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Shifting Gears on Alternative Energy?

Mar
5
2010

windtronicsIf your party is a bit on the quiet side, the quickest way to liven things up these days is to ask anyone what they think of wind power!

This goes especially true in our area, where wind turbines are starting to dot the horizon from London to Tiverton and beyond. And everyone has an opinion, from ‘the best thing since sliced bread’ to ‘a blight on the landscape’ to ‘Ohhh, the NOISE!’. Companies are launching massive ad campaigns to promote wind turbines and local groups are mounting grassroots support to stop them anywhere they can. One group of researchers at the University of Toronto have even come up with a new blade design tip that is expected to significantly reduce the noise.

But are we going in the wrong direction? A chemical engineer (and longtime alternative energy consultant) in Muskegon, Michigan thinks we might be looking at the wrong end of the blade for our energy. Imad Mahawili has been focusing his research on the consumer end of the wind energy spectrum, developing new types of turbines that will install on individual homes and small towers rather than on massive grid-based installations.

His Blade Tip Power System (BTPS) uses many nylon blades and turns a permanent magnet generator inside out. The magnets are on the tips of the blades and the stator is on the outside of the generator. Think of it as freewheeling pinwheel inside a hoop. With the stator on the outside creating the energy rather than a complex series of gears in a centre driven generator shaft, Mahawili’s system vastly improves efficiency – with power being generated at speeds as low as 3 Kmh! And without the central gear system vibration and the resulting noise are reduced.

The EarthTronics wind turbine, made of stainless steel and plastic, measures six feet in diameter and weighs less than 95 pounds. It can produce over 1,500 kilowatt hours per year in low wind speeds, which is about 15 percent of an average household’s energy needs.

The technology sounds promising and last year Earthtronics began manufacturing the WT6500 turbines in Windsor as part of the Ontario governments alternative energy initiative.

More information: Clean Tech News, Green 3D Home, EarthTronics

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The Teeswater.Ca Team are a group of people interested in providing local news of interest to everyone without needing the instant gratification of their name in (cyber)print.

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This work by Mark W. Law & The Teeswater.Ca Team is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 Canada.