When it comes to renewable energy, we’re pretty big fans of Wind.
It’s clean. It’s effective. But it's not without its shortcomings.
But with cutting-edge research and development, the future of wind technology is more exciting than ever.
If you’re immediately picturing a tall structure with big spinning blades,
then some of these new innovative breakthroughs are going to surprise you.
We thought they deserved a deeper dive here on Two Bit da Vinci
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Wind power is among the most commonly used and fastest-growing renewable energy sources on the planet
with 93 GW of new capacity installed in 2020 – a 53 percent year-on-year increase - according to the Global Wind Report.
Today, most wind energy involves massive turbines using giant blades to transform the wind’s kinetic energy into electricity.
Wind farms the world over have made a massive impact in reducing global carbon emissions,
eliminating over 1.1 billion tons of CO2 around the world
But wind technology is far from flawless.
The intricate, top-heavy mechanics of conventional wind turbines demand high up-front costs. Like deep footings
for stability. Their complex and sensitive components, such as their gearboxes, require regular maintenance.
Then there’s the environmental impact — As our good friend Matt Farrell has pointed out on Undecided, wind turbines do kill birds, but these numbers are wildly exaggerated.
Wind turbines kill about 234,000 birds every year in the United States, while cats kill 2.4 billion,
according to the US Fish and Wildlife Service. So while yes there are inherent dangers to wildlife,
but now you’re equipped to debate anyone using this as a reason we shouldn’t be building wind turbines.
So if it's not environmental considerations, why should we be investing in new forms of wind turbines?
Well, you’ve probably noticed neighbors putting up solar panels on their roofs, maybe you yourself have some,
but wind turbines aren’t met with the same levels of adoption just yet. That is because most wind turbines are massive,
making them difficult to integrate into areas like cities or individual homes.
The wind turbine of today has been optimized for centralized power generation. By making these turbines absolutely massive,
they’re able to harness large amounts of energy from even slow wind speeds. Much like a nuclear or coal power plant,
the name of the game has been huge amounts of energy in centralized locations.
But we’ve mentioned that a theme of the century has been decentralization.
Solar panels mean every homeowner is a mini power plant.
Wind though, hasn’t yet, broken free of this centralized model of generation. But that might be changing,
with some pretty innovative approaches to the future of harnessing the free and renewing power of the wind.
One incredibly promising design comes from Spanish Technology startup Vortex Bladeless,
whose vortex-induced resonant wind generators are garnering quite a bit of attention around the world.
Design by company co-founderDavid Yáñez,Vortex generators stand about 3 meters high and feature a rather..unusual design.
The cylinder harnesses wind energy utilizing a phenomenon in fluid mechanics called Vortex shedding. Just about every object,
when hit, struck, or strummed, will vibrate at a particular frequency — known as its natural frequency.
Ok so a quick science tangent here, but I promise this will be fun! So the natural frequency of a system is
the frequency at which a system tends to oscillate in the absence of any driving or damping force.
If the oscillating system is driven by an external force near its natural frequency, this frequency is called a resonant frequency.
In this rope, you can see that as input frequency reaches the rope’s natural frequency,
the string seems to harmonize, and the amplitude of the wave is at its maximum. This is the first resonant frequency,
or fundamental resonant frequency. There’s actually an infinite number of these frequencies, here you see one wave at 11hrtz,
but increase the frequency to 22hrtz and youll see 2 wawes in the same area
This will be The second reasonate Frequency.
The real takeaway is that the rope has the highest amplitudes, or peaks and valleys, at these frequencies,
because at other frequencies, some of the waves will interfere and cancel out. This is the principle at play with the vortex shedding turbines.
As wind passes through a bluff body, the flow is modified, generating a cyclical pattern of vortices — which also produce a frequency.
As the vortices' frequencies match the natural frequency of the structure, the structure starts to oscillate,
in other words, you could say, they start to harmonize with one another.
From an engineering perspective, design considerations like the height of the cylinder, the width, the stiffness
and even weight distribution, all affect this natural frequency, and should be optimized for the expected wind speeds.
Typically, engineers and architects design buildings and bridges to avoid this effect. We don’t want our bridges swaying in the wind!
You probably remember watching videos growing up of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge. Which had a very unfortunate design,
resulting in a natural frequency, very close to the oscillations induced, from the wind. As a result, as the wind hit the bridge,
the bridge started to oscillate, and because of this poorly conceived natural frequency,
the amplitude of the oscillations got bigger and bigger until finally the bridge collapsed.
Unlike for a bridge, larger amplitudes are actually good for something harnessing that kinetic energy,
and Vortex Bladeless is leaning heavily into this principle.
These giant umm Skybrator If you will. harness vortex shedding by having an outer cylinder oscillate while remaining anchored
to a fixed bottom rod. As they oscillate, they generate electricity through an alternator system.
For the most part, these vortex blades shine where traditional turbines don’t. They’re entirely bladeless, made of low cost,
lightweight materials like resins and carbon fiber and are generally pretty low maintenance,
generating power at a rate between 30 and 45% cheaper than traditional turbines.
That said, the turbines harvest only about 30% of the power of traditional turbines.
But, because they require far less space, more could theoretically fit in the same area.
According to the company, the goal is not to replace traditional wind energy,
but to supplement some of the shortcomings of current wind farms.
According to Yanez, "What we want is to try to find a niche that is not properly covered by conventional wind power."
So sure you’d need more of these systems than massive conventional wind turbines,
but by being so compact and easily placed where the electricity is needed, you could decentralize the power generation,
and reduce electricity distribution losses by reducing the distances the energy needs to travel.
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Another major player in solid-state wind power is the EWICON, short for Electrostatic Wind Energy Converter.
Where traditional turbines utilize mechanical energy, EWICONs create potential energy with charged particles, in this case from water droplets.
A steel frame holds about 40 horizontal rows of insulated tubes — kinda like a giant tennis racket. Each tube contains several
electrodes and nozzles which release positively charged water particles in the air — what’s called Electrospraying.
The positively charged particles naturally gravitate towards the negative electrodes,
but when the wind pushes the particles away from the electrode, it increases the particle’s potential energy —
kind of like lifting a weight against gravity. As the particles blow away, the voltage of the device changes, creating an electric field that can then be transferred to the grid for use.
These devices are still very much in development, but one experiment conducted by Delft University of Technology
in the Netherlands was able to generate about 2.1 mW per nozzle, with each nozzle dispersing about 20 ml of a water/ ethanol mixture every hour.
Based on these experiments, to achieve 1 kW would require a device with over 500 spraying nozzles, occupying a space of about 14 square meters.
Compared to wind turbines, EWICONs could be fashioned into many shapes and sizes, making them adaptable to existing infrastructure within cities.
Their lack of moving parts means much less maintenance and mechanical wear and tear.
No blades also mean they’re much more bird and bat-friendly.
Several companies are investigating their potential — including the Dutch Windwheel Corporation
which plans to integrate EWICON technology into a massive, 160-180 meter tall beacon of synergistic ecotexture.
The structure, which will live in the port city of Rotterdam, will pull together several eco-friendly innovations including rainwater capture,
wetland water filtration,solar technology—all built around a sprawling urban collective of apartments, hotels and even a sky bar!
One major downside of EWICONs, though, is their reliance on water — which could impact their overall benefit and could potentially render them useless in freezing temperatures.
Also as temperatures rise, regions like the American Southwest are facing increasingly arid conditions and constant drought concerns.
Enter Solid-State Wind Energy transformation which bears many similarities to EWICONs but without the water —
which is ironic considering these devices are often abbreviated to be called… SWETs…
"I need to borrow some swets"
SWETs have no moving parts and can harvest electrical power using coronal discharge to create negative air ions,
which the wind carries away..
A proof-of-concept SWET, developed by Richard Epstein at the University of New Mexico’s Department of Physics and Astronomy,
uses ionic currents instead of water to produce electricity in a process called “electrohydrodynamics…”
The device consists of 55 parallel, 17 gauge aluminum wires threaded between two
8 ½ meter tall wooden posts spaced 8 meters apart on a flat roof.
20 of the wires, called emitter wires, have small carbon fiber “hairs” — each about 7 micrometers in diameter.
Small negative currents flow through these wires which create coronal discharge through these carbon fiber tufts
basically an ejection of plasma — releasing ions into the air.
The particles get swept up as the wind blows through the wires, leaving the array with a slight positive charge,
causing the electrons to flow from the ground, which can be harvested as electricity.
Epstein’s prototype can only produce about 1/20 of a watt, but it is still in the very early phases of development.
But, in theory, the SWET could be scaled up by increasing the number of emitters and attractors.
Once it becomes more advanced, SWETs could provide large amounts of power with little negative environmental impact.
Our next entry in bladeless wind technology… technically isn’t bladeless,
but it does still eliminate many of the shortcomings typically found in wind turbines.
Vertical-Axis turbines, or VAWTs, are exactly as they sound. Instead of giant wings that stretch outward on a horizontal shaft,
these turbines have airfoils mounted vertically. Because they have small blades,
they aren’t going to as efficiently harness the power of the wind, but they are truly omnidirectional,
working no matter which direction the wind comes from.counterparts. Two companies, in particular, German-based
Luvside, and Icelandic Icewind, have been manufacturing VAWTs specifically for commercial and residential use.
The former has an estimated total power of about 367 W with wind speeds under 7 m/s.
The goal with these types of wind generators would be to create a wind equivalent of home solar panels.
There have even been experiments with placing VAWTs on the tops of trains to extract power as the train moves by.
One of the most exciting and promising options for residential wind energy is the Halcium Power Pod.
These prototype small-scale turbines are made specifically with your rooftop in mind.
The devices can collect airflow from any direction at any given time. The blades are contained inside an outer component,
making them much safer for nearby people and animals.
The devices are being designed to work alone or in conjunction with an existing solar system.
Imagine being able to collect energy from solar during the day and take advantage of higher wind speeds at night or during a storm!
Unfortunately, the Power Pod isn’t on the market quite yet, though the company hopes to have a model available by the end of 2021.
Finally — one of the coolest options for harvesting wind energy — SkySails!
This is pretty much exactly what it sounds like. Massive wind sails like the kind kite-boarders might use to ride sick waves off the coast of Sardinia Bay.
These massive, automatically controlled power kites ride the wind in a figure-eight pattern up to 400 meters high.
As they climb, they unspool a tether from a ground winch. The tractive force drives a generator inside the winch which produces electricity.
Once the tether reaches its maximum extension, the autopilot drives the kite into a neutral position with minimal drag and lift.
Then the generator acts as a motor and reels the kites back in.
The brilliance of these devices is that they take advantage of the wind forces circulating high above where most turbines can’t reach
Even if the wind isn’t always blowing on the ground, there may be wind we can take advantage of at much higher altitudes.
The reality is that many of these technologies are still in development and it’s hard to know which will ultimately survive.
But the truth is we’ve only really begun to scratch the surface of emerging wind technology.
The potential of having at-home wind power is definitely something worth exploring and developing,
moving us closer to sustained power at both small and large scales.
One thing for sure, the answer to sustainable, clean energy, is blowing in the wind.
When I got idea to make this video I was laying on a beach, and it was windy 24 hours a day.
just being near the ocean there is such a difference in temperatures, youll have a nice breeze.
pretty much the entire day, and to my mind I keep thinking, "Imagine if we have like a vortex shetting turbine generator...
on every canopy or every umbrella or sunshade?" thats what I mean by decentralized power generation
Typically, we though of big, huge, massive, Mega watt generation stations
But I have a 5 killowatts Solar system, Maybe as we go forward it'll make more sense for us to have smaller,
discret systems that almost look artwork. Ive seen some of these really cool vertical access turbine generators
in places like in Europe, where it looks like a pin wheel is almost like a piece of art, if we will reimagine what we think of
cities and roads, near train stations we could basically convert every part of our urban life into energy generation potential structures
and thats probably the most exciting part about all of this.
All right! So What do you guys think? which of these technologies as crazy as it may sound appeal the most to you?
Are they all pay in the sky? Do you think itll actually happen?
Sound off ! in the comment section below, we always love hearing from you about what you think.
also, let us know about future topics you want us to cover, and as always a huge thanks to all of our member from our Two Bit tribe,
our youtube members and Patrons in Patreon.