PROJECT "WEB"
WIND ENERGY FOR THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT (PROJECT WEB)
Project WEB sought to demonstrate that the sensitive use of wind turbines in urban areas should be recognised by policy-makers as a realistic response to the global environmental challenges we face.
Many countries have vast largely untapped renewable wind resources. Yet, while 75% of the EU (European Union) population lives in urban areas and our buildings account for over 40% of overall energy demand, there are virtually no wind turbines in our towns and cities where the majority of electricity is consumed.
Key objectives were to address barriers to use (e.g. reduced wind speeds in urban areas, the size of turbines relative to buildings, noise problems, safety fears, planning restrictions) by developing innovative technological solutions and producing design guidance for the integration of wind turbines in, on and around buildings. WEB considered 3 generic techniques for integration of wind turbines:
- sensitively siting or landscaping stand-alone machines in urban environments, which can supply surrounding buildings;
- retro-fitting turbines onto existing buildings;
- full integration, such that the turbines drive the architectural form of a new building.
Techniques for full integration were successfully demonstrated by the field-testing of a 2-storey prototype building or wind concentrator with an integrated HAWT and VAWT during the project. Designed by the team and fabricated in the Netherlands, the FSM was shipped to the UK for erection and field-testing.
Suggested acronyms for describing the technology developed are ‘Urban Wind Energy Conversion Systems’ (UWECS) and ‘Building Augmented Wind Turbines’ (BAWTS).
Draft guidance for UWECS developments has also been produced. The guidelines cover the conceptual design process and include methodologies for predicting energy yield, and categorising and assessing environmental impacts and economic costs. There will be both external and internal environmental impacts for UWECS.
Source : http://www.bdsp.com/web/
MARS
Because the wind blows in different directions, because there isn't a constant air flow to get through and because not all regions get it, traditional turbines are no longer very efficient now that Mageen Power invented the airborne wind turbines. Apparently "at a thousand feet, there is steady wind anywhere in the world" said Mac Brown COO for Mageen.
The company got a $5 million funding and managed to develop a lighter-than-air wind turbine that is filled with helium and has a 100-foot-wide Mageen Air Rotor System (MARS) that spins around a horizontal axis and produces 10kilowatts of energy. The whole turbine is wired to the ground with a copper cable and send energy down to be used (it can light up a small village) or can be stored in batteries.
There is a small concern about birds that would die flying inside. Mac Brown assured that being so big, bigger than a house, a bird would see it and a bat would sense it.
Mageen Power got the paten for their MARS turbine in October and I can tell you I wish they'd start producing on a larger scale if there aren't any airplanes/helicopters problems related, because it's a very important source of energy involving minimum levels of pollution.
Source: NyTimes
MAGNETIC LEVIATION WIND TURBINE
It's a vision of a magnetically levitated wind turbine that can generate one gigawatt of power (enough to power 750,000 homes). This is the device proposed by a new Arizona-based company, MagLev Wind Turbine Technologies. The company claims that it can deliver clean power for less than one cent per kilowatt hour using this wind turbine.
Magnetic levitation is a very efficient method of capturing wind energy. The blades of the turbine are suspended on a cushion of air, and the energy is directed to linear generators with minimal fiction losses. But the big advantage with maglev is that it reduces maintenance costs, and increases the lifespan of the generator.
The company also points out that building a single huge turbine like this reduces construction and maintenance costs, and it requires less land space than hundreds of conventional turbines. The company is headed by Ed Mazur, a researcher of variable renewable energy sources since 1981 and inventor of the magnetic levitation wind turbine.
There has been speculation that turbines like these would use "full-permanent" magnets, meaning there are no electromagnets, only cleverly placed permanent ones (probably Halbach arrays).
China already has Maglev wind turbines in operation, see: The World's First "Magnetic Levitation" Wind Turbines Unveiled in China.
This article by WorldChanging goes into the technical details of using maglev in wind turbines.
Web site: MagLev Wind Turbine Technologies
LOOP WING WIND TURBINE
The above is the image of a wind turbine from the LoopWing company in Japan. This product is intended to be marketed for house owners who are interested in saving the planet and some money for them as well. this model e1500 is said to achieve 43% power performance at wind speeds of 8m/h.
INNOVATION
The above image shows a Highway Wind turbine. These would harness the wind generated by passing cars/trucks to create energy.
HAWT's & VAWT's
Horizontal Axis Wind Turbines & Vertical Axis Wind Turbines are the two types of Wind turbines.
Horizontal Axis Wind Turbines (HAWT) :
Horizontal Axis Wind Turbines are built with a propeller-type rotor on a horizontal axis (i.e. a horizontal main shaft).
HAWT's are the most common types of wind turbines you can see. most of the commercially installed wind generators are of this type.
Vertical Axis Wind Turbines (VAWT) :
The only vertical axis turbine which has ever been manufactured commercially at any volume is the Darrieus machine, named after the French engineer Georges Darrieus who patented the design in 1931. The Darrieus machine is characterised by its C-shaped rotor blades which make it look a bit like an eggbeater (you can see it in the image on the right). It is normally built with two or three blades.
WIND GENERATORS
Wind generators harness the wind energy to produce electricity.
The two essential components of a wind generator are:
1)wind turbine and
2)generator.
Ofcourse, there is another component. it is the pole on which the entire apparatus is mounted.
The wind turbine converts the energy of the wind into rotational energy. The rotational energy is used by the generator to produce electricity
Inside the body of a generator, there is a coil of wire and a magnet. When a coil of wire is moved inside a magnetic field, it produces an electric current in the wire - the same principle as a dynamo on a bicycle, but the wind provides the movement, not your legs.
Wind generators come in many sizes and shapes, from small units found on caravans and boats to enormous machines that can power a whole village. Wind farms have many generators which produce a large amount of power. Some people object to wind generators on the grounds that they can be noisy and may be thought to spoil a beautiful view. Recently, wind farm planners and engineers have improved the noise problem considerably. Many people living near wind farms think that they enhance the view.
Perhaps the ultimate solution is to put wind generators offshore, where winds are strong and there are no neighbours.Benefits
Wind generators are the main viable alternative to fossil fuels and nuclear power : as such wind power has the potential to replace currently existing generating technologies which cause a wide range of environmental problems. Wind power does not contribute in use to climate change or acid rain, and does not create a hazardous waste storage problem.
Wind generators have a good energy ratio: they generate many times the energy needed to make them(this is not the case with solar Panels). Also, it is easy to decommission wind power installations (unlike the nuclear power plants); most of the materials are easily recyclable using existing technologies.
Greater use of wind power means less dependency on remote fuel sources, with the problems of transport and military involvement that brings.
Wind power is suitable for small installations, unlike many other generation technologies which are only viable on a large scale.
Safety and reliability are good - a properly installed wind generator will operate without problems for 20 years or more, and there is no record of any member of the public ever being harmed by an operational wind turbine.
What can we do?
It’s a good idea to combine wind with solar, to take advantage of all weather conditions (plus the wind blows at night) to provide all, or contribute to, your energy needs.
If you want to provide all your needs, the first task is to reduce energy use and become more energy efficient, otherwise it will be quite expensive. Wind generators are ideal for boats and caravans though, where less electricity is needed, and also for remote, off-the-grid homes, in conjunction with a diesel generator - especially if heating is solid fuel, and cooking is with bottled gas.
Check the wind speeds at your location, or monitor them yourself - you can get monitoring equipment from wind and sun, then look at graphs provided by manufacturers for their turbines to see what power (in Watts) you will get for your average windspeed. Divide by 1000 to get kW, and multiply by the number of hours in a year (8760) to find the kWh generated per year (a kWh is a unit of electricity and can be found on your electricity bill).
Talk to your local planners (for a small turbine, this shouldn’t be a problem), and choose a site away from trees and buildings (rural areas are much better sites for wind generators).
Decide whether you will use a battery bank, or be grid connected (in effect using the grid as a store instead of batteries). There are environmental problems in the manufacture and disposal of batteries, but electricity companies often pay a lot less for energy received than supplied (although this may be changing). There is a third way, called grid interface. Batteries are used but the grid kicks in via a transfer switch if the batteries get low. You can slowly add more wind and solar to reduce the need for grid power.
You can buy 12-volt domestic appliances, in which case you just need batteries and a regulator, or you can use normal 240v appliances, but you’ll need an inverter too. You can self-install or you can employ a professional.
In some countries (for ex : U.K) a government grant is available for wind generator installations.
WIND ENERGY AN INDIRECT FORM OF SOLAR ENERGY???
Wind Energy is an indirect form of Solar Energy. About 1% of the total solar radiation that reaches earth is converted into energy of wind. Wind results from differential heating of the earth and its atmosphere by sun. As the sun heats different parts of the earth at different rates, air circulates from cold to warm areas producing winds. Wind energy has been used for thousands of years to propel sailing ships and for pumping water and grinding grain.
The application of wind energy has several advantages like:
- low gestation period
- no raw-material cost
- non-polluting etc.
SOLAR THERMAL POWER
Solar energy can be produced a great amount of green electricity. As we all know solar panels are used for this purpose. But they are expensive. To answer these problems i have two solutions :
- We an produce electricity from the sun even with out using solar panels. we can use reflectors to reflect all the sun light onto a certain area which receives the heat to generate steam. the steam, as usually is used to rotate the turbines to generate electricity.
- The other way is to concentrate the solar energy onto solar panels. The difference between this method and using solar panels alone is that less number of solar panels (and thus less cost) are needed to harness the same amount of energy.
THE DARKEST SUBSTANCE ON EARTH
U.S. researchers have made the darkest material on Earth, a substance so black it absorbs more than 99.9 percent of light.
Made from tiny tubes of carbon standing on end, this material is almost 30 times darker than a carbon substance used by the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology as the current benchmark of blackness.
And the material is close to the long-sought ideal black, which could absorb all colours of light and reflect none.
"All the light that goes in is basically absorbed," Pulickel Ajayan, who led the research team at Rice University in Houston, said in a telephone interview. "It is almost pushing the limit of how much light can be absorbed into one material."
The substance has a total reflective index of 0.045 percent -- which is more than three times darker than the nickel-phosphorous alloy that now holds the record as the world's darkest material.
Basic black paint, by comparison, has a reflective index of 5 percent to 10 percent.
The researchers are seeking a world's darkest material designation by Guinness World Records. But their work will likely yield more than just bragging rights.
Ajayan said the material could be used in solar energy conversion.
i think this is really a good news for the future of solar power
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