Slow Chat

OK I put this one in “news COVERAGE” rather than just “news” because what this article says (this new turbine design is “good”) is WRONG - bad info.
This is a new one for me: The article DOES NOT MENTION HOW IT WORKS. All it does is make typical “Professor Crackpot” claims about how wonderful it is, without even a single clue as to how it (supposedly) works.

It’s called “Aeromine”, and it had me thinking of a theme song for this engineering fraud/disaster: Ohh oh oh oh sweet Aeromine" (Guns & Roses Sweet Child o’ Mine).

Now you might notice that I am “denunking” this turbine WITHOUT KNOWING A SINGLE DETAIL OF HOW IT IS SUPPOSED TO WORK!

How could I POSSIBLY throw THIS baby out with the bathwater WITHOUT KNOWING ANYTHING ABOUT HOW IT 'WORKS"???

Well this might start giving you a clue of how I was able to confidently say “idiots idiots idiots” for 14 years and counting:

Once you get used to identifying “The Professor Crackpot Syndrome”, you DON’T NEED TO KNOW ALL THE DETAILS TO JUST SAY “Yup, that’s another one!”

I see no moving parts - it advertises no moving parts.
It targets building-mounting (which could work fine, but is nonetheless “Professor Crackpot” territory - the good professor is mysteriously attracted to building-mounted concepts…)

It claims “They can generate up to 100%” - 100% of what? Does it beat the Betz coefficient? No. 100% of a building’s power needs. When used in combination with solar!!! What a meaningless claim! How about telling us in Watts? Give us the swept area and weight of the device so we can compare it to other wind energy devices? No need for such inconvenient formalities from “Professor Crackpot”!

No, they just state, offhandedly, in the headline, that “This groundbreaking motionless wind turbine is 50% more efficient than regular turbines
They can generate renewable energy up to 100 percent.”

If that is not a 100% “Professor Crackpot” claim, I don’t know what is!

The article is written by a girl, by the way. And it is nothing but fluff. Not a single detail of how it actually works! Just idle claims of alleged greatness - In a supposed “Engineering” publication!

I think we’ve seen the design before in more detail from another, previous “Professor Crackpot Press-Release”. I think it uses airfoils to generate a vacuum that then pulls air through a small fan (turbine) through ducts. One more dumb idea.

Now you guys have been exposed to this 'Professor Crackpot" press-release/headline stuff for long enough now to immediately recognize it when you see it, right? I mean, like, nobody here could take this article the LEAST bit seriously, right? And you SEE all of the “SYMPTOMS” of “The Professor Crackpot Syndrome” here now, right?

OK, well, maybe at least SOME of you can see what’s going on here, right?
Hopefully MOST of you can see it???

So you can SEE by this point, that there really IS a “Professor Crackpot Syndrome”, with known symptoms, as easy to identify as red spots identify chickenpox, right?

Well I hope this clears up the “mystery” of “How can Doug come in and immediately discard, out-of-hand, any apparently-nascent “superior” wind energy technology, as utter garbage, right out of the box, even without knowing all the details?”

You SHOULD, by this point in time, be able to RULE THIS IDEA OUT with ONE QUICK LOOK, right?

Yet - look - there are a LOT of SERIOUS people BELIEVING in this utter garbage, right? They’ve even got BASF supposedly salivating over a test unit on their roof. Does BASF have a lot of “really smart people” onboard? OF COURSE!

And that is exactly how this stuff works: It doesn’t MATTER HOW HIGH YOUR IQ IS!!! If YOU DON:T KNOW ABOUT WIND ENERGY, YOU COULD BE A GENIUS AND STILL FALL FOR 100% WRONG STORIES LIKE THIS!!

And how can I dismiss this idea out of hand so easily? BECAUSE I’VE SEEN HUNDREDS OF DEVICES WITH THE SAME EXACT SYMPTOMS! I’m not even going to list the symptoms again. You don;t even need to see the picture or hear any details - just the claims made are ridiculous! Half the price of solar - without any exposed working surfaces - without any noise - SURE! If you don’t know the symptoms by now, you just aren’t paying attention.

By the way, did you notice the spacing between rooftop turbines in their “rendering” of a huge logistics warehouse? (A gigantic new logistics warehouse just like it was recently built near here, by the way)

Why the spaces between the turbines? If they work so well, why would they leave spaces between them, rather than maximizing output by placing more turbines in the spaces between turbines? Because they are IDIOTS! COMPLETE, MORONIC, WORTHLESS-TO-THE-CAUSE IDIOTS!!!

And YOU should be able, by now, to IDENTIFY WIND-IDIOTS AT A MERE GLANCE.

I hope thjs explains how real wind people can so easily identify complete idiocy in wind energy design. promoted by “really smart” know-nothings!
It does not MATTER how many “PhD’s” they may have. When it comes to wind energy: Idiots are idiots. And MOST people ARE complete idiots when it comes to wind energy, sorry to say.

But that is good, because by comparison it makes us “smart”! Right? Right???.. :slight_smile:

Oh well, I guess it didn’t do any good to pick the “category” of “news coverage” for my post on some “news coverage” regarding a NON-SOLUTION, nonetheless being touted as a “breakthrough” for wind energy.
Why has my thread already “closed”, and my messsage “moved” to “Slow Chat”? What IS “Slow Chat” anyway? Chat for people who are too “slow” for a regular chat?
Anyway, here is what I am noticing about “press coverage” in general:
Within the last year or so, there are several online daily publications with a “science” and “engineering flavor” (even if written by incompetent, cut-paste, compliant, unquestioning, press-release regurgitators).

Now here is the WEIRD part of this:
The above article appeared in “Interesting Engineering”. Maybe an hour later the same exact “news” is released by “New Atlas” (which had a different name previously).
LINK TO OTHER ARTICLE (which I will not bother to read)

So THIS post IS ABOUT “Press Coverage” but has been arbitrarily MOVED for unknown reasons to an ill-defined category of “SLOW CHAT” where know-nothings expose their ignorance on a daily basis.

More on the topic of “news releases”:
I expect this same article to appear in three (3) more supposedly independent and unrelated online daily content “magazines”(?) with the next 2 days. There seems to be a new central “decider” the picks which (totally false) stories the supposedly “independent” science and engineering websites will carry. Either that, or they are all stuck for ideas and have started just reading and copying each other. In any case, it is redundant nonsense that is often being promoted. Not a single fact-checker in any of these supposed technologically astute publications knows their ass from a hole in the ground! What a bunch of morons! If you want to know what’s wrong with the world, there are apparently no smart people left! :O…

Your topic had no relevance to Airborne Wind Energy. And if rants belong anywhere, it is preferentially here.

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OK Windy, just in case you haven’t been paying attention, “Airborne Wind Energy”, like it or not, is a SUBSET of Wind Energy, sharing many, if not most, aspects thereof.
And ONE MAJOR aspect they share has always been a constant and persistent influx of supposed “breakthroughs” that are not only NOT breakthroughs, they are actually NOTHING BUT LIES by people who do not understand the first thing about wind energy to begin with.
I think the people in this group started out saying “What is this guy (me) even talking about?”
Now I think many people here realize they are indeed involved in a “field of dreams” which is often “The Land of the Lost” in the sense of literally tricking well-meaning people, from investors, to employees, with complete nonsense masquerading as “cutting edge technology”. In my opinion, talking a post specifically exposing “press coverage” verging on outright promotion, with ZERO diligence by the author, of a non-starter of a wind turbine design, is the EXACT sort of thing AWE people need to stay ahead of lest a similar situation affect them or the people they care about. To me, it seems people running these forums do not really care about facts or improving wind energy, they just want to feel like they are somehow “in control” of a conversation, for whatever reason I do not know. But you can get an idea of the general personality type from the one who was “banned” and yet still posting here.
Anyway, what “topic” it falls into I could care less, really, it is just more annoying behavior to see this sort of knee-jerk reaction to facts being presented. This forum is about as interested in real facts as the last one. Meaning “not at all.” In fact most people need to be beaten over the head with them for a few years nefore they can even admit there ARE any facts involved. Really, it seems more about being part of some sort of “coverup” than anything else. The magazines, the forums - it;s all just about keeping the lies going for more clicks and more readership. Like “No! You can’t tell people how things really are!!!” It’s like you all want to live in a fantasy-world where any facts are just inconveniences to sweep under the rug to keep enjoying an continued diet of “all nonsense all the time”. Oh well, have fun! :slight_smile:

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And by the way if you read my post it is about “press coverage” of this turbine, more than the turbine itself. And if you want to cal it “a rant” then maybe you think it is a good design, that the near-duplicate articles that mysteriously appeared an hour apart are accurate, and everything just is fine. Sounds about right. So why do you HAVE a “topic” of “press coverage” if a post specifically about press-coverage is moved from it?

What is YOUR opinion of this NEW phenomenon of multiple tech-news outlets all getting their “stories” from the same source, all publishing similar articles on the same exact topics within the same 2-3 day window, over and over again?

What is YOUR opinion of supposed technology “authors” who ask no questions and just cut-paste a dubious, lying press-release, pretending they “wrote” legitimate “articles” when they obviously did little-to-no research AND have no knowledge of the subject matter at hand?

What is YOUR opinion of mentions implying that this hunk-of-junk that probably can’t make even 30 Watts in a strong wind is rated at 5-6 kiloWatts? Do you think it’s OK to tell such blatant lies to thousands or even millions of people?

Can you see any relevance to Airborne Wind Energy and the challenge of separating fact from fiction in this field? Or do you think everything you’ve heard and read in AWE is true?

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It’s not something I can change so I’m not interested. This forum is also not about the changing press landscape or how current press coverage is often flawed.

I suggest finding different reading material if you find what you are looking at now lacking. Maybe a sci-hub search could be interesting.

The more interesting goal of the forum is to advance the field I think, posting links to press releases or press coverage doesn’t help with that, and I don’t think is interesting.

It’s basic internet literacy to know not to trust everything you read online and if you’re interested in a subject to do your own fact-checking. Anyone capable of advancing a field doesn’t need to be constantly reminded of that, and as such your rants are too frequent at best.

…and for all your mention of facts, the comment I moved had more opinions than facts. You’d need to back up your opinions with evidence to have them have any value, and then better to leave out the opinions and let the evidence speak for itself. That’s how you make a convincing piece of writing.

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Windy I’m here to explain basic things to often clueless people. With decades of designing, patenting, promoting, getting grants for, prototyping, testing, experimenting, manufacturing, repairing, and operating wind energy systems, what you may perceive as “opinions” ARE facts. It’s just that people who don’t KNOW the facts see what look, to them, like “opinions”. Once you know what you’re doing, your opinions are factual.

It turns out that we have explored the underlying “technology” behind this latest “roof-mounted magazine-article-miracle” that claims to be “50% more efficient” and what was it - 50% less expensive(?) etc. etc. etc. than regular wind turbines.

I did not realize that from the first article that was bereft of details, but the second article had more details and we could see it was the perforated “airfoils” using the lift suction to generate an airflow through ducting.

Note: There is a pre-existing wind turbine vacuum effect (from the 1930’s I think - very old anyway) that is VASTLY superior to this method, yet it STILL got no traction.

I think one of the main lessons here, besides the obvious one that this “idea” is a bad idea, is that such “press coverage” is meaningless because the “authors” know nothing about the subject matter and are just regurgitating what they are told, without much, if any, analysis or independent assessment.

The point being, just seeing an article about your shizzle on some website doesn’t mean you have a good idea. It just means some “author” doesn;t know any better, and a given proposal “sounds good” so it can generate views as “clickbait”.

Participants here like Jason immediately start hypothesizing how the same effect might be used in an airborne system, making it highly relevant in peoples’ minds at least, to AWE.

Sure, to a degree. But:

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Slow chats been busy? @Windy_Skies is making good points @dougselsam. im being reminded of a engineering principle often joked about in workshops. Give a man some knowledge and he can make something? If that man then add to what he’s given? Then gives it to some who knows better? Progress is made! It doesn’t have to be the “right” solution? as it just one of many solutions? Each with its own merits. Depends on how aware you are? your starting point? what you learned as you went along. Even if you had a vague idea to begin with? There is a multitude option out there? Some even I’m yet to encounter or understand. Understand relevance is key to success? More often than not? in my experience at least? were often get swept on down stream and it takes time to process the new surroundings. It always a learning experience.

Even when looking at the betz limit itself? The wind itself is a object moving at velocity. There is correlation to the mass its able to displace? in any give swept area? I’ve see the brick wall argument? The airflow will not stop at a brick wall as it inclined to follow around it? It’s why involutes are a great idea? As it turns the moving mass back in on itself. It is where e=mc2 can be used? Because the mass of the rotor/turbine itself could be equal to the mass of wind flowing over it? Or the mass of the wind can be greater than the mass of the rotor/turbine. Mass A is the wind at velocity
Mass B is anything the wind encounters. The mass of any rotor would be critical in an involute design. It just a question to, how you can make that available to produce electricity? Air itself is just a low density fluid. Third state of matter in only money? More like the forth these days. Condensates and plasmas Being the other two. tai chi teaches you that you can take the opponents mass and redirected it. Often with very little input? The same true when it comes to wind energy. It why the design of Francis turbine has a high efficiency. When used in hydroelectric schemes.

The reason I can imagine a lot if solutions is I don’t try to reinvent the wheel. I look at what we have already? Then see if it can be out to good use on other projects? Sure it got some blindsides. Like what don’t I know? It takes a lot or reading, observations trials and error. Find a thousand way that doesn’t work? Only to find the one that does?

Some times a fresh pair of eyes is all that need to spot what often overlooked or missed entirely. Maybe not up to everyone standards? But an expert in their own field no their less? Better to know a single thing well than a million thing poorly? Tend to be the engineers way?

Read the comments, I was like ok? It been busy in slow chat?
The areomine it similar to a concept used in the 1800.

He made a horizontal windmill. Which was the potteries version of the aeromine. So Principle it’s a very old concept. Just has a Modern spin on it.

It not a dead loss. It just another way to extract energy from the wind. Just something else to consider?

Yeah Jason, “Slow Chat” is for “slow” people, and it’s been “busy” since “Windy” seems to have a knee-jerk instinct to shift posts from the topic where they belong to “slow chat”. It’s mostly his way of feeling useful, pretending to have some influence on wind turbine design by, if he can’t control peoples’ speech outright, at least forcing their thoughts into a “topic” he feels puts the person making the post “in their place” - which has to be below his place in some way, to make him feel important.

I have not been here for a day or two, since I remembered if I “log out”, I don’t get the “reply” button, which saves me a lot of time since I always feel like I should set ignorant people straight in their thinking about wind energy, and there is so much ignorance here, but it is really a waste of my time. I can’t save everyone!

OK I checked your reference to the Darwin turbine. I can only assume you are referring to this video:

Of course it’s that same guy - as usual. That windmill is a typical newbie-non-starter of a design - instead of just building a windmill he builds an entire building - saving the need to aim! Wow, what a concept. Interesting how his video doesn;lt evn show the louvres openeing on the side where he blows the fan in. And of course it culminates with a computer fan lighting an LED - a Dave Santos-esque “proof” that today’s wind turbines have once again, been superseded!

You know what blows my mind about not only this guy “Darwin”, but DaVinci as well? By this time, wind power had been the main non-animal source of industrial power in Europe for 500 years. The windmills were highly sophisticated and automated, using well-designed airfoils, incorporating automatic aim and of course overspeed protection to prevent damage from high winds.

Meanwhile, you have the big-name “geniuses” like “Duh-Vinci” promoting his non-starter of a “helicopter” in complete ignorance of the highly-developed machines for trading wind energy for shaft rotation: wind turbine rotors, all around him. Yet “Duh-Vinci” could not be bothered to notice he probably walked right past working (sideways reverse) “helicopters” every day, while they operated right in front of his eyes. Oh, and by the way, anyone who looks closely at his “battle tank” can see that turning the crank would have rotated the front wheels opposite to the rear wheels, so it would not have worked either.

I liken Duh-Vinci’s drawiings to stuff 6th-grade kids write in the margins of their schoolbooks when bored. And the Mona Lisa - largely ignored for centuries - nobody even knew or cared about its location - until it was stolen, which made “the news” and suddenly “Duh-Vinci” was the world’s greatest genius and his childish drawings of stuff that would not have even worked, and a painting of a not-so-attractive woman were endlessly celebrated.
Hmmm, so why was “Duh-Vinci” celebrated as such a genius?
Because he worked in weapons development, and changed history by inventing the semi-automatic firearm, which allowed peasants to shoot knights in armor, rendering their armor as just a lot of useless metal, setting the common people free from the tyranny of the kings.

Nobody talks about that, but that was Duh-Vinci’s actual most significant invention, and one that actually WORKED. Back then, as now, technical people often found work in armament design.

The strange thing is the REAL geniuses of this age (and hundreds of years before) were the people who designed the working windmills (NOT just sketches of non-workable fantasies!).
The first question in my mind is, why do we never hear about the people who designed these working windmills with the highly-developed, high-speed airfoils? Could it be that the windmill inventors did not come from influential families?
Anyway, you may notice that this guy “Darwin”'s “windmill” did not even have a good-quality windmill rotor as its propeller! No, he used single-surface, cloth “blades” comprising a high-solidity rotor. Maybe he was the Dave Santos of his day. Single-skin.

In any event, this guy making the videos seems to have a fixation on using sheet-metal louvered HVAC vents from hardware stores for wind energy capture, and yes, he is pretty much a crackpot. As usual, it’s all about lighting an LED using a computer fan. You can also power such a device by simply blowing through it with your breath. As always, there are a million ways to make SOME electricity from the wind, at SOME cost. The question is, do you have an actual IMPROVEMENT over existing, highly-refined wind turbines? The same question applied 500 years ago! It is actually pretty funny to think that wannabe innovators today are STILL this STUPID after 1000 years of wind turbine refinement - STILL saying THE SAME STUPID THINGS about wind energy! Really pretty amazing when you stop and think about it.

Recently I was contacted by a guy who had watched one of my videos, and wanted me to check out his “wind energy improvement”. “Sure”, I said. Of course he had nothing but a pile of typical, long-disproven “Professor Crackpot” features, all combined into one neat self-defeating package that might be expected to return about 1/10th (one tenth) the energy of a regular wind turbine of the same size. Of course his device also used about 10 times the material to sweep the same area, rendering it about 1% as effective, in total, compared to modern wind turbines.

I tried to be very nice and gentle with how I worded my response to him, but by now, you can probably imagine how he reacted: He was PISSED!!!
He could not understand WHY I “could not understand” why his idea was “clearly superior”! He explained that his device was better because it sucked air through itself… - a perpetual motion machine I guess, right? The wind powers a rotor that then powers the wind? Obviously it made no sense, but the only thing he knew was he was a genius and his idea was the next big thing in wind energy and how was it possible I couldn’t understand how superior it was? Sound familiar yet?

Well I suggested he might want to read a book on wind turbine design so he would understand why his “idea” had many disproven features, but to him, dedicated to his own ignorance, that just sounded like a sarcastic put-down. You see, these people cannot be reasoned with. And they are everywhere. Even the IDEA of learning ANYTHING about the subject matter they purport to have surpassed is anathema. The idea that he should read a book on something!?!??!? OGM how could I be so mean?!?!?!?

Anyway, your guy Darwin was an overweight dim-bulb know-nothing from an influential family - by the way did you know the “scientists” of that time were busy telling “ignorant” peasants that stones could not possibly fall from the sky? Why? Because, well, as “scientists”, they had to overcome the “ignorance” of all the facts that surrounded them. Facts they knew nothing about because they were comfortably sheltered from reality.

Today it goes on still. Instead of “coming from a good family”, today’s crackpots are “anyone with an internet connection” - still coming up with the same worthless crap as the equally-ignorant people from 500 years ago. Wow, progress!

And by the way, the Darwin turbine idea is almost exactly like other, similar “ducted buildings directing airflow from all directions to a small wind turbine” that we’ve seen here. NOT really all that similar to the “Aeromine” device. But very similar or really nearly identical to other crackpot designs we’ve seen here before.

You would think in 500 or 1000 years, peoples’ ignorance would have evolved, but no, the song remains the same. Nope, today, with fantastic working wind turbines all around us, people are STILL spewing the same ignorant crap!!! Unbelievable. Oh, and your mention of E=MC^2 : Wow, sounds like Dave Santos again - throwing scientific-sounding crapola against the wall, hoping something will randomly stick.

I hate to break it to you one more time, but to make a difference in wind energy, it helps to know how it works. And remember, out of 1000 “new” wind energy concepts, we’re lucky if a single one is even relevant, let alone an improvement.

No, writing several long, long paragraphs filled with with poor grammar, bad spelling, and questionable reasoning, amidst mentio0ning a million distractions, does not change anything - doesn’t make a difference. Not in the least. But nice to hear from you. :slight_smile:

all very valid points made.
I’m afraid you won’t be braking any glass here? I know I’ve go mountains to climb. Somewhat try to put my English in order? I hope to the stars I’m not going to have to revise but any oh!

Darwin’s design as show on Robert Murray smith channel. Just show the multitude of paths taken over the years. In his latest forays into Darwin’s design? he made a bigger one? I sat thinking about Darwin’s efforts. Going you know how it would work if the flaps were co-flow wings? Yes it a lot of work. But do able if, you want to waste and afternoon or two on it? Just for the giggles of looks what I’ve built? Ive just made Lego’s version of a wind turbine?

I totally agree it can be a crap shoot sometimes. it’s very nice to see what you guys get up to. It been epic, the two throwing going on. Lots of sabre rattling. Even seen you guys bits chunks out of one another. I just share something I come around to finding. Though it interesting? Doubt I’d be able to complete normally. The diversify and specify thing. I had fun modelling a co- flow module this week past.

Its in section luckily for me the arrow points airflow out. Based it off golf ball dimples. Imagining the wings or fuselage made from it? Obviously testing can be done in cardboard. My next plan was tin cans, Just to test it out? Essential its a flying box girder. It flew down the stairs quite nicely. Though it did have quite the drop rate. Yet so see if it can sustain flight with input?
Doubt I be winning any awards soon? It was just basic nets folded to form required shapes. Just something I was toying with. Maybe to build something sci-fi esq.

As it goes for us brits? getting hold of bog rolls hard enough. With all the changes we’re experiencing, who knows where next week will get us? I like to think moon and stars? Let not get my hope up yet! Three prime ministers in a year? Keep it up, we might just have an advent calendar of pm’s before Christmas?

I just hope it just a phase? Though I doubt it somehow?
I will chime in from time to time? Even in the slow lane?
All I can say Is I’m not dead yet?

Glad you finally figured out who I was? though for some purposes I was hoping to keep it strictly to Freeflying, or on the drawing board? Saves me getting stalked everywhere I go. Would be bad to have a pint and a rando goes nuts? I get blue lighted to hospital for something? Though sort of made my first name obvious. I live and learn.

Glad to see you back😊

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I guess if I were WindSkies I would flag this as “not pertaining to AWE” and either delete it, or move it to SLOW CHAT. Oh wait, it IS in “Slow Chat”. Not sure why everyone else gets nitpicked about whether their shizzle pertains to AWE. I guess it depends who it is, what rules are applied. :slight_smile:

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As everyone’s familiar with what rigs are? Seeing what @Windy_Skies posted, an interesting example of an engineering fail. Though it has to be said? it lasted longer than most people would have thought.

If I recall correctly? Destroyed in a storm. I hope x1 wind got there sums right? It looks like it could blow over?

It saying it down wind? Sure that’s going to put enormous stress on the single anchor point? And rip that steel like paper? Don’t quote me here? but the angular momentum going to cause that rig to turn towards the water. Spain can get lashing of hurricane force winds especially on the northern coast where you have the monster 120ft waves. The surfers Mecca is prime example. If I were a betting man? I reckon one good storm, and that’s going to be in the drink? Even if the do counter the rotation forces? Canaries you get force 10 and 12 winds. @dougselsam i wouldn’t worry too much. Unless they planning to go airborne if a hurricane? I think awes will be ok?! The question I have is, if it like and oil rig but for wind? Is is a semisubmersible? Followed by? Does it have dynamic stabilisation? Didn’t see windy mention it?

It a great development for deep waters. will it withstand nature’s brutality? If awes was to go the rig route? As competitive as the market is? How long do you think it would survive out it storm force winds?

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Daddy Long Legs
A seafront train with electric motor railway feet in 1890’s WOW.
OK we can do anything we like now.
That is cool.
As for the X1
If that’s a downwind turbine… Single leg at the front…
Anyone see a problem with the animation?

If I can successfully wrap my eyeballs around it, looks like maybe the rotor was installed backwards? Like they just used a previous rendering with insufficient modification?
Also, the conceptual line-drawing image of the wake vorticity in the air just rotates with the rotor but doesn’t travel downwind…
I always wonder about the stability of such downwind passive aim. It wants to use the thrust force of the rotor to keep it positioned downwind, but the sideways reactive force of the skewed downwind rotor, once offset to either side, would tend to make the position oscillate from side to side. So would the aim be stable or would it oscillate? If you imagine a disc on the end of a pole, like the head of a nail laying down on its side, allowed to pivot from the point of the nail, if the head were to travel a bit to the right, the wind would spill off to the left off the slanted head, pushing the head further to the right. So you have the reactive sideways force working against the thrust tendency to simply push the rotor downwind. Which force predominates? Would the aim be stable, or would it oscillate from side to side, constantly changing its aim, like an oscillating fan?

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I’m not completely sure, but I believe a saw a yaw motor mentioned in one of their patents.

Come to think of it, I do have a two-rotor downwind turbine that’s been running here for 10 years nonstop, and it aims well. One thing most people don’t know about regular upwind turbines is, once spinning into the wind, they tend to stay aimed into the wind, even without a tail or other guidance. In that case I think it’s the thrust spilling off to either side of a skewed rotor pushes the rotor back straight into the wind.

An interesting solution? Especially because it counters the rotation forces.
Does that mean that with the right anchors the tower can itself, be prevented from over rotating? Would this work for both upwind and down wind? In my mind it like that safety latch on doors. in this case, in the opposite direction to prevailing winds.

I’d imagine your going to need some extremely beefy anchors? Cables being 310mm diameter and up? In old English that about a 1ft in diameter.
With that in mind? What is the risk of the line snapping under repeated loading?

If you are taking slack lines into account? With various tidal range? Being able to operate in various weather conditions? Id worried the moment a force 9 Gale blew through it wouldn’t end up on its back? 82km/h winds.

The model also shows still conditions. I’m not all too sure how that will translate to open oceans? As you do get?

Know to sink shipping for generations. How would that translate to a tower system? Keep in mind you just spent a few million getting that far? Then the beast of our oceans comes to wrench your plans? If you got a whole farm? That going to be expensive and costly to fix?

Just something to consider as your designing a turbine?
How do you stop its self destruction mode in adverse conditions? Something mr @dougselsam always points out?
If It does self destruct? the environment clean up will be equally costly?
As it running cost and hiring a recovery vessel? Easy 1000 man hours before you get started? That’s being conservative?

Is the idea worth pursuing? Yes! but only in the sense of fore-planning for the time being? If you can you may want to see if you can get it into a wave pool? May help recreate some conditions it will encounter in the open ocean? Just to see how it performs then? Help sometimes to have independent results? Then cross reference to other studies into naval and marine engineering? Would give you a better platform to work from?
Great start though! A good approach! Using the wind to stabilise the tower.
If you get the chance? take a look and hydrometer designs? or the ship that’s called flip?

Always wanted a go? Would be awesome to see a turbine built this way? Good luck!