminar flow
for a real test, these need to be installed in Australia. this country's climate brings so many inventions undone. they mention about no birds, no nests, etc. well in summer, our mud wasps will find a way. they always do... unless you can keep this rotating 100% of the time to not give them a chance to establish a nest. there's a heavy emphasis on city usage in this vid, but not much on rural usage. also what's the average lifespan of the bearing used in this to keep it spinning? it would need to be exceptional, which would only add to the cost.
how do you get rid of it , receiving a storm warning ?
I always have to wonder for both wind and solar, how do these devices survive in heavy hail storms?
Tho commenters that are negating this because of similar previous proposals are working with old data. There are 1Bn people in the world whose domestic electrical baseline needs have gone from zero to levels that now include several LED lights, charging capacity for devices that are now no longer optional. In a county like Cambodia, where I've spent a fair amount of time, this has been a major capital expense in power generation (by coal), and transmission infrastructure.
Meantime, in cities like Phnom Penh, energy consumption is rising quickly, and the national grid is subject to frequent failures. So a solution that eliminates need for upgrading infrastructure by segmenting in particular low-voltage requirements and thus reducing grid demand, is a huge factor in things like reducing expansion of fossil fuel use for those 1 billion. And most Americans and Europeans have a pretty hazy idea about the rate of modernization in the developing world, which is much larger than 1 Billion: closer to 4 or 5 Billion, depending where you set the line.
So why not solar? It could be, and often is. But dependence on solar increasingly means competition for what are rapidly becoming the costliest elements commercially available, putting impoverished farmers in a bidding war with American consumers who want more solar on the yacht to allow them an induction cooktop. Who do you think will win?
Aerodynamics 101: All wind only travels horizontally along the ground. Seriously: By far the strongest vector of wind near the ground is horizontal.
That said, buildings translate many wind vectors to vertical, ergo the invention works!
3 years ago I bought a 10kW windturbine from AliExpress and it produced a whopping 125 kWh in one year. We have enough solar panels on our roofs to cover most of the year, but at the edge of our garrden there is a small run (stream) that starts running from September/October to about April maybe May, so I created a waterwheel and using a CVT transmission I connected the watersheel to the turbine and last year the construction produced 1700kWh and it generated enough energy in the winter months and in 2023 we pulled 230 kWh from the grid, so far this year we keeping it at zero. I created a funnel which for about 6 feet reduces the width of the stream with 60%, making the water flow faster which is probably why we're still at 0 and we have the added benefit that unlike a traditional windturnbine, our waterwheel turbine is not visible from the yard which I think is a big advantage...
@@2Fast4Mellow you for President 2028
if the wind-turbine is 10kW, is it hourly, daily, monthly? If it's monthly then fine, 125kW is a lot, but otherwise it's just like 10 days worth of power used by an average home - peanuts really. The waterwheel generator is another matter as 1,7MWh is in the ballpark of a usable solution but then again, who has access to flowing water? Hardly anybody.
Not to deny one can setup a home system using zero or almost zero external power. That's certainly doable, but solutions of 150-300 kWh are not viable unless they are dirt cheap and can be scaled when needed. You can setup a lot of solar panels but you cannot set too many wind-turbines on a given area as they will suffocate each-other.
Wish I had water running near me, but at least I got good solar and wind potential out here! That's cool, thanks for sharing your details.
@@vaakdemandante8772 It's maximum output is 10kW, but it needs a hurricane in order to produce that. It's like the maximum output of your solar panels, only obtainable in perfect conditions. The turbine can reach 10kWh if it is spinning at the maximum rpm for an hour. It required a 8 m/s wind to start spinning, but about 9m/s to sustain it. Wind power is useless, it was almost never spinning. It spun sometime late autumn to early spring, but not enough to generate real power. Still, the 1700 kWh is nothing compared to the 13.500+ kWh generated by the solar panels, but it is enough for the winter months to help out with the lack of sun power. I started testing first with the waterwheel directly attached to the shaft of the windturbine (as a replacement of the wind propeller) and a garden hose. Did not work, then I started playing with different gear ratio's. We had a defunct scooter and I converted the CVT for use with the wind turbine. On the propeller shaft there is a white marking and a RPM meter is reading that figure, an arduino is controlling a servo that is changing the gear ratio of the CVT. It's typical range is between 400 and 900 wH. Our typical annual power usage is 14-15 mHw and I wanted to make minimal changes to our daily routines (family of 6).
The turbine was quite expensive, so I started tinkering in the hope I gout recuperate some of my money. It works, but I agree not suitable for most other people ;-)
@@vaakdemandante8772 if it is 10 kW, than this would be the maximum power output at the maximum allowable wind speed. (it must be a rather big wind turbine for a private person...)
When you have these 10 kW for 5 hours, then you get a total of 50 kWh accumulated energy. That would be a full EV charge.
But when the wind is too low (like at my place) then it could not deliver anything for most of the time. (except when a cold front rushes through, but when it's over then it's over... at my place...).
Solar typically delivers more, but only during the day. 10 kW peak solar power would be a small installation for a house roof. 20 or more would be more typical.
Solar with battery backup is more reliable, more cost effective, and getting cheaper every year. There may be some cases at home where wind is better due to extended periods of cloudy weather and short daylight hours, to compliment solar. Some countries with relatively small land areas may benefit from offshore wind. Solar is superior in most cases
What do I think?
I think that the biggest barrier to small scale wind-turbines adoption, is regulations, and not their lack of output. Will cities allow them, that is the question & problem. It doesn't matter if they only produce a fraction of a homes power needs, wind is an excellent compliment to solar power. If a small wind turbine only produces half of the power you need, install enough solar for the other half. If it only produces one quarter of the needed power, install two, and enough solar for the other half of your power needs. Or stay grid-tied, and just use a small turbine to reduce your power bill.
Winds this invention could most use in cities can vary from stiff to level one hurricanes. The invention is great BUT the securing of the unit and its generated resistance forces may place unforeseen loads on a portion of the building upon which it is secured. Add to that load, a scenario where a sheet of material gets embedded or covers its surface, the result could be catastrophic destruction of a whole installation. Site selection and worst case planning is paramount in high density city/suburb environments.
0:03 Small wind turbines struggle to get off the ground.
I see what you did there.
In my opinion once they really figure out wind generation it will surpass solar
use a helium floating vawt instead, no size restriction, better than kite wind turbines. make it a floating wind sphere.
I don't like wind it generaly because it has inconsistent and unpreditable power output which leads to issues keeping grid energy stable, which includes using up excess energy to prevent infrastructure damage. This focus is on residential energy generation which requires a lot of extra infrastructure for inverters and contracts to sell energy back to the grid, and just generally takes up space.
Because of this I think centrallized energy methods is better. but having a few of these around wouldn't be bad for disaster situations.
Wind in West Texas and the rest of the plains would work on the modular/home level. But in most of the rest of the US is not so suited to it.
I feel like these could go down the center of highways all the cars passing would be constant wind
Hi Matt, first off I love your show!
I was wondering if you would be interested in covering Superhot Geothermal Energy?
I found this article from the Clean Air Task Force, it’s outlining the potential challenges and benefits of this kind of energy source.
I have another topic one related to REE’s; 2.34BN metric tons of rare earth minerals discovered in Wyoming.
yadayadayada.....whats the efficiency? as in per m2 of swept surface?
I would have like to have heard what happens in storm strength winds?
And another question is salt air in costal cities (where a lot of the population are) ... degredation?
I would say- son, soccer is not just a game; its a matter of energy which means life and death. I couldn't locate the generator though, is it also spherical in shape or hidden somewhere in the supporting structure...
I'd say noise is irrelevant in a city. Even if they're louder than standard wind turbines no one will notice it over the sound of people, traffic and so many others there
The future is a combination of many ways of obtaining electricity including solar and wind
interesting technology... what is missing is planning. the mounting of these on existing buildings is not trivial. what is being done to require new buildings to have "hooks" for wind? and incentives to update existing buildings?
Would like to see this compared to the Halcium turbine for output, animal safety and snow/ice. Both are not quite in production but should be by 2026.
I swear to god, if any of those wobbly looking windballs appear anywere within my circle of life...