Submitted by lughnasadh t3_y92bcf in Futurology
Imagine endless rows of these on those gigantic mile long industrial warehouses?
I think you have to space them out because they take wind from all directions, so maybe not rows and rows the way solar panels are set up- but perhaps stacks and stacks? Or spaced as efficiently as possible?
As a quick example, if you have two units east-west of one another, wind from the west hits one but not the other, same goes for wind from the easy. Either way, I think you get my point.
Edit: I hadn't read the article and thought they spun but in a small footprint. Have read, very wrong. Point still stands, maybe stacked?
There don't appear to be any of these that exist, only renderings and the power warehouse rendering has solar panels on it.
> Or spaced as efficiently as possible?
Article said about every 15 feet.
Wow. That's close.
They don't take wind from all directions.
I expect they're relying on wind being higher coming over the edge of large buildings, and stacking wouldn't work very well.
They are already starting to use wind power on Container Ships. I hope these can also be used to reduce fuel usage on Large Ships.
Wind powered ships!
It's like evolving, but backwards!
Considering architecture, art, music, people's knowledge of nature, community-building, faith and trust in our own senses, etc., we've been devolving for quite a long time, my friend. Just because time passes and you can type on a screen doesn't necessarily mean progress.
Faith? One of these things isn’t like the other. Progress means not believing in fairy tales
He didn't put a comma after faith, it was part of the "faith and trust in our own senses" part. However I'm not quite sure what he means by that. But it doesn't sound like he's talking about religion
The combustion engine was one of the worst things to happen to this world.
Got a reference or link on the DuPont tests?
Heck, there is even some flat space on the top of these where you could put solar panels!
Or use these wind towers as poles to support a flat, roof-width solar panel assembly. No more solar losses from shadows cast by the wind turbines.
Report on Humans #80420
They are starting to use more than 10% of their brains. SoS.
Exterminate! Exterminate!
Love the concept. I wonder how it would scale with size (eg. one the size of a classic wind turbine).
The answer is in the article. Traditional big windmills come pretty close to the Betz limit, these things dont. The good thing is, that they dont claim to revolutionize the established technology. It is a new market and it looks promising although the optics are a huge deal for architects and cityplaners…but who cares in a industiral area
Also some countries have very limited sun. Like the UK
This. I live in the southern US on a half wooded lot up a large hill. It’s not sunny enough for panels but it would be windy enough for this.
And the wind also shines at night!
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Submission Statements
Rooftop wind power is a sector that has seen many false starts and dodgy claims over the years. Is Aeromine any different? It looks like there may be reason to be cautiously optimistic.
I can see this solution often failing on NIMBY planning permission grounds. It seems a thing most neighbors would love to object to. It could still find lots of use cases however. Particularly in remote, rural, or particularly windy locations.
An interesting idea, but I'd love to see power curve data for different wind directions; from what I can tell (and my admittedly layperson knowledge), it looks like the electricity produced would drop off very quickly even from ~15 degree deviations from the ideal wind direction.
5 kW turbine for a 3 sqm area? Apart from sporadic and localized gale winds I don't see much potential wind power to harvest in just 3sqm, much less in the kW range. I'm very skeptical of these claims.
If I had a small version of this that generated 100-200 watts I'd be happy. That'd be enough to let my house break even at night.
There are some nice camping wind turbines that are big enough to fit that category
https://www.amazon.com/Wind-Turbine-Generator-Blade-Camping/dp/B09DL499QJ
Just want to say all these turbines are basically scams that don't work. 12 m/s is 26 mph. You do not have 26 mph winds as often as you think you do.
It really depends on what use case you have and where you mount it.
But you're right that you're absolutely not getting nameplate capacity out of it very often.
Agreed. These could be good in a limited number of areas. Just as with tidal and wave energy generators, a good solution but only for very few places.
Thx for posting this.
100-200 W only requires a small battery?
Just put a solar panel on top of them for max power!
Or another wind turbine then a solar panel for double max power!
And, and build the turbines out of solar panels!!
And build the solar panels out of wind turbines!
Then filter your own pee.
While running it down a water turbine!
Use the water turbine to power a fan to spin the windmill!
Seems like it might be good for buildings along coastlines.
I have a rooftop patio, this would be very cool, but I'd love to have some validation that I'm not going to be cleaning up bird remains on the regular.
Do you have to clean bird remains from your window sills on the regular? Flying into windows kills about 2500x more birds every year than windmills.
https://www.statista.com/chart/15195/wind-turbines-are-not-killing-fields-for-birds/
Okay google, what's the proportion of windows to windmills?
Not to mention it's a savonius rotor, not a wind turbine
"a machine for producing continuous power in which a wheel or rotor, typically fitted with vanes, is made to revolve by a fast-moving flow of water, steam, gas, air, or other fluid."
So it's a rotor, powered by air, that's generating power? Pretty much the definition of wind turbine.
Y'all really got to argue about anything don't you. What I was getting at is this motor could chop up birds and the like versus the conventional wind turbine.
That wasnt an argument though. Language is important and you made the same claim (it's not a wind turbine) in multiple comments.
If no one corrects you, other people might believe you and start parroting it.
>versus the conventional wind turbine.
Had you used this phrasing or similar in your other comments we wouldn't be having this conversation.
I’m thinking, a shit ton more but I’m no math whiz
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They’re stationary, so it looks like they won’t thwack birds out of the air, but they create a negative pressure vacuum so hopefully they don’t suck the birds down and clog the internal machinery
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It's just a turbine; you could encircle it in chicken wire and you'd be fine
Worse than a turbine, a Savonious rotor.
It's an embedded turbine.
The blades at the top look like a standard Savonius Turbine, but they are stationary.
The actual turbine is below them, and rotates around the same axis that the air is moving.
Ah, my mistake. I still think chicken wire is a good solution, especially since you can't really see it from like 10ft away, and the openings are so wide it'd have a negligible impact on wind resistance and velocity.
Do you have an intense childhood borne fear of cleaning bird carcasses?
The moving components are all inside the housing. No splatty birds.
I wonder if this can be used to help pull heat from things also.
Like, let's say you have it pull the hot air from a bank of ac units, or refrigeration, or something like that. If the ambient air it is pulling is hotter than the low pressure air created, you should have even more energy, no?
I can imagine that the cheap fan would have low heat tolerance, but I'm not talking about something like restaurant exhaust. Just increasing the cooling of an ac unit should help lower energy costs.
I' m very curious about the output of smaller scale ones.
This kind of stuff is the only thing that gives me any hope
What do you with something like this when a hurricane is headed your way?
You get a lot of power
>As with traditional wind turbines, size is key.
>On the other hand, they don't create the noise
>and Aeromine places a relatively small, cheap internal propeller (perhaps 36 inches/91 cm in diameter) in that tube to run a generator
>So what are the downsides? Well, these things need to be installed in spots where the wind direction is pretty constant, because they don't angle themselves to catch a breeze – and they probably never will, since they're designed to be such a cost-conscious machine.
So instead of low-frequency noise they create high-frequency noise, they are less efficient than traditional ones, and they don't even work when the wind is coming in from the wrong direction. On top of that they look like oversized rooftop AC units.
If I had a dime for every project pushing the "this is going to work so much better than traditional wind turbines"-angle and promising that no, this time it's going to be different, really bro just trust me, all we need to do is complicate a very simply design to make it more affordable and efficient I would have a lot of dimes. Maybe even some dollars.
I mean, solar panel output might vary by daytime and cloudcover, but it usually doesn't change all that much due to the sun unexpectedly rising in the north. Solar panels also don't need as much maintenance, and there's not a whole lot that can break, apart from the panel itself. And I don't think birds and instects tend to nest in or on solar panels all that much. Below, maybe.
The following submission statement was provided by /u/lughnasadh:
Submission Statements
Rooftop wind power is a sector that has seen many false starts and dodgy claims over the years. Is Aeromine any different? It looks like there may be reason to be cautiously optimistic.
I can see this solution often failing on NIMBY planning permission grounds. It seems a thing most neighbors would love to object to. It could still find lots of use cases however. Particularly in remote, rural, or particularly windy locations.
Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/y92bcf/aeromine_says_they_have_solved_many_of_the/it33btf/
If you reinforce the housing you could also use them to mount solar panels on without needing to mount them directly to the roof giving you even more power and still have access to your roof to say have an AC unit under the solar.
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I got halfway through the description thinking it said 'Aerosmith'
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No moving parts? Less wear and tear …is it cost effective! Looks like an eyesore but might be a new norm if it works!
There is still a turbine. But its built in the base. The shape of the thing creates low pressure and pulls air up through the base.
Here is another design which pulls air through it, with a turbine in a tube. https://ip.sandia.gov/images/tech/2.png
Or how they can connect multiple air ducts to a single turbine https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTV9wMkd5CFzHrGmrxKyoD2baWr-IxTcRbecQ&usqp=CAU
There are no "external" moving parts is what they mean. Like a regular turbine spinning huge blades.
If they find a way to generate energy by just blowing wind along a few copper coils, let me know.
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Are they noisy? Windmills tend to make noise when in operation. The big ones have this annoying pulsating swoosh when the blades move.
Natural noises like running water or wind through trees is ok. But any sort of rythmic noise from say a spinning turbine quickly becomes unbearable since you can’t help but hyperfocus on the annoyance
The turbine is enclosed so probably not noisy on the outside of the building. You may want soundproofing on the inside of the building.
Some places in Norway has wind turbines on top of hills and the noise drives local people mad. Soundproofing the house is good but you also want to enjoy the silence in your yard as well. These are rural locations so people are used to the silence there. Kinda why they moved there.
The natural environment is also a big part of the ”people soul” in Norway, so messing up the mountains with windmills is a trauma.
Ideally it should look a bit like this outside your door: https://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brudeferd_i_Hardanger
Maybe with a grocery store for convenienxe sake, but kinda hidden to so it does not stand out.
Ofc land based mills are cheaper to both build and maintain than off shore ones. Which is where much of the problem lies.
> The turbine is enclosed so probably not noisy on the outside of the building.
As for the Norwegians, I wasn't making any particular recommendations for their power needs - how much electrical power does one need while rowing around on a beautiful fjord anyway? That looks pretty relaxing.
Sitting in your 1800sqft single home (built in the 80s so insulation is a bit meh) in the winter, watching Netflix with the fjord outside and your electric car charging in the garage is surprisingly energy intensive.
Sure you got a couple heat pumps installed 5 years ago, but it still sucks up juice to heat the place up
Everyone wants cheap power, but not in their back yard. The landscape is for instagram posted peak hikes in nature as every good norwegian does, not for windmills. They kinda ruin it visually speaking.
Build them into highway pillars and bridge supports.
If it's motionless then what is the vertical axis turbine inside the shroud/assembly doing to make power?
It's motionless in the sense that it doesn't rotate like traditional turbines or vertical axis turbines. The structure vibrates and somehow they capture the energy from it. Kinda like comparing a circular saw to an oscillating saw but for generating power.
Ok NVM I went and read the article (shame on me) and there is a turbine it's just hidden from the surface.
I thought this was a different type that does exactly what my explanation was suggesting.
Here is what I thought we were talking about: https://vortexbladeless.com/technology/
"Operating more or less silently" and "motionless" are red flags for me.
The moving parts are hidden... if you even scan the article.
IOW, not motionless. Gotcha. Sketch.
It’d be cool if they could make a small horizontal version of this to act like a spoiler on a car to sustain the battery while driving.
Due to efficiency losses you will generate more drag than you would get electricity back to power the vehicle. Perpetual motion machines haven't been invented yet.
>yet
So there's a chance...
Not perpetual motion. Just enough energy created to increase range. Ie you drive 50 miles, but produce enough from wind to charge the battery enough to go an extra 10.
Perhaps some day wind and/or photovoltaic cells could effectively increase battery range enough to offset the costs both financially and physically.
But it's not recouping anything. Like they said, the energy you would lose from the drag is more than the energy you'd get out of it. Even if it were 100% efficient, all it would do is not slow you down.
Hence why: “IT’D BE COOL”
Right now it is not feasible, perhaps one day someone will find a way to manage the drag.
It’s an theory that is being tested and studied. Look at EOEL or the Ventomobile or the Lotus Nemesis.
Yes, it'd be cool, but it's not ever feasible. Not now, not with any future tech. It goes against the conservation of energy. If it worked, it would have to be a magical turbine that put out more energy than the kinetic energy it got from the wind.
The only reason regular wind turbines are useful is because the kinetic energy from natural wind is free. So we can convert a part of that to electrical energy. The car examples you gave use this free wind energy.
A turbine on the back of a car would be getting all of it's kinetic wind energy by slowing the car down and converting a portion of that lost energy to electricity.
It would violate the laws of physics. Over 100% of the power it generates would be coming from… the battery it is feeding power back to, with a whole lot of losses due to friction, etc. It is simply not possible and no amount of “it would be cool” will ever make it possible.
Exactly, the cruel reality of math and physics.
Things that move need maintenance.added costs add up, become obsolete, rust away and become white elephants.
Also ugly as fuck
Waiting on the hybrid for maximum efficiency 🧠 Also interested in using the heat to boil a fluid to rotate yet another engine 🧠🧠 Someone must put me on the creators board of big energy, if you're going to rob investors atleast make it sound cool
This looks a lot better than the bird murdering giant windmill eye sores.
Bird murdering lol
Yeah, the windmills kill like 100,000 birds. Cat's kill 100x more but these clowns don't seem to give a shit about useless cats vs shit that also generates power and lets us move off of massively polluting forms of energy.
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Cats aren't killing eagles and hawks. They're killing common tweety birds.
Naughty owd puddy tats!
Thats why this article is exciting. This rooftop invention looks superior to windmills
No joke, an energy company was sued, fined for millions for all the eagles and hawks get killed by their windmills
Feel free to go to one of the larger sites, see for yourself. Vertical turbines like these are much better for the environment. Not just preventing bird kill, but less overall impact (less steel, transportation energy costs, fibreglass blades, etc).
It’s funny how many people care about windmills killing birds also roll coal. It’s almost like they are being disingenuous. Not that I’m accusing you of that…
The idiots that “roll coal” need to have their vehicles seized. I dislike windmills because they are WAY less beneficial for the environment than most people think, and there are better alternatives (like this product).
Fossil fuels kill orders of magnitude more birds every year.
That and buildings, especially glass windows.
How are regular windmills eyesores? It’s all subjective I guess, but I live near a bunch and I love the look of them on the mountains.
I’d rather see the landscape than giant windmills. Smaller scale urban vertical turbines also means less distribution logistics
ShadowController t1_it3lnbv wrote
DuPont is testing these at their warehouses, which is a promising indication it’s not all just a PR stunt.