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TL;DR: Everyone knows that solar can provide electricity at 20% efficiency or heat at 80% efficiency. Almost no one is aware that windmills can do the same. In
by koala_man 8y ago
TL;DR: Everyone knows that solar can provide electricity at 20% efficiency or heat at 80% efficiency. Almost no one is aware that windmills can do the same.
Instead of connecting a windmill to an electric turbine, you can have it churn a pool of water where friction raises the temperature without the conversion loss.
Fascinating article. I had never considered this.
- mrfusion 8y agoI wonder if you could do even better having it turn a fan and compressor on a heat pump.
- icebraining 8y agoThe article talks about this in the "Retarders and Mechanical Heat Pumps" section.
- Symmetry 8y agoElectric motors/generators are typically much more than 20% efficient, the usual range is 75% to 95%. And you can use that energy for things besides heating on warm days. EDIT: The overall wind turbine isn't that efficient, that's the efficiency of the conversion of the mechanical rotation to electric power. There's a good deal of loss between the wind itself and rotation to vortices and whatnot.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- wallace_f 8y agoI am not a builder, but I wonder if tech like this is stymied by the nature of the housing market? From what I understand, housing is one of the most-regulated sectors, and one which has also seen not much innovation (compare to computers or autos). Were I a Bill Gates, I'd sponsor housing projects where innovators could be rewarded based on sustainability and cost. I guess, in order for anyone to live in them, I'd also have to sponsor some politicians to get government to then allow it. From an efficient resource allocation (in other words, economic) perspective, there appears to be almost noone solving sustainibility problems. What I mean is, sustainability per dollar spent should be at the forefront of our minds, and I'd be very surprised this kind of tech did not find a place in the market if that were allowed to prevail.
- mxuribe 8y agoI believe there are entities that benefit far more from keeping the status quo as-is, instead of innovating. While I've only worked in large real estate enterprises in my past, and not actual housing (though the two industries are quite linked), never forget that beyond the science and conventional challenges of innovation, there exists human elements who block forward progress; because - sadly - some of these humans gain too much ($POWER or $MONEY, etc.) in the legacy world.
- wallace_f 8y agoI'm convinced this is one of the biggest problems with our generation--corporatism or cronyism, whatever it is. It is the fact that the private sector and government collude to keep the status quo profiteers safe from innovators obsoleting them. It should be the opposite. The government should work to resolve market failures. This is one of those issues which is not left vs right, but rich vs poor... That just gets completely ignored, whether by accident or design...
- zackmorris 8y agoMy thoughts as well (most of the other top-level comments got it wrong). The other important feature of this is that anyone can build a Savonius (or other) turbine and impeller at home, meaning that there is no lower floor on cost, meaning it's one of the only scalable uses of wind power that I've seen. Free energy in the form of heat is all around us (orders of magnitude more than humanity uses currently, even considering a 20% electricity conversion efficiency). I'm in mourning that there is still no off-the-shelf supplier of Stirling engines for the world. Which is probably by design, considering how detrimental something like that would be to oil stocks hahah.