EneBird Tech

[EneBird Wind Power Plants]

Dear people on this forum!

We want to introduce ourselfs and our tech.

As Kelly's Windwing, Festo's double-wing and the tyerwind, the EneBird Tech is a wing-based tech, instead of rotor-based.

Rotors has been used for wind energy harvesting since hundreds of years and thus are very well developed - we stand in the beginning of our development.

Still, the Enebird tech differs in one aspect from all other harvesters, rotor-based or wing-based: it swings with a steady frequency! Only the amplitude of the swinging elements raises with the amount of energy "inside the system", the frequency remains the same.

The reason is that we have based our tech on inertia-spring-elements and thus "self-frequency".
That way, we "apply harmony" to the wind and when grouped close together, the Enebird harvesters increase their efficiency.

Before you ask: no, we have no data about the efficiency, yet. We just started!

From January, the 2nd 2018, EneBird Inc and Enebird Aerogeneradores s.l. is active and we work to develop our tech as fast and as good as possible.

We will annouce a very cool application in the beginning of February.

Our aim is to create relatively small EneBird Wind Energy Harvesters, that will be mounted near the ground, do not need high poles and can be grouped easy to form "fields" of EneBirds. This is possible only with our tech and this will create huge "windwaves" the harvesters "ride on".

If you want to support us, check our homepage, facebook and twitter pages. We are looking for early stage investors as well.

We will check this forum and keep you informed about the progress we do. For daily pictures of what we work on, please check facebook.com/enebird.

Thank you for your attention!

www.enebird.com

[Dave Schwartz]

That's quite a kinetic sculpture there so far.

Of course it looks like there is lots of power available in the big motions you see with only a few hundred grams of plastic and aluminum flapping around under no load. It will be a big challenge making the various moving parts robust and serviceable enough to withstand the elements in the long term while being able to channel kilowatts of pulsating power to a generator.

All modern commercial VAWT rotors also use 'lift' aerofoils of quite sophisticated design. The days of fixed flat panel pinwheels like the old picturesque Dutch grist mills are long gone. A lot of research has gone into determining the power available in a given wind stream and the optimum design to extract the theoretical maximum of that. There is also a reason for height: available power in the wind stream gets better with a bit of altitude so you are going to be at a disadvantage straight out of the gate.

I think you will be hard-pressed to equal existing state-of-the-art rotor designs but good luck!

[EneBird Wind Power Plants]

Hi Dave

Thank you for your comments.

It is important to understand that there are quite some very basic differences between wind-wheels (of whatever kind) and our tech that make direct comparisons very problematic.

Our devices are mounted close to the ground, they do not need stream-lined air and the "air used" is not defined by an area (two dimensions, like rotor-diameter, or projection of rotor surface), but by a space defined by the air flowing by and being "influenced" by the wings.

You are very right that it seems complicated to create a device with this technology in BIG dimensions. We focus on 20-100 Watts. I think that you believe me that this amount of energy is possible to harvest without high-tech-materials.

I will explain in a pdf - soon on our homepage - the very basic difference of the aerodynamic principles of fixed-amplitude devices, like wind-wheels, Kelley, Festo and Tyerwind-devices - and the fixed-frequency device, that is EneBird only.

But, and that is very important to understand, if one would want to harvest 1 Megawatt with our system, one would NOT build ONE HUGE device, but rather place 100 x 100 = 10 000 small devices close to each other and thus create a field of Enebirds. Each device produces just 100W, but all together harvest one Megawatt. And they will do so with VERY LOW wind-speeds. Unbelievable low wind-speeds, because they produce huge waves that "influence" extremely big "air-space" above and below the devices.

With a used surface of about 2 m² per device, such a field would be 20 000 m² , that is 200m x 100m in size. Now, you need to take in account that when we assume 2 meters of "influenced" height of the air-space, this is 40 000m³ of air or about 50 000kg of air. To calculate easy, we assume an air-speed of 10m/s. The "influenced air, thus carries about 2.5MegaWatt*second of kinetic energy "across the devices".

I needed quite some time to understand that this is the most important and completely different property: Enebirds can (and SHOULD!!) be clustered!

While wind-wheels need distance from each other for the air to become stream-lined again, Enebirds produce low-frequency waves and enhance each other when grouped near to each other.

Enebirds "sing in a choir", while the others "make noise". That is the difference that creates properties and possibilities otherwise regarded as impossible for wind energy harvesters.

We have not demonstrated the cluster-effect to the public, yet, but we did see this in our experiement- and it is very easy to understand in theory.
We are going to demonstrate this effect as soon as we will have built a couple of same devices..

Thus, each device will be build in a size where we can use cheap materials that still offer more than enough stability in relation to the power harvested.

To get more power, instead of building bigger devices, we can simply cluster more same devices. If build in heights of just a 1-4 meters, the devices can be maintained and repaired easy.

There are so many - and so different - applications of the Enebird tech that we do not look for any direct competition with high-tech-megawatt-wind-wheels.

We focus on individual, small scale use. The sizability is met by the clustering of small devices to achieve the looked-for power. Be aware: noiseless. Without killing bats and birds.

The way people will harvest wind energy will completely change, once this system will be developed and widely available, especially because it will become very cheap to produce electricity this way.

The single device might not be as effective as other harvesters, I cannot say for sure, now. BUT, clustering them offers completely new possibilities. For places, where wind-wheels do not work or are not allowed to be used, even a low effectivity but noiseless working Enebird is indefinitely more effective!

Thank you again for posting your thoughs!

www.EneBird.com

[Rob Beckers]

Hi Carlos,

I'm curious what makes you say that the "air that's influenced" would be more than its frontal area (or rather, the area it flaps up and down in)? Yes, it'll create a bit of a wave downstream, but I don't see this affecting more than that of the frontal area hitting the device (and CFD simulations of obstacles in an air stream that I've seen don't show any effects away from the obstacles).

The other one I see mentioned on your Web site and in your earlier message is how the device works close to the ground: The wind speeds close to the ground are so low there's not much energy in those air streams. They're also very turbulent, so they'll beat the living daylights out of your device causing premature wear. It's not that traditional turbine manufacturers want to put their HAWTs on a tall tower, they do that because that's where the energy in the air is!

All that said, 20 Watt is a power output I can see happen. That's pretty modest, though I suspect you'll end up with a flappy bird quite a bit larger than you'd at first blush would expect to get there. Of course, this all depends on what 'rated wind speed' is going to be: Normally turbines are rated at 11 m/s, and you could do that for yours. Thing is that 11 m/s is going to be VERY rare close to the ground for 99% of the land mass on this planet.

It looks cute though!

As they say, the proof is in the pudding, so just build one with an alternator and let's see what comes out!

-RoB-

[EneBird Wind Power Plants]

Hey Rob

Thank you for your comments!

I was writing a theoretical explaination of "air influenced" or "air affected", but I think that we will create some experimental setup first and publish it's results before publishing the theory to explain it.

And you are completely right, wind turbines MUST be on high poles they do not work close to the ground. But it's not because there is "no kinetic energy" in wind close to the ground, but because there is extremely high "inner energy" called turbulences.

As wind-wheels need stream-lined air and create turbulences, they are unusable - BUT if one would set up a field with VORTEX-tubes to "flatten" the turbulences, then a wind-wheel would work right behind.

Anyway, waved-streamlind-air is what birds produce and use and they can fly near the ground. They can fly most turbulenced air.

We are building two with alternators, now, we will build many more. It will take a few days/weeks and then we will present more experimental data, videos and then we publish the theoretic explanation I have already written.

The rated wind speed is aimed to be MUCH lower than 11m/s. I hesitate to write numbers, but substancially lower.

Thank you for letting us discuss on this forum!

www.enebird.com

[EneBird Wind Power Plants]

Dear people of this forum

Two months have passed since my last post and thus I thought it's time for an update.

On our facebook-account you can see that we have been busy and creating a lot of new models improving the features.

I set up a group-resonsance-effect experiement. I found my proposals prooved by the experiement, but as we do not have a wind-tunnel, yet, and the "sucking-effect" of the wind is a major aspect for the machine to work properly, I decided that the video is not "good enough" for the public.

Thus, we improved the basic model and are about to attach generators to it, so soon we will be able to put the machine outside in the wind and then we will show the functionality and the group-effect.

We will look for local media coverage, then, as well.

Please stay tuned!
David
www.enebird.com

[EneBird Wind Power Plants]

Hello!

It has been some time. The development of the swinging device prooved to be too complicated for us in this stage, besides, there were lot of troubles with the staff.

We are going an easier way, now, starting with the tangential Magnus effect wind turbine:
https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6460908751636566017

Unfortunately, since a few days we have the testing models ready - but no wind at all on this island!

Thus, with some wind coming soon, we will make more videos.

The "wind affected" is much bigger than the "projected area" for Magnus effect turbines as well, anyway, it is better to abstain from speculation and get real-world data.

So, first will be the tangential Maguns effect windturbine, then the axial one, then a energy-kite I invented and issued a patent for and when we will have all the experience and funding necessary, I will continue with the swinging devices.

Thank you for your attention!

Best wishes
David

[Rob Beckers]

Hi David,

Pity to see the EneBird work stopped! While I don't see potential as a wind turbine, I thought it had a great future as a some type of yard ornament (and I don't mean that in a bad way). There's a huge market selling ornaments, especially something that makes a bit of energy, has some lights. People love that stuff!

You do seem to have a propensity of picking the outliers when it comes to wind turbine designs. Those Savonius rotors won't work all that much better when you hurl them around (and yes, I know what the Magnus effect is; golf balls use it to fly further!). At the end of the day the limit is how much energy you can extract from a volume of air as it flows by, and this won't be an efficient way to do so.

In any event, I can see how those beautiful beaches and coral reefs of the Canaries get boring after a while and one wants to spend time building turbines! :cool: Keep us posted!

-RoB-

[EneBird Wind Power Plants]

Hey Rob

You are right concerning the swinging design. I wanted it to be construced small and used as flashing decoration and to load low energy devices.

Unfortunately, that was not possible for me to achieve and I had to stop that way due to lack right people and of funding.

The turbine presented now is, again, special. We have "flowing through" and "flowing by" wind, but I guess that you are right, we won't break the Betz' limit with this construction. Anyway, vertical Savonius-turbines are very low in effectivity. We want to build more efficient vertical turbines.

So, for vertical turbines, coming close to the Betz limit would be a great step forward. Darrieus showed this possible, with all the problems of his construction.

And I have a major improvement - the axial Magnus effect windturbine that should, then, make it possible to break the Betz' limit, as much more wind will be affected than in the "projected area".

Anyway, we need to go step-by-step and the first thing to do is build this "tangential Magnus-effect windturbine", add some improvements and see that we can get some sales.

Then we will build the axial Magnus effect Windturbine, the Magnus-effect energy-kite, sell them all and then come back to the initial swinging system, especially designed for "decorative home use".

That's the plan.

Best wishes
David

PS: Well it's more the pollution with big windmills that drives me to find other ways...