The Wind Amplifier, The Venturi Wind Focus...

reply to post by Phage


First I apologize for being grumpy, but I have been trying to
get ppl behind me on this idea and others and I do not
do a good job of explaining it from past experience.

"I wonder why we don't see that system in use. "

I am speculating here...

New design, higher initial investment, bigger land foot print.

I think at some point it will be put in a mountain pass where
the mountains are already raising the wind speed thru the pass.

But it likely will be land that is not really usable for much else.

My idea for the bearing was a water bearing like the fluid dynamic
bearings in hard drives these days.

Basically a thin sheet of water and the device could hydroplane on it.

If you can hydroplane a fully loaded semi tractor rig you can
hydroplane about anything, lol.

If the fluid dynamic method is what would work best anyways.

My idea was 4 sails, they went with 3 which makes more sense
now that I see theirs.

My central rotor was a VAWT style as it will go faster than a Savonius.

Thanks for the reply phage, sorry for being a bear.

Life has been taking a dump on me lately.

Originally posted by Ex_MislTech
reply to post by Phage

 

Maybe then I am referring to another effect, the increase in power is
real and can be felt between buildings in downtown areas.

The wind is focused and is at a higher speed due to the skyscrapers
channeling the wind into more narrow areas.

The best explanation I could think of was the Venturi effect.




[edit on 9-9-2009 by Ex_MislTech]

conservation of energy law still applies.you are merely gathering a large volume of slow wind and speeding it up.

Originally posted by nobodysavedme

conservation of energy law still applies.you are merely gathering a large volume of slow wind and speeding it up.

did i hear that right?

Originally posted by nobodysavedme
merely gathering a large volume of slow wind and speeding it up.

merely? doesnt anyone realize that if you can amplify any form of energy than you have infinite energy.!!!
all you do is cycle the out back to the in,

like you said they take in slow wind and speed it up, if then the sped up wind was added to the next batch of wind coming in the amplification being circular should be endless.

hence tesla technology but with wind turbines instead of electricity itself.

i believe this would be easiest with a motor of only magnets, theirs plenty talk and home made examples of this on the web,

It seems to me the main advantage of funneling the air is to either reduce building cost or to make effective devices in areas with low wind speeds. But the total wind energy you can harvest in a certain area would not increase.

I had a similar idea as in that video clip once, but instead of wind using the ocean tides. Advantage of the tides is that they are always in the same direction, so the funnel can be placed in a fixed position.

Originally posted by -PLB-
It seems to me the main advantage of funneling the air is to either reduce building cost or to make effective devices in areas with low wind speeds. But the total wind energy you can harvest in a certain area would not increase.

I had a similar idea as in that video clip once, but instead of wind using the ocean tides. Advantage of the tides is that they are always in the same direction, so the funnel can be placed in a fixed position.

That is exactly right.

A sail is much cheaper than a wind turbine.

Quadruple your power, half the number of turbines, and half
the amount of maintenance as well as long as the turbines
are built to handle the high speeds.

Probably would need to retract sails in thunderstorms or have
shear pins break at a 20% below stress failure level.

Also consider the idea of a sail high in the air over the wind turbines
held in places by towers and guy wires that pulls wind down from
200 - 400 ft down into the turbine.

Imagine a giant sail ribbon in the air diverting high speed air down to
turbine level, ie. even a higher wind speed increase because higher
wind moves at higher speeds til about 1,000 ft up.

Also another factor is this.

If the wind speed drops below a certain level the windmill will not turn.

If you can gather a lot of very low speed wind and change it from
2 mph to 16 mph your windmill turns while others sit still.

Certain areas all over the world have those low speed light breezes.

Also power from wind is not linear, ie. twice the speed
equals 8 times the power if there were no mechanical loss.

Double the wind speed equals 8 times the power

Wind power curve

So by using sails to pour quadruple the amount of wind onto the
turbine you get 16 times the standard windspeed and it would
enable you to take a 1 mph wind and still make power.

In areas of wind low speed this would actually make wind power viable.

At present wind maps show zone 4 or higher are the only ones
economically viable for wind power.

With this method zone 2 or higher would be viable.

Wind density zone map

The great lakes plus offshore wind could power the whole US.

The only issue for them would be boating and heavy seas.

The 3 sisters waves of the Great lakes are no joke.

Rogue wave causes

[edit on 13-7-2010 by Ex_MislTech]

There are some limitations to this idea though. There is a maximum amount of air (or water) a funnel can handle, after that it will just overflow. The wind will flow around your funnel as that will be the path of the lowest resistance. So a funnel will only work optimal at a specific wind speed.

I can imagine that scaling the wings of a mill is more cost effective, as you won't need any additional structures. But the concept in that Youtube video doesn't look that bad.

Originally posted by -PLB-
There are some limitations to this idea though. There is a maximum amount of air (or water) a funnel can handle, after that it will just overflow. The wind will flow around your funnel as that will be the path of the lowest resistance. So a funnel will only work optimal at a specific wind speed.

I can imagine that scaling the wings of a mill is more cost effective, as you won't need any additional structures. But the concept in that Youtube video doesn't look that bad.

Yes you are right, there is a point of diminishing returns due to
back pressure.

At what point that threshold is crossed I do not know.

Maybe a physics genius or aerodynamic engineer can tell us.

Thought it must be mentioned some multimast sailing vessels
of old moved over 100 tons of ship and cargo thru the water
with some speed.

IMHO
The sail boat example is a good one.
Foils are cheaper to build, have no moving parts, and if you focus the wind to the right place you eliminate the nessesity of huge wind mill construction

Look at a dutch wind mill - slow blade.
Pump the water up, then when you need power, release the water down... no batteries, or lift a huge weight by electric winch, then release the weight when you want power

Originally posted by pryingopen3rdeye

Originally posted by nobodysavedme

conservation of energy law still applies.you are merely gathering a large volume of slow wind and speeding it up.

did i hear that right?

Originally posted by nobodysavedme
merely gathering a large volume of slow wind and speeding it up.

merely? doesnt anyone realize that if you can amplify any form of energy than you have infinite energy.!!!
all you do is cycle the out back to the in,

like you said they take in slow wind and speed it up, if then the sped up wind was added to the next batch of wind coming in the amplification being circular should be endless.

hence tesla technology but with wind turbines instead of electricity itself.

i believe this would be easiest with a motor of only magnets, theirs plenty talk and home made examples of this on the web,

You are wrong again.You endless amplifier is your delusion.

think 2x6=6x2 0k?


e=Energy is conserved.

otherwise water pipes would explode and the planet would implode if your endless amplifier occurred as any slow moving stream could be "amplified".

you need to take basic physics.

@ nobodysavedme

You are right about the inifinite wind recirculation not working.

My design and that of the company in question just gathers more
air and crams it across a smaller space.

It can take slow wind, make it flow across a smaller cross section
and thus increase the wind speed.

Where this would benefit is as I mentioned you can build less turbines
and use these directional sails to focus the wind.

Higher power, lower cost and areas of the world that are considered
marginal for wind power now become usable due to higher
wind speeds.

reply to post by Ex_MislTech


Bernoulli came up with the theory a long time ago. What happens though is a loss of pressure or amount of energy in the air that is acting on the turbine. It is why an airfoil works. When an airfoil passes through the air, the molecules going over the top have a longer route to take so they stretch out and have to speed up to get back to where they were. Therefore, when they are moving faster, there is less density equalling less pressure on the top of the airfoil creating lift. now, if you put a wind turbine in the fast moving air, you are putting it in a faster moving but less efficient air resulting in no gain.

Wind turbines take energy from the wind, and convert that into electrical energy. This idea is no different, it merely takes a large amount of energy from a large area, and focuses it at one point where it can be converted into electrical energy. You may need a smaller wind turbine for the same power but this is made up by the fact that you require a way to concentrate that energy (a wind 'funnel') hence it does not help any of the issues that wind energy has. The only way this could be advantageous is if the structures that concentrate the wind energy at one point are already existing, or can be used for other purposes, for example, placing them between buildings somewhat like this. Other than that, it probably unnecessarily complicates wind turbine design because it is significantly more complex than an extremely large turbine generating the same amount of electrical energy.

With a focus that provides 4 times the air speed, you get 64 times the power.

10 mph to 20 mph = 8 times, 20 to 40 mph = another 8 times.

This alone could solve electric power problems around the world for all time.

I turned this in to Google's 100 ideas to help the world, but it went ignored.

Let me know what you think !

You seem confused...

Power = Energy / Time, which is the same as Joules per second.

The amount of energy per unit of air follows 1/2mv^2.

Therefore the amount of power you get from the wind completely depends on how much kinetic energy is in the wind (1/2mv^2) and how much of the wind you can capture (amount of wind flowing through the system per second). As well as efficiency. That's all there is too it.

A grossly simplified mathematical rule could be:

Electric Power = ((1/2)(mass of wind flowing through the entire system per second)(change in average velocity throughout the entire system)^2)(efficiency) (aside: that's where you get your cubic equation from, as mass flowing through is dependent on velocity and v*v^2= v^3.). Your idea DOES speed up the wind in the middle, but this is negated completely by a decrease in pressure, thus the above equation will still hold 100% true otherwise it would break fundamental laws of physics, something I doubt a simple funnel is going to do.

Again, for the overall generation system that equation will always stay the same no matter how you design any wind system. If you want more electrical energy, you need a larger structure to extract more air or it needs to be more efficient(by reduced vortices for example).

It would also constrict the air as the funnel would change the direction of the air, directing the air into the turbines. Thus part of the kinetic energy in the air would be transferred to the earth, instead of going to spinning the turbine. Given that, I ask:

Why would it make sense to construct thousands of massive funnels around thousands of turbines using the largest and strongest sails ever created (which constrict the air), supported by massive towers a few hundred meters high with their associated capital cost, land footprint, and maintenance cost, instead of simply making the turbine blades longer?

(aside: You could build more smaller blades, but then the overall complexity has gone dramatically upwards and it avoids economies of scale).

It would only be a good idea it were in a situation like the Bahrain World Trade Center.

It might be able to be optimized for low wind areas, but this would come at a cost of high winds. The economics of wind go way down in low wind areas, which would mean it's even more uneconomical.

It wouldn't (alone) come close to solving all the issues that wind power integration has, and it's not like other technologies aren't progressing either. Unconventional wind-turbines aren't being widely implemented mainly because in the real world they don't work very well compared to more conventional types. It seems to me that there's a reason that wind power provides 2% of the worlds electricity. It's not about how much energy exists, it's all about how costly, safely, and how reliably it is to utilize it. Wind comes out dead last and first first and last principles.

France is the only developed country with acceptably low CO2 emissions (and thus fossil fuel use) from electricity generation with the exception of those with really big hydro resources. The infrastructure was built in less than 20 years. Despite all the noise, publicity and substantial expenditure on wind and solar, other European countries such as Denmark and Germany are nowhere near what France has already achieved. Oh, and electricity is cheaper in France.

[edit on 19/7/2010 by C0bzz]