Former Soviet Weapon Designers Take On Wind Power

[debequechute]

"A team-up of engineers from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the Makeyev State Rocket Center in Miass, Russia has developed a new model of wind turbine for home use. The "Wind Sail" design is a vertical axis wind turbine (VAWT), designed to be used as a generator for off-the-grid and distributed-grid systems. The current production model, the WPU-2500, produces 2500 kilowatt hours over the course of a year in typical wind conditions.

http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/001079.html

[whatsnext]

This is certainly OT to this post but I was looking around China Depot's site and found this:

http://www.chinadepot.com/gwindberlin.html

Just about right for the guy who's wife wants to leave everything plugged in and turned on. I haven't bothered asking for a price quote seeing as how the tower is not included.

John.......

[laskey]

I've seen this egg-beater design before.  I think it was MIT in the 70's.  I wonder what makes it different/better?

Cya,

Chris

[Wolfie1]

Has an "egg-beater" ever been sold to the public before? Perhaps that's what they mean by different.

Looks like Wind Sail, Inc. is in some industrial park so who knows if they will make it to market.

Martin.

[juiced]

You guys know, if you use the search words "soldier" "army" "U.S. Gov." or "military" on my site, and you'll find a few things. The only good thing i can see about this, would be that fact that the military will get more R&D $$ in one year then all of the projects on E.I. in 5yrs.

[Ungrounded Lightning Rod]

The current production model, the WPU-2500, produces 2500 kilowatt hours over the course of a year in typical wind conditions.

i.e. an average power of about 285 watts, or about 6.84 Kw Hr/day.

Which would be enough to supply my NV vacation house's power needs, or reduce its power bill to the $48/year keep-connected fee.  Or to provide about a third of the power to my CA townhouse, at a savings of about $350/year.

Maybe I should build one on top of a garbogen?

[drdongle]

China depot looks like they have a lot of potentualy usefull R.E. products.

Carpe Vigor

Dr.D

[whatsnext]

I may have to ask for a quote on a few items myself.

John.....

[Wolfie1]

THat's one thing they don't discuss. Does the design work well because of the blades or because of the generator design?

Is the brown disk at the top of the pole the generator or is it down on the ground.

Also, is that shape rigid or does it change shape as it spins.

More! What is the profile shape of the vertical blades. Do the diagonal ones have a profile as well? If so, then what shape?

So many questions....... Let's hope it doesn't become another Wind Tree.

Martin.

[Ungrounded Lightning Rod]

Do the blade supports flex so the trailing end of the blade is distorted downwind (approximating the other darrius design whose name I can't remember with the off-center crank, and probably causing metal fatigue in the structure), or are they rigid?