Rooftop wind energy innovation claims 50% more energy than solar at same cost

https://www.pv-magazine.com/2022/10/17/rooftop-wind-energy-innovation-claims-50-more-energy-than-solar-at-same-cost/

by fairytalemtg • 4 years ago

220 303 4 years ago

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/25/climate/energy-transition...

bpodgursky2• 4 years ago

Rooftop solar is essentially drop-and-forget -- you have to do approximately 0 maintenance for the next 10 years (at least).

There are definitely moving parts in that video -- does it have to be cleaned? Do the bearings wear out? Will a bird nest in it? Fill with leaves?

I definitely hope it works but I'm skeptical this is really as mindlessly easy to do as to drop panels on a residential house.

2Gkashmiri2• 4 years ago

I own one. 5.6 kWh I think.

Its amazing. Been using it for like 2.5/3 years now and it has really helped in becoming energy independent. Don't have batteries yet as the tech is unproven here, but on grid-off grid without batteries already has given us more usable energy during the day when the grid goes.

Aachen3• 4 years ago

What type of turbine do you have and what's your environment like? Do you live in a city or on a farm or something in between?

yjftsjthsd-h4• 4 years ago

Wait, are you saying that you're off grid and don't have batteries? Do you just lose power if there's no wind?

halfmatthalfcat• 4 years ago

In snowy climates, brushing off panels is a pain in the ass and heating solutions result in net neutral generation for the most part, so there’s no point. In heavily overcast climates, recouping costs from installation takes dramatically more time. Wind is ubiquitous and doesn’t run into these problems…

Steltek2• 4 years ago

Who brushes off their panels? Snow comes crashing down off mine within 24 hours of the storm. The whole house shakes in a very unnerving manner as it hits the porch roof. How do you brush off snow without risking damage anyway?

micromacrofoot2• 4 years ago

I never brush snow off my panels. It slides off after a couple days at worst (and does a nice job of cleaning in the process). TBH I don't really care because my production is very low in winter anyway.

teeray• 4 years ago

Not my experience in northern NH. It snows, then the panels are covered for maybe a day, then it all slides off like an avalanche. It’s like having a metal roof.

I’m not sure how a wind turbine would fair with winter weather. I would think they could be subject to icing like any other propeller—-reducing their output and possibly creating mechanical damage. Aviation has certainly thought about that problem a lot, so there might be solutions.

zemvpferreira• 4 years ago

I'm with you in that any mechanical system will be more trouble than a photo-electrical system however...we really can't afford to overlook any renewable power sources at this time.

If nothing else, there is a lot of security to be gained from the fact that wind speed is anti-correlated with sunshine in many places.

yjftsjthsd-h4• 4 years ago

we really can't afford to overlook any renewable power sources at this time

We shouldn't overlook options, but we can absolutely look, do a cost/benefit analysis, and then discard options that don't make sense.

loceng2• 4 years ago

It's all quite nuanced, and details are important, things like there will also be noise-vibrational pollution created from wind vs. solar.

duxup2• 4 years ago

Yeah if I had a noisy wind power device on my roof... I would not be happy about it.

ansible• 4 years ago

I am highly skeptical.

The amount of energy you can extract from the wind is a function of swept area for a conventional wind turbine. I don't see how this is going to be much different, even if it is incredibly efficient. "swept area" in the video is, what, around 6 square meters? So about the same as a wind turbine of 1.9m in diameter. If it has the same efficiency, we're talking about maybe 1600W maximum.

The design may, or may not be good and dependable, and may, or may not require less maintenance than a conventional wind turbine.

But a lot of the problem is mounting it on a roof. There's a reason why the commercial units are being built bigger and bigger, and higher and higher. The higher up you go, the more steady and strong the wind becomes. At rooftop level, a lot of the wind is blocked by trees and buildings.

So I don't care how good the turbine design is, mounting it on a roof isn't a great solution for generating much power.

brightball3• 4 years ago

I have been wondering about this for years.

Aachen3• 4 years ago

I've looked into it but the results, unless you live in an open field or an otherwise windy area or want to build fifty meters into the air, and unless you and your neighbors are fine with moving shadows all day every day, are disappointing. Silent vertical turbines sound cool but far outperformed by solar. Might still make sense to have a mix since batteries won't get us through the winter, but wind turbines are much better suited to fields and forests really. Even a relatively small one (so you don't need to cut down swathes of said forest for access roads and work area) has much better performance than what you'd place on a roof.

The only promising thing I found for rooftops is something that is placed on the nave of your roof (hope I'm using the right word, I mean the highest part) and the wind blowing over the surface ends up concentrating there. Should be out of sight and reasonably performant. But it was all still proof of concept stage from what I remember.

I'm curious how this project will pan out. I hope good, but the article doesn't mention what their innovation is other than proposing to put a whole array on one's roof.

thefourthchime• 4 years ago

Forget about all of that. Have you seen this thing? The WAF (Wife Acceptance Factor) is going to be near zero on this one.

bxtt• 4 years ago

How will this be financed?

In residential solar, panels are largely subsidized by federal ITC or financed by banks claiming the tax equity which covers the maintenance, upfront costs, etc; hence the zero upfront residential solar model. Will this be similar?

hinkley5• 4 years ago

I’ve seen a bunch of people talking about how you need to install solar this year because the subsidies are going away. The whole goal of the subsidy is to get enough of an installed base to get costs down so you don’t need the subsidy. Even if the midterms give us a better Congress, you can’t count on these forever.

jillesvangurp• 4 years ago

Wait a few years and panel prices will drop by more than the subsidies you are receiving now on the existing ones. Even without subsidies, it might be worth it for some people to do right now. It depends on your situation.

The trick is having a well integrated system that doesn't waste power but instead works with batteries, grid, and EVs to make sure you waste as little as possible of the free energy your panels generate when they are producing rather than just serving excess power to your neighbors via the grid at some token value that your power supplier sets. There are some nice solutions emerging in this space.

bushbaba3• 4 years ago

Solar panels are fairly set and forget. No moving parts. For wind curious what kind of maintenance is needed

dont__panic• 4 years ago

Where I live, I wonder how they'd interact with heavy wind, ice, and snow. I imagine during the winter months you'd have to de-ice them, and potentially clear away wet, heavy snow. Whenever a Noreaster or similar strong wind comes through, I wonder what the chance of damage is -- presumably they automatically shut off if the wind becomes too strong?

mywittyname2• 4 years ago

I'm surprised to hear that these don't have built in heaters for de-icing.

If you drive through the great plains states, you'll pass hundreds of these going far as the eye can see. They can't require that much ongoing maintenance, because it would be untenable to do so at that scale.

I get that these are different designs, but the fundamental constraint of being low maintenance has to be a design requirement.

jansan2• 4 years ago

To be fair, those weather conditions are not optimal for solar power, either.

Regarding strong wind, some wind energy technologies are self limiting, like the savonius rotor. I have no idea how the approach mentionen in the article handles strong winds.

tantalor• 4 years ago

From the article:

Aeromine said... the patented system is motionless and virtually silent

Edit: This is just a quote from the article! I'm only trying to provide context from the article to the above comment. There's no need to signal your disagreement with this quote by voting on it.

zardo• 4 years ago

By motionless they mean something other than "no moving parts" as it has a turbine connected to a generator.

bushbaba3• 4 years ago

It has motion. The cylinder rotates. All boils down to how long that mechanical part will last prior to needing to be replaced.

wongarsu• 4 years ago

Judging by the 30 second clip they show it's motionless in the same sense as dyson's fans are bladeless. The motion and blades are less in-your-face, but still present.

throwaway894345• 4 years ago

I mean, solar panels degrade with time. I've heard "30 years" bandied about, but I've also heard that a lot of Chinese-manufactured solar panels rated for 30 years only last 5-10 years (that may have been specific to Australia, I don't recall).

photochemsyn• 4 years ago

Chinese-made monocrystalline silicon panels are expected to have extremely long lifetimes (25+ years with no degradation) relative to thin film types (Cd-Te, etc.) However, another main issue is quality encapsulation of the panels; if done shoddily this greatly shortens the lifetime of the panels. Practically, look for manufacturers who have the longest guarantees.

https://solaranalytica.com/solar-panel-encapsulation/

Tangurena23• 4 years ago

When I lived in Denver, our data center would sometimes have HVAC trouble because cottonwood tree seeds would clog up the fins of the roof-top heat exchangers. They look like white fluff and some years would cover lawns looking like a light dusting of snow. The worst year, the fins were covered (on one side) with a solid white felt that clogged the fins enough to cause the HVAC to blow circuit breakers and shut down our data center (which was mostly a DR site for other branches of the corporation).

hinkley5• 4 years ago

The moving parts of solar panels are the dust and the cleaning equipment needed to remove it.

dahfizz• 4 years ago

Where is this true? Rain would be more than enough to clean solar panels.

ilyt2• 4 years ago

I'd imagine once per year or two, any consumables (grease, maybe occasional bearing replacement) would be cheap so you really would be mostly paying for time of someone proficient to do it.

andsoitis2• 4 years ago

Fascinating.

Checking out the company who makes these, https://www.aerominetechnologies.com, I see they position it for larger buildings, including multi-family residential, but not large single-family homes, but I feel motivated to see whether this might be a good solution for my case instead of installing solar.

MajimasEyepatch• 4 years ago

Seems like you need a flat rooftop. Where I live, that's uncommon among single-family homes.

andsoitis2• 4 years ago

Flat rooftops are very common in SoCal, and luxury homes are large. Seems like a potentially good market for them, but yeah, maybe it isn't a big enough market in their calculus.

dml2135• 4 years ago

Is this truly motionless, or are the turbines just hidden, sort of like those Dyson fans?

giantg2• 4 years ago

Based on the video, there's definitely internal movement.

mostly_harmless• 4 years ago

If you look on their website (https://www.aerominetechnologies.com/) you can see there is a downward facing turbine hidden underneath

razster• 4 years ago

From what I've seen it does not move. In my area winds come from the north and east, so it would work one direction but not the other. Also, how does the wind channel into the main duct?

yohannparis• 4 years ago

Motionless in the sense or they do not have to be facing the wind at all time.

marcosdumay2• 4 years ago

You can see the moving part on the video. It's just internal to the duct.

constantcrying4• 4 years ago

There is a turbine at the bottom. It just redirects the wind down.

Calling it "motionless" is truly bizarre.

JoeAltmaier• 4 years ago

Upward, I think. The wind thru the vanes sucks air up?

exabrial3• 4 years ago

Home Owners Associations already block solar, unfortunately I give this a 0% chance of getting approved in any neighborhood that has one :(

EDIT:

====

Don't shoot the messenger. I don't agree with it either.

seydor3• 4 years ago

Home Owners Associations already block solar

on what grounds?

micromacrofoot2• 4 years ago

curb appeal, my realtor said that solar panels are actually a downside a lot of the time when he's dealing with the higher end of the real estate market

exabrial3• 4 years ago

Usually that "it's an eyesore" or some other BS. That's the entire reason the Tesla solar roof has a market share, is that it "looks like" a normal roof without giant boxes on top of a house.

again, I think the whole notion is silly and counterproductive, just reporting on reality.

doctorhandshake• 4 years ago

In my understanding, the justification commonly given is that the disruption to the unified neighborhood aesthetics is bad for resale value - resale being the justification HOAs use to block anything they don’t like.

Tangurena23• 4 years ago

Satellite dishes used to be banned by almost all HOAs in America until the FCC prohibited it. https://spectrumam.com/fcc-regulations-satellite-dishes

Basically:

If the buildings are condos or townhomes, then the building is owned by the HOA. In a condo, the homeowner owns from the paint inwards. In a townhouse, the HOA owns the structural elements, but in short, the homeowner owns the sheetrock and paint on "their" side of the walls. Exterior walls and roofs are owned by the HOA.

If the buildings are detached single family houses, then the building is owned by the homeowner.

ElevenLathe• 4 years ago

They similarly hate ham radio antennas, but there are federal laws that mean you can do it anyway and they can pound sand. Something similar could be put in place for solar/wind installations.

pencilguin17• 4 years ago

I have seen conflicting claims about ham antennas.

If you have an overriding right to a ham antenna, you can threaten to put one up if they don't back down over something else. (To be clear, this would be a good thing.) If you already have one, you could threaten to expand it.

mywittyname2• 4 years ago

Some do. Mine doesn't.

And there are laws being passed across the country making solar access a legal right for all home owners.

Plus, I doubt these would work on typical suburban houses, given their roof pitch. Houses would need to be designed with flat roofs in mind in order to accommodate these things. Thus, you're looking at this being applied to new construction in most of the USA.

MonkeyMalarky2• 4 years ago

I love the inherent contradiction of the existence of HOAs. Americans love freedom and small government so much, they have to invent a worse and more invasive replacement.

Tangurena23• 4 years ago

There is no transparency nor accountability for the "condo commandos" who rule some HOA boards like the girls in Mean Girls. I've ended up on 2 separate condo boards and each time I swear "never again!". Maybe this time I mean it.

exabrial3• 4 years ago

It's absurd. People are forced into them if they want to buy a house, and part of the agreement is if you sell the house, you can only sell it to a person that agrees to sign. It _should_ be illegal, especially given the racist history that HOAs were designed for.

brightball3• 4 years ago

The perk of HOAs is that you can get elected to it. You can organize your neighborhood to get elected and make changes if they aren’t happy with the way it’s currently run.

The whole goal of smaller and more localized governing bodies is that you have easier access to change them. The only thing stopping you is getting the support of your neighbors.

scifibestfi• 4 years ago

It's a small, local government run by people who actually live in the area they are governing. It's objectively better than a large, non-local government that has no skin in the game and doesn't have to live with the consequences of their actions.

xyzzyz5• 4 years ago

HOAs are much better, not worse replacement. If I don’t like HOA rules, I have more ability to affect these than to affect county, state or federal level rules. I can also vote with my feet by moving out of HOA, to a different HOA or even to a place with no HOA. Moving out of county, state or country has significant higher cost, which is higher the bigger the administrative unit is. In short, for any given problem with HOA, municipal/state/federal government has the same problem, and in fact it’s worse there.

pessimizer• 4 years ago

HOAs were originally "White Homeowners' Associations," so after (and likely before) losing their legal purpose of being entities that enforced the racial covenants that restricted their members from selling their homes to black and Jewish people, their purpose instead became to enforce a particular kind of cultural whiteness on the neighborhood. Whites who didn't take care of their lawns or wanted to paint their houses the wrong color weren't being white well enough.

Americans love freedom and small government so much, they have to invent a worse and more invasive replacement.

The same group of Americans, too. HOAs were like a GPL for racists.

hot_gril6• 4 years ago

Cause the HOA is small-scale and localized to your neighborhood, not big govt. The idea is sensible, but some of them do stupid things.

kortilla4• 4 years ago

No they can’t. It’s illegal for an HOA to block solar: https://aurorasolar.com/blog/how-to-get-hoa-solar-approval-t...

mattmaroon• 4 years ago

That article is pretty clear that it’s only protected via solar access laws in some states, and even in many of those states while they sometimes can’t specifically prohibit panels they can make them basically impossible to find placement for with rules about what can go In outdoor spaces, requiring permission and permits, etc.

OP is right, HOAs can be a nightmare for someone wanting to install solar. I’m dealing with this in one of my units currently.

carlsborg2• 4 years ago

These are not meant for residential units (yet)

danans2• 4 years ago

In California at least, the law forbids HOAs from blocking solar:

https://findhoalaw.com/solar-panels-solar-energy-systems/

harshaw• 4 years ago

not sure of your state but in Massachusetts the state law overrides these HOA rules.

beembeem• 4 years ago

This is a poor blanket statement. This is not true in California.

seydor3• 4 years ago

An Aeromine system typically consists of 20 to 40 units installed on the edge of a building

why not a bigger single installation? seems like this is rotating a tunnel internally, not motionless.

Looks like there s no shortage of good ideas to generate energy but how do we store it

hn_throwaway_992• 4 years ago

Looks like there s no shortage of good ideas to generate energy but how do we store it

The nice thing about solar and wind together is that they are complimentary - wind usually starts to pick up right when solar starts to fall off. Here is a helpful dashboard from ERCOT in Texas: https://www.ercot.com/gridmktinfo/dashboards/combinedwindand.... Usually what happens is that when the sun starts to go down, winds starts to pick up. This was critical when we had near-capacity conditions this summer when it got so hot.

kortilla4• 4 years ago

Barely. Once the sun goes down the wind usually stops.

seydor3• 4 years ago

looking at renewables power generation it seems wind is slightly going down at night too , certainly not picking up

https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/power/chart.htm?l=en&c...

ilyt2• 4 years ago

I'd imagine cos it's easier to produce one size unit and just install multiple of them

ZetaZero• 4 years ago

The company has not yet provided any real numbers. I want to know how much electricity is generated at a specific wind speed. The lack of this most basic number leads me to believe this isn't as good as it sounds.

lifeisstillgood• 4 years ago

I think there is a hybrid future coming - and I suspect farmers will be at the forefront of this - hills with steps full of these built in, marginal fields providing pv-solar.

I can smell a new industry I just cannot understand the leverage points

ortusdux• 4 years ago

I've been fascinated by roof ridgetop fans. They capture the air being funnel up and over the roof to increase their efficiency without increasing their size. The startup RidgeBlade uses a simple ducted squirrel cage fan along the ridgeline, and their studies show a 2.2x efficiency increase on 45deg slope roof. They also work well with solar.

https://thepowercollective.ca/products/rb1/

jonnycomputer• 4 years ago

Well, the look of them is unobtrusive enough to gain acceptance, I think. But you know anyone with practical real-world experience with one of them? how much electricity produced, how much to install, roi?

forgotusername6• 4 years ago

The site says 2kw continuous for the domestic system. That's about half of typical domestic solar installation. I really do wonder if you can get that in a real world environment.

nofollow• 4 years ago

I'm waiting for Vortex Bladeless: https://vortexbladeless.com/

brink• 4 years ago

That movement with that shape is reminding me of something else.

hammeiam• 4 years ago

Found the YIMBY

soperj• 4 years ago

wacky inflatable arm flailing tube man?

tmikaeld• 4 years ago

What is the efficiency and power generation?

trenchgun• 4 years ago

It is essentially vaporvare.

fairytalemtg• 4 years ago

Wonder if the funding will come from those that support solar panels like Sunrun, Sunpower.. or new lending sector will form that specialize on lending + insurance for wind equip

DrNosferatu• 4 years ago

Price per kWh?

chess_buster• 4 years ago

This is the question.

tb_technical• 4 years ago

How do I get one? I live in a high wind area.

walnutclosefarm• 4 years ago

The claims made in the article are too over the top to be able to take them seriously - particularly the idea that wind is somehow going to even out the stochasticity of solar. In most locations, and particularly at the heights implied the notion of "rooftop" wind, wind is just as variable as solar. They might well be partially complementary (there isn't much wind on the best solar days, where I live, but might be good wind on cloudy days; but still, when the sun down goes here, the wind goes with it 4 nights out of five).

These turbines may or may not be a good deal for many sites, but you sure can't tell that it's even a question from this article.

MikeDelta• 4 years ago

And upstream turbines will take away the wind from the downstream ones, making them less useful in closely-built environments.

constantcrying4• 4 years ago

The article just repeats the companies statement. Of course not an ounce of scepticism or doubt is to be found.

didgetmaster3• 4 years ago

I am always skeptical whenever I see a headline that says new technology X can be better, cheaper, or more efficient than existing technology Y, but then fails to show in the actual story how that is true with real numbers.

This CAN produce 50% more energy than solar, but under what conditions? It seems like they should have a side-by-side chart of a solar and a wind setup that costs the same and show how much energy each one produced over the course of a year. Since nothing like that was in the article, I remain skeptical.

VBprogrammer8• 4 years ago

Scepticism is sometimes a lazy response but in this case I think you are completely correct.

Power from a wind turbine varies as the square of wind speed and the cube of diameter. Some places in the world have a lot more wind than others in general, someone once said that if the wind is a persistent annoyance where you live then a wind turbine is a good fit. Without specifying the conditions under which this is the case then its pointless.

jakobnissen2• 4 years ago

It's the other way around - cube of wind speed. So wind speed and consistency is critical

ErneX• 4 years ago

Agreed, but this has the advantage of being able to generate at night.

solarkraft• 4 years ago

But the lazy response is the totally right one. Oh, you have a super simple technology that is 10x better and 10x cheaper than what already exists? And you've been chugging along trying to bring it to market for 5 years and nobody wants to invest? Yeah, everyone else must be stupid or something ...

throwaway5752• 4 years ago

I am deleting this and all my other deletable comments on this topic.

bumby• 4 years ago

According to the article, Aeromine is the company making the claim that the design can produce 50% more energy. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect them to validate that claim.

didgetmaster3• 4 years ago

"They" should be the author of this article who chose the headline but failed to back up the claim in the story. If you are going to say that anything is 50% better, then at least show one instance where that was actually achieved. If you invent a new engine that you claim gets 50% better gas mileage, then you better show at least one trip of a significant distance where it did it.

I built a new database engine that I claim is at least 2x faster than Postgres at queries without needing separate indexes on the table columns. I don't claim it will always be that much faster on every query, but I show several instances where it is not only 2x faster, but 10x faster. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVICKCkWMZE

Without a video like this, I would not expect anyone to take my claims seriously.

pakitan2• 4 years ago

And that paper looks extremely fishy. You can see they tested with 10m/s and 15m/s. I definitely wouldn't want to live at place with average speeds like that. Then you need the wind to blow at a very specific angle of 10-15.

And they finish it with

This analysis shows that AeroMINEs can be installed at $2,400/kW. Finally, at optimum performance AeroMINE systems can reach a LCOE of 10 C/kWh at just over 5 m/s average annual wind speed, which is highly competitive with a solar PV installation

How is the "analysis" showing that? There is no cost analysis in the paper and they never tested speeds of 5 m/s.

throwaway0x7E6• 4 years ago

reflexive skepticism isn't any better than reflexive optimism.

it is in the current climate, with shady marketing and clickbait journalism producing three dozen such headlines every day

gremlinsinc• 4 years ago

I think there needs to be a hybrid system for some redundancy when there's no sun or no wind, of course then maybe we need a water feature so we can have hydro when there's no sun and no wind..hehe.

shagie3• 4 years ago

On a semi-serious note, you use surplus renewable energy to pump water up to a higher elevation and then use that when you need it. The energy storage capacity of pumped hydro can be very impressive.

The upper reservoir (Llyn Stwlan) and dam of the Ffestiniog Pumped Storage Scheme in North Wales. The lower power station has four water turbines which generate 360 MW of electricity within 60 seconds of the need arising.

https://www.energy.gov/eere/water/pumped-storage-hydropower

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricit...

unicornhose3• 4 years ago

Well, the grid still works, though eventually there will be brownouts and power cuts. That's when you get to charge your batteries.

Hydrogen via electrolysis is an alternative, I think? Less efficient, but stays for longer and can be used either in a fuel cell or an ICE engine.

RosanaAnaDana3• 4 years ago

but under what conditions?

Windy ones?

Seems as long as it could be a plug and play solution, it would be a great compliment to solar. Typically days with lower solar gain are more blowy.

emiliobumachar• 4 years ago

At night, of course.

didgetmaster3• 4 years ago

There are various areas where the wind blows quite a bit and bright, sunny days are not the norm. In those conditions, then maybe it makes total sense to install one of these systems instead of a typical solar rooftop installation.

I would even expect an example where 50% more energy was actually achieved to be set up in one of those areas. Since no example was given, it makes you wonder how extreme the conditions have to be for this new technology to make sense.

carlsborg2• 4 years ago

Tested by Sandia National Lab. The idea from what I can tell is this thing co-exists with Solar on the rooftop because it sits at the edge.

avip• 4 years ago

> but under what conditions?

A windy night.

79522• 4 years ago

I don't think the comparison with solar is particularly useful and would always need to be made on a site by site basis. But it is true that some sites have better wind resource than solar. A better comparison is with the limitations of traditional turbines.

Compared to a traditional turbine this design could eliminate shadow flicker, reduce structural loading on the roof, have different safety margins, increase the number of generators that can be placed and reduce visual impact. And they may have found a way to do that whilst maintaining a relatively large swept area. That is key as power output scales relative to swept area rather than height.

I am usually sceptical about vertical axis but this seems more interesting than most designs. It could be a good fit for commercial buildings if installation is simple enough. And maybe could be placed temporarily on agricultural land during winter. And you could see the concept being applied in other ways such as with sun shields on buildings.

Finnucane• 4 years ago

At least judging by the video, this doesn't look like something that would be a practical choice for a lot of residential situations relative to existing solar options. Maybe on larger apartment buildings? It would be cool if it were, I mean here in New England we get lots of wind, all the time.

jansan2• 4 years ago

I wonder how these compare to old fashioned savonius rotors, which are cheap, silent and omnidirectional. No visible moving parts is nice in residential areas, and I suspect that is their main selling point.

pornel• 4 years ago

There's more wind at higher altitudes, so I expect industrial-scale wind farms to have an inherent advantage over any rooftop solution.

byyll• 4 years ago

I don't think it's worth popularizing such concepts and patents. I've seen plenty of them in the past 2 years and non have reached production and promised value that outperforms solar panels.

Furthermore, there is research done on solar panels all the time too to increase their efficiency and panels have and continue to improve their W/m2. So by that time, solar panels might have outpaced it.

This "same cost" is likely calculated as initial cost + electricity/24h instead of initial cost + maintenance cost + lifetime.

Other comments have mentioned the moving parts which don't exist on solar panels. Moving parts will inevitably fail in contrast to solar panels which often outlast their 25 year warranties with only reduced efficiency.

Wind is less predictable than sun too. It's also less powerful the lower the height is due to buildings blocking it. That's why wind turbines are so high and usually out of cities.

Cost is not the only factor that matters. Panels on rooftops are more or less not visible. This thing sticks out a lot and isn't aesthetically pleasing.

Panino• 4 years ago

Aeromine said unlike conventional wind turbines that are noisy, visually intrusive, and dangerous to migratory birds, the patented system is motionless and virtually silent.

I've been a supporter of wind energy for 30 years and it's my favorite generation source. I want to believe the claims of this company, but the above quote is activating my spidey senses. Conventional wind turbines are not a serious threat to birds. According to Homebrew Wind Power by Dan Bartmann and Dan Fink, here are the causes of bird fatalities per 10000 fatalities (page 28):

  5500 Buildings / Windows
  1000 Cats
  1000 Other
  800 Power Lines
  700 Vehicles
  700 Pesticides
  250 Communication Towers
  <1 Wind Turbines

Many other sources agree.

Any wind turbine company will know this. For one to spread this lie makes me doubt their other claims. I hope they're right about price per watt but I have serious doubts.

That said, I would LOVE to have affordable grid-tied residential wind to complement my rooftop solar. It's not an easy problem to solve.

zaphod12• 4 years ago

I can't speak to the technology, but their CEO and marketing staff have been aggressively crapping on other clean energy sources. They also repeated a lot of lies about solar. I hope the tech is real, the people behind it seem like jerks.

eisa01• 4 years ago

Sounds like Trevor Milton

Estimated Teslas battery cost by the delta between the normal model and the performance model with bigger battery :)

exq• 4 years ago

Smells like oil industry astroturfing

paulryanrogers• 4 years ago

Surely those stats depend on the prevalence or absence of wind turbines. So if we had as many turbines as buildings they may well be a greater cause of bird deaths.

pakitan2• 4 years ago

Wind power is responsible for something like 5% of generated electricity in the world. If we scale it 1000x, to reach the cat level, we'll have enough electricity to power 50 Earths :)

ihunter2839• 4 years ago

From what I understand, one of the big bird issues with turbines is that birds of prey like hawks, eagles, and falcons don't generally look forward but down as they scout for prey, and thus are likely to fly into turbine blades. I believe some turbines have cameras systems to detect birds in the vicinity of the blades and either make a noise to alert the bird or maybe even bring the turbine to a halt. This is really only an issue for large scale installations though, obviously wouldn't apply to low lying roof installations.

tinco4• 4 years ago

The bearded vulture is one of Europe's largest birds, it rarely comes to The Netherlands, living mainly in Spain and France. When it does comes to The Netherlands, about once every 3 years, it'll be a national news item as it's quite a spectacular bird. Last year one came, and not a week later it was found dead under a wind turbine.

That bird is not just a statistic, it was the single bird of one particular species in our country, and it flew into one of the few wind turbines we have.

I'm 100% for wind turbines, I think it's a magnificent sight every time I cross the afsluitdijk seeing them rise from the mists providing us with clean future proof energy. But the sort of stupidity that drives an engineer to say only 1 in 10000 bird deaths is due to wind turbines, without asking why or how or what bird is going to be the end of us all one day.

weaksauce• 4 years ago

painting one of the blades black reduces the bird fatalities significantly from a study i read on here a few months back.

spaniard89277• 4 years ago

And they provide a video without sound.

The only truly bladeless wind tech I've seen is this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7Q92fX2P5A

And they are still not commercial AFAIK.

hoosieree2• 4 years ago

Here's a much less horrifying type without blades (or any moving parts): https://newatlas.com/ewicon-bladeless-wind-turbine/26907/

devonkim5• 4 years ago

The estimate for cats is widely disputed and was a complete WAG with little empirical backing and more like extrapolation from a non-representative sample. There are studies currently in progress to more accurately measure the impact of cats upon bird populations and last I saw the results were showing the prior estimates were grossly overestimated because cats kill many more kinds of animals than just birds like squirrels, lizards, and rodents.

Also, I have a 9kw solar setup and simply can’t add more without sacrificing land or basically tearing my house down to make a new, more optimal roof, at which point all the environmental pros of using solar are more than wiped out by the construction carbon footprint. Old homes really are terrible oftentimes for solar installations, sadly.

actually_a_dog• 4 years ago

The exact numbers re: what kills birds here aren't really what matters. What matters is the relative orders of magnitude. Even if the number for cats is a WAG and wildly off by a factor of 2 in either direction, we can safely say that buildings and windows are far more dangerous to birds than Felis catus.

If cats are in fact half as dangerous to birds as estimated, then the danger is still of the same order of magnitude as that from power lines, vehicles, and pesticides. If they are twice as dangerous as estimated, then the danger is still not far off from those other things in terms of order of magnitude.

Ultimately, these things are all factors to keep in mind in terms of how we can prioritize actions that benefit the bird population.

TL;DR: focus on orders of magnitude here, don't get fixated on exact numbers.

midasuni• 4 years ago

Presumably that’s a 9kWp system, with peak potential on a good day to generate 9kW at the optimal time of the day

Is there any way to work out how many kWh such a system would tend to generate for a given latitude throughout the year? If I wanted to charge a 10kWh battery once a day for 12 months what kWp system would I need. What would it produce in June vs December etc.

medion• 4 years ago

Domestic cats should be illegal anywhere outside of a major city. It’s such low hanging fruit in reducing loss of small native animals, with virtually no downside.

Vrondi• 4 years ago

In my experience, it very much depends on the individual cat. Besides general levels of hunting competence overall, cats seem to have a good bit of variety in their preferred prey types. Some catch everything, but some specialize in small rodents (never catching birds) and others I have know did catch primarily birds. I had one who loved young rabbits above all else, and I've even known some for whom a nice fat moth was the gourmet treat above any.

acchow2• 4 years ago

I'm not sure how to interpret these statistics. Since it's given per 10000 fatalities (and not per square meter covered in said obstacle), can't you conclude that the wind turbine fatalities are so low because we haven't deployed many of them? Whereas there are tons of buildings?

conductr• 4 years ago

This is my thought. What happens when we have 10 million wind turbines out in the wild?

clnq• 4 years ago

I suppose that if fewer than 1/10000 birds are killed by an X number of wind turbines, then we could guesstimate that fewer than 1/5000 birds will be killed by 2X number of wind turbines in a given area.

Of course, many other factors are probably involved in any kind of practical estimation. Densities of turbines and wind farms are probably important. There's also the aspect of birds learning to avoid these turbines over time, and the question of whether we can/would do something to make these turbines easier for birds to avoid. For the latter, we have a lot of creative solutions recently - https://www.rechargenews.com/wind/wind-farm-eagle-deaths-cut..., https://vortexbladeless.com/technology/, https://tethys.pnnl.gov/sites/default/files/publications/May....

bckygldstn• 4 years ago

Wind power accounts for about 10% of total generation in the US. So even if turbines were added to account for 100% generation, and demand increased 10x, it'd still be far less than anything else on the list.

tertius• 4 years ago

You're telling me there are just as many windows as there are wind turbines? Or are you lying with statistics?

merely-unlikely2• 4 years ago

The scalable, “motionless” wind energy unit can produce 50% more energy than rooftop solar at the same cost
An Aeromine system typically consists of 20 to 40 units installed on the edge of a building facing the predominant wind direction

I'd like to know how well it performs in variable wind directions vs variable sun directions for solar. Obviously location dependent but I'm guessing the figures quoted are best case scenarios.

BMc2020• 4 years ago

So I don't have to read the article, what is the swept area compared to a conventional wind turbine? My limited understanding is that what really counts.

Also, my other limited understanding is you have to be at least 50 feet above the rooftop, any lower and wind is too turbulent.

themitigating2• 4 years ago

I didn't think birds flying into walls or windows would be the highest

user_named• 4 years ago

Your cited source is clearly biased towards wind. I don't trust those numbers for a second.

mrb2• 4 years ago

You can see technical drawings of their device in their patent (US 11391262): https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/26/02/b1/f9004c8... The article calls it "motionless" and "bladeless", but this is patently (hah!) false. There are actually spinning blades... See figures 16c, 16d, 19 in the patent: the blades are in the turbine underneath the central body element.

At first sight, given the quantity of material used in the device for the foils and central body, relative to the small turbine size, it's hard to intuitively picture how or why it can be more efficient than a regular wind turbine built using the same amount of material which could, therefore, have much larger blades.

Edit: in fact the inventor of the device, Carsten Hein Westergaard, previously published results from a prototype https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1742-6596/2265/4/... in which he claims the prototype achieved an efficiency of 42% of Betz limit, which is inferior to standard utility-scale turbines (Wikipedia claims 75-85% but I haven't checked sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betz%27s_law#Betz's_law_and_co... ) so that seems to confirm my intuition.

foxyv• 4 years ago

I think they mean that the blades are not visible from ground level. A big problem with wind turbines in residential areas is the motion is really distracting and shadows on windows can be annoying as heck. Although looking at the patent, this thing would be stopped up with dead squirrels on my house in ten minutes unless they added some grating to the inlet.

hoosieree2• 4 years ago

The blades are spinning so fast cleanup becomes a simple matter of wiping off the red mist.

taftster• 4 years ago

Just to ask. Do you think the housing of the turbine would somehow "channel" the wind it collects into the blades? And therefore increase the performance or yield against the size of the blades? Maybe in this way, the comparison is legitimate, that a smaller turbine blade (as in this case) can collect more wind?

I'm honestly not sure if that holds up properly, like from a true physics point of view. But it kind of makes sense from intuition. It would seem you'd get quite a fast moving turbine blade with this configuration.

mrb2• 4 years ago

That's entirely the point of Aeromine's invention: the foil and body channel the wind (by decreasing air pressure between the foils) and this increases the speed of wind at the turbine. But per my edit, it doesn't seem sufficient to beat the efficiency of traditional wind turbines. I suppose that's why the company tries to focus on other advantage (less noisy, better aesthetics).

JumpCrisscross• 4 years ago

not sure if that holds up properly, like from a true physics point of view

Thrust efficiency from ducting is real [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ducted_fan#Duct

Obi_Juan_Kenobi2• 4 years ago

What they're really after is using the structure to direct the wind and create stronger flows by the lip of the roof. This is not a new idea, but perhaps they have hit on a shroud design that works more effectively.

I have little doubt that it can produce impressive figures in very specific conditions - many designs do - but I doubt they see vastly improved real-world performance.

cbhl• 4 years ago

Sounds like the inverse of those "bladeless" dyson fans where the blades are hidden inside the body/base. Might still be a net safety improvement?

abc_lisper• 4 years ago

This is like the Dyson fan in reverse. Look ma, no blades - well there are, just not behind/facing the wind.

laverya4• 4 years ago

There's a difference between thermodynamic efficiency and cost efficiency. Extracting 40% of the energy in the wind for $500 is very often going to be better than extracting 70% for $5000.

dzhiurgis• 4 years ago

Yes but then location comes into play - offshore power needs to be delivered!

rootusrootus• 4 years ago

inferior to standard utility-scale turbines

But isn't this supposed to be a rooftop wind turbine? I'm curious how it compares to other small turbines that I could conceivably put on my own property.

Obi_Juan_Kenobi2• 4 years ago

efficiency of 42% of Betz limit, which is inferior to standard utility-scale turbines

That isn't surprising at all; wind generation scales very very well with larger size. If it actually achieved 42% at that size, it would still be a major innovation.

But that's also a strong claim that requires very strong evidence. The reasons for inefficiency at smaller scales are fundamental: higher drag to lift. Essentially what they're doing is using the existing building as part of the device to direct wind. This is not a new idea, and in favorable conditions you can get some impressive numbers. But in real life..

https://www.renewableenergyworld.com/storage/small-wind-turb...

79522• 4 years ago

But it is not about power per kg of materials but power per $ spent. You may be able to fabricate the wing elements out of cheaper and heavier materials using simpler methods.

constantcrying4• 4 years ago

bladeless motionless I always love it when articles are obvious shill pieces for a company. It is a turbine system with a different mechanism of getting air to a turbine. The first thing you see in the video of the article are spinning blades.

The real question which the article should be asking is how they compare to traditional large turbines. (Which can stand unobstructed at great heights). How well this works in urban environments, where Wind is blocked/funneled by other buildings. Or if the claims over solar are actually justified.

Far too often there are articles about blatant vaporware (often fusion) where people just report sone companies claims as if it were self evidently true. If you want to convince me: - Show actual data. What did one such unit generate over a few month in electricity? Surely you have to know. - Do not lie. The thing obviously is neither motionless nor bladeless.

danans2• 4 years ago

The unit requires about 10% of the space required by solar panels and generates round-the-clock energy

That's a pretty sneaky way of implying that it provides energy at all times, when it probably just provides energy when the wind is blowing, whether that is during the day or night. There's nothing in the article about any energy storage capacity included with these things, apart from the claim that it can minimize auxiliary storage requirements.

yodelshady• 4 years ago

"The unit... generates round-the-clock energy... producing energy in all weather conditions."

Can someone explain to me how, whenever wind energy is mentioned, any sort of of scepticism, and I don't mean "snarky internet contrarian" scepticism, I mean "human being who has lived on Earth" scepticism, ceases to exist?

Is there actually a large population out there who has never experienced outside weather conditions in which there was no wind?

Or do you... think that bad things will not happen to you if you just believe in transparent bullshit hard enough? Because I'm sorry, but they will.

How. Does this Shit. Get Written?

The best, most reliable sources of wind, FYI, are known by anyone in industry to be very far away from most built structures, and high.

ajross3• 4 years ago

Is there actually a large population out there who has never experienced outside weather conditions in which there was no wind?

Over a geographic area approximating typical grid distribution distances, and at altitudes reached by commercial wind turbines? Surely there's such a population, but it's a very, very small one. A "calm day" in your backyard at sea level with a bunch of trees around is still generating a ton of wind power on hilltop turbines. And if your neighborhoods hills aren't getting it done, there are gusts somewhere within a few hundred km just waiting to be milked.

No, this is wrong. Wind power is in fact extremely reliable, especially when you remember that things like fuel distribution routinely idles fossil fuel plants too. Nothing is 100% reliable.

But the other part of your point: that building roofs are a poor place for wind, is I think more defensible. Certainly if you have $N to spend on wind power, you build more ridgeline turbines and you don't put these things on roofs. But the people spending those dollars aren't the same.

If you're a business or home with a roof, and you're looking at putting solar on it for whatever reason, and this thing is better (itself very much an open question), why not?

laverya4• 4 years ago

No, this is wrong. Wind power is in fact extremely reliable, especially when you remember that things like fuel distribution routinely idles fossil fuel plants too. Nothing is 100% reliable.

According to [0], Germany's wind farms averaged a 36.9% capacity factor over the course of 2019. Further down there's load duration curves, and it looks like a lot of plants have no power generation for >10% of the time.

EDIT I FORGOT TO INCLUDE MY CITE https://energynumbers.info/germanys-offshore-wind-capacity-f...

Ayesh• 4 years ago

It's too late for me in my time to pull my thoughts together, but this goes on the same lane as Nigerian prince scams, cryptocurrency/ICO scams, etc.

It's like if your lie is so bad, and if you can still get a small amount of people to believe you, they will fall HARD to it, and you can scam them multiple times because they continue to fall for them. That's the target audience.

BorisTheBrave• 4 years ago

It means round-the-clock as in "it works during the day and night", rather than literally non-stop. For example, if I said that security did "round the clock patrols", you wouldn't assume they patrol every second of they day, but rather regularly through the night.

The fact a few people might misinterpret it is a marketing bonus, but surely negligable, because no one could believe that.

rendaw• 4 years ago

No, that's exactly what I'd assume. That's how it's defined (MW):

being in effect, continuing, or lasting 24 hours a day : CONSTANT

I'd expect that they have a rotation of maybe 12 people patrolling for 2h and then switching, so someone is patrolling at every minute.

mensetmanusman• 4 years ago

Wouldn’t people do both then?

dieselgate• 4 years ago

Cool article and comment section just to see the tech used here (some folks even linked the patent for this design). It's interesting to see this in "pv" magazine which presumably stands for photo-voltaic.

It's good to have options and I don't think the world will ever be "solar OR wind" - they compliment each other and can provide redundancy.

The interesting thing here is Rooftop seems to focused on selling to consumers (?) as opposed to industrial scale turbines or solar farms. For my personal (off the grid) energy needs one/two 100w panels are sufficient but nice to see a less "dangerous looking" wind catcher.

This probably has less installation than solar and I'm curious about the lifespan/service intervals of the mechanism

ltbarcly3• 4 years ago

Moving parts, noise. These are the reasons PV is likely to continue to dominate most deployments.

Schroedingersat8• 4 years ago

More likely that wind power is the third power of wind speed, and rated capacities are usually 8m/s

If they don't outright state swept area or rated speed, assume a random house will see 5-10% capacity factor. This is why wind is huge and only in specific places.

Plus anything over about 200W per household on average will create turbulence which will mean the neighbors can't also get that much.

Wind is for utility (where it still dominates for now in northern climes) and select industrial or commercial sites.

suprjami• 4 years ago

An Aeromine system typically consists of 20 to 40 units installed on the edge of a building facing the predominant wind direction.

I don't want 40 of these highly visible things on the edge of my roof.

pencilguin17• 4 years ago

I bet you wouldn't mind 40 of them on the edge of the nearest Walmart roof.

hot_gril6• 4 years ago

I'm all for renewable energy, but what's up with the push (and subsidization) for homeowners to become mini power plant operators? It's even weirder with home batteries involved. Yeah you save on transmission costs, but it's overall a lot cheaper, safer, and less politically messy to do this at dedicated facilities or huge buildings like malls.

jeffbee• 4 years ago

It plays together with other ridiculous myths like urban farming. People want to feel and appear green regardless of objective reality.

hot_gril6• 4 years ago

Yeah but at least urban farming isn't super subsidized. If someone wants to play with home solar or farming as a hobby, that's great, but it's not everyone else's job to make sure it's profitable for that person.

Maybe the issue with urban farming is that water is subsidized, and those people use a lot of it.

hot_gril6• 4 years ago

Also, I'm happy at least something is being done. It's just not a great way.

samatman3• 4 years ago

This things is clearly not designed for residential roofs.

For one thing, it's hideous.

But mostly it's intended to be installed on the ridge of a standard commercial flat roof, tar-paper style, and take advantage of the effect which large walls have on the wind.

Houses, being lower, having (generally) pitched roofs, and therefore no structural ridge, are not the intended market.

hot_gril6• 4 years ago

The picture does seem to be in a neighborhood. Can't tell if it's on a house, but either way it's a small building.

c2h5oh• 4 years ago

I'd like this to be true, but that's some industrial grade BS sprinkled in that press release:

The unit requires about 10% of the space required by solar panels and generates round-the-clock energy.

Let's be generous here and use numbers for my area, which further north than all of US excluding Alaska. I can get just over 200W of electricity per m^2 from solar (peak) with standard ~20% efficient panels here and 200kWh per year.

So with this I should be getting 2MWh per m^2 per year with an average power output of almost 230W and much higher peak as it is generally much more windy during the day.

So 1m^2 footprint of this device would match performance of standard 3.5-4m diameter wind turbine (9.6-12.5 m^2) assuming a sane if slightly optimistic average annual wind speed of 4m/s.

I find that super hard to believe.

concordDance• 4 years ago

Wind speed scales with height above ground so I presume these are only for sky scrapers.

627467• 4 years ago

So, does anyone know how I can go about measure the wind potential over a certain períod of time on my - say - balcony or roof? Any inexpensive suggestion?

pleb_nz• 4 years ago

I don't see think we should see this as a replacement, but something that compliments other forms such as solar.

It doesn't have to be one or the other ignoring costs

Rooftop wind energy innovation claims 50% more energy than solar at same cost

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