Startup is about to install bladeless rooftop wind turbines on box buildings

https://electrek.co/2024/05/24/bladeless-rooftop-wind-turbines-box-buildings/

by peutetre • 2 years ago

118 67 2 years ago

electrek.co

jncfhnb• 2 years ago

What’s the meaning of a 50kW unit with a 5kW generator?

renewiltord• 2 years ago

You put ten of them in a row. Click through to the PDF. "50 kW system of 10 units occupying 50 m"

walthamstow• 2 years ago

These devices are a lot like the cooling towers on ancient and modern Persian buildings

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windcatcher

thinkcontext• 2 years ago

Another article says the company is claims

The scalable, “motionless” wind energy unit can produce 50% more energy than rooftop solar at the same cost, said the company.

https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2024/05/23/bladeless-wind-energy...

fragmede• 2 years ago

put solar panels on top of the wind unit

amanzi• 2 years ago

The PDF linked to in the article explains how it works: https://26011849.fs1.hubspotusercontent-eu1.net/hubfs/260118...

Obviously, it's not bladeless - you just can't see the blades. Page 4 of the PDF explains how it works: the airfoils create a vacuum above the propeller, which then sucks air from below, which generates the power.

ElectricBoogie• 2 years ago

I'm glad they're sticking these only on box buildings, other shapes might not work so well.

pedalpete• 2 years ago

I wonder if they could also use these as mounting platforms for mobile tower antennae?

We have a bunch of buildings where I live that are covered in black panels for antenae, rather than competing for space, it would be nice to see these as dual use.

Animats2• 2 years ago

This needs a third-party evaluation. Nobody gets that much power from rooftop wind with small devices. Usually you need at least 16 square meters of intake area to get 5KW.

Some similar devices with iffy claims:

- EIP - encased turbine for rooftop mounting [1]

- Sheerwind (active about 2014-2017) Really big funnels. [2] Critique: [3]

If ducting a wind turbine would help, everyone would be doing it.

[1] http://eiptechnologies.com/

[2] https://web.archive.org/web/20171221050330/http://sheerwind....

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtjKXb5gko0

metadat• 2 years ago

Yes, their generation numbers are not definitively defined in TFA, not even as a concrete typical range.

goda90• 2 years ago

Here's another one, Ventum VX175: https://ventumdynamics.com/

Regarding what you said about ducting, I don't think that's a fair assessment. Really big turbines are the biggest bang for your buck, but they aren't exactly duct-able. And on the flip side, really big turbines can't be built in a lot of places. So the question is, does ducting help smaller scale turbines, and will placing smaller scale turbines where big turbines won't fit going to be worthwhile?

Animats2• 2 years ago

So the question is, does ducting help smaller scale turbines, and will placing smaller scale turbines where big turbines won't fit going to be worthwhile?

Simple ducting does help some. A group at Clarkson has been working on this. They have a wind tunnel, so they can get solid data. [1] They have a simple duct around a standard wind turbine. This gives the effect of more intake area, and they get almost twice the output power. Unclear if this is cheaper than just increasing the blade length.

Many people have been down this road. There are many, many variants on experimental ducted wind turbines. Just search for "ducted wind turbine". There are very few installations. Here's one of the few.[2] They're demo installations on college campuses.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EXxA-RkwuRY

[2] https://www.ductedwind.com/blog

BMc2020• 2 years ago

This agrees with what little I remember. Energy you can get out depends on swept area, and these don't have much of that (different rules apply to funnel designs like this one but the concept is still applicable). Wind close to the ground is too turbulent to get much power out of as well (imagine how many times it can change from blow to suck and back in a minute). They could have solved these problems, but I didn't see anything very different at their website, just creative funneling of air through a turbine. I wish them luck though.

KennyBlanken• 2 years ago

I was going to say the same - there was a big fad for building-top wind generators and then everyone figured out that the airflow over a building is really turbulent, which makes it pretty shit for power generation.

Ask anyone who sails; trees and buildings shield a lot of wind out to surprisingly far away. The reason the big boys work well is because they are much higher above the ground where the wind is stronger and more consistent. That's also why companies are trying to make kite and blimp based generators work.

Only place I've seen the rooftop turbines work was at an airport where the giant open space around the terminal buildings means winds are more even and lower to the ground.

It feels like off-grid people mostly use it as a supplement for the stormy bouts where winds are often strong when solar yield is low...or as a backup in case their solar system breaks. They're happy if they meet the needs of their fridge, for example. Modern fridges use an average of less than 100W; lower if they're not self-defrosting.

erie• 2 years ago

There has been several startups for the past decades who have tried this an disappeared afterwards.The real and legitimate research, development and improvement of wind turbines have been plagued by fad wind turbines. Fad wind turbines fly around Amazon selling big claims at breakneck speeds.

gmokki• 2 years ago

I've been interested in this company that has made vertical axis wind turbines for harsh conditions for 40 years: https://windside.com/gallery/

They have very slowly started to sell to wider market. Clearly they have never aimed at being cheapest, but their advertised maintenance free installation is a big plus. And also that the models can generate electricity at wind speeds from 2m/s to 60m/s.

bruce511• 2 years ago

When we talk about solar it doesn't really matter if you want to generate 100w, 100kw or 1mw. You're pretty much using the same tech, and the pre-requisite is simple "sunshine".

But wind is more complex. If you want to generate a lot, then you need space (to build a tower), height (higher is better) and size (bigger is MUCH better.) And wind.

But if you just need a little, say 3kw, then you're not looking for the best possible outcome, you're looking for local outcome.

Most of us are location bound. I want to generate energy here - because I use it here. There are constraints (noise, size, height etc.) that I live with.

Sure, I've got solar, my roof is full of that. Let's stipulate that economically I'm better off adding more solar. Let's also stipulate that my roof is "full".

I get quite a few windy days (and windy nights) a year. If I harvest 1kw/h, I'd be happy. If I generate excess I can sell it to the grid.

The obvious answer is still a 3 or 5 bladed conventional wind turbine. But that is both visual, and can be noisy.

Personally, I don't need it to compete economicly with solar. I don't need it to be "perfect wind efficient". All I need is around 3kw capacity (for 1kw output) in a residential friendly package.

Solar has shown that individuals are prepared to spend capital on residential generation. And in sufficient volume to move the grid needle. I'd love to see similar opportunities for those with more wind and less sun.

kibwen• 2 years ago

Note that wind is a good complement to solar, because it's largely driven by the heat from the ground rising upward, so it tends to start picking up in the afternoon/evening as solar starts to dip.

IshKebab5• 2 years ago

1 kw/h

Try again...

readyman• 2 years ago

What is kw/h?

aorloff• 2 years ago

They also have a hurricane upgrade package.

Now we're cookin with gas

zo1• 2 years ago

The evaluation just needs to be for longevity, repairability and maintenance needs/costs. The big purpose of wind for a lot of small scale installs is to augment solar for night time and/or continuous base load assistance to it, and not as a primary source of generation.

I'd immediately get something that just gives me a tiny 300w on average as it means my 5kwh battery lasts 5 hours at night instead of 3 (made up numbers). That puts me soooo close to being full off grid it's not even funny.

People talking about return on investment, payback periods etc are completely screwing over the uptake of solar and other non renewable sources.

klunger• 2 years ago

In 2013, I had an internship at a kind of industrial incubator and fund in Kongsberg, Norway[https://kongsberginnovasjon.no/?lang=en]. Although that was 11 years ago now, and a lot has certainly changed in the industry, physics has not.

At the time, they had an explicit focus on alternative energy technologies, so recieved a lot of proposals similar to this. I do not remember the details of my analyses anymore, but I do remember that every single one of them was rejected because none of them passed a basic back-of-the-envelope plausibility evaluation.

These projects basically fail because their output is poor compared to other solutions of similar or even lower cost.

It is also important to consider how much energy it takes to manufacture their solution in the first place. How long does it take for them to actually become net carbon negative? Does it even happen in the lifetime of the product? Sometimes the answer is no (in which case, what is even the point?)

vasco• 2 years ago

The point might be as simple as a big building wanting reduced bills or energy independence without thinking one iota about the environment. It can also be to just signal that your big building is progressive and innovative, to attract companies to your commercial real estate.

__alexs2• 2 years ago

I spent 5 years working in wind microgeneration (but with helical turbines) and entirely agree.

Rooftop solar works because it's cheap and simple to set up. Wind is not that. The structural and installation requirements result in relatively high fixed costs. To offset that you need to scale the size of the turbine, and maximise the time they spend spinning. You can only go so big on buildings and the built environment reduces your capacity factor because there's loads of buildings blocking the wind.

gumby• 2 years ago

In an urban environment is there enough updraft from "heat island" effects to harvest the energy?

I kinda assume not else someone would have done it already, but maybe my assumption is wrong because it wasn't economic before and could be now.

userbinator2• 2 years ago

For those who are looking for a more intuitive understanding of what 5kW is, that's 6.7HP.

_Microft2• 2 years ago

More comparisons: the power of water cookers, (a single) electric stove top and fan heaters are usually in the order of 2kW (at least in Europe with 230V AC)

quickthrowman2• 2 years ago

5kW is just enough power for a 5 HP motor at 230v 3-phase (12.5A), and not quite enough power for a 5 HP motor @ 208v 3-phase (13.8A). If #14 wire was allowed for branch circuits in commercial construction, you could use those as your conductors, that’s how small these things are.

NEMA motor ampacity table: https://www.galco.com/circuit/fla_rate.htm

neilv2• 2 years ago

Will they contribute to noise pollution?

My neighborhood seems to have dramatically increasing noise pollution in the last couple years. The abuses have gotten ridiculous (and often gratuitously obnoxious) enough that I suspect backlash is imminent. Until there's serious regulation, I feel like I have to ask, since the noise environment seems to be a reckless free-for-all at the moment.

hampelm• 2 years ago

That is spoken about in the article.

neilv2• 2 years ago

Where? I saw the word "noiseless" tossed out there, but could just be journalist translating some marketing copy about some aspect of the system, not the entirety of its effect on noise pollution.

Tagbert2• 2 years ago

Are your neighborhood noise levels caused by wind turbines or something else?

omnimus• 2 years ago

By far most noise pollution in cities is due to cars. Better start with that.

applied_heat3• 2 years ago

I’ve had good results deploying both wind and solar at remote off grid sites, when there was a week of clouds due to a storm system moving through there was quite often a lot of wind and the batteries would stay fully charged.

jes5199• 2 years ago

what kind of hardware do you use to capture wind energy? It’s pretty easy to get into solar as a hobbyist but wind seems to have a higher barrier to entry (?)

applied_heat3• 2 years ago

Some $300 wind turbines off Ali baba that put out 300 watts or something. It was kind of like a propeller diameter 1m mounted to a little dc motor that was mostly bearings.

We mounted it on a pile to a shed made of metal covered foam panels, the whole shed blew over. Guyed it down after that.

kumarvvr• 2 years ago

Its not "bladeless".

Its "no visible blades"

That aside, I do remember a different design that allows for omnidirectional wind capture. A tall funnel structure that directs wind from all directions to a turbine below the structure.

It seemed like a good idea, and some installations were made. However, I think the efficiency and costs did not work out.

userbinator2• 2 years ago

Thank Dyson for popularising the "bladeless" term. These seem like the reverse of their fans.

sunshinesnacks• 2 years ago

Paul Gipe’s website [1] is always worth checking out when it comes to unusual wind turbine designs. He knows a ton about the history of wind energy, and lots of things have been tried before.

And this NREL report [2] is also relevant. It reviews a number of rooftop wind projects. None of them met their energy goals. And the report also recommends sticking with 3rd party certified horizontal axis wind turbines (but those still underperformed because rooftops are not great for wind energy…).

[1] https://wind-works.org/wind/small-wind/rooftop-and-urban-win...

[2] https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy16osti/65622.pdf

shmerl• 2 years ago

Next - windtraps for water.

Tagbert2• 2 years ago

Followed by… stillsuits.

leecoursey• 2 years ago

Oh, dear. I read as far as "Its generator system is a rotor-stator system with a highly efficient 5 kW permanent magnet generator", then immediately thought of the Turbo Encabulator:

https://youtu.be/Ac7G7xOG2Ag?si=WSdQIhyki2IDzqVm

numpad0• 2 years ago

So it's those pumpkin shaped rooftop ventilation thing with a shroud and generator?

quickthrowman2• 2 years ago

These things don’t generate very much power, 5kW @ 208V 3-phase is only 13.88A which means it can’t even run a single 5HP motor. It’s equivalent to ~25 200w solar panels.

You’d need 30 of these just to power a single 208v three phase 400A panel, and the size of building these would be installed on will typically have a 2000A or larger electrical service.

Assuming it runs at full capacity for an entire year and electricity costs $0.10/kWh, it would save $4,380 a year, but obviously it won’t generating at 100% all the time.

I fail to see how these would ever pay themselves back, I’d guess one of these units is between $30-50k installed, possibly more. The roof might need structural reinforcements which could push the cost higher. There will be electrical distribution equipment to transfer loads between the wind powered generators and utility power.

Startup is about to install bladeless rooftop wind turbines on box buildings

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