Slow Chat

Great vid. All wind energy is a mass of swirling convection currents created by solar energy.

If you ever wonder what went through my head when I saw the pendulum design? Colin furze doing this. Or even a

But with wind as it main driver. No cars needed.

I am aware of the the force on the blade of a standard turbine. are very similar mechanically. To the forces trebuchets use. A single blade is like the arm of a trebuchet. Got that part. I’m also not coming from a purely wind background.

I hope your familiar with involutes,
as even I know you don’t need are large sweep area to generate a lot of energy.


Aware, turbos can run in suck or blow. It just needs to circulate around a set point to work. As far as I’m aware it works for most fluid dynamics systems.

To explain further

A trick most engineering’s and one point or another have tried
1.225 kg/m3 At 15’c is atmospheric density. Air being variable density fluid.
And highly viscous. So increasing it density will certainly help generate more power from the wind. Even up to the betz limit. If it wasn’t for the boundary layer non of these turbines would be possible. That i do understand. As it exploits aerodynamic to best effect. 1.225 kg/m3 at 7m/s is what I’m looking at. If that can become compressed? it is a winner. Any pressure change that induces more wind? is a winner. Plain and simple, 5kg/m3 would carry far more energy to drive a turbine, produce high torque therefore more power. Right?
The issue with going big, its need more material to do so. More time in production cycles, and that Incurs cost. People loose interest. Much like magpies. Lift and drag rotors are the main types I know of. So I didn’t think I was too far out with my thinking when making suggestions. Spent most of Covid trying to learn about wind energy. I’m aware vortices can travel the length of the blade to provide lift. Or be turn inward to provide power for a drag rotor. I know how wind works wind blows blades spinning. Does in need to be more complicated? I don’t think so. As I said before, and mention again. “take what Mother Nature give you and make the most out of it.” Shake (hawt DAWT VAWT) your mother gave you. Currently trying to find the Cfd software to run on IOS. so I can get a better idea myself. That hasn’t been a joyous task. Nope no fun there.
been keeping an eye here because it’s interesting.

He got it to spin under 2m/s. t doesn’t have a large swept area. Which I thought was good. Didn’t know if you knew so here goes. I expect the usual professor crackpot Comments. but hey presto. I will find out later.

Reminds me of running away from girls as a kid, laughing and yelling that they had “cooties”
These kinds of “fluff” videos always have some “dumb” aspect.
Windmills have used shaped airfoils for 1000 years, for example, and are not restricted to “modern wind turbines”. (DaVinci, Wright Bros., etc. never noticed.)

And what they call “flat” blades on, I assume, farm windmills, are still usually curved (bent).
Their illustration of a “flat” windmill blade, straight with rounded edges, is way too thick. Not realistic. They are losing people who might actually be interested.

Then they use a quickie explanation of the discredited Bernoulli explanation of lift, saying it will force the blade “upward”, never explaining that the blades are pitched so a component of lift pushes them forward in a circle, nor that the suction on the “upper” surface extends to the leading edge. Again, they would have lost any truly interested person.
Someone who may have been interested in science will be turned off, thinking it makes no sense.

Funny they start out bragging how many homes a turbine can power “for a year”.
Outsiders, especially “journalists”, almost always say that! “For a year!” What happens when a year is over, the turbines stop working? Warranty expired? What happened to the 20-year+ design lifetime?

“Generating enough power every year to power 750 homes”. How about just an hour, or a day? Can they power 750 homes for a day? Or is it only for a year? Then what, after a year of wind power, the homes have to find a new source of electricity? “Sorry, your year is up. Show’s over. Nothing to see here, move along… What do you mean you want more power? Didn’t you watch those ladies’ video? It’s for a freakin’ year! Now get lost!”

OK here it is again: "A windfarm of 200 similarly sized turbines could power over 150,000 American homes - or twice as many European homes - for an entire year.

Did these girls not go to engineering school, to learn that “power” is already defined as energy per unit time? What does “year” have to do with anything? They just have to “say it”, because they heard someone else “say it”. It’s as though there is something about wind energy that makes people take leave of their senses - sucking the brains right out of their heads! Would they say your furnace could heat your home “for a year”? That your car can get 20 miles per gallon… “for a year”? That candy tastes good… “for a year”?

There it is again: “With a rotor diameter of 220 meters, just one of these turbines can meet the annual power needs of 16,000 European households.” Annual. Not monthly, not weekly, not just today, not just this moment - they need a whole year. Then it’s over.

“German physicist Albert Betz calculated that since some of the wind must remain to keep the blades spinning, a turbine can only ever capture 59.3% of the wind’s energy”
Wrong.
It is not because “some wind must remain”, it is because all wind must exit the area or more wind could not move in, and if all the energy were extracted, it would stop the flow.

Always funny to see people who are new to wind energy and do not understand it, try to explain it, but it happens all the time. At least they know SOMETHING though. I’ll bet they at least understand power is proportional to swept area, for example. :slight_smile:

I’ve been toying with the maths.
After being verbally brutalised. I’ve just calculated rotor mass and need some one to check.
Air density travelling at speed. Which equal the amount of mass it can displace. For me I got 1.225kg/m3 traveling at 7m/s = 8.575 kg/m3 from there rotor size based on mass. E.g. Mass of air kg/m3 to mass of rotor kg/m3 1:1 ratio is 8.575kg/m3 3:1 = 2.858333333333kg/m3. I also calculated the energy for each kg/m3 at 7/ms= 84.092 J.
I did a voltage calculation for every kg/m3
At 10 coulombs and got 8.41v from 84.092 J.
Am I right to think that total mass of air flow before a rotor counts? If so? then the pressure of the total air flow acting on the rotor is important. Much like how if. A hole collapses. the total pressure of the soil pushes in on all sides. Is equal to the surroundings mass. Obviously air pressure and density with effect these number.

I just wanted a rough idea at ball park numbers.
I was trying to find a theoretical minimum rotor size. to get a theoretical maximum out. much how galileos bell experiment works. For scaling purposes. If my reckoning is right? would improve efficiency. Might even tweak the betz limit? I might have just calculated the joules its needed to turn the rotor. A smaller rotor compared to air flow would work much better. In this instance. RPMs will be much hight due to a gearing effect brought on by the difference in mass. Effectively 8.757kg/m3 can move 2.858333333kg/m3 with three time more energy due to e=mc2.

Losses can be negated some what. By adjusting for resistances and contact with airflow. It may only need 2% of the mass to provide 100% of the output. Much how a Francis turbine and Cross-flow turbine - Wikipedia works. Efficiency is proportional to ration between kinetic energy of a fluidic mass and turbine mass. - resistances. Be that drag, electromagnetic friction Or displacement losses. Displacement loses being the killer.

Remember you have a large volume. acting on a small volume. Which is your power creation and efficiency. It will have some correlation to total solar out put from the sun though I wouldn’t know the exact figure there. The ratio between large volume and small volume counts. Then it simple as an input output equation. If the betz limit is finite? Tweak the design to work within. So it can work to 100% capacity. I think if the known numbers are out there? then it’s becomes possible. Engineering loves datums. Base lines and the like. I ask myself the question what does it take to move the rotor? And what size does it need to be? I end up here. If someone could check my reckoning? I’d appreciate it. Thanks :pray:

Just to let you know if I do not respond it is because, at a certain point, I just can’t read any more drivel. I was curious, but found myself unwilling to wade through more of what is most likely meaningless, to me anyway. Have a McDay! :slight_smile:

If you are asking whether the Betz limit is the true limit, I guess most of us would just say, yes, even not knowing exactly why. If you want to prove Betz wrong, the burden of proof will be on you.

The Betz limit though is not maybe the most important thing. If you can extract energy at a low price that may be worthwhile, even if your windmill is not best in class in extracting wind from a certain swept area

But then again, if your windmill only extracts a small fraction of the available energy, the burden of proof is on you to explain why that could be worthwhile, when windmills exist already

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Another way I was thinking about it. pardon the Viking inference, is a boar snouts.

4:15s in, the crack team engaged the enemy. The larger mass displaced, the smaller mass with little to no resistance. This would be the wind vs rotor. Or how a rack a pinion engages. the rack, being the wind. the pinion the rotor. The measure of energy created would be the distance the rotor blade traveled. Once engaged and presented to with the wind. It’s an inequalities of scale if you will. Displacement being the key factor here. In the design of the rotor’s swept area and mass.
Rotor weight & diameter in kg/m3.

It would also depend on turbulence within the boundary layer itself. With the changing fluid dynamics densities within the airflow itself. If I’m on tack with my thinking there. Then it only a matter of a test rig to find out. To prove it!

Appreciated the pointers. Ultimate I’m trying to find out and understand. if the betz limit can be broken? Using the power of observation.
To improve rotor design.
If E=mc2 has any to do with it? Maybe?
supermassive black holes being my analogues for this.
We also get to learn if Vikings can do science. If they can? great! If I can grab moment. i Will try to have some real time data. Should my thinking be correct.

Going to let the results speak.

Nice demonstration of how to break the Betz limit with a sword…

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Another example of this is a peak flow meter used by asthmatics. To message lung capacity. As breath is very good at creating wind like conditions.


I grew up around family members who were asthmatics and used these all the time. In this example the rotor would be the measuring indicator. Just to give an idea of scale. Got a fair idea how it would work. Peak flow will help determine the amount of available energy. In any given area.
In old steam money, that’s stroke length. that’s directly related to volume of energy imput. In kg/m3/m/s2 should give the total energy value for Any give gust.

If I recall my science right a car hits a stationary object 50mph will fair better than two car hitting head on. Obviously you have a high energy penalty to start with. To turn the rotor. but once going it don’t take much to keep it going much how flywheels work. If the rotor is for eg. A third the mass with the wind mass acting upon it. It should need less energy to get going. Which is your basic power bell curve. The peak of that is your energy requirement to move the mass of the rotor in kg/m3 With regards to inertial transfer.


Should look a bit like this peek flow graph. Wind speed, air volume vs rotor size. 1:1 relation should be where it maxes out. In my case 8.575kg/m3 for 7m/s windspeed. Based on air density in motion for any size rotor. I know that this will vary in variable wind conditions. Depending on a compressing and decompressing wave fronts.
Rpms should follow a similar curve. According to rotor size. Low rpms at 1:1 scale and high rpms small scales.
Choke flow must be accounted for. If the boundary layer separates. Which might Be the Leading cause rotor stalls. Depending of class of rotor. Ww2 pilots know a little about that phenomenon. Where props failed to bite.

So like many greats hit it with a sword and hope for the best. It how Alexander the Great beat the Gordian knot. So could be how today’s science guys bet the betz limit? With something pointy.

https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/t4xfph/location_of_wind_turbines_in_europe_oc/

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It is impressive what the Danes have achieved. I remember a report of them exporting energy to the rest of Europe.The uk is not all that far behind them. Coming a close 6th place globally. still plenty of room for improvement. the English Channel is ripe for wind energy.
I know where i am. there was a massive dispute over where they wanted to place the wind farm. Between the needles and old Harry rocks. It was in the local news and the Bournemouth echo. Didn’t help that we then had a mobile drill rig turn up. which was here for weeks.our local council had something to do with that. Furzey islands oil/ gas field see further exploration. there is competing interests locally. We have one of the largest solar farms in the uk. Right next door to the airport. Over 100 acres or more it just keeps growing. The farmer has many a side buisness. Like camping and wwoofing. It is link to the major estate holders in the area. I’m fairly sure if you tickle them pink. they jump at the chance of extra revenue streams. It very long winded. Parley court I believe is responsible for the up keep of the solar farm. Though don’t quote me on that. North of the airport it extends further.

Well, actually, you do NOT “recall your science right”, and the word is “fare”, not fair, and it’s “two cars”, not “two car”. “Science” says two cars hitting head-on is the same as one car hitting a stationary object. And next, like every newbie who has never made a single Watt, you, in your infinite wisdom, are going to disprove the Betz coefficient on paper. But you don’t seem to be able to even write a single sentence without multiple errors of every kind!
I swear, I could debunk every single sentence you write. Just decided to do a quick check of this group to see how retarded it has quickly become. I wish you would just stop.

Im meant to have a scribe, as one not available. can’t afford to pay for one. Or know where I can find one. I blue screed long ago. From my list into eternity. Of things I don’t find easy. Debunk my thought train if you will. I know my grammar. got dragged through the hedge backwards. Still trying to convey something. however gobble it is? Sure it a jumbled mess but FYI im autistic. I have acknowledged I could be very wrong . Being as curious as I am.

What your seeing is insanity level on C.o.D. To think it was going to be easy? Nope! Yes I would have flunked a lot. without help! Might not be chancing my luck here. Might not of even known you existed. Total feel like a Roman try to learn Latin. Remember Einstein, he had my kind of problems. But came up with e=mc2, Or Stephen hawking. Who had nought better to do. than ponder about the universe and dream about black holes. Forgive my broken English, ive had a life time of this. From my bros. And others. It very isolating. Just so you know! If I know anything? hawking, never stopped trying! nor will I! I’m might not be the best. but I’m still trying! As people used to say, they do love someone who try’s.

Btw what are batteries? I’m fairly certain. I can make a few watts out of that! With Jumper cables and car batteries. For a kid that grew up with meccano, and most of the tactical toys. a 80s, 90s kid would have. Plus the odd trip to the science museum. I disagree. “With never made a watt in my life”. Statement. I hope you know what a wimshurst generator is? Used to love playing with them at the electricity museum. In my local town when it was there. Even loved the plasma orbs as well. Sure I can’t compete with the big boy yet!

Some of the worlds biggest “retards”, advanced the world so much! we owe them a debt of gratitude! Going as far back as it can go! If it were not for then? no LHC. No warp theroy. No getting of this rock. No room to grow. If not for their hyperfixations and willingness to explore ideas. or reuse the ones we have differently. we would, be done for! Forgive my messy thoughts. it just they way I am! I know I will be corrected for something. Hence can you check my thinking? We all need those datums. the rest just follows on from there. That is the spirt of STEAM fields like ours. Ive said more than once. just a guy with the spanner’.

Correct me where I’m confused. Oh thanks for straightening me out. On the car thing. My thinking at the time. was car meets car and the forces added together. Happy to clarify the best I can. Be on your square, and have a nice day!:stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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So there is hope. :wink:

Ey, there some. As long a science greatest curse stays way.

OK when two identical cars traveling the same speed crash head-on, the point of impact does not move. Same as a car hitting a completely (theoretical) unmovable object, usually said to be “a wall” when this question is entertained. Contrast this with two cars of varying mass or speed, where the point of impact moves, and one car or the other has an “advantage”. I did not read that whole post - too much to read - just noticed one sentence that jumped out at me as incorrect and difficult to comprehend.

Now this may sound harsh, but you have to understand, as I’ve explained many times in the last 14 years of AWE popularity, my experience in debunking “windsanity” goes back much longer than that. How? Well, please pay attention to this because I’ve had to spell it out several times in that 14 years:

  1. Wind Energy has always been a magnet for crackpots, because the wind is invisible, so people can (and do!) imagine it behaving however they want. But wind doesn’t necessarily do what you want. It does what IT wants…
  2. Airborne Wind Energy is a Neodymium Supermagnet for crackpots. Why? Because with the introduction of a true unknown, seemingly “anything goes” - in many peoples’ minds, “there are no rules” and a certain highly-insistent personality type believes this lack of standards makes their prolific-yet-unorganized thoughts suddenly valid and accurate, without any actual validation. Typically, believing they are undiscovered geniuses of the highest order, these people tend to repeatedly bring up “Einstein”, “The Wright Brothers”, and really ANY and EVERY passing “genius” thought coursing through their highly-active-yet-even-more-highly-disorganized brains.

OK I am not the one running this site. But if it were a building, with a sign on the front, that sign would say “Airborne Wind Energy”. What it would NOT say is “Welcome to the Happy Valley Mental Hospital.”

There is a saying: “It is good to have an open mind, just not so open that everything falls out”.

Now before you say the analogy of a mental hospital is farfetched, please consider, This “discussion” has been going on since 2008. In that time, we’ve had many companies come along declaring that they “will” develop airborne wind energy, often giving dates by which they “will” power X hundred or thousand homes, usually in a remote place. The people running these companies give all sorts of details about how wonderful their wind energy systems “will” be, but in the end, none of it comes true.

Similarly, take a guy walking down the street talking to himself. OK not unusual, you might say, we all occasionally talk to ourselves. But this guy is actually talking to imaginary people. And not just to rehearse a speech or something, he actually THINKS the “people” he is “talking to” are really there! He is “out of touch with reality”… Some people would just say “crazy”.

Now take a guy who convinces a large group of people he can re-imagine and improve the art of wind energy with his proposed flying contraption. Is what he is saying for real? Or is it imaginary? And if it proves to be imaginary, not real, aren’t the key personnel almost as “crazy” as the guy walking down the street talking to imaginary people?

In both cases, it is delusional people with a wrong idea in their heads, acting as though the wrong ideas are right, when they are not.

People with experience in wind energy, especially those of us who have seen the pattern over a couple of decades of all the typical things the newbies think and say, can immediately flag most of these people as legitimately “crazy”, yet, like the guy walking down the street gibbering to himself, they can’t understand the reality we see. They just say we are “closed-minded” or “mean”, etc.

We know, they don’t.
It is that simple.

We’re familiar with the “mental disorder” from which they suffer, having seen all the “symptoms” many times over, long before “airborne” entered the fray of “improved approaches to wind energy”. We know all the symptoms, we’ve heard all the “arguments”. We know what they are going to say before they say it.

They “are the next Einstein”,
They “will disprove the Betz coefficient”…
etc.

Now why would someone enter the world of wind energy and immediately declare their first order of business is to invalidate the main, longstanding rule of the Betz coefficient? As though they are already making SO MUCH POWER that exceeding the amount of power possible to extract from a continuous flow is all they have left? Why? Because they are out of touch with reality. They don’t know how to make ANY power, yet they think Betz is what is “holding them back”

But they “are like Einstein”, so they will “rewrite the rules”. At no point do they ever just make lots of power within the Betz coefficient. No, that would make too much sense. Remember, they are “crazy”, so don’t expect them to suddenly start making sense! If you tell them they have never made a Watt, they will try to come up with a wise-ass answer, like they once connected a car battery, flicked on a light switch, or turned a generator by hand.

No, we are talking within the context of wind energy, but in the end, the crazy people just want an excuse to go on with more crazy talk. The last big example we had in AWE was one of the people running “the old forum”. Ironically, that in itself seems to occasionally be one more “symptom” of “the craziness”. A way to “feel like” they are at the cutting edge of wind energy, without having to prove it.

His strategy worked in that case, because it allowed him to keep going on ad infinitum, and when anyone protested he could just have the “correct” post deleted, and pretend his “incorrect” posts were the new way of thinking, even though he never really ever got anything worthwhile running at all, let alone enough to make a difference.

When I say someone “has never made a Watt” in a wind energy discussion, I am talking about a Watt in wind energy.

Meanwhile all Betz says is you have to leave enough energy in the wind for it to exit the area, or you won’t be able to have any new wind enter the area. Now that sounds pretty logical, doesn’t it? New air has to enter, therefore old air has to leave, therefore old air needs to still have kinetic energy left, for it to move out. Actually it is extremely simple, and not arguable, yet people still do. Why? Because from that standpoint, they are verifiably “crazy”. We know it. They don’t.

If one person says “We are developing airborne wind energy and will power X-hundred homes in location Y by date Z.” (which is usually “next year”) we can say they were “mistaken” when it doesn’t happen.

But then when ANOTHER guy comes along and says THE EXACT SAME THING, we might start to notice “Hey, didn’t the last guy, who turned out to be crazy, say that exact same thing?”.

By the time you have hundreds of people ALL saying they WILL power X hundred homes at location Y by date Z, (next year) you MIGHT see it as a bona-fide mental illness, with specific symptoms, just like the guy walking down the street angrily arguing with imaginary people.

At some point you can see this is “a syndrome” with long-recognized and well-defined “symptoms”, which never seem to change much. This was going on in wind energy before Airborne Wind Energy became a popular topic, and continues on in spite of the accumulating evidence that it actually amounts to a common mental disorder, always with the same symptoms.

So I would just say, noting that there IS NO sign here saying “Welcome to Happy Valley Mental Hospital”, if someone has a contribution or question related to the serious topic of airborne wind energy, which is now PROVEN to exist, this is the place for it. If, on the other hand, their mind is so open that “everything is falling out”, maybe they should consider actually DEVELOPING an AWE solution THEN hitting us with it, rather than just using this place as a dumping ground for all the stuff “falling out” of their “open mind”.

It is a much more simple common delusion than you suggest Doug
It’s belief in the worth of money.
To get any financial support for a project you have to promise exactly what you just described to folks who may not have a clue
saying they WILL power X hundred homes at location Y by date Z, (next year)
is basically compulsory in an energy systems business pitch

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.
The statements are false.
The people making them are either lying or delusional (crazy) - take your pick.

Einstein always did really well in school, and worked really hard to come to where he did. And he was standing on the shoulders of giants, having deep knowledge of physics knowledge that came before him. I think for people to compare themselves with Einstein looks simply bad.

Just comparing as someone who does not seem to know a lot about the Betz limit saying thay it can be broken.

I do invite you to join the discussion. But the way you are going about it does not come across as very sympathetic. Maybe focus less on changing the world and more on baby steps?

That’s against human nature. Learning you need to separate a big problem into many small parts and you need to set achievable goals - take baby steps - comes from learning from not doing that and failing. Everyone starts out trying to shoot for the stars, that’s fun to imagine.

But I agree. One giant baby step would be for example to build your own small wind turbine from plans. You learn a lot and you get free electricity at the end hopefully.

Another small step would be to go here: https://www.khanacademy.org/science/hs-physics

Yes, this is true. Learning is little by little. I know I have the parts I need to a working mock with my skill level. Its funny you should mention building one. As I was wondering which bits of scrap to sacrifice for the efforts. Helps sitting on a junk pile, of useful bits and bobs. Even if going to look like a scrappy scratch build.
My parts list,
Bicycle wheels.
Belts
Universal motor
5*2 joists
Drainage gutters.
Prefabricated metal sheets.
I’m good for a ground based test run.
Even if I had wait awhile for some bits to become available.
Shouldn’t be bigger than the width of a washing machine.

Thanks for the sign posting. To relevant information :+1: that was far more helpful. Also very informative.
2014 I started this journey into renewables. Hours of vids later. Here i am talking to to the brains of the industry.
I never thought I’d find my way here. Or anyone with some degree of knowledge. Knowing it wasn’t a task I can take on alone. Not without guidance from those who know. YouTube is helpful. without it I’d be non the wiser. Or even know what to look for. To begin to understand. YouTube has its limits. So learner guides are much better.

Further more If we have motors and technology? that is rated to be 90% or higher in efficiency. It stand to reason the betz limit. can be at some point surpassed. Based off what I know is out there even if. I’m not the guy to do that. Its just one big meccano set. Just waiting to be bolted together. I know that’s possible. If nothing else. So many thanks to all here.