Blades? Don't Need No Stinkin Blades.
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I'm always intrigued by ideas like this, but few of them ever pan out.
From what I see in other articles, including the interview below, the concept should be viable from a basic technical standpoint. However, they've got a serious kickstarter vibe about themselves: they're making very big promises (which are unbelievably specific for their progress so far) about the economic viability very early on. They appear to have built a small prototype of the oscillating tower, but not the generator.
http://www.renewableenergymagazine.com/article/the-power-of-the-vortex-20150407
They say their generating system will alter the force resisting the tower's movement automatically. Changing this effective stiffness will change the frequency the entire device wants to resonate at. I also suspect part of the reason it is tapered is to generate vortices with different periods in order to help keep it operating at a wide range of wind speeds. The tradeoff would be that only a small part of the tower is ever generating near its peak efficacy. If the cost is truly low enough, that's not necessarily an issue, but we're talking about very big structures here.
They also talk about how easy it will be to maintain and how simple it will be to scale up and automate production, but they don't seem to have anybody listed in their employment with experience in commercial power system maintenance, large composite structure design, composite production automation, or composite fatigue.
When they talk about a 1 MW version, the few figures they do give point to a tower in the ballpark of 500 feet tall. Building something like that is radically different than the 40 foot tower they said they plan to test next year.
From what I see in other articles, including the interview below, the concept should be viable from a basic technical standpoint. However, they've got a serious kickstarter vibe about themselves: they're making very big promises (which are unbelievably specific for their progress so far) about the economic viability very early on. They appear to have built a small prototype of the oscillating tower, but not the generator.
http://www.renewableenergymagazine.com/article/the-power-of-the-vortex-20150407
They say their generating system will alter the force resisting the tower's movement automatically. Changing this effective stiffness will change the frequency the entire device wants to resonate at. I also suspect part of the reason it is tapered is to generate vortices with different periods in order to help keep it operating at a wide range of wind speeds. The tradeoff would be that only a small part of the tower is ever generating near its peak efficacy. If the cost is truly low enough, that's not necessarily an issue, but we're talking about very big structures here.
They also talk about how easy it will be to maintain and how simple it will be to scale up and automate production, but they don't seem to have anybody listed in their employment with experience in commercial power system maintenance, large composite structure design, composite production automation, or composite fatigue.
When they talk about a 1 MW version, the few figures they do give point to a tower in the ballpark of 500 feet tall. Building something like that is radically different than the 40 foot tower they said they plan to test next year.
Looks like it could also be better than props in the sky for birds. Something to think about when trying to capture wind power on major migration flyways.
CaptSpiff
Minister of Fire
Interesting,... what about noise? One of the biggest neighbor complaints about windmills is the annoying sounds they make.
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