this video is sponsored by ZipRecruiter harnessing the power of the wind is no longer reserved for
large-scale wind farms homeowners and businesses can now turn to a new rooftop wind turbine design
from a company called aeromine to complement solar power when it's cloudy or dark but are
these turbines really what they're cut out to be how do they work and what makes them
different from all the rest and what does it mean for you and me I'm Ricky and this is Two Bit da Vinci
on paper when does the perfect complement to solar for distributed renewable energy
production since unlike solar wind can blow at night or when it's clouded or cold out
but while residential solar has made its way to millions of homes and businesses the same
just hasn't happened for wind even though wind power is among the fastest growing source of
renewable energy around the world I mean in the us alone the total installed capacity of wind
energy grew by 13 gigawatts roughly 10 percent to reach 136 gigawatts in 2021 globally wind
power capacity grew by 93.6 gigawatts is now 837 gigawatts up almost 13 from the previous
year for contacts the electricity consumption of the average American household is around 1.2
kilowatt which means that the new Global install capacity could power almost 80 million American
Homes yet we don't see wind turbines on every rooftop why is that the reason is that most
of the newly installed capacity comes from huge wind turbines with an average nameplate capacity
of 3 megawatts grouped in centralized wind farms most of them offshore the reason behind this is
that the wind turbines get more efficient and can capture more high-speed wind the taller and bigger
they become making them more cost effective but it also makes them wildly expensive to build and
useless for low speed wind what this means for you and me is that installing these types of massive
turbines at home or on buildings isn't an option they're just two massive and large scale for our
needs and most of us couldn't afford them and the smaller versions are too inefficient to be
practical and still require high-speed wind but thankfully there are other options for small scale
distributed wind power we made a video on this topic about a year ago where we covered bladeless
wind turbines in that video we talked about some of the more exotic designs like the Spanish Vortex
bladeless that a lot of you dubbed the sky braider watch that video you'll understand that reference
or the electrostatic wind energy converter those Technologies were pretty cool but we're
mostly experimental and still in the developmental stage but a startup called aeromine is changing
the game for distributed wind power the design inspired by Formula One race cars arrowman is a
wind turbine company based in Houston Texas it was founded in 2020 by Professor Carson winterguard
from Texas Tech University CEO David astronaut and Martin maneke an experienced Tech developer
the company patented a unique way to generate renewable energy efficiently from low-speed wind
using an airfoil like the once found on race cars the technology helps solve most of the problems
with conventional wind turbines the company also claims that its turbines are more efficient than
other wind turbines of similar size and they can produce 50 percent more power than a solar array
of similar costs furthermore they're mounted on the edge of rooftop so they leave almost all the
roof surface available for solar panels so it's not like one or the other but both but how is this
possible okay so engineering hats on for just a moment I promise we'll keep this fun but before
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thanks to ZipRecruiter and you for support in the show aeromones are made of two main components a
pair of mirroring aerofoils the wing structures at the top and a generator enclosed at the bottom
the aerofoils are designed to take advantage of something called the Venturi effect which
is a drop in pressure caused by an increase in speed when a fluid passes through a constricted
area like the ones between two aerofoils this is the same thing that produces uplift on wings on
an airplane and also down force on an F1 car keeping it planted down at really high speeds
and during cornering without skidding in the case of the aeromine two airflows are placed sideways
one in front of the other forcing air to speed up as it goes through the middle the kicker is that
these aerofoils are Hollow Chambers connected to a manifold with a turbine generator at the center
the wings let's call them are also lined with little outlets on the internal surface so when
wind pushes through the aeromine and accelerates its pressure drops because of the Venturi effect
this sucks air through the manifold old and through the turbine making it spin and generate
electricity this is super counterintuitive at first because you would think that it was the air
going through the aeromine that moves the turbine but it's not it's actually the air coming in from
the manifold intake that drives the turbine and this is awesome if you stop and think about it I
mean we're talking about a system that literally extracts air from one place which could be pretty
much anywhere and pushes it through a wind turbine to generate electricity so you can install these
things for example on a huge Warehouse in the desert and use it as a multi-purpose generator
air extractor to remove hot air that builds up near the ceilings and that is pretty impressive if
you ask me some of the most important benefits of this design though are the fact that it is a small
turbine but the system has a large sweep area so you can harness a lot of wind power without using
huge turbine blades this has several advantages like reducing the cost of installation maintenance
is also reduced since the turbine is small and enclosed in a manifold protecting it from the
environment and also dramatically reduces the amount of noise how about damage to birds one of
the first comments I always get when I talk about wind turbines all in all our mind is a really cool
technology that could revolutionize the way we generate distributed renewable electricity from
the wind it's an interesting concept that could potentially have a huge impact on our Energy
Future but I bet you're wondering two things can I buy it today and how much do these things cost
unfortunately the answer to the first question is still no you can't go out and buy an aeromine yet
because a company hasn't reached commercial scale yet but don't get discouraged just yet
because aramine already struck a major deal with the German chemical Powerhouse BASF and
installed its first major commercial pilot system in basf's Factory in windot Michigan last summer
in 2022. this is pretty impressive considering the company only launched two years prior if
all goes well it'll be a matter of months before they open sales to the public so I'll be keeping
an eye out in the the near future regarding the second question I don't have a definitive answer
just yet but we can't estimate the cost from the company's statement that a 5 kilowatt unit can
produce 50 percent more power than a solar array of equivalent cost so the cost of a five kilowatt
unit should be equivalent to the price of a 3.3 kilowatt hour solar array at an average cost of
2.86 per watt for solar in 2023 that works out to 9533 Dollars and a cost per watt of
a dollar ninety one this is higher than the 130 to 150 per watt for utility scale wind project
but the savings and maintenance costs transmission lines and other benefits like being decentralized
could give these turbines a pretty competitive levelized cost compared to other utility wind
farms furthermore as the company improves its design and Manufacturing processes based on
the results of the pilot test its cost could potentially go down more significantly even
from where it is today because you gotta remember there's no real exotic materials it really comes
down to manufacturing foils and the packaging of it all another topic that always comes up when
talking about Renewables like wind is efficiency how good are aeromones that converting wind
energy into electricity according to a research paper from a team in Sandy labs in collaboration
with westergard one of the company's co-founders their mark one turbine design can reach a stable
efficiency of 18 percent at wind speeds as low as 22 miles an hour and an unstable Peak efficiency
of 28 percent under certain conditions this is about a third to a half of the bets limit which
is the maximum theoretical efficiency of a wind turbine regardless of design considering that most
horizontal axis wind turbines the ones we think of have a efficiency of between 20 and 40 percent
aeromones aren't too bad but definitely not quite as high of course as always the technology isn't
perfect and it has several drawbacks the most important issue is that to reach the promised
potential performance aeromones have to be installed on the edge of large buildings with
flat roofs like warehouses big box stores and the like this is to take advantage of the building's
flat facade which creates an upward current of air that amplifies wind speed so unless you live
in a container home or other modern style house with sharp edges flat vertical walls and roofs
with no Eaves you won't benefit all that much from installing an aramine on your roof so that
was a bit of a setback for me because I really do want to add a wind array to my house but I don't
know maybe there is a part of my house somewhere where this could make sense however for those of
you that live in multi-family homes aeromon's Mark II design with a collector scoop and the
turbine in the center pointing down is optimized to harness this effect turning a 10 mile an hour
wind into 20 miles an hour in the intake and 50 mile an hour in between the airfoils that's
a 5x increase in wind speed and could make them useful in many more places that conventional wind
turbines wouldn't even be able to spin the second issue is that for the same reason I just mentioned
the building needs to have one of its walls facing the wind which isn't always the case additionally
aeromones are fixed in place and can't pivot to catch the wind for a better angle this means that
they only work efficiently year round if the location has predominant winds always blowing
roughly in the same direction there are also some concerns about aeromones under extreme weather
they probably won't be impacted by storms or extreme heat but snow could be a bit of an issue
if it builds up between the airfoils as it hardens it'll stop working until cleared excessive snow
could also clog the jet Outlet of the aerofoils reducing their ability to suck in air through
the manifold and power the turbine though maybe most of these issues could be prevented if we
warm air through the manifold and melt the snow to prevent clogs it's just something to think
about and it would require some additional excess heating maybe through a resistive element to keep
this from freezing over so as usual this is not a one size fits all solution for distributed wind
but it's an amazing option for those lucky enough to live in the right place many coastal cities
get a nice constant Ocean Breeze and buildings are usually purposely built looking toward the
ocean so it could be a great use case for way more things than you think but there's an even better
use case on the horizon we made a recent video about the Saudi Arabia Mega project to build the
linear city called Neo I strongly suggest you check that out after watching this one the line
is a crazy linear skyscraper Mega City 106 miles long and 1640 feet high can you imagine how many
aeromones we could fit on the top of that kind of a roof system and how much air would just be
funneling right through aeromones are roughly seven feet wide and judging by the pictures
they're spaced about twice their width apart so that's one air of mine every 21 feet give or
take so you could fit almost 27 000 aeromones on the line generating 133 gigawatts of electricity
maybe even more and at an average consumption of roughly one kilowatt per person that would
be enough to cover the electricity demand of a hundred and thirty three thousand people not
huge compared to the 9 million projected residents but still a really good start looking at aramind
and seeing how they came up with a very clever practical scalable solution for distributed wind
and that they got from startup to launch to a commercial pilot plant in just under two years
I feel very confident that we'll see these types of solutions deployed all over the place pretty
soon massive adoption is also likely to bring down prices making these and other similar Technologies
the perfect complement for residential solar panels taking us one step closer to a future of
a decentralized electricity grid with competitive prices we'll still need batteries of course but
with wind blowing 24 hours a day the need for Batteries will be reduced compared to solar
alone alright so that is a look at the aeromine I think this is such a cool concept I think there's
a lot of benefits too if you think about a traditional vertical axis wind turbine or a
horizontal access wind turbine it really disrupts the flow in a large pattern that's why offshore
wind turbines are spaced very very far apart so that way downwind turbines aren't affected by
the Upstream turbines could the aeromine do a better job of harnessing the wind without
having to be as far apart 21 feet we mentioned per aramine probably is a tighter density than
other forms plus you could actually potentially use it at your house and that's what I'm looking
for I would love to complement my solar array I have a 10 kilowatt solar system going up as
we speak but no wind which means as soon as that sun goes down I'd have to have all batteries for
backup so I'm looking at more of these type Solutions and I might even try to reach out
to aramon and see if I can get one to mess around with all right that's a look at the aeromine don't
forget to sound off in the comments below hit that subscribe button and the bell icon so you don't
miss our future videos and as always we'll catch you guys next week I'm Ricky and this is stupid