Comment 6197

By seancb (registered) - website | Posted April 03, 2007 at 13:09:51

Tim Hunkin has a very interesting write up on his experience working with wind power: http://timhunkin.com/a125_arch-windpower...

Clearly, he wasn't working on optimizing the energy transfer (which I suspect is a huge part of windpower R&D) but his experimental anecdotes provide a good perspective on what wind can and cannot do. (quote: "David Cameron (the leader of the UK conservative party) got a lot of publicity for fitting a ‘Windsave’ windmill to his chimney (www.windsave.com). Windsave’s website proudly claims their 2m diameter blades will generate 1Kw of electricity at a wind speed of only 12 meters per second. 12 meters per second is force 6 or almost a gale. By the cube law, a moderate breeze of 6 meters a second would only generate 120 watts, certainly not enough for a freezer let alone anything else that might be switched on, and a light breeze of 3 meters a second would only generate 15 watts, enough for one energy saving light bulb.")

In other words, it's good to be skeptical of these wind generators' ouput figures...

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