Sunday, October 05, 2008
Wind inertia generators for energy?
Current wind turbine technology does not impress in it physics. While wind energy is abundant the air itself is dispersed and fluid - making it especially difficult to capture and translate the energy from it. Unlike hydro-electicity where water can be conveniently stored, channelled and driven by gravity to yield energy, a row of wind turbines on a shoreline or ridge top look miniscule compared to the volume of the air moving around and over them.
So how to change that? Clearly building larger and large wind turbines is just yet more lessons from the book of the Hindenburg and the Titantic.
What we need is macroscopic generators; tiny devices that can be mass produced in silicon and plugged into a battery storage system. Solar cells already use this macro approach, but obviously do not work at night or on cloudy days.
Tiny wafers that vibrate like sheets of paper as air moves over them, can translate that energy into tiny currents that are then stored in batteries. This would work very well for home use in combination with solar arrays of cells, sharing the same infrastructure.
So how to change that? Clearly building larger and large wind turbines is just yet more lessons from the book of the Hindenburg and the Titantic.
What we need is macroscopic generators; tiny devices that can be mass produced in silicon and plugged into a battery storage system. Solar cells already use this macro approach, but obviously do not work at night or on cloudy days.
Tiny wafers that vibrate like sheets of paper as air moves over them, can translate that energy into tiny currents that are then stored in batteries. This would work very well for home use in combination with solar arrays of cells, sharing the same infrastructure.
