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Is this a contest to find the most inefficient wind turbines possible?

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Iā€™m not sure. I think the gist was the quickest and easiest to build. With reliable results.

Well raising money is a ā€œbe careful what you wish forā€ thing.
Soon they find themselves unable to make payments.
The debt piles up.
The investors start getting nervous.
Then they demand a bankruptcy so at least they come out with something.
They end up with the worthless IP.

Thatā€™s the only thing they did right.
And from what I saw, it didnā€™t spin very fast.
If they were paying any attention, they would realize their truck testing is showing them the design will not work out. So the testing is a success, but they are ignoring the resulting data. They just want to keep bilking investors.
They could build an equivalent regular turbine for next to nothing. It would be much smaller and require almost no material in comparison. But reality is not how these people operate. They are like on an acid trip.
What I think they should do is offer a version without their main invention, the overspeed control, since it seems to be what is holding things from going forward.
(ā€œHey Professor Crackpot, great invention , except for its main feature!ā€)
But they probably couldnā€™t even pull that off.
Iā€™m not aware of the need for overspeed protection for a Savonius, never seen it, and I think there would be a passive way to accomplish the same result, rather than the way they do it. Or look up how previous Savonius machines handled high winds. Maybe just cut off the power if the voltage gets too high and let it spin - it wonā€™t go any faster than the wind anyway.
You can see in the truck testing how slow the rotor is going, even though the truck is moving right along. The whole thing is silly, pursuing a mostly-disproven idea and adding a deal-killer unnecessary cumbersome automated electric feature as though it is a breakthrough.
They are bring the typical ā€œwheelbarrow to the Formula-one raceā€ except their wheelbarrow has a really expensive way to slow it down, and they think maybe they can get it all working within ten yearsā€¦ ten years? OMG, well the ā€œProfessor Crackpotsā€ of the world are just a never-ending feature of the landscape.

Hyperbolic cones.
Double output.
Viktor schauberger inspired.

Double the output from only 5x the material use
Oh

Yep, its an interesting result.
Because of

There is a paper out there saying you can get 30% more out than what went in.

Im not sure how this can be applied in a practical sense. But it is an interesting result non the less.

The wannabe professor crackpots always show ā€œvoltageā€ as though it is power or ā€œoutputā€.
(Wheee! Look at our Voltage!!!")
Any little device can produce an idle potential of thousands of volts, even if it can generate almost zero power, depending on how many turns of really thin wire they use. Voltage in itself means absolutely nothing.
This guy in the video is the blind leading the deaf, the helpless inspiring the hopeless.

This is true. Turns of wire and diameter do influence voltage.
Just thought it impressive that was a pc fan that did it.
Which can be anything from 50 turns to 250 turns. Per coil. As not all fans are made equal. The specs are on a previous vid where he converted the pc fans. Iā€™m going to say it you bog standard fan from a pc before 2018.as thereā€™s plenty on eBay. The point heā€™s making is some power. is better than no power at all! Just 50% increase is something that not to be sniffed at. One to keep the eyes open for. He knows something which is better than nothing. Different walk, different talk. But hey oh. Bare in mind he converted the fan for power generation. he was doing to show hobbyist how to do the same. Heā€™s making to with the scrap pile. With the bare minimum of tools. Blind he maybe? But with each day of enquiries it get a little less dark.

OK so I just watched the video (at 1.5x speed so I could stand to sit there for 2 minutes of nothingness)
Professor Crackpot doesnā€™t seem to realize that wind is normally approximated as an incompressible flow, just like water.
And in Windergarden, we learn the unsurprising fact that while a funnel can increase output, it pushes the rotor to a high-than-ideal Mach number, which increases noise and lowers efficiency, pushing the designers to increase blade pitch and rotor solidity, which further lowers efficiency. And as Roddy pointed out, the funnel uses too much material compared to how much power it adds. Anyway, nothing new in adding a funnel to the front, back, or both. Picture a 600-foot diameter turbine with an added funnel a quarter-mile wide that must be built to withstand 120 mph winds. What material are you going to use, reinforced concrete? What would it cost, a billion dollars? And of course ā€œwhat would the neighbors think?ā€ Blotting out the sun with concrete? Decommissioning cost? CO2 emissions? One turbine costing more than an entire windfarm? This guy is not showing anything new, other than he is ā€œdiscoveringā€ what people with the slightest familiarity with wind energy already knew long ago.

A keep pointing made about realities scaling. I understand that too high a Mach number. will act like a pressure cutter on steel. It is why? You see the ablative damage on the blades of many wind farms. Which can lead to structural failure. He considering small scale rather than larger scales. Iā€™ve been fortunate enough for the information to cross my path. When the original wind farm where made. It was noted how much attention was paid dust and other abrasives in the atmosphere. Many argue, that they should have seen that one coming. Considering most of the cutting technology out there. On the other point made. I agree it would be impractical if made solely from concrete. What I had in mind was more like tent like structure. Much like your pop up tents. It a shame a lot of the old mill chimney are now demolished in the industrial heartlands. as they would make for fantastic bases for a turbine like this. On the small scale you could use cob construction up to 20m on a parabolic arch. Which make the decommissioning a that bit easier. High pressure water cannons can be employed to wash it away. Cob is a good material and can last for centuries.
Local to me, we have a cob barn that stood on the site since the 1600s. Even up where you are you have rammed earth structures. That are far older than anything we have in Britain. Curtesy of the original natives inhabitants. What I think his target ranges for scale would be about 30m. Maximum or 100ft across. I doubt it would be wise going any bigger. Structure loading from the wind sheer alone is enough to cause terminal damage. On the point what will the local think? depending how you sell it too them? You might get away calling a kinetic sculpture? oooh look at the pretty petals. Even invite them in to paint all kinds of pretty colours. Helps if the feel like they have some ownership. It Schauberger inspired. Was his main reason for trying. It alway fun to see someone discover for themselves. Sure it been around a while. It has seen some use in various different place. I doubt your average joe knows or even cares to know. Definitely would be grand to see it in more regular use. Though I agree a balance must be struck if this was going to have any meaning full impact. I believe heā€™s looking at it for his wind wall. Because of the expanded surface area in play. We are yet to see?

Well I have a building here that greatly enhances the wind flow in certain locations.
And Iā€™m all for enhancing the flow wherever it could be advantageous. So far nobody has succeeded with funnels, and a lot of highly-funded attempts have gone absolutely nowhere.
But people will always keep talking about it. The thing about the idle musings on the internet is itā€™s mostly people who have not experienced what it takes to keep even the simplest, most ruggedly-built wind energy system operating. The wind will rip shit apart beyond your wildest expectations. Meanwhile you will always have people with no experience playing with computer fans - so what? Talk is cheap. Anyone can sit around typing on the internet about stuff they donā€™t really have any knowledge or experience in. Sure, build a rammed earth structure and wash it off with high pressure water cannons - what could possibly go wrong? Or start an insane asylum where people running around with butterfly nets can paint pretty flowers on wind sculptures and get everyone to pretend it is creating power. Create an economically-compelling energy solution and the world will beat a path to your door. On the other hand, when a strong wind hits and it all folds up and ends up ripped apart hanging in a tree a mile away, you might start to learn. Or lay off all the people in your group selfies and go bankrupt like so many, or more likely just keep sitting there typing like the rest.

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The guy with the spoons turbine should not have called it Daisy
Screenshot_2022-03-29-21-39-13-401_com.twitter.android

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Nice! Much better idea looks the part as well.

To all whom might be interested? @Windy_Skies @Rodread @PierreB @dougselsam @tallakt @tallakt

Go turbine test rig.
Including meccano parts. As the stand.

Interesting that, with all of todayā€™s tools, Boeing decided they could not design a new jetliner, and instead determined the best they could do was create flawed band-aid software to adjust the flying characteristics of a modified version of a design created by talented guys with pencils and slide rules 60 years ago. :Oā€¦

Is it a stretch to say that CFD has had a huge inpact on eg. cars, windmills, ships, sails, AWE, etc etc. The amount of data you get almost for free is astonishing.

Wrt Boeing, its a matter of; static environments donā€™t attract the best talent. Boeing is geared towards safely producing almost the same product over and over. The people who do this are not the creative in depth knowledge people. You can read about innovation in large companies many places. Its known to be difficult.

Well the fact that there is no AWE progress, and Boeing canā€™t design a new plane is also astonishing. With all that free data! The thing is, if you have a decent concept, you should be able to do a decent job of making a decent prototype with decent performance without having to do backflips on a computer. Donā€™t forget the most powerful supercomputer is in our heads!

As your always up for suggestions AWEs.
Especially the YouTube verity.
Todayā€™s daily servings.