Hi all. I'm kinda new here, although I've been around TheBackShed.com for quite a while.
I'll make it short and sweet: I store my wind energy as compressed air. All my windmills,
except for the "yard art" ones run little piston or paristaltic pumps. The air is transferred
through solid copper lines to the receiver. It loses most of its heat of compression on its
way to the receiver.
The receiver has an over-pressure pop-off valve for safety, which I leave set at around
35 psig. I use the compressed air to run small air-driven engines. If I want to make some
electricity, I couple an air engine to an alternator and do all my electricity creation, including
rectification, down on the ground.
I build mostly VAWT machines, as I've come up with a design, which is robust, easy to build
and strong. I live on the Texas prairie, where the winds blow 20 o 30 mph all day and all
night on a regular basis. No lack of wind power here!
My VAWT blades are made of sheet plastic and can be built any size I want, but I try to keep
them on the order of about 2 feet tall and no more than 3 feet long. That's a maximum of 6
square feet facing the wind at all times. There are 4 blades inside each VAWT contraption.
As soon as I can get some free time (I'm retired, but . . . well, we won't get into that) I'll
post the build on both 4ms, if I can figure out how to post pictures here.
Most of the stuff I build is small-ish, but the VAWT's design can be built to ANY size you have
room for. When my old house, which was destroyed by a tornado, is finished being torn down,
I plan on building a new VAWT with four 20-square-foot blades there. The entire machine will stand
about 3 feet tall and be about 11 feet in diameter.
. . . . . Mac