Re:Why Wind Turbines Have Three Blades
by vanderZwan on Friday May 06, 2016 @10:30AM
(#11644218)
Relevant Low-Tech Magazine entries on wind-power, and small windmills:
Urban windmills harm the environment [0]
> A small windmill on your roof or in the garden is an attractive idea. Unfortunately, micro wind turbines deliver hardly enough energy to power a light bulb. Their financial payback time is much longer than their life expectancy and in urban areas they will not even deliver as much energy as was needed to produce them. Sad, but true.
Small windmills put to the test [1]
> A real-world test performed by the Dutch province of Zeeland (a very windy place) confirms our earlier analysis that small windmills are a fundamentally flawed technology
(Note that the picture shows that almost all windmills tested had three blades)
Wind powered factories: history (and future) of industrial windmills [2]
> In the 1930s and 1940s, decades after steam engines had made wind power obsolete, Dutch researchers obstinately kept improving the – already very sophisticated – traditional windmill. The results were spectacular, and there is no doubt that today an army of ecogeeks could improve them even further. Would it make sense to revive the industrial windmill and again convert kinetic energy directly into mechanical energy?
Unlike this story, which certainly sounds interesting but shares no real data to back it up, Kris de Decker thoroughly digs through sources to write articles backed up by available data as best as possible.
Urban windmills harm the environment [0]
> A small windmill on your roof or in the garden is an attractive idea. Unfortunately, micro wind turbines deliver hardly enough energy to power a light bulb. Their financial payback time is much longer than their life expectancy and in urban areas they will not even deliver as much energy as was needed to produce them. Sad, but true.
Small windmills put to the test [1]
> A real-world test performed by the Dutch province of Zeeland (a very windy place) confirms our earlier analysis that small windmills are a fundamentally flawed technology
(Note that the picture shows that almost all windmills tested had three blades)
Wind powered factories: history (and future) of industrial windmills [2]
> In the 1930s and 1940s, decades after steam engines had made wind power obsolete, Dutch researchers obstinately kept improving the – already very sophisticated – traditional windmill. The results were spectacular, and there is no doubt that today an army of ecogeeks could improve them even further. Would it make sense to revive the industrial windmill and again convert kinetic energy directly into mechanical energy?
Unlike this story, which certainly sounds interesting but shares no real data to back it up, Kris de Decker thoroughly digs through sources to write articles backed up by available data as best as possible.
[0] http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2008/09/urban-windmills.html
[1] http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2009/04/small-windmills-test-...
[2] http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2009/10/history-of-industrial...