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The Guardian reports that Vortex Bladeless has developed a new bladeless wind turbine that promises to be more efficient, less visually intrusive, and safer for birdlife than conventional turbines. Using the principle of natural frequency and vorticity, the turbine oscillates in swirling air caused by the wind bypassing the mast, and then builds exponentially as it reaches the structure's natural resonance. It's a powerful effect that famously caused the collapse of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge in 1940, footage of which inspired David Yáñez to try to build a structure to harness this energy rather than prevent it. The turbine "floats" on magnets, which as well as significantly amplifying the oscillation, also eliminates any friction and the need for expensive lubricating oils or mechanical parts. "Wind turbines now are too noisy for people's backyard," says David Suriol. "We want to bring wind power generation to people's houses like solar power."
On the minus side the oscillating turbine design will sweep a smaller area and have a lower conversion efficiency. "The best wind turbine will collect around 50% of energy from the wind," says Suriol. "We are close to 40% with bladeless turbines in our wind tunnel laboratory." To offset this disadvantage, "you can put four, five or six 4kW turbines in the space of one conventional turbine, which need 5 meter diameter space around them," he says. In fact, wind tunnel tests have shown they perform even better placed closer together as they benefit from the vortices each of them creates.
Original Submission
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday June 04 2015, @12:40PM
Wow, 150kwh? How do you manage that? I have a fridge, run-hot server, a cable modem, and a couple wifi routers. That's it. Everything else is off except for the few minutes it's needed.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 1) by Absolutely.Geek on Thursday June 04 2015, @10:36PM
Wood burner for heat in winter and no air con in summer (30 degC max). Hot water is handled by natural gas, so no electricity spent there. Both my partner and I work so during the day nothing is on but the fridge and my server. Most of the lights in the house are now LED downlights 36W (6 x 6W) in the lounge, 50W (5 x 10W) in the bathroom, with more being replaced as we renovate. I have a newish 4k TV that has a low power draw, and I read a lot.....we eat out probably too much so the electric oven / stove only gets used 2 - 4 times a week.
We always dry our clothes outside on the washing line; I understand that is not possible in an apartment but the dryer does suck up a fair amount of power.
Kiwis generally use around 7 - 10kWh a day, we are a bit below that. I know that people in the US are using on average 30kWh a day......probably due to climatic differences.
Don't trust the police or the government - Shihad: My mind's sedate.