Mixed news on the BBC this week - the rather sad story of the demise of a home wind turbine maker in Glasgow, Windsave, was reported here. As I reported in a previous blog entry, for most people, home wind turbines really don't make sense. Most of us simply don't get enough steady wind to get enough power out of these mini turbines to make a sensible difference. Their website has now been taken down, but apparently there was a statement on it acknowledging the disappointing results from the technology.
I sent an email enquiry to a local wind turbine company asking them if they had a table of wind speed versus power output, but so far I've had no reply. It seems odd to me that you'd try and sell such things if you didn't have good data on their likely performance.
On a slightly more upbeat, but rather longer term note, a Norwegian engineer has developed a floating offshore wind turbine. This uses a slack mooring system - similar to Pelamis I guess? - to moor a turbine in relatively deep water. It's about 100 metres below the surface and about the same above - weighed down with rocks as ballast. The benefit this brings is being able to deploy wind turbines in deeper water than can be managed just now, although at present the cost remains a bit high. The report can be read here. I wonder what Don Quixote would have made of such things?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment