Archive for June, 2009

Generate Power with the Savonius Wind Turbine

June 21st, 2009

An Introduction to Savonius Wind Turbine

Wind, A pure, clean, renewable source of energy that we have been harnessing successfully for centuries. From the early windmills that would pump water for farming to the simple use of the wind in our sails, to giving our planes the power of flight, wind has been a consistent and reliable source of energy for mankind. And now, with the search for energy sources that don’t emit harmful pollutants into the air, the world is taking a closer look at how we can develop new and more efficient ways to generate electricity from the power of the wind.

Savonius Wind Turbine

One particular model of wind turbine that has been developed is called the Savonius wind turbine or S-rotor. The Savonius wind turbine is a type of vertical axis wind turbine or VAWT. It was created by Sigurd J. Savonius, a Finnish engineer, in 1922, although the very first to attempt to build this type of wind structure was Johann Ernst Elias Bessler in 1745, in Furstenburg, Germany. However, he fell to his death during construction of the windmill and sadly the building was never completed although it still stands to this day.

The Savonius Wind Turbine at Work

Concept of Savonius Turbine

The Savonius Wind Turbine is a drag type vertical axis wind turbine, and it operates by cupping and dragging the wind, causing the rotor to turn and generate electricity. The Savonius Wind Turbine usually has about two or three scoops or cups to catch the wind. The design allows the turbine to rotate relatively slowly, however, there is a high torque yielded from the rotation.

Unlike the Darrieus Wind Turbine, which uses airfoils and lift force to turn the blades, the Savonius Wind Turbine cannot rotate faster than the speed of the wind, making it an inefficient turbine for commercial use. However, the Savonius Wind Turbine is an effective electricity generator for residential areas as they are extremely quiet, easy to build, and relatively small 1.

The Savonius Wind Turbine is by far the simplest and most economical wind turbine design 2. You could even build one yourself from the many designs available on the internet using simple materials you can get at your local hardware store. These small scale Savonius Wind Turbines can be used for anything that requires a small amount of power such as an electric gate, outdoor lights, or pumping water.

Savonius Wind Turbine Is Perfect for Small Wind

The type of wind harnessing that the Savonius Wind Turbine can create efficiently is called small wind, and is an important part of the solution to global warming. Small wind energy is now one of the fastest growing forms of domestic and residential electricity generation and is a great investment for homeowners and small business owners.

Objections to small wind have usually revolved around the height and aesthetics of the actual turbine. To capture wind and efficiently generate energy, the typical wind turbine design needs to be extremely high. However, the Savonius Wind Turbine operates efficiently lower to the ground and some designs are extremely elegant to watch. And, because the Savonius Wind Turbine operates at low wind speeds, it’s perfect for areas that might not get as much wind as others as it is still able to effectively harness the wind for residential use.

Helix Wind Turbine

One example is from a company called Helixwind that started in 2006. They debuted their turbines at the Burning Man 2007 and now offer their vertical axis wind turbines to the public. Their models start at $6,500 and qualify for the 30 percent federal tax credit initiated by The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.

The systems can also be used in some areas for net metering, which mean that any excess electricity produced by your wind turbine can be fed back into the electric grid and could qualify you for a credit at the end of the year from the power company 3. Net metering currently isn’t available in all states, however, the number of states adopting this concept is growing.

The idea of small wind is rapidly catching on in the United States. A recent report from the American Wind Energy Association reported that there has been a dramatic increase in the small wind market – almost 78 percent growth in 2008! The United States also sold about half of the total wind turbine production worldwide – a total of $77 million 4.

This sudden growth of small wind production could be because of the new federal tax credit, the decrease in costs of the actual turbines, or the many different designs that are now available to the average consumer. Most consumers want to do what they can to help the environment and participate in the green movement.

The Necessity of Wind Power and the Savonius Wind Turbine

There are so many reasons in today’s world to research and develop new sources of clean energy. Right now, the majority of our energy comes from petroleum, natural gas, and coal – energy that has serious negative consequences on the environment. These resources create greenhouse gases and are responsible for global warming. They also emit the main culprit of acid rain – sulfur dioxide.

Worldwide, commercial use of wind power is increasing with Denmark, Spain, and Portugal receiving 20 percent of its electricity from the wind 5. And while the United States only has about 1 percent of energy production coming from wind power, US citizens are doing their share by beginning to embrace wind power for residential areas.

With the increase in oil and natural gas prices hitting the United States hard in this down economy, finding renewable sources of energy that can be found within our own borders has become extremely important. Only by embracing these natural, clean sources of energy, such as wind power, can we truly minimize our impact on the environment and create a sustainable source of reliable power that we can harvest right within our own borders – making us the self-sufficient entity we desperately need to become.

How to Power Your Home with Your Own Savonius Wind Turbine

Simple design of Savonius turbine makes it very easy to use for residential wind power. Below is a video explaining how to build a turbine for few dollars in your own back yard. This looks ugly and noisy. But with little more fine-tuning, I am sure this can become a very effective way of producing electricity. This video series contains two parts. First part is about building the rotor and then the second part on generating electricity using that rotor. You might not have to all the steps shown for yourself. You can buy some parts from the shop than building it. Thanks For the creator of this video series

Part 1 – How to Build the Rotor

Part 2- Generating Electricity with the Turbine

1. Savonius Wind Turbines. http://www.reuk.co.uk/Savonius-Wind-Turbines.htm

2. Energy Saving Now. Practical Wind Generated Electricity. http://energy.saving.nu/wind/winddesignprimer.shtml

3. Helixwind. http://www.helixwind.com/en/index.php

4. Jetson Green. Small Wind Market Surges 78%, US Manufacturers Making Money! http://www.jetsongreen.com/2009/06/small-wind-market-grows-78-percent-in-2008.html

5. American Wind Energy Association. Wind Power – Clean and Reliable. Http://www.awea.org/utility/pdf/wind_and_reliability_factsheet.pdf

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Posted in Windmill

Tags: Savonius Wind Turbine VAWT Vertical Axis Wind Turbine Wind Power Wind Turbine

Renewable Energy Can Ensure Our Future

June 9th, 2009

For centuries untold, we have harnessed the power of renewable energy. From the first time the wind caught our sails to propel our ships through the water, to burning the biomass material wood to cook our food, to using the geothermal energy from underwater reserves to heal our aches and pains. It’s only been within the last century or so that we have turned our backs on these valuable sources of energy and turned to less expensive (then) and caustic energy sources such as petroleum, coal, and natural gas.

By using these cheaper forms of energy, we have managed to produce an excessive amount of pollution and waste and the time to return to the more natural, clean, and sustainable energy sources has become a key to securing our future as a profitable and healthy society. As it stands, only 2% of the world’s energy came from renewable resources last year 1. By burning harmful fossil fuels, we release poisons such as carbon dioxide, a known greenhouse gas, and sulfur, which causes acid rain. The United States alone is responsible for more than 21 percent of carbon dioxide emissions 2.

Change is coming though. There is a current movement underway to discover new and more efficient ways of harnessing these renewable energy sources. A pilot project in Germany at the University of Kassel called the Combined Power Plant, studied the possibilities of combined multiple sources of renewable energy to generate electricity. Their research proved without a doubt that renewable resources can provide a reliable source of energy. The plant links and controls 36 wind, solar, biomass, and hydropower installations throughout Germany and provided clean and efficient energy 3.

There are many different types of renewable resources that can be used to meet the rising demands of energy production.

Soalr Renewable Energy

Solar Energy

Perhaps the most known source of renewable energy, solar power is literally the process of harvesting the sun’s energy and is one of the most abundant energy sources in the world. In the United States alone, if we were to install solar power plants in the southwestern deserts, we could power the entire country with absolutely no pollution 4.

Although solar power is an intermittent energy source, meaning it’s not available all the time, and less energy is produced during colder months of the year, it is still a viable option for renewable energy and can be used in conjunction with other renewable energy sources.

Wind Mill

Wind Energy

Growing in popularity lately, wind power is created when the force of the wind turns wind turbines and generates electricity. The United States uses only 1 percent of wind power for energy use, but the rest of the world is benefiting greatly from this clean energy source. Denmark, Portugal, and Spain receive more than 20 percent of their electricity from wind power 5.

The Unites States has great potential for this power sources as up to 46 states have winds that can be used for commercial use. North Dakota could supply up to a third of our energy needs.

Hydro Power Plant

Hydro Power

Hydroelectricity is created by the force of falling water and is harvested by constructing a dam. The water in the created reservoir flows through a pipe and turns the water turbines as it falls, thereby generating electricity.

A huge advantage to a hydro power plant is the ability to store energy. Because the reservoir of water is essentially a storage system for the hydro power plant, it can be used to produce energy whenever needed. There are about 80,000 dams in the United States, but only 3 percent of them produce electricity 6.

Biomass Energy

Biomass energy is produced when organic materials that come from plantlife and animals are converted into electricity usually by burning the biomass materials. The most common biomass material is wood.

Ethanol alcohol is also considered a biomass fuel and is created by the fermentation of certain crops, mostly corn and sugar cane, but it can also come from sugar beets, potato skins, rice, and wheat. Ethanol is used as a transportation fuel and can be either used as a replacement for gasoline in certain engines or a mixture of ethanol and gasoline can be used to power regular automobiles.

Geothermal Energy

Literally meaning earth’s heat, geothermal energy has been used for centuries dating back almost 10,000 years when the Paleo-Indians used hot springs to cook their food. Geothermal power plants convert geothermal energy by converting the water rising from underground reservoirs into steam that can power an electric turbine.

Geothermal plants are extremely reliable as their resource, unlike solar and wind, are available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The United States is the current leader in geothermal energy.

Tidal Power

Tidal power harnesses the energy created by the force of the rise and ebb of the tides. The force of the current propels underwater turbines and causes them to spin, thereby generating electricity.

Tidal Power Plant

Because the power comes from the predictable tides, tidal power is an extremely reliable source of energy that is not affected by outside forces such as the weather. However, there are only certain locations throughout the world that have the potential to generate enough power from the tides to actually produce a substantial amount of electricity.

The Future of Renewable Energy

The rising pollution and the increased demands for energy make renewable sources of energy that much more significant in the role they play in our future. Today, we consume coal, petroleum, and natural gas as the main sources of our energy. And, petroleum usage is almost half of our total energy consumption. With more than 60 percent of the United States’ total petroleum coming from foreign countries, exploring renewable resources that can be found within our own borders can increase our economy and reduce our dependency on foreign countries for our energy needs.

While there’s no one answer to meeting the demands of our energy needs, it’s obvious that renewable energy sources, when combined together can provide a lasting, reliable, and pollution free source of energy.

1. International Energy Agency. Monthly Electricity Statistics, 2009. http://www.iea.org/Textbase/stats/surveys/mes.pdf

2. Energy Information Administration, What Everyone Should Know About Energy, (July 2008).

3. The Combined Power Plant: the first stage in providing 100 % power from renewable energy. http://www.solarserver.de/solarmagazin/anlagejanuar2008_e.html

4. David Comarow, “Here Comes the Sun,” Kyoto Planet Sustainable Enterprise Report, November 2008, Whitepaper.

5. American Wind Energy Association, Wind Power – Clean and Reliable, http://www.awea.org/utility/pdf/Wind_and_Reliability_Factsheet.pdf

6. Hydropower. Hydropower at a glance 2006. http://www.need.org/needpdf/infobook_activities/SecInfo/HydroS.pdf

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Posted in Renewable Energy

Tags: Alternative Energy Renewable Energy

The Clean Truth of Nuclear Energy as a Renewable Resource

June 9th, 2009

Shippingport Reactor While nuclear energy has come under a lot of scrutiny in the last several decades, mainly due to the two most famous incidents, The Three Mile Island accident and the disastrous Chernobyl explosion, nuclear power remains a viable renewable energy source that has minor environmental implications.

Nuclear powered aircraft carrier

Nuclear power isn’t a new concept. The very first nuclear fission was achieved in 1934 by an Italian Physicist named Enrico Fermi and the first nuclear power plant to generate electricity for an actual power grid was the USSR’s Obninsk Nuclear Power Plant in 1954 1. The United States wasn’t far behind with the construction of the Shippingport Reactor in Pennsylvania by the end of 1957. But even before the United States completed the construction on our first reactor, the US Navy embraced the power of nuclear energy and constructed the very first nuclear powered submarine in 1954 called the USS Nautilus. Since then, the US Navy has used nuclear energy to power more marine transportation than any other organization, powering watercraft like submarines and aircraft carriers.

Since the birth of nuclear power, the US has begun a steady process of developing this renewable energy source, but politics and misinformation about the energy source has somewhat slowed down the overall growth and use of nuclear in our energy consumption. It still stands today, however, that nuclear power is the world’s largest source of emission-free energy – a fact that is indisputably hard to ignore.

How Does Nuclear Energy Work?

To really understand nuclear energy, you have to first understand the general mechanics of the process in creating nuclear power. Nuclear energy occurs during a process called nuclear fission, where the atomic nucleus of an element absorbs a neutron and splits the atom into two or more smaller nuclei and releases a large amount of energy. Nuclear power plants harness this thermal energy to boil water and generate steam, which in turn powers a steam turbine and creates electricity.

Nuclear power can come from the fission of many different kinds of elements including, uranium, plutonium, or thorium. However, almost all of the nuclear power generated today comes from uranium 2. Today, almost 20% of all the electricity produced in the United States comes from using nuclear power 3.

The Benefits of Using Nuclear Power

Nuclear power is a clean source of energy that produces no carbon-dioxide emissions or greenhouse gases. That means there is little impact on the environment, and we could actually improve the quality of the air if nuclear were to replace other fossil-burning energy sources such as coal, which produce huge amounts of pollution and waste.

For example, to make the comparison of nuclear power and coal, nuclear power produces only 2,000 tons of solid waste each year. While coal produces more than 100,000,000 tons of solid waste in the form of ash and sludge every year 4. That ash that is released into our environment contains poisons such as mercury and nitric acid – pollutants that are both harmful to the environment and to our health!

Also nuclear power has another advantage over coal. The fission of just one atom of uranium produces more than 10 million times the energy that comes from burning an atom of carbon from coal 5.

Nuclear Plant

In terms of safety, nuclear power has been plagued by the myth that the harnessing of this type of clean energy is unsafe, but did you know that there has not been one single fatality from Nuclear power in the United States? During the Three Mile Island incident back in 1979, the reactor was destroyed, but the core itself remained confined and there is no evidence that the public was harmed.

Chernobyl mir

Even more interesting is the infamous Chernobyl accident in 1986. When we really examine the facts of the case, we begin to understand that when compared to other accidents that happen all over the world in the coal mining industry, the effects of Chernobyl were relatively minor. Only 31 people were killed during the explosion.

In the United States alone, there have been 717 coal mining disasters that resulted in at least 5 or more deaths, and more than 1500 coal miners die a year from black lung – a result of coal dust particles settling in the lungs 6. On average, about 60 people in the US die from coal mining accidents every year. In China, just from 2000 – 2008, almost 50,000 people have died due to coal mining 7.

Thousands of fatalities have occurred due to coal mining in the history of the United States. Compare that to not a single lost life for nuclear power in US history and there really is no comparison. After examining the construction of Chernobyl, it was determined that the design of the power plant was extremely poor and the actual maintenance itself wasn’t up to par either. The reactor actually reached 150 times its normal power level before the water pressure was high enough to blow the plant apart.

The Future of Nuclear Power

In 2009, there were 439 nuclear reactors operating in 30 countries, with more than 40 under current construction. The United States has 104 nuclear reactors in operation today, generating 20% of our total electricity production, and 26 new nuclear reactors are on the immediate horizon for the US.

History of Nuclear Power

While the construction of nuclear power plants had waned in recent years, the current geopolitical circumstances have revived the US’s interest in developing nuclear power. With sufficient nuclear power, the United States could potentially reduce the current dependency on foreign imports for gas and oil and decrease the amount of pollution caused by the burning of these fuels.

Nuclear power is a powerful source of clean energy that can’t be ignored. It has vast potential to power our country’s energy needs without the dangers of mining and the harmful environmental implications that are produced from fossil-fuel consumption. And, when combined with other renewable clean energy sources such as wind, solar, hydro, and geothermal power, it could eventually lead to the United States being solely powered by clean, efficient energy that originates within our borders, cutting down our reliance on other countries to provide us with sufficient resources to supply our increased demand for energy.

1. Nuclear Power in Russia. World Nuclear Association. http://world-nuclear.org/info/inf45.htm

2. Frequently Asked Questions About Nuclear Energy. http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/nuclear-faq.html

3. Nuclear Power Now. http://www.nuclearnow.org/

4. Nuclear Power Now. http://www.nuclearnow.org/

5. Frequently Asked Questions About Nuclear Energy. http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/nuclear-faq.html

6. Mining Disasters. http://rogerphilpot.homestead.com/Miningdisasters.html

7. US Coal Mining Deaths:1990 – 2008. http://frankwarner.typepad.com/free_frank_warner/2006/01/us_coal_mining_.html

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