Ideas for harnessing electricity from nature

realitykeeper

Does anyone have any madcap but authentic ideas regarding generating/storing electricity and other forms of power e.g. cooking gas?

Here is my suggestion: A sail, attached to a hinge. When on-shore winds push the sail back, a metal coil is wound slightly and held via a ratchet device. In the space of several hours, such a device could hoist a weight to an elevated level, e.g. from the base of a cliff to the top. This is then potential energy which can be released in a controlled way. Needless to say there are plenty of holes in that idea but rather than pointing them out, more suggestions please.

Capt'n Midnight

An engineer can do for a dollar what any fool can do for two
- Arthur M. Wellington

Energy harvesting is easy. Doing it economically isn't.

Actually scratch that , energy harvesting is cheap, storing it isn't.

Potential energy is mgh. Or in English to store a unit of electricity worth 20c you'd need to lift about 40 tonnes to a height of 10 meters. That's not cheap to build.



The sail would work. Mediterranean windmills have sails. But a two bladed aerofoil turbine would be cheaper to mass produce, because it could be a lot smaller because it's more efficient.

A huge turbine would be cheaper than thousands of little ones because of economies of scale and because it's windier up there. Wind predictions are good enough to schedule when wind power will be available.

Solar panels are getting very cheap, but not so predictable.


Most residential energy is used for heat or transport. Harvesting heat is probably the way to go.

You can generate hydrogen by electrolysing the urea in urine, but that's messy. And you have to be sure you can get more energy out of the Hydrogen than it took to electrolysis it.

realitykeeper

I think it makes sense to have a setup which is as direct as possible. Transporting electricity via the grid is inefficient, house by house generation does not have that drawback. Also, converting energy to another form eg spinning blades to electricity, while necessary, is not 100% efficient. The old dutch windmills were of course never tested in a wind tunnel or engineered to high precision like today`s wind turbines, but they were very direct in converting the wind into useful mechanical work. It might be possible (depending on the application) to combine modern design with direct applications like the old windmills.

Capt'n Midnight

realitykeeper wrote: »

I think it makes sense to have a setup which is as direct as possible. Transporting electricity via the grid is inefficient, house by house generation does not have that drawback. Also, converting energy to another form eg spinning blades to electricity, while necessary, is not 100% efficient. The old dutch windmills were of course never tested in a wind tunnel or engineered to high precision like today`s wind turbines, but they were very direct in converting the wind into useful mechanical work. It might be possible (depending on the application) to combine modern design with direct applications like the old windmills.

A while back I did a quick calculation that if EVERY building in Leitrim had a small roof turbine it would only replace one or two of the largest wind turbines. And the bigger turbines would be clear of obstructions so they'd catch more wind more of the time. Local turbines would also need electronics and installers.


Long distance transmission has gotten better over the years, higher voltages mean lower losses. Larger electrical machines and transformers are more efficient than consumer ones. They have to be as even small losses will cause them to overheat.

The main loss in long distance transmission is I squared R. Or in English if you half the power or double up the cables then you only loose a quarter of the power, if you can justify the cost of extra cables.

The other side of that coin is that better alloys mean you can put more power through the same weight of cables at peak time because they can run hotter. 50% more power over existing infrastructure and no planning permission needed.



If you have a stream on your land then happy days, otherwise you are investing in backup too.