Wind farm idea! Can this work?

[Nakoa Woodruff]

Hi,
I want to build a 12kW wind farm. The idea is this. Set up 6 2000 watt wind turbines in a wind tunnel I will build to move about 72,000 cfm of air to provide a constant 15mph wind. I want to get 24 AGM batteries rated at 255ah each for storage. That will give me apx. 6120ah of storage. I want to use a 12kW inverter and have a transfer switch installed to stay tapped in. My thinking is based on personal research, if I can run the system at 75% efficiency with the turbines, they will provide 9kW electricity over a 24 hour period. I read that the average household uses about 500 watts per 24 hour period. The reason I'd like to build this system is to provide 5 buildings on our farm power. Could this work or am I way off base here?

[Rob Beckers]

Hi Nakoa,

What's providing the wind for the wind tunnel?

-RoB-

[Nakoa Woodruff]

Hi Rob, I desigbed a daisy chain propeller system using a couple small hp motors with sproket and chain turning up to 9 propellers. I have designed and built a small scale system for a friend but noise was an issue so a solution I can up with was to put the unit under a soundproofing insulated, partially enclosed box. It really helped. That's were I came up with the wind tunnel idea. I want to be on grid but not need it. I also want to be able to supply back to it and actually see returns in a decade or so.

[Shayar Choksi]

Hi Nakova,

If noise is issue better use rubber timing belt and timing pulley to reduce noise up to 60dBs. If you know rpm let me know I will guide you to which belt and pulley can be used.

Wish You Best

Shayar

[Nakoa Woodruff]

Hi Shayar, I like that method and did research it some but I was worried I couldn't keep adequate tension on the belts. I will try and set one up to test a couple thoeris. Thanks for the input.

Nakoa Woodruff

[Shayar Choksi]

Hi Nakoa,

You can use tension pulley. If you have drawings you can send me, I will find out solution. Please also let me know how much RPM you want to maintain continuously. We can sensor to move tension pulley up and down to maintain RPM. with sensor you can decrease and increase RPM up to certain level.

Thanks and Best Regards

Shayar

[Shayar Choksi]

Hi,
Nakoa,

I was reading your posts on your wind farm project. If you don't mind I would like to know cost of your project to get 12Kw electricity. I think we can get better solution than wind farm in very small land using our tech of vertical turbine, which provide constant electricity 24 hours at very low price. With O&M kwh cost is less than 0.0003 USD. Our 1 Mw plant working successfully on the same principle. Vertical turbine use gravitational force to generate electricity. If you want more info you can feel free to write me
Thanks and Best Regards
Shayar

[Rob Beckers]

Folks, this thread seems to be going off the deep end (as in X-files territory)...

Nakoa, if you intend to run a number of fans (in a wind tunnel or otherwise) to then generate power from wind turbines, to run the fans, to generate power etc., I am sorry to tell you that is not going to work. That is an 'over-unity' machine, as in "over 100% efficiency". Nature does not allow that. There's no if or buts about it, this is not a grey area, this is not debatable or controversial, it will never work.

Shayar, your throwing meaningless terms around, hopefully not with the intention of selling snake oil (as those sales people often use meaningless technobabble to impress unsuspecting buyers). There is no such thing as "gravitational force" when it comes to wind turbines.

Wind turbines get their energy from one source, and one source only: The kinetic energy in moving air, otherwise known as "wind". By slowing down a mass of air they take some of the kinetic energy out of that air, and turn it into mechanical energy. Gravity does not figure into this, it would work work in outer-space with zero-gravity if you had a moving gas.

The other one is that the vast majority of VAWTs (Vertical Axis Wind Turbines) out there produce very little useful energy. There are a few, very few, that live up to the lofty spec sheet claims, but they also cost much more than an equivalent HAWT (Horizontal Axis Wind Turbine, ie. a regular propeller type as most people know them). There are good reasons why an equivalent VAWT has to cost more to make than a HAWT, it has to do with materials needed and forces on those materials that it has to withstand. The long and short of this is: If you want kinetic yard-art, get a VAWT, if you want to produce energy, get a HAWT.

-RoB-

[Shayar Choksi]

Hi Rob,
Please let me clarify on my comment sent yesterday.
1.Our Vertical Turbine is not use wind. We use 0.50 density square cube containers falling on belt, belt is 3 meter wide, it is specially designed double sided timing belt which carry 40.50 ton weight all times. Containers falling from 45 meters height. 38 meters above ground and 7 meters underground. Falling Containers move belt, belt move flywheel of 180cm. Flywheel moves other mechanism. container size is 3 meter x 3mtr x 3mtr, filled with 12228 liter of water or equal weight of sand and close with partition inside container to not allow movement of water or sand. This way we convert kinetic energy of falling container to electricity. Container go up using buoyancy once reached down after 38 meter. We are using vertical force so we call it vertical turbine. I have tried to attached here simple sketch. My aim is not selling our product or idea because it required huge investment, I was only want to compare cost with wind power. Break even for our plant is minimum set up of 30Mw. We are going to setup 100Mw for State government in India. So many parts of this plants are made by us such as 3 meter wide double sided timing belt, 3 meter long timing pulley, some sensors etc..

[Shayar Choksi]

sketches of our vertical turbine. In fact it is our mistake we call it turbine but it moves our heavy flywheel and flywheel is turbine for us.

[Shayar Choksi]

Hi Rob, in sketch I saw only one side on container and belt, we use two belts to balance falling container. Falling containers speed is controlled by weight of flywheel. It is simple physics of potential energy to kinetic energy but difficult to execute. all faces problem to transfer container from air to water blocks, face too much pressure of water in MPa, we found its solutions

[Rob Beckers]

Shayar, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, especially since the other ventures your business is in seem to be very well reasoned and reasonable, however, if I understand you correctly you too are trying to construct an over-unity machine. I assume you believe that the falling weights, and rising partially empty cells, with go around indefinitely. Not only that, you will be able to tap energy off of it while it's moving merrily along too!

Sorry. This won't work.

Where do you think the energy is coming from that you plan to tap?

The potential energy of the weights at height is undone by moving them full circle (down the belt, turning it into kinetic energy, and up the water/belt again, turning it right back into potential energy. There's zero gain there.

The energy gained from the buoyancy is more tricky, but look at it this way: You have to put that volume into the water first, thereby displacing water at pressure. In doing so you just added all the energy you could possibly get back through buoyancy, if there were no losses. Unfortunately a moving object under water is incredibly lossy, so you're going to get far less back than you put in.

Overall nothing is coming out of this contraption. You'll be adding quite a bit of energy to keep it moving along...

-RoB-

[Shayar Choksi]

Hi Rob,

Thanks for your reply. I will send you more details on our plant toevening. Right now here it is 9am in India. At evening I will be free and reply how we tap power from belt. Generally we believe belt consume power only not take out power. We are not using any perpetual motion theory. We simply using natural sources with different way.

Best

Shayar

[Joe Blake]

I think an even simpler, more relevant example is the humble bicycle. I've been riding bikes since the early '70s and I've heard people saying it's done by gravity. Well, it is, after a fashion. If the rider sits on the seat with the pedal at 12 o'clock (ie at the top of the revolution) and stands on the pedal, gravity will assist the rider's body to fall earthwards, causing the pedal to rotate and propel the bicycle. That's all that gravity does. The bicycle will coast forward until friction (air, road-to-tyre) will bring it to a halt. In order to progress further, the rider must use his/her own muscles to lift the other leg to put the foot on the alternate pedal, which is now at 12 o'clock.

But this will not progress the bicycle very quickly, and to increase velocity, the rider must exert further energy by pulling on the handlebars, and so forth.

Noted sci-fi author Robert Heinlein had a very succinct expression - TANSTAAFL - "There ain't no such thing as a free lunch".

Or in this case TANSTAAOUM - "There ain't no such thing as an over unity machine." Otherwise we'd see people riding bicycles by simply standing on the pedal once. I do that on my tricycle but I've got an electric motor in the hub of the rear wheel, 24 volt batteries and solar panels behind me to keep the batteries charged.

[Shayar Choksi]

Hi Joe,

I surprised when you mentioned TANSTAAFL. To get solar energy how much we pay to SUN to get sunlight? To turn wind turbine how much we pay to wind? No doubt we have to invest to setup mechanism to convert sunlignt and wind to energy. I also surprised when you mentioned "over unity" or SMOT. If you read my explanation carefully you can get idea I simply talking about conversion of kinetic energy. As you know hydro power is simply working on kinetic energy Ke=1/2mv². In our plant belt is working as turbine, which use same principle of hydro power turbine.

[Shayar Choksi]

Hi Joe,

I surprised when you mentioned TANSTAAFL. To get solar energy how much we pay to SUN to get sunlight? To turn wind turbine how much we pay to wind? No doubt we have to invest to setup mechanism to convert sunlignt and wind to energy. I also surprised when you mentioned "over unity" or SMOT. If you read my explanation carefully you can get idea I simply talking about conversion of kinetic energy. As you know hydro power is simply working on kinetic energy Ke=1/2mv². In our plant belt is working as turbine, which use same principle of hydro power turbine.

[Joe Blake]

Shayar,

In your original post you wrote "Vertical turbine use gravitational force to generate electricity"

Now you are talking about sunlight. Your explanation(?) is extremely unclear. Are you saying that the energy you draw from the system comes from sunlight? If so then your device looks remarkably inefficient, with inherent frictional losses caused by moving parts.

The name "Rube Goldberg" springs to mind.

[Dave Schwartz]

Lets not be too negative, Joe. You, Rob, me and probably many others know that 'over unity' machines are prohibited by the laws of nature but others may need gentle persuasion.

Often these ideas for over-unity machines come from garage tinkerers and inventors who convince themselves of the viability of such a machine but overlook crucial energy inputs. Often there is a proof-of-concept implementation that substitutes some manual steps that the inventor intends to mechanize in the production version but fails to recognize that these manual steps are actually the energy inputs that made the POC work but without which a production machine will fail.

Since this seems to be described as a closed loop system, if we get an explanation of every step and the energy input and output of each step, perhaps we can point out the flaw. Anyone who refuses to describe the full operation in fear that 'big oil will steal my invention' is only fooling themselves.

Just like a generator-linked bike running on the 'gravitational energy' of placing big rocks on the pedals at the top of the pedal travel seems to work as long as you omit the potential energy that is added to the rocks by the machine that lifts them from where they fall off the pedals at the bottom to place them back on the pedals at the top. In the POC, that may be a biological machine (the human) that overlooks itself but that machine too will stop eventually after you stop replenishing its chemical energy (food) which ultimately comes from the big ball of fusion in the sky. You have to figure out what's going to substitute for that step and where its going to get its energy.

[Joe Blake]

You, Rob, me and probably many others know that 'over unity' machines are prohibited by the laws of nature but others may need gentle persuasion.


Exactly, Dave. I think one point that the purveyors of "over unity energy" overlook is that if there is such a beastie, then it must work on a different set of laws of nature, which then means that other systems based on classical laws should NOT work and for the over unity to be accepted, it has to be proven that these standard systems aren't working.

There are thousands of laws legislators have spoken, a few that Nature has sent. The former are being continually broken, the latter can't even be bent.