Environmental News, Eco-Friendly Gadgets - FreshAirTimes.eu

The search for alternate source for energy is ready for a crusade and wind turbines have provided sublime hope as well. Whenever we think about wind turbines, we visualize them to be huge, but what makes the Enercon E-126 different is the fact that it is the world’s largest wind turbine.
Ready to light up almost 5,000 homes with only four of these, the Enercon E-126 can produce over 7 megawatts of energy. And assuming each household consumes up to 938 kwh per month, one of these wind turbines can light up 1776 homes. Lets take a take a look at its features. (more…)

Just imagine being a wind-powered home? Strange enough for us, but not for the residents of Mar del Plata in Argentina that will have its first wind-powered building, run entirely on wind power, without a slight use of thermal energy. What a great advancement, especially keeping in mind the current atmospheric profile of the earth, which is full of greenhouse gases emitted by coal and thermal resources.

Not only will the building run on wind energy but also save it for future use, for days without wind. A building zooming with ventilation and windmill over its head is the brainchild of two young entrepreneurs and designed by Mariani-Perez Maraviglia. The inhabitants of the wind-powered building will be able to save 15% of the expenses that they earlier used to incur on thermal energy. This way helping themselves save their hard-earned money and also doing a grand favor to the environment, which is sulking under the strain of global warming.

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Recent years have witnessed the discovery of several mini-wind turbines, which, unfortunately, have not been of much use. However, the household Windspire turbine from Mariah Power seems promising.

The Windspire turbine has a propeller-free vertical-axis design, and can generate (in about 11mph wind conditions on an average) 1800 kilowatt hours of power every year. On an average, the power generated by this turbine can take care of around 25% of the typical energy requirements of a household. If one is energy-efficient, he/she can indeed benefit more from the turbine.
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In the race of finding alternate power source, we have something windy now. According to the International Journal of Sustainable Design, we have gone one step ahead with two brilliant researchers, namely Jyotirmay Mathur and Rajeev Kathpalia from the Malaviya National Institute of Technology, Jaipur, India. The duo have developed a ‘solar chimney–wind tower concept’, which is based on the primitive and passive method of cooling buildings.

The duo claims that though this technique had already been used to keep the interior of the buildings cool in summer, they have incorporated more scientific and modern methods to add more value to the older system. Developed for a so-called fully urban building in Delhi, this duo has decided to utilize the natural resources to the fullest, walking side by side with the limitations of the site. As the name suggests, their system combines a solar chimney and a wind tower to the overall building design. Their method uses a stone covered wind tower to push in the cool air inside the building, which again pushes the hot air outside through the thermal conducting panels of the chimney.
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Check out this fascinating project ‘KiteGen’ developed by
Sequoia Automation to meet the needs for rising global electricity consumption. Presently the concept (that uses kites instead of
propellers, theoretically producing as much energy as a nuclear power plant) is on the drawing board, but Sequoia believes it can produce a working model of the KiteGen within two years. The KiteGen improves upon inefficient windmill systems that use a single propeller to generate energy. Unlike these static generators, the dynamic movements of the KiteGen’s kites allow it to use an autopilot-like system to adjust to wind conditions in order to achieve the highest possible speed, and therefore the greatest output.

The efficiency of the system would be so great, in fact, that Sequoia estimates KiteGen could produce one gigawatt of power for just 1.5 euros per megawatt hour. Were it able to achieve these theoretical figures, KiteGen would be nearly 30 times more efficient than other European energy production techniques, which costs about 43 euros per megawat hour.

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Now, you have to believe that wind has the power to propel even a 462ft steel ship, assuring a ‘greener’ future, one can dare to dream of. Believing in the ‘green age’ buzzwords, the cargo vessel - MS Beluga — owners have come up with an innovative way to prove that the modern steel ships can replace diesel engines with nature’s power wind.
The crew will deploy a 160 square-meter kite - named strong>SkySail — that will fly more than 600ft above the vessel, during its journey from Bremen to Venezuela. At this height, the winds are stronger and more consistent than at sea level. And, if this venture is successful, the kite will not just significantly reduce carbon emissions, but also cut diesel consumption by up to 20 per cent! This in turn, will save a day’s fuel costs by £800!

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Thinking about making a low-cost, easy-to-install wind power device that provides a safe and attractive method for harnessing power from the wind? Virtually all modern wind turbines convert wind energy to electricity for energy distribution. So why not follow these steps and make your own Vertical Axis Wind Turbine or VAWT that stands on the ground and can accept wind from any direction, a unit that will potentially experience high winds, above 25MPH.

Vertical–axis wind machines have blades that go from top to bottom and look like a giant two-bladed egg beaters. The advantages of this arrangement are that generators and gearboxes can be placed close to the ground, and you need not worry about the wind direction. It is easier to maintain because most of their moving parts are located near the ground and there are no emissions or pollution produced by its operation. For those who live in areas with high winds and want to curb their electric bills, this option can be highly efficient and moreover an attractive energy source.

The UK government is going to soon unveil its plans of building approximately 7,000 wind turbines. It is expected that these offshore wind farms will generate enough electricity for every home in the UK by 2020. Shows how serious Britain is about saving the environment.

Even though the beautiful coastline of Britain would undergo change, it will play a vital part in Britain’s effort in combating climate change. If everything works according to the plans, then this would make the UK’s wind industry twice the size of any other country’s. Can you guess how much electricity these wind turbines will be producing by 2020? A whopping 33 gigawatts of electricity! (Current production is just 2 gigawatts)

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With a plunge into the eco friendly market with launching an entire fleet of environmentally responsible ideas in this year’s Frankfurt Motor show, Mercedes has done it again by introducing wind power for its electric smart for two vehicles.

In the head UK head office in Milton Keynes, a 20 m tall vertical axis wind turbine is installed. One of the six in the country, the turbine is specially designed for urban spaces and it spins to generate energy from where ever the wind comes from. The unique helical design and carbon fibre blades are designed for minimum noise and vibration. With in a year the energy generated by the wind turbine will be enough to power the car for 30,000 miles. Three charging points are installed with each of the six wind turbines installed.

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A floating wind turbine that its makers claim could significantly boost the renewable energy sector was officially launched at a trade show in the German capital. Wind turbines at sea are nothing new, but until now they have had to be sited in shallow waters so the bases could be fixed to the seabed. This not only means complicated and costly construction but also visual pollution, as the rotating blades can be seen from the shore. Unlike normal offshore wind turbines it does not need to be anchored to the seabed and can be used in waters deeper than 50 meters (164 feet), depths at which installation costs for fixed turbines become exorbitant. It will soon go into operation off the coast of Puglia in southern Italy.

Via: RawStory