Wind Energy
- Turbine-less wind generator - http://humdingerwind.com/windbelt.html - how does it work?
- 5 kW wind turbine kit- under $6k in parts, without tower - http://www.prairieturbines.com/purchase.htm . This appears to be the most affordable package available anywhere for serious wind energy production.
Kite Power: Crazy ? Not necessarily. Read on ...
Why not use kites? non-rigid woven fiber structures are very localizable. UAV control systems could be adapted for flight control:
- Ecoble article: Wind Power Generated From Kites
- at Delft University of Technology:Kite Power Could Generate Energy for 100,000 Homes
- See video - High Altitude Wind Power
- Autopilot Arduino board for drones
- Saul Griffith on kites as the future of renewable energy
Wind Power with Hydraulic Transmission
Back in the golden age of the Dutch, their booming economy was powered by wind in all sorts of incarnations (see article from Low-tech Magazine - Wind powered factories: history (and future) of industrial windmills). Wind provided a lot of energy but one big problem was that this energy had to be used at the time that it occurred, with very little ability to store it for later use. Now in the 21st century, we can use hydraulic implementations to solve this problem. We builders of the GVCS are quite familiar with hydraulic systems from such projects as LifeTrac. We can also use a hydraulic transmission for stationary applications such as wind. The "mill" that harvests the mechanical power from wind is coupled to water pumps, generating hydrostatic pressure. This way, when this energy is drawn from a storage reservoir, the energy is available at any time, powering hydraulic motors.
Links
- Patent (granted 2008): "Wind turbine with hydraulic transmission"
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