Fuel Economy, Hypermiling, EcoModding News and Forum - EcoModder.com - View Single Post

Ryland · 06-18-2012, 07:09 PM

The best way to do electric heat is with a heat pump.
A 10 foot rotor diameter should be fine, a rotor diameter of 2.5 meters (8.2 ft) seems to be about what is being mass produced, but for a home built turbine you are going to want a larger collector (rotor) to make up for your other losses with it being home built, check out OtherPower.com if you want to see some awesome wind turbines that are home built and that work really really well, but in reality there are very few unanswered questions about wind turbines, we know what the mass of air is and how much energy is in that air, we know that as speed increased the power in the wind is cubed and we know that to get to that wind that has enough energy to make a wind turbine worth while you tend to have to go up, hence the saying "more tower, more power!"
My main dislike about Savonius rotors is that only half the rotor is doing the work because the other half is being pushed up wind so that half that is being pushed up wind is seeing twice the wind speed as the half that is doing the work, this cuts the size of the collection area in half as well, so where a regular turbine has a large round collection area a Savonius rotor has a very small area that is collecting energy from the wind and it's fighting it's self, needless to say I did see one that was spinning away this last weekend (no load on it) so they do spin... but the rest of the turbines around it were producing near their peek output because of the high winds! so I'm not sure why the owners of this one didn't feel it was windy enough for it to be hooked up to a load and doing some work... but then again they were trying to sell it so they did want it to spin... they sure are pretty when they spin, nice wind art, but if you want one that has a rated output that doesn't break the laws of physics then good luck! so far all of them that I've seen use math that more or less say you could hook a fan to it and have the fan blow on the Savonius rotor to produce more power to run the fan and have some left over! but then again that's just going off the published specs.

06-18-2012, 07:09 PM	#4 (permalink)
Ryland Master EcoModder Join Date: Jan 2008 Location: Western Wisconsin Posts: 3,903 honda cb125 - '74 Honda CB 125 S1 90 day: 79.71 mpg (US) green wedge - '81 Commuter Vehicles Inc. Commuti-Car Blue VX - '93 Honda Civic VX Thanks: 867 Thanked 434 Times in 354 Posts	The best way to do electric heat is with a heat pump. A 10 foot rotor diameter should be fine, a rotor diameter of 2.5 meters (8.2 ft) seems to be about what is being mass produced, but for a home built turbine you are going to want a larger collector (rotor) to make up for your other losses with it being home built, check out OtherPower.com if you want to see some awesome wind turbines that are home built and that work really really well, but in reality there are very few unanswered questions about wind turbines, we know what the mass of air is and how much energy is in that air, we know that as speed increased the power in the wind is cubed and we know that to get to that wind that has enough energy to make a wind turbine worth while you tend to have to go up, hence the saying "more tower, more power!" My main dislike about Savonius rotors is that only half the rotor is doing the work because the other half is being pushed up wind so that half that is being pushed up wind is seeing twice the wind speed as the half that is doing the work, this cuts the size of the collection area in half as well, so where a regular turbine has a large round collection area a Savonius rotor has a very small area that is collecting energy from the wind and it's fighting it's self, needless to say I did see one that was spinning away this last weekend (no load on it) so they do spin... but the rest of the turbines around it were producing near their peek output because of the high winds! so I'm not sure why the owners of this one didn't feel it was windy enough for it to be hooked up to a load and doing some work... but then again they were trying to sell it so they did want it to spin... they sure are pretty when they spin, nice wind art, but if you want one that has a rated output that doesn't break the laws of physics then good luck! so far all of them that I've seen use math that more or less say you could hook a fan to it and have the fan blow on the Savonius rotor to produce more power to run the fan and have some left over! but then again that's just going off the published specs.