The Future of Wind Turbines? No Blades?...

[pErvinalia]

It’s no longer surprising to encounter 100-foot pinwheels spinning in the breeze as you drive down the highway. But don’t get too comfortable with that view. A Spanish company called Vortex Bladeless is proposing a radical new way to generate wind energy that will once again upend what you see outside your car window.

Their idea is the Vortex, a bladeless wind turbine that looks like a giant rolled joint shooting into the sky. The Vortex has the same goals as conventional wind turbines: To turn breezes into kinetic energy that can be used as electricity. But it goes about it in an entirely different way.

.....

Its makers boast the fact that there are no gears, bolts, or mechanically moving parts, which they say makes the Vortex cheaper to manufacture and maintain. The founders claim their Vortex Mini, which stands at around 41 feet tall, can capture up to 40 percent of the wind’s power during ideal conditions (this is when the wind is blowing at around 26 miles per hour). Based on field testing, the Mini ultimately captures 30 percent less than conventional wind turbines, but that shortcoming is compensated by the fact that you can put double the Vortex turbines into the same space as a propeller turbine.

The Vortex team says there are some clear advantages to their model: It’s less expensive to manufacture, totally silent, and safer for birds since there are no blades to fly into. Vortex Bladeless says its turbine would cost around 51 percent less than a traditional turbine whose major costs come from the blades and support system.

http://www.wired.com/2015/05/future-win ... no-blades/

[mistermack]

Looks promising. You could even use the ground area for solar as well, in the right part of the world.
You would think that if the principle works, it would allow you to go bigger and higher than current wind turbines, without the cost rocketing exponentially.

The mention of carbon fibre makes it sound expensive though. It's got some way to go to prove itself.

[piscator]

Use them for higghline towers too, like through mountain passes and other places where there's enough wind. Probably maintenance-prohibitive for the amount of power they'd generate, even compared to typical towers.

Remember seeing something about a frond-like apparatus that would wave and wiggle around like a tall blade of grass in the wind, storing up hydraulic energy from ram-like apparatae in the joints and base of the things. Haven't heard anything about it since.
Probably requires vast quantities of some exotic latex base that only comes from old-growth rainforest for the thousands of pump seals a frond farm might need...

[Tero]

Here is a screw, already under way. Miniturbines have been made 30 years for local power to remote devices. This is in Valkeakoski which gave a permit for a tower of 100m

[pErvinalia]

The difference is that VAWT's and regular turbines need bearings and far more moving parts.

[Tero]

Well, the model above also avoids most of the problems with migrating birds. The blades of a regular turbine move too fast for birds to avoid them, and take a big cross section. more of the cylindrical models, moving or not, can be placed in an area.

I found out the picture is a photoshop, they only have the permit I think so far.

[Seth]

If I understand the theory, the stalk doesn't spin, it just waves back and forth. It's a bit unclear.

[Tero]

The cost of moving parts is mainly bearings. The other parts wear if standing up from weather events and oxidation and do not last forever.

[Brian Peacock]

They look like giant organ pipes, I wonder if they product a low noise if the wind passes over them just right - like blowing across ya beer bottle.



Wind power!

[Seth]

They look like giant organ pipes, I wonder if they product a low noise if the wind passes over them just right - like blowing across ya beer bottle.

I'm sure somebody will complain that they do...

[pErvinalia]

That turbulent flow that creates the organ sound is what is being captured by this system. So you wouldn't expect them to make too much sound. If they did, then they wouldn't be working very efficiently.

[JimC]

That turbulent flow that creates the organ sound is what is being captured by this system. So you wouldn't expect them to make too much sound. If they did, then they wouldn't be working very efficiently.

The energy content of even quite loud sounds is surprisingly low, so potentially, a device could leak a lot of sound without being particularly energy inefficient.

[pErvinalia]

Someone will turn it into "earth" music.

[mistermack]

I would have thought that this system needs bearings too.
And how do you generate electricity, with no moving parts? I know of no system that can do that, except a battery.
There is a lot of detail missing from their blurbs.

[pErvinalia]

edit: scrap that, brain fart.