The hole in the center will be putting this solid state energy generation to work. Utilizing the same principles of EWICON, the Dutch Windwheel Corporation is developing a 160-180 meter high future landmark in Rotterdam. The prototype developed by Epstein has just 1/20 of a watt of power, but it’s just a prototype to prove the concept and it’s still at the first steps of its development. This causes electrons to flow from the ground, which can be collected as electricity. So just like the EWICON concept, the wind blowing past the wires carries the negative ions with it, and the array gets a slight positive charge. It’s not that different from ionic air purifiers that were all the rage in the early 2000’s … if you remember the ionic breeze … I’m still trying to forget those commercials. When small negative currents flow through the emitter wires, the tufts create a coronal discharge, releasing negative ions into the air. In the prototype there were two kinds of wires: attractor wires, which were plain wires, and emitter wires that contained small tufts of 7-micrometer diameter carbon fibers attached about every 15 cm. Richard Epstein described the prototype as a series of 55 parallel aluminum wires strung between two 8.5-meter tall wooden masts, separated by about 8 meters on a flat roof, and all the wires were electrically isolated from the masts. This process is called “electrohydrodynamics”. His approach is very similar to what the Dutch developed, but instead of using water his concept uses ionic currents to produce electricity. ![]() But there’s another idea called the Solid-State Wind-Energy Transformer (with the unfortunate acronym … SWET) developed by Richard Epstein. You’d need a water line run to installations and it wouldn’t work at freezing temperatures. 7Ī prototype of the EWICON is installed at the Delft University of Technology.Īn obvious downside of this idea is the reliance on water to carry the charge. In this case, water droplets are used to hold a positive charge and, when the wind blows them, this movement of the droplets produces electricity that can be transferred to the grid. EWICON utilizes wind to create a flow of charged particles through the air that can be tapped into to produce electricity. 6Īnd how it works is kind of fascinating. While it’s still very much in development, it provides significantly lower maintenance costs, less wear and tear, and no noise issues. In 2013, researchers at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands removed the need for moving mechanical components and created EWICON, which stands for Electrostatic Wind Energy Convertor, kicking off the development of the ion wind generator concept. And this is where solid-state wind power arrives on the scene. They need to be checked two to three times a year. 2 3 4 There are simple solutions that are proving to be effective for that, like just painting one of the blades black.īut there’s also the fact that turbines have a lot of moving parts, like the gearbox, which require a decent amount of maintenance. each year by domesticated cats, or the 1 billion birds that die from flying into windows. ![]() Compared to the 2.4 billion birds that are killed in the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service estimates that between 140,000-500,000 birds die at wind farms each year. ![]() While they do kill a good number of birds and bats every year, when you look at those numbers in context it’s blown a little out of proportion. The construction of wind farms has also had an impact on wildlife. Harnessing wind requires high upfront costs, and the energy generation isn’t as effective for individual homes, or small scale installations, as they are at large scale. 1Ģ Breakthroughs That Could Solve the Fresh Water CrisisĪs I mentioned in a previous video, wind turbines have several downsides. It’s helping to avoid over 1.1 billion tons of CO2 globally. Currently, 743 GW of wind power capacity is installed worldwide, making it the green power source with the most decarbonization potential per MW. According to the latest Global Wind Report, 93 GW of new global wind power capacity was installed in 2020, with the U.S. It’s not hard to see that, along with solar, wind power has been a major player all over the world in lowering our carbon emissions from fossil fuels. But what if we could scale down that power to something that could fit on your roof? And be self-contained with smaller moving parts … or maybe no blades or moving parts at all? Let’s look at some future alternatives for harnessing wind power. A wind turbine’s massive size and moving parts make them challenging to roll out because of the space they take up, as well as maintenance. Wind power is one of the fastest-growing renewable sources that works well at scale, but it isn’t perfect.
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