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Wednesday 28 May 2014

Harness your own wind

From dutchnews.nl

Engineering and Technology Magazine (link may require registration) reports on a new Dutch design for domestic wind turbines.

A super-efficient and completely soundless wind turbine developed by a Dutch company aims to enable every household to generate its own wind energy.

Officially unveiled today, the shell-shaped Liam F1 Urban Wind Turbine offers much better efficiency compared with conventional designs. Its shape, modelled after the perfectly logarithmic spiral of a Nautilus shell, allows the turbine to always position itself at the best angle towards the direction of the wind, achieving efficiency which is about 80 per cent of what is theoretically possible.

With an average speed of wind of about 5m/s, the turbine generates about 1,500 kilowatt-hours of energy – about half of the consumption of a regular household. The Archimedes, the company behind the Liam F1 Urban Wind Turbine, believes that in combination with efficient solar panels, the turbine can make every household completely energy self-sustainable.

5 comments:

Sam Vega said...

"in combination with efficient solar panels, the turbine can make every household completely energy self-sustainable."

It was a dark, still, night...

A K Haart said...

Sam - ...when all the little green folk are in bed.

FrankC said...

When I saw the post title I had a vision of a windmill stuck on my bum.

Demetrius said...

If anyone could crack the storage problem, how to do it reliably and effectively in a low cost small size system we might get somewhere. In the meantime get used to switching stuff off when not needed.

A K Haart said...

Frank - that's a good image for UK energy policy!

Demetrius - and get used to wearing more clothes indoors.