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Personal wind turbine design is 3x more efficient
If you don't mind placing an object that looks like an egg beater on your roof, you might someday be able to use a personal wind turbine like this to make your electric meter spin backwards. Ben Storan's design won a $6302 British Standards Institute (BSI) Sustainability Design Award, praised for its efficiency and quietude.
What makes it so special? The odd-looking configuration can be quickly removed from a roof, saving it from hurricane force winds and such, and it uses unusual vertically oriented turbine blades and lightweight materials to enhance its efficiency. The result of this unconventional design is a power generator that can produce 1.2-kW of electricity in a 12-meter-per-second wind, and that's three times more efficient than competing designs.
British Standards Institute, via Oh Gizmo
By murcielago05 at 7:25 PM ON 07/03/07
not very good looking...but still. the average home uses 1.2kw...so this could be a big hit IF its priced right.
Meaning dont price it at 10 grand or some crazy high figure like that.
By Ian Gordon at 6:04 AM ON 03/15/08
I'd certainly buy one since if you look at roofs in any big city they're certainly ugly anyway, so no great loss. If it's priced right I'd include it in an Integrated Community Development (ICD) project.
By raja zahid at 5:25 AM ON 10/13/08
need wind turbine blade structre
By Hedgewolf at 10:51 AM ON 01/09/09
Is there anywhere we can see the power curve for this thing ? I'd like to know the startup speed as well - 12m/s is nearly 30mph... I don't often get that much wind across my roof !
By jerryd at 4:05 PM ON 01/09/09
Not a chance this being worthwhile as it can't get any kind of tip speed, thus can't produce much usable power. Basic physics.
By Stein at 7:23 AM ON 04/06/09
Same story over again. This turbine concept has been tried many times before, but never proves to be efficient. What kind of bolony is it to say that it is 3 times more efficient than other designs? a 2MW turbine produces 2MW at 12m/s, so it is 1666 times better! A 1,2kW turbine with nominal wind speed of 12m/s will produce 1,2kW regardless of the design! Simple wind techonolgy.
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Stein:
Same story over again. This turbine concept has been tried many times before, but never proves to be efficient. Wha...More »