CarbonetiX

Harnessing energy from a belt flapping in the wind

If you’ve ever thought about putting a wind turbine on your suburban house, but then started to research it, you’ll know that wind turbines don’t work too well in cities and the suburbs.

Even if its windy, turbulence means that unless you can get your turbine very high – three times as high as anything within a few hundred meters (including your house), the turbine simply won’t generate much wind.

I recently saw a study of 30 odd urban wind turbine installations in the UK which showed very poor performance.

It looks as though this problem may have been overcome with a radical new design. Humdinger, a US company, have come up with a wind generator that makes electricity from the vibrations of a belt flapping in the wind. Its a great sounding idea. From the looks of their website the product isn’t yet in commercial production – so don’t get too excited yet.

But I like the thinking behind the idea – instead of trying to make something with blades and a rotary motion – make it linear, and in theory it may be more reliable and robust than a rotary device where there is lots of turbulence.

www.humdingerwind.com

Renewable Energy Crowded Out

THE proportion of Australia’s energy produced from renewable sources such as wind and hydro has declined dramatically over the past 50 years, a new report shows.

Despite all the policy implementations and public awareness campaigns, Australian’s are getting a smaller proportion of their energy from renewable sources.

The report by consultancy group Green Energy Markets showed that in 1960, renewable energy provided 19 per cent of the grids electricity compared to just 7 per cent today. Coal-fired power, which produced nearly 200 million tonnes of green house gas in 2008, had risen 1200 per cent and currently provides over 80 per cent of our electricity.

The ratio of renewable energy to coal-fired power on the main national electricity network has declined slightly from 11 per cent in 2001 to 10 per cent in 2009. The image below shows the share of CO2 emissions associated with the different generation methods.

(source: http://www.climatechange.gov.au/~/media/publications/greenhouse-acctg/national-inventory-by-economic-sector-2009.pdf)

This has occurred despite policy targets such as the federal government’s Renewable Energy Target which aims to ensure 20 per cent of electricity is produced from renewable sources by 2020.

Such initiatives are fantastic but as yet have been all carrot and no stick. Mark Wakeham, Environment Victoria’s campaign director, said:

“[The findings] highlight that we are going to need a broad mix of renewable energy technology,”.

A price on carbon is still the most effective way to reduce Australia’s dependence on Coal power.

”Until someone who is polluting stops polluting, or pollutes less, we are not going to see a fall in our national emissions.”

All comments on Climate Change, Renewable Energy, Sustainability and Government Policy are welcomed. We encourage friendly open debate.

The romance and reality of urban wind power

Its now possible to buy a 200 watt micro wind turbine for $449 from Jaycar electronics. A couple of years ago they were even including a four meter tower with the wind turbine. If you live in a windy flat spot with no trees or houses upstream of the prevailing wind it’s a bargain. But don’t waste your money buying one of these and putting it on top of your suburban house, in your backyard or on top of your office building.

Encraft in the UK have published the results of a trial on the operation of 26 building mounted wind turbines with a combined 168,950 hours of operation. The purpose of the trial was to see how grid connected small wind turbines performed on a range of building types and locations. It was undertaken in 2007 and 2008. A range of turbines from different manufacturers were tested, with capacities from 400 to 1,250 watts. The report includes photos of each installed turbine. Looking at the photos it becomes pretty obvious that the wind turbines that performed the best were mounted high, well above surrounding buildings.

The gist of the report comes in paragraph three “as anyone who knows anything about wind power will attest, urban environments and building mounting is probably the most challenging context in which to try to make wind power work.” The report then goes to show that the average availability factor of turbines in the trial was 0.85%, improving to 4.15% if turbines which were switched off or broken were taken into account.

At a 4% availability factor a 200 watt turbine would only produce 70kWh a year, about 20% of the energy used by a small energy efficient fridge. At a 1% availability factor that drops to under 20kWh. Take off the power that the generator might use and the effective power output could be zero.

The report notes that many of the turbines on the best sites (high rise) were turned off because of noise complaints.

Encraft say that the “technology is still at a development stage and is likely to make a tangible contribution to energy and carbon saving only on the most exposed site and tallest building.”

A couple of years ago I researched putting a small wind turbine on my surburban house. Someone from the wind industry advised that for the turbine to work it had to be twice as high as the nearest obstruction. Otherwise the air would be turbulent, reducing output and leading to early failure. I figured that building a 50 meter tower in my backyard and getting the necessary planning permit wasn’t worthwhile. And of course it also helps if you live in a windy location.

With this rule of thumb in mind it becomes obvious pretty quickly that urban or surburban wind generation in most cases just isn’t viable with current technology. And the UK study proves it. Maybe emerging technologies that may be able to operate better in turbulence may prove more useful in urban environments, such as the linear wind generator.

Category Archives: Wind energy