Japanese breakthrough will make wind power cheaper than nuclear
A surprising aerodynamic innovation in wind turbine design called the 'wind lens' could triple the output of a typical wind turbine, making it less costly than nuclear power.
Snapshot from video 
It's also important to point out that growth in wind power capacity is perfectly symbiotic with projected growth in electric vehicles. EV battery packs can soak up wind power produced during the night, helping to equalize the curve of daytime energy demand. So the controversial investment currently being entertained by President Obama to pipe oil down from the Canadian Tar Sands would — in my utopian vision — be a moot point.
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BUT...... Seen the number of blades, the price of the turbine will be twice as high as a normal one. Besides, other have tried this long before and it did not work !
I have been lurking around here for fairly sometime but i havent made a comment, just thought i would say hello!
From one madness to another..
We must destroy the industrial civilization as soon as possible.
I once was on Stumble Upon a wind technology that used fields of very long vertical tubes to generate wind energy. I have been unable to find anything else about them. Does anyone know what I am talking about?
Yeah I remember. I also remember another story about how ridge tiles on ones roof will soon be replaced with silent turbines. Lots of good ideas lets do one of them...
Just saw that article you are talking about last week. It was talking about this being used in the deserts in the middle east. Tall carbon fiber rods that moved with the wind and stored the energy generated in pods in the base.
Just keep stumbling around, maybe it will come up again.
Yea, it was like a white canvas tube/tent, and they were growing plants under it and using the convection to harvest a current. check out http://alt-e.blogspot.com/2004/11/solar-chimney-for-california.html
too bad we didn't get a clue and still don't.
California voters have a rare opportunity to shut down their nuclear power plants! www.californianuclearinitiative.com
and why would you ever want to shut down a nuclear power plant? im assuming that you have absolutely zero clue as to how a reactor operates, have no knowledge of nuclear engineering, and have no idea what kind of safety protocols exist that govern how a plant runs. until you go to school and really learn about it, then you should keep your mouth shut and let the people who have gotten the degrees determine the fate of the plants, not the ignorant public.
"U.S. with its endless miles of prairie and agricultural land is one of the few nations that could actually deploy such a network of wind turbines without disrupting the current productivity of the land (Russia and China also come to mind)"
And, you know, that little place called Canada....
Also, "And think of the millions upon millions of jobs that would be created building a 21st century energy distribution system free of the shackles of ever-diminishing fossil fuel.... More
Other than a brief mention of noise being a problem with wind turbines, in general, they failed to talk about noise, vibration of this new design. Hopefully, sound & vibration can be compatible with the enjoyment of all living creatures. It is extremely important.
Sorry in advance, but someone has to say it; most of these posts are half-baked with poorly thought out ideas, and half-brained notions of how energy is generated, stored, and distributed. Furthermore, the oversimplification of the economics of energy in an article like this just serves to make any discussion about it meaningless. It just goes to show you that one-sided thinking is absolutely bad (whatever faction you come from) and that meaningful discussion only happens when many points of.... More
Wouldn't it be nice if the wind lens could be added to all existing wind turbines in the US? Doubling current annual generation capacity (43,461 wiki 2011 3Q) to 86,922
I thought wind power was a great idea... Until I understood that on the hottest day in America, the winds were silent. Good luck with that, there isn't enough storage to make up for a 75% + drop in generation on the peak demand days.
I suspect the reason this will not happen is because too many large corporations are making too much money from the status quo. "If you wonder why something is the way it is, find out who is making money from it being that way."
Why wasn't this discovery made in the United States? Where is our investment in green energy? Our investment should be educating our children for the world of the future and invest in infrastructure, we have the means. we just need the will!
Ignorance is truly bliss.....I aplaud the technology for wid power and certainly agree with its POTENTIAL, just as i believe tidal power, magnetics, and geothermal areas are all 99% unused. And then there is fusion which is nearly unmentioned anymore. However, we are not any where near "dwindling" in our supply of fossil fuels, jobs are made by desires for products and services, and nuclear waste (for my highly uninformed friend) is actually radiated microscopic materials in water for the most.... More
ZERO CARBON FOOTPRINT. Any other questions?
Yes, who cares?
It is most certainly not a "zero carbon footprint". Think of the production, shipping, and maintenance that they will require. However, it is absolutely a renewable energy source.
There is no end to the ways we can harness wind energy. Your article is clearly out of date. Did you spend more than 5 seconds researching the subject?
There is only one windmill solution for the planet: A planet sized windmill. Two pivot points, one at each pole and one blade that circumnavigates the globe. It would take 24 hours for one revolution, but the power generated would be incredible. Now, that's a crazy idea!
The author's note that current technology in wind turbine design is more cost effective than coal is just an outright lie. Since this author has a bias towards any "green" technology it's only expected that he would fall for any set of manipulated numbers to prove a point. The truth is that most Americans want uninterrupted power at the cheapest price possible and if wind power could do that we'd be all over it. Nobody wants to pollute the air and water needlessly but no supposed "green".... More
The unfortunate truth is that much of the world is, without damaging technology, unliveable in.
It's insanity to live somewhere that needs constant air conditioning ...and to compound that by relying upon technologies that could one day soon prove too costly or burdensome to provide that energy.
Sure we could use nuclear power, but eventually, and a lot sooner than you think, the waste products will start to become a burden. Not to mention the cost of the fuel, and the potential.... More
That's a lopsided statement fossil fuels are hardly relaible anymore and have been subsedised tens billions of dollars every year for decades, are fast running out and repeatadly cause brown outs due to the inability to meet growth demands vs mining times and costs where as a renewable system lasts forseably forever as long as its maintained and has far lower overheads in the short term and moreso in the long term. I understand though with fossil fuels however, lends itself to the monotary.... More
The author's note that current technology in wind turbine design is more cost effective than coal is just an outright lie. Since this author has a bias towards any "green" technology it's only expected that he would fall for any set of manipulated numbers to prove a point. The truth is that most Americans want uninterrupted power at the cheapest price possible and if wind power could do that we'd be all over it. Nobody wants to pollute the air and water needlessly but no supposed "green".... More
Oh and also, good luck keeping that turbine in the picture safe during the winter, I dont see any possibilities for pitch control.
Dude 1/4 of alaska is like the size of california! What, are you gonna give all the maintnence men camper trucks and 200 gallons of gas? Is that realy that enviormentally friendly? Also, where is all this land? Are you going to destroy national parks and build huge windfarms? Or are you going to kick people out of their homes. Industrial grade wind turbines can be up to 40 stories tall! Talk about defacing the country side!
OH, so you mean destroying parks like how Fracking poisons the underground water supplies and watersheds that feed cities. Poisons that are known to cause cancers and are endocrine disrupters. You mean how industry pays people a pittance for their mineral rights? How regulations on scrubbers for coal and oil burning plants are so outdated, that they can dump poisons into the air for over ten years before action is taken to correct it. Poisons that rain back down into your water supply. .... More
Not to mention a no fly zone for any living thing.
The Bay of Fundy tides are violent enough to destroy the best engineered tidal turbines. We are working on better engineering.
I remember this being 'new' design 10 years ago
Great news.
Hope this will come soon and be duplicated in Brazil too !
Joao P L
http://www.ddi-ddd.com.br
Mythbusters used this design for their prototipe of a personal plane. How is this new?
So how good for the environment is it to kill all that forestation and fauna that produce oxygen and destroy 170K Square miles or the size of Alaska in Wildlife habitat? Do you not realize this is not green energy but just a power and money shift from right to left supporting industries? You are being manipulated into thinking you are saving the planet for a cash grab while ruining mother earth. Just drive through the wind farms of Cochella/Indio CA or take a look at the new solar farm where.... More
Where does you electricity come from?
Lots of prairie space not being used for much of anything. You prefer leveling mountains for coal or burrying toxic waste in the ground?
Do you have any better option? Nothing's perfect. It would be much better having wind farms and solar panels than oil, coal, gas, and nuclear. That's a fact. You're trying to hard to be a hippie.
I live very near the wind farm in Northern Colorado and there haven't been any decreases in the antelope, bunnies or rattlesnakes for that matter near the wind farm here. Maybe Colorado animals are less sensitive than California critters, but I think all the impacts we have on this little planet are going to effect something. So, I guess you have to ask which is better, pumping tons of pollution into the air, risking a possible meltdown or displacing an animal or two. I guess we could also.... More
i just have an idea to throw out there. considering if these work so well, couldn't the same idea be used on a smaller scale to help as a supplement to electric vehicles? 2 or 3 of these downsized device's could be placed between the headlights behind where the grate is that has a grate specially made to allow for maximum air flow. instead of having to use gasoline for when the electric power is too low it can tap into the saved energy used from this. also given the vehicles are moving there.... More
Actually, that wouldn't help too much, I'm afraid. Disrupting a vehicle's aerodynamic profile and adding additional drag-inducers would really hurt fuel economy when trying to get the vehicle up to speed - up past 40-45mph wind resistance becomes a really big issue, and at freeway speeds of up to 80... well, I dunno.
A possible solution would be to run the turbines off the vehicle's exhaust, much the same way a turbocharger is run; this might have the undesired effect of adding.... More
I'm all for alternative energy, but do the math... The U.S. has 9.83 million km2. If 2.2 km2 is suitable for wind harvesting, then that is just in between 1/4 and 1/5 of the WHOLE country! If you propose 2.63 million wind turbines, then that comes out to more than 1 turbine per square kilometer! Imagine a windturbine every 1000 meters from the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains!
Migrating birds are not taken into account with this Japanese inventor whatsoever. All the more reason to keep the spinning blade diameter SMALL, decentralized and powering a family household. I've never seen it fail, whether it is centralized windpower, solar, septic, city water, coal, nuclear. ANYTHING that is centralized, and the family unit not empowered to do it all by themselves, is going to destroy the wildlife and their habitat. It's because, when these ideas are scaled up,.... More
The sad part of having each household on it's own power source is that the renewable energy people are more greedy than the oil and gas people. That's why it costs so much to install a personal/household solar or wind system on a house. If we can get the environmentalists to quit being so greedy we could all have affordable renewable energy.
I read some studies that show that birds aren't stupid and stay clear of the wind mills. Do you think a bird would really fly through a wind mill? Would you? Birds still would have plenty of space to fly around the windmills. Instead of killing some "stupid" birds (you know the ones that fly into your window) lets just kill the O-zone and all of earth. That sounds like a great idea. If you stupid hippies would stop your nonsense it would be great. THANKS
A follow-up to my post in the wee hours of the day regarding current wave energy projects. I wrote that I thought a successful wave energy project existed somewhere along the Irish coast. I couldn't remember where I had read this. There are a number of experimental projects around the globe, including, in Ireland, a "wave power device" operated in a two year trial which was completed in 2009. I found some information at Wikipedia - .... More
'Well, such a breakthrough has been made, and it's called the "wind lens." '
It's usually called a ducted fan.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ducted_fan
And it doesn't mean you can get any more power *per square mile*. It just means you can use shorter blades on the turbine to get the same power. Whether the extra structure saves money isn't clear.
..and just think, after a few years of this huge array of wind turbines there'll only be a few birds and bats left to clean up after (woot woot)! ohh wait, that might not be a good thing..
