Like most of you I have ideas floating around in my head all the time and for the most part that is where they stay (just sitting there growing old and moldy). So from time to time I have decided to throw a few out there and share them, maybe some one can make good of them?
Here is one for this week.
1. A pinwheel size wind generator on top of every telephone pole in America? I can not imagine this concept would ever solve all of our energy needs. But how much of an impact could it make? Would this sort of network have a plausible effect on the overall grid? It would seem that the numbers are in favor of manufacturing such an item at a low cost. And In the face of opposition to new wind farms, think about it there are thousands and thousands of preexisting telephone poles crisscrossing our nation, would it be to much to ask them to multi task a little, I mean they are already just standing there holding wire?
17 comments:
you know, I never really thought about how the poles just sit there like you said. Thats all they do...hold wire, how damn boring.
Suppose you have a fan blade about the size of a dinner plate. Suppose the fan blade is on a shaft with a generator core and the whole rotating part weighs about five pounds. It might have a moment of inertia of 1/15 ft2-lb. At 120 rpm, it will have rotational energy of about 10 ft-lb-force. Assuming it can impart one third that much energy to the electrical generator each second, you've made yourself a 0.006 horsepower generator.
I've heard of a small (about 5' diameter) disc shaped turbine that is rated on the order of 1kW (enough to power a microwave oven) in a 30mph gale. But in a 6mph wind, it would barely power a 40W light bulb.
jesus Mark. how do you come up with this shit!
cute Idea Scott, but... where would the squirrells and birds sit?
mark is mind blowing, I fear him!
Hey, I'm an engineer, and this is the sort of thing I studied. I've got to make some use of my education, right? But I think it's been too long since my school days, because I didn't use the best formula for figuring out power generation. It would have been better to calculate it as the torque times how fast it spins, then factor in losses from conversion to electrical power. I won't go into the details, but the numbers come out about the same in the end.
Does anyone have an emaila ddy for some at blogger? I am having problems posting threads and I need help.
I keep getting a security error and it wont let me do anything.!!!
this is the message I keep getting for anyone here that can help me:
We're sorry, but we were unable to complete your request.
The following Errors were found:
securityToken : Your request could not be processed. Please try again.
I still have not been able to find a email address for tech. support and I still cant post any new threads.
this is pissin me off.
I've been having trouble too... When I try to log in from the main Blogger page, I enter my user name and password, and it just kicks me back to the main page... And I'm still not logged on! But if I log in from the "post a comment" page, it works OK.
You can try posting a question on the Blogger Help discussion board: http://groups.google.com/group/blogger-help
I finally found some type of email addy for blogger. I emailed them, now we will see how many days it takes for them to get back to me.
I will keep ya'll posted by replying here....
I have not had any such trouble. Eric have you installed any new software on your machine lately?
just some new anti virus software, but that sint the problem either, ive already tried to post while disabling my anti virus protection.
Gotta tell you Mark, I too am extremely impressed by your engineering skills. Kudos.
Hey Mark, I'm not finished yet...I loved your comment!
I still cant post and I have not heard back from the blogger people yet.
this sucks.
Eric, have you try'd logging in on a different machine?
No, I have not yet tried that....I will do that tonight on my moms p.c.
thanks for the sugesstion scott!
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