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Vertical-Axis versus Horizontal Axis Wind Turbines I just completed a spreadsheet which allows inputting to windspeed at 10 meter height

and calculates the power of a novel-design VAWT windtower. There are several sets of assumptions: (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) That the tower goes to normal hub height of known horizontal axis turbines, i.e., 50 meters tall, 163 feet from ground to eves, a 16 story building. That the tower could be extended to the height of the top of the swept area of the rotors of a 50 meter HAWT, that is, 90 meters, a 30 story building. The diameter is first assumed to be similar dimensions to a common grain storage silo, 30 feet, by both heights. Multiples 2x, 3x and 4x diameter dimensions are also simultaniously computed for both heights. Betz Law .59 max production is included by removing 41% of the swept area power off the top in all calculations.

Here are some documents which describe some of the tower designs: http://h2-pv.us/wind/Introduction_01.html http://h2-pv.us/wind/Big_01.html http://h2-pv.us/wind/strip_mining/strip_mining.html http://h2-pv.us/wind/towers_prior_art/towers_prior_art.html The first one is dated 22-jan-06, meaning this device is now unpatentable based on 1 year publication without application taken. It is in the public domain and I stand to make no more profits off developing it than anyone else. This is not a scam for investment. I'm busy with other projects and tossed this one out just to change the paradigm. The spreadsheets are here: http://H2-PV.us/1/Eagle_Roost.sxc http://H2-PV.us/1/Eagle_Roost.xls They are essentially the same. The ".sxc" version is OpenOffice.org freeware compatible, the ".xls" is monopoly office compatible with Excel for the freedom-impaired. There's two numbers highlighted in yellow background. One you don't touch unless you really really need to recompute air pressure density for someplace not at sea level. The second one is the master input for the spreadsheet and calls on that other variable, so messing with one changes everything else. The MILES PER HOUR cell is preset to 10 miles per hour winds initially, at 10 meters height under normal location siting conditions. At ten miles per hour high power generators do not budge. They have so much weight that the wind force cannot start them moving. This tower -- called Eagle's Roost because it is bird friendly, with no moving parts outside -- would be operating at 10 miles per hour. It is impossible to foresee the exact power production, but it would be over 25% up to maybe 50% of the figures shown as SUM for the 1st stack and second stack. That means it would be putting into the grid between 16 to 33 kilowatts in the stack up to hub height, and if full height the 2nd stack would be inputting between 30 to 60 more. The wider diameter towers at bottom, which are still inside the diameters of standard silo grainary buildings, show alternatively that 132 or additionally 260 kilowatts more kilowatts would be feeding the grid. Normally, after subtracting Betz from Swept area the net 34% efficiency gensets turn out to be 59% efficient, with losses from resistance, friction and reactance being the big leeches. I am at least justified in saying that 25% to 50% efficient is plausible by that standard. What is different between regular gensets and this concept is there are NO gears, no crankshaft, so friction is minimalized. There's no reason to assume resistence or reactance

is any higher either. There are stacked generators. At higher levels, one per segment, at lower-wind lower-levels, perhaps two or three layers are ganged to one generator. That means the lower stack is six or five generators stacked on individual stories, and their individual ratings would be summed. The lighter gensets have lower mass inertia to overcome and therefore move more freely under lower wind force. The EFFECTIVE wind speed is 1.8 times actual windspeed, and that means that the force available, although smaller, focuses on a much lighter target. At higher winds, the kinds that normally produce the nameplate rated power of HAWTs, the tower out-produces them. This page, table three shows the windspeed and actual production of several real HAWTs. http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/solar.renewables/rea_issues/wind.html#t3 At 20 mph winds based on 10 meter height measure, not one of the HAWTs has gotten into it's main production range yet. At 25.9 mph based on 10 meter height measure, 11.6 m/s, the lowest speed in the table, the VAWT is outproducing the rated power of the best HAWT at only HUB HEIGHT in the 120 foot diameter version. The 30 foot diameter double stacked full height is out-producing three of the five of the HAWTs. The 120 foot diameter model is approaching 4 megawatts fed into the grid at the same engineering efficiency expectations of 59% after deducting Betz' Tithe. At 35.3 mph, at 10 meters, 38 mph at hub height, the best of the HAWTs is producing 1.65 MW, but the littlest half-height tower is feeding 1.3 MW. The 32 story building, with no moving parts outside is selling 11.7 megawatts of electricity at the same height, same wind. That's seven times as much NET GRID power from the VAWT as the HAWT. Because we all agree that power smoothing is desirable, some gensets in the tower can be dedicated to making pure DC from homopolar generators and electrolyzing water for hydrogen fuel cells. The hydrogen economy is going to be needing a 10:1 ratio of power going into electrolysis compared to what goes into the grid for electric consumption. These towers can generate AC and DC simultaneously. Redesign of the gensets to make DC high current instead of AC actually reduces lots of weight, reduces inertia, reduces complexity. All you have to do is get a copper disc spinning over a bed of permanent magnets and you output pure DC. NO coils, no gears, no crankshaft. So. Who wants to find my mistakes in the spreadsheet, if any, or dispute my logic? The tower itself is a cylinder, an extremely strong shape. The combination of exterior shell plus several additional concentric circular layers inside adds to the stability. The exterior is made of repetition of modules around a circle, then repetition of layers stacked one on top of the next. The exterior modules are made of exactly four planes meeting at defined angles -- there is no mystery at all how to build these things. A prototype out of plywood is easily fabricated. Wind tunnel models are a piece of cake. If I was making them, I would use some FRP, fiber-reinforced-plastic, maybe engineered bundles of fibers including some carbon fibers, some fiberglass, some cheap PVA. Then the modules can be winched up easily by local labor, instead of specialists who use giant cranes and travel state-to-state. Likewise the gensets. All repetition of small modules which can be fabricated in thousands of locations from here to Bangladesh. If one stack layer goes offline for maintenance, the rest keep producing, with hardly a blip to the total production until one part can be swapped out for another. Irising the windows shuts down any layer independently.

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