Folding Wind Turbine Concept: the Eolic Posted on February 8th, 2010
This concept is pretty cool and could be useful, especially for those who camp or move between homes or home and office. It’s limited in what it can do, but the concept is cool. In fact, some people like scientists and foresters or the like might find it useful in the field as a portable power source.
It’s Eolic, a foldable, portable wind turbine.
Designed by Sergio Phashi and Manuel Pantano of Marcos Media, the Eolic is also meant for disaster situations or even military applications. It’s a relatively small “pod” case that, when opened, can be unfolded and set up to be a stand, pole, and wind turbine with generator all in one unit. It should be capable of putting out more power than the smaller, basically hand-held units that are currently on the market.
It’s just a concept, but a good one that might have actual market potential.
Opening the pod, the unit folds out to reveal the tripod stand with the folded turbine at center. The pole under the turbine telescopes in three sections while the turbine unfolds to reveal three blades. Wiring runs down through the telescoping stand and out. When fully extended to its maximum height (unspecified), guy wires can be released and staked into the ground around it for added stability.
Pretty cool concept.
DuPont and DoE Collaborate on Thin Film Solar Program Posted on July 28th, 2009
An initial $9 million is being put into the partnership between DuPont and the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE). The solar research program aims to find a solution for providing main stream thin film solar cells for commercial and residential applications.
This 3-year program is designed to accelerate the commercialization of an ultra-thin protective film (3,000 times thinner than a human hair, if you can imagine) to protect and prevent moisture from interfering with solar photovoltaic (PV) cells.
Thin film cells are expected to be one of the fastest-growing segments in the industry because of their wide potential for use in various applications. They are also cheaper to build because of their lower silicon and other costly contents, but up until now, protecting them has been an issue. DuPont thinks they’ve solved that and will be using the partnership with the DoE to fast track final testing and development of the thin film covering as well as the commercialization of the process.
Because thin film solar cells can be made flexible instead of rigid, they can be integrated into a large variety of products and locations.
The project’s total $9 million is split into thirds, with DuPont providing $6 million and the DoE the other $3 million. Scientists at DuPont believe they can have a prototype model for commercial testing before this time next year and hope to have it in production full scale by 2012.
2 Wind Energy Myths Debunked Posted on July 25th, 2009
There are two needling urban legends or myths about wind energy that are commonly used to say that wind turbines will not be able to replace much of our power usage and aren’t really ecological or “green.” Both of them are myths, not fact, and are bunk.
Myth 1: Wind Turbines Kill Birds
The most common one is that birds are constantly killed by the rotating blades of wind turbines and that California or other states are considering banning them (or being hypocritical in environmental policy and allowing them). Often, these birds are named as “Spotted Owls” (the infamous catch-all endangered species bird) or other endangered birds.
The reality is very different. Wind turbines turn way too slow to hit nearly all species of birds. I’d wager that even the Dodo bird would be able to get out of the way fast enough. They also don’t have enough force behind them, in most winds, to do anything but shove the bird for a second, before the shape of the blade and the bird’s soft feathers slid it out and away from the turbine again.
This wasn’t always true, of course, and some of the older models from the 1970s and 1980s–some of which are still in existence in Altamont, California–turned very quickly. Remember, that was the day of the muscle car and James Bond on a speedboat, so it was all about the speed. Generators at that time, it was believed, had to turn at high RPMs to generate any worthwhile amount of power. So turbines spun at quite high rates.
They soon found that not only did they kill birds quite regularly, but these turbines were also not scalable past a certain size and thus would never be useful in lower winds or higher outputs. The Europeans, who were not nearly as obsessed with speed, can be credited with slowing things down and coming up with the larger, slower design that we see today.
Myth 2: Wind Won’t Work Because We Need To Store the Power
Another pervasive myth is actually grounded in a misconception of how current grid systems work as well as how a total operation for power generation would work with a significant amount of wind generation included. Most would be surprised to find out that there is little to now mass storage of power used in our system now.
Unless you count unburnt coal, water in a reservoir that hasn’t been sent through a dam, or natural gas that hasn’t been fired, that is.
Current systems on the grid have scalable ouput that can be changed nearly instantly to match demand. Natural gas and hydro are most commonly used this way. Their production can ramp up or slow down almost on demand to meet the needs of the current grid users. This occurs daily, without most of us even realizing, it, actually.
Coal can also be cycled this way, but isn’t often done (except on schedules: more in daytime, less at night) because it takes much longer to adjust.
Current estimates from the American Wind Energy Association says that even when wind energy production makes up 20% of our current power usage, other systems in the grid can make up for any losses or over-abundance when wind is plentiful or not.
Hopefully, I’ve given you a way to stave off the doubters when either of these issues come up.
The Solar Blimp Takes To the Skies! Posted on July 23rd, 2009
French engineers have built a helium blimp and wrapped the top of it in solar panels. The cells power the propellers that moves the blimp and makes it zero-emissions. The team plans to fly the zeppelin across the English Channel later this summer after flight testing.
Called Project Sol’R, the blimp is led by INSA Lyon and ESSEC Business School built the aluminum frame and then stretched a nylon-polythylene wrap over that. The whole blimp is 72 feet long and the cells generate up to 2.4 kilowatts.
The blimp was built by students of the engineering schools and took about a year and a half to complete. The Sol’R debuted at the Paris Air Show at Le Bourget in late June.
Interestingly, Lockheed Martin has been working on a solar-powered drone (unmanned) blimp for military reconnaissance use, but is not affiliated with this Sol’R project.
I wish the team the best of luck and can’t wait to find out how the flight over the Channel went!
Pervious Concrete Pavement – Lets Water Soak Into the Ground Posted on July 22nd, 2009
Pavement has a major down side when it comes to ground water: it forces the water to run off, usually by channeling, and thus doesn’t let a lot of it soak into the ground. Most water coming off of pavement will run in rivulets into streams, sewers, and so forth. This deprives groundwater sources of some of their renewal sources.
Well, Pervious Concrete has a solution for that. They’ve developed a Pervious Pavement that allows water to soak through into the ground beneath it. This porous concrete meets EPA stormwater regulations and is even recommended by the EPA as a Best Management Practice.
For most uses, such as parking lots, the concrete is actually cheaper because installation can forego the usual runoff designs and stormwater management devices like retention ponds or spillways. The down side, of course, is that this concrete is not as strong as normal, solid concrete, but it is strong enough to be used for low speed and light load applications like standard car parking lots and pedestrian walkways.
The way it works is deceptively simple: the concrete is mixed with a high aggregate content (gravel) and less sand than usual. This creates a mortar bond between the gravel pieces, but does not make a solid sheet of concrete. This allows for the formation of a 15-25% void ratio in the finished concrete.
This will be pervious (porous) and typically allows a 5/gallon per foot per minute
water flow through the concrete and into the ground beneath.
If installed correctly, the concrete is resistant to freeze-thaw cracking, oil seepage from leaking vehicles, and is easily cleaned by pressure washing or brushed sweepers. It’s only real down side is that strength issue, which can be somewhat overcome to accommodate vehicles up to tractor-trailer size, just not at speed.
Pretty cool!
