The Wind Lamp is a concept that could help the environment and natural resources in a number of ways. This green lamp is designed to serve as a street lamp, and it could come in very handy at places with sufficient wind power. The lamp basically consists of LEDs and a wind power generator.

The wind generators harness energy to power the LEDs, and since LEDs themselves are quite energy efficient, they are in a suitable position to effectively use the energy so generated. LEDs in the lamp use the required energy for light, and any excess energy generated can be supplied to neighboring lamps to keep them running.

Designer Kyung Kuk Kim’s concept generates clean power, gets some load off the grid, and probably even manages to do its job well. All those plus points however, come with some negatives as well. This would be one expensive street lamp to install and maintain, and with the resources each lamp would require, it will likely take away more than it provides.

Via: Ecofriend

The effect of millions of electric vehicles connecting to the grid during peak hours has been feared and discussed since long. While charging vehicles during off-peak hours may be good for utilities, in an interesting turn it may even earn some money for the owners. More specifically, EV/PHEV owners in West Texas and Illinois are being paid to charge their vehicles during off-peak hours, and that’s clean wind energy we’re speaking of.

With the growth of wind energy in these states, there is an oversupply of energy during off-peak hours, and this has in turn pushed prices into the negative range. Since wind turbine owners get a tax credit to the tune of 2.1 cents per kilowatt hour of energy generated, they prefer not to shut down the turbines during off hours and pass on a share of the subsidy to the end user.

Since there is no efficient energy storage system in place for off hours, the turbine owners are short of options. Smart Meters could prove to be useful for customers and utilities during such times, at least for the near future, until the demand increases or energy storage systems like Compressed Air Energy Storage (CAES) come into play.

Source: Reuters

Mariah Power, a small wind turbine manufacturing company, has created a wind speed measuring app for the iPhone. The basic idea of course, is to let interested users measure wind speed, and see if it would suit their need for a small wind turbine.

The app uses the phones microphone to capture the sound of the wind, and then uses an algorithm to cancel out ambient noise and find out the wind decibel speed. While the speed calculated may not be entirely accurate, potential customers can get a fair idea of the usability of a wind turbine.

The Reno, Nev. based company builds slim 30-foot-tall vertical-axis turbines that can turn wind into electricity. These turbines cost $4000 plus another $1000 for installation and offer 1.2kW of power, or 2000 kWh of power annually and a claimed cost of ownership of 12.4 cents per kilowatt-hour over 20 years. The company says its turbine moves slower, thus generating less noise.

In any case, the app is a great way for people to check feasibility of installing a wind turbine, giving those interested, an efficient and easy to use tool.

Source: earth2tech

If you remember in Part 1, I set the table and server up the hors d’oeuvres, appetizer plates, and salads of harnessing Herricanes (If you don’t remember, STOP!  Go back and read Part 1 before continuing).  Now I will serve up heaps of real meat and continue the anger management presentation.

Waves, which seemed as big as skyscrapers and actually several times the height of the boats crashing down on the vessels, threatened to squash them all like cockroaches underneath Mother Nature’s shoe. Such power is just begging to be harnessed.

In fact, many companies including Lockheed Martin Corp. are developing utility-scale power-generation plants.  I am not talking about a couple of buoys in the ocean generating a few watts of electricity to power a light bulb of fan, but plants capable of generating power for cities.

A company named Pelamis has prototypes of what I call “Ocean Snakes” that are jointed mechanical snakes that bend in seas and generate electric power by pushing hydraulic fluid past turbines when their joints flex.  Imagine developing larger snakes that can function in 50-foot seas!

I can already hear your next question, gentle readers.  “Fred, hurricanes do not happen often enough to rely on them for power, so how do you address this?”

I have a solution for this also.  I am stealing someone’s science fiction idea:  heat generating sakes (if you remember the book, please let me know).  These mechanical monsters would be much larger than Pelamis’ prototypes and would generate huge amounts of heat when the flexed.

You might ask, so I’ll ask it now “What do heat generating snakes have to do with hurricanes?”  The Global Warming activists used to say rising temperatures feed the hurricanes and rising sea temperatures do this.  Localized changes in the sea temperature happen all the time globally, rising and falling with seasonal and longer periodic rates.  El Nino and La Nina are examples of this climatic change that have been around longer than man’s SUVs.

But, let’s just pretend that more hurricanes will result from Global warming; more hurricanes mean more electricity to meet our needs!          

Now, we just exploit what we know about making lots of hurricanes and activate these heat-generating snakes during hurricane season and use them to localize the hurricanes to places far away from land where possible and also use them to increase their fierceness.  In other words, use these snakes to make the hurricanes MAD!

Now, here is the ingenious part.  Combine all three (windmills, power snakes and heat snakes) and have them reinforce each other and create a synergy that will produce huge amounts of power.

Who knows?  Maybe this article will provide the catalyst for a group of companies to turn some cowboys loose and lasso this energy.

Kathryn Siranosian published a blog entry about Hurricane Rick and she got me to thinking.  While I believe it should be named Himmicane Rick and that has nothing to do with this article, hurricanes could be good for the energy business.

You may ask, “How so, Fred?  Don’t you remember Hurricane Katrina and the oil shortage and price increases?”  Yes I do and the loss to the oil supply was not even measurable as the oil companies knew it was coming and shut down the oil rig platforms in the Gulf of Mexico and secured the wells to reduce or even eliminate seepage.

The gasoline prices rose temporarily in response to speculators who expected the shortages and tried to make some money on it.  They lost as oil production resumed as normal a day after the hurricane left.

Now, as we all know, most herricanes are full of vitriolic, rancorous, and malicious anger, and are seemingly dedicated to the destruction of anyone or anything that gets in their way.  After a couple of unsuccessful marriages, I thought about trying to harness this power for the good of mankind, rather than its obliteration.

Kathryn states “Maximum sustained winds remain near 180 mph, with higher gusts. While fluctuations in intensity are likely during the next 24 hours, Rick is expected to remain an extremely dangerous hurricane for the next day or two.”

WOW!  Just think of the electricity that could be generated by windmill farms based in the areas that hurricanes inhabit.  Just think of hundreds or even tens of thousands of windmills churning out megawatts of power with 180 mile per hour winds.

In fact, they do not need to be based there all year around.  Take them into dry-dock for maintenance during the off-season and tow them back to sea just before the start of the hurricane season.

Let’s see, how could we harness the hurricane even better?  AHA!  I remember several episodes on the Deadliest Catch on the Discovery channel and the crab boats with their crabby captains (we now know that crabs got their name from the captains of the boats that fish for them) fighting for their lives during a hurricane on the Bering Sea.

In Part 2, I will provide even more methods of capturing hurricanes and harnessing their power.

Hurricane Rick is now an “extremely dangerous” category five storm, according to officials from the National Weather Service.

Maximum sustained winds remain near 180 mph, with higher gusts. While fluctuations in intensity are likely during the next 24 hours, Rick is expected to remain an extremely dangerous hurricane for the next day or two.

Officials expect Rick to remain offshore of the southern coast of Mexico over the weekend. As shown in the 5-Day forecast (above), it is predicted to strike the Baja California Peninsula early Wednesday morning.

Rick is likely to generate large swells–and potentially dangerous surf conditions –along the southwestern coast of Mexico during the next few days.

Source and Image: National Weather Service

Can a fan still cool you if it doesn’t have blades?

Apparently so, if it’s the new Dyson Air Multiplier ™ fan pictured above.

Dyson, a company well-known for advancing vacuum cleaner technology, has now developed a new generation of innovative bladeless fans. These fans use the simple principles of fluid dynamics –without the traditional fan blades –to multiply air flow 15 times, ultimately expelling some 119 gallons of air every second.

What more, since there are no blades, the Dyson Air Multiplier ™ fan is safe and easy to clean. Air flow is uninterrupted, and velocity is adjusted with a control similar to a dimmer switch.

How does it work? The Dyson website explains it like this:

1. First, an energy efficient, brushless motor draws air in using technologies similar to those at work in jet engines and turbochargers.
2. Airflow is accelerated as it passes over an airfoil-shaped ramp.
3. Air from behind the fan is drawn in by a process known as inducement.
4. Air from around the fan is also drawn in by a process known as entrainment. Altogether, the airflow is amplified 15 times.

You can watch an entertaining video of people reacting to this remarkable new fan here.

Technology like this isn’t cheap, however. The 12” version of the Dyson bladeless fan is available for $329.99. The 10” version will set you back $299.99

Source: Dyson

The achievement will be phased in however, as only 5GW power generation will be in place by 2010. It will go up to 12GW in 2015 and by 2020, it will reach 20GW ,with the installed capacity eventually reaching the magic figure of 40W.

What has taken even the experts by surprise is the astonishingly low cost of the project. The overall cost sits at $17.6 billion for 20W and the entire 40W-this isn’t confirmed -, whatever bracket it chooses, it is still pleasingly low.

If you try to establish a reason for this low cost production, the most suitable answer is the use of Chinese-made wind turbines. These turbines are made less expensively than those made in the US or Europe and hence the costs of power generation stay low.

Reference is also being made to the local employment generation and fostering turbine parts manufacturing activity meaning maybe the actual costs may not reflect what it should.

[via Treehugger] Image courtesy of Diego Silvestre

Image by stuant63

Home wind turbines are coming and in many cases are already here. But, in truth, call me shortsighted but if I live in a place where it’s windy enough for me to get the benefit of a whirlygig on my house, I think I might want to move. Perhaps if I lived alone out in the middle of a field in the middle of the plains of Oklahoma, or on a mountain top or, or…

About the only real reason I can think of someone wanting a wind turbine on their house would be the ‘cool factor.’ And what about noise? And they have to be big enough to really get some power generated out of them…and, and…

Am I really being too shortsighted here? I can’t see the forest for the wind turbines.

Greenbird, wind powered vehicle breaks speed record

With a uber-cool looking carrier dubbed the Greenbird (completely wind-powered and uses absolutely nothing else to speed it up), after a few unsuccessful attempts down under in Australia, Richard managed to achieve this rare feet at Ivenpah Lake in Nevada.

Dare to venture a guess on the mark he set? It’s a stunning 126.1 mph and yes that is all just wind power!

The Greenbird is much like a sail boat on land, but has totally different challenges to overcome. Powered by wind at such a high pace, the entire vehicle experiences a lift much like a flight on runway. And to counter this Richard used F1-styled wings to keep it firmly on ground!

While the new speed record gives a great ad for wind energy and illustrates its potential, Richard is looking forward to breaking his own record and setting a new land speed record for wind-powered vehicle, all over again. [BBC via Inhabitat]