Hippy Green

When I think of wind power I think of these huge blades spinning around and creating a couple of megawatts of power, not a in my backyard kind of device. Well Mariah Power has create an affordable $4,000 vertical wind turbine that produces 1kW of power and stand only 30 feet tall!

The Windspire is a vertical wind turbine that stands about 30 feet tall and 2 feet wide. The perfect wind turbine for DIYers. Many “wind bashers” find vertical wind turbines better then horizontal wind turbines due to the “possibility” of bird killing via migration. I find this HARD to believe and hear much of the SAME people bashing cell phone antennas and TALL BUILDINGS. Think about it, do you see birds flying into a huge building, NO so why would they fly into a spinning blade. (sorry for the rant, ugh I just hate those people who complain and do NOT understand the FACTS!)

Anyway, The Windspire is a rugged and simple constructed vertical wind turbine that has limited maintains. It produces about 25 decibels of noise at five feet, which is about the same as a noise neighborhood house. The Windspire only needs a 8 MPH gust of wind to produce power and can survive up to 100 MPH winds!

The most interesting part that would make me buy a Windspire is the fact the Windspire also includes an internal wireless modem that can continuously transmit power production information directly to your computer so you can check your power production at any time. Monitor your offset and see how fast you can pay it off. At 10 cents a kilowatt it takes about 20 years to pay it off, but at $4,000 a nice investment for the green person inside you.

While doing some research today I stumbled across some great website to help lower the cost of going green. With most technologies the new they are the more they cost. Over time the price goes down and economics of scale play a role. Anyway, please take a look at DSIRE for tax breaks for adding alternative energies to your home. Now please keep in mind that some houses (condos, gated communiteis, etc) have a HOA that would prevent you from setting up or installing a wind turbine or solar array.

As for your commute, if your thinking about a hybrid or converting a car to bio-diesel please take a look at the Tax incentives for alternative fuels.

The German town of Dardesheim will soon be running completely on renewable energy. Most of the town has solar roofs installed as well as some huge wind turbines, like the 6 megawatt turbine, the E112. This turbine produces 12 to 15 million kWH per year!

The 1,000 residents of Dardesheim want to attach tourist who are interested in renewable energy. The town has organized a monthly newsletter, the Dardesheimer Windletter, to inform the population of the latest project progress.

The town does not completely run on wind, there are 9 different solar PV plants that generate about 250,000 kWh or able 1/3 of the Dardsheim’s domestic electricity.

via Wind Works

The next energy harvesting idea is using the already clogged speedway (highway,parkway,etc) to convert the wind created by the passing cars, trucks, etc to electricity. This idea has been around for a while, but I think what makes this recently example so specially is how they go about doing it, using overhead turbines that collect the energy. We could use this energy to power the lights along the freeway, but the upfront cost would be pretty large, especially if we plant to have these every 10 to 100 miles apart.

Joe (ASU) posted on the Archinect schoolblog his idea (picture above) as well as other diagarms explaining how he came up with this idea and how we can use the power. He explains how harvesing this power of cars driving by is much like a parasite on a organism, we would harvest free power from the speeding cars (minus the upfront cost of installing these turbines). I find this project even more interesting because they want to install them in the phoenix area.

As some of you know, I am on vacation in the phoenix area. I actually just drive by where they would be installing this wind turbine near the 51 and Osborn Road. I also been taking some pictures of how people are using solar power here, but since there are a lot of condos and apartments out here with HOA (Homeowners Associations) they REFUSE to use Solar Panels or let renters/buyers install them! I just can not get over these, its FREE POWER, granted their is a cost assocatied with the solar panels, but you can save money and have them not only pay for themselves over time but save money!

Anyway back to the wind farm highway, Joe also did some calculations showing how the average vehicle passes by at 70MPH, so if you take a 10MPH baseline, each wind turbine would produce 9,600KwH of energy annually! (enough to power Joes 700sft apartmnet!). I must hand it to Joe if you get this up and running I will be sure to fly back out here and take some pictures of this futurist highway wind turbine.

From Micro Wind Turbines to Multi-Axis Turbosystems there are a variety of ways to use the wind as a form of energy harvesting. Many people complain about wind turbines from “Ruins the View” to “kills bird via migration paths”. I just CAN NOT STAND THESE REASONS! The fact is I spent 2 months traveling Europe this summer and have many, many images of wind turbines. I think wind turbines look beautiful and make the scenery even that much more special.

When you see the rotation of the turbines slowly moving in sync its almost memorizing. As for bird migration, do we have to setup our air travel and airports based on bird migration because they will get sucked into the jet engine?

Now to the alternative windturines, Mass Megawatts Wind Power, Inc has a patented Multi-Axis Turbosystem (MAT) that harvest energy via wind. Much like the micro wind turbines, the MAT system is arranged in a array of multiple wind collectors that rotates multiple generators to transform wind to electricity. Now keep in mind I think this site has over estimated some of their numbers, but I would love to see one of theses and monitor how much energy its harvesting. The company has a PO Box in Worcester, MA but after calling their phone number the operator said they have an office in Shrewsbury, MA. The operator was not able to answer any more of my questions and was more of a messaging service then informational. I do know have the background/information to endorse their product, but I think there is something fishy going on.

As for micro wind turbines, I think they are a great idea. There is a demand for smaller wind turbines in urban areas, but using many smaller wind turbines can still create a large amount of power. Inhabitat posted an article about micro wind turbines last month. You can even order some if you want via Motor Wave Group

Magenn Power’s MARS (Magenn Power Air Rotor System) is a windturbine thats a hot air balloon that generates power an sends it down via tether cables. MARS is a horizontal axis wind turbine that uses a 1000 ft tether cable to transmit its power. There are restrictions that the FAA requires, but having a easy to deploy wind turbine can be a huge selling point!

For those people who either live in the middle of no where or remote 3rd world countries, a source of power is very important. *Side Note* This would be awesome at Burning man. The MARS system is designed to be rapidly deployed and installed without the use of concrete or cranes. MARS generates power with wind speeds between 4 to 60 mph. This idea is just genius and would LOVE to see one in action. Magenn even created a small video about MARS, its on the right hand side of their site.

Energy harvesting wind is a simple concept, but creating new methods and products that will harness the power with easy rapid deployment is HUGE for the wind community. This concept is interesting and makes me think if some green hacker could make a smaller version attached to his house? I know I see those big blow up ads at gas stations, maybe we should look at building the college version and see what power we can harvest at 100 feet.

Chris Pepe of Tears of Fire has build some interesting Green DIY projects. Using our Avronics board he has build a Wind LCD Meter to monitor the MAKE DIY Wind Turbine that his brother Michael built. Chris has worked on a variety of EE projects that deal with Green Technology as well as fun Green toys like a solar powered pendulum. Chris is also a University of Vermont Graduate and is currently working on some really interesting projects.

Seeing how fast people are moving into cities and how much the price of a square foot costs, it only makes sense that we look at building up. We need to look at utilizing all the space we have in our large cities. While I was visiting Japan I saw many unique structures that saved on space by building on top of one another. For example, some of the highways the buses drove on were actually double decker. Building a farm as a skyscraper makes sense and provides food without traveling outside the cite. We could also attach wind turbines and solar panels on this skyscraper to gather energy.

Skyscraper Farms are just the next step, they provide harvesting for both food and energy. We need to start thinking urban planning in cities like New York where 1000sft Condo, 1 bedroom 1 bath in Chelsea costs 1 million dollars! We need to build solar panels and wind turbines on top of these skyscraper Farms as well as produce.

Wired Magazine had a great article about Skyscraper farms