Windbelts - The Next Cool Energy Technology
Start here to see this revolutionary new technology! I'm not kidding - this is a huge game changer!
Whether
you like it or not, our energy landscape is changing. Our children's
energy needs will incorporate all the energy resources we're currently
used to - electricity generated by coal, natural gas, and nuclear power
plants with automobiles powered by gasoline and diesel. But their
energy needs will also be met by a plethora of other sources, such as wind, wave,
and solar methods of collecting energy along with cars power by
electricity, fuel cells, and possibly alternative fuels like hydrogen
and LNG. Today, those energy sources contribute less than 5% of our
total energy needs. But, for the next generation, they may contribute
10-25% of the total energy needs in America. Every percentile less
hydrocarbon-based fuel that we use represents billions of gallons of
oil that we don't have to import.
One of the biggest obstacles
to widespread implementation of any of the alternative energy
technologies is the cost of implementation, usually measured as dollars
per watt. For example, older solar panels are very costly (usually around $2/w) as are parabolic mirror systems,
which also have a large number of moving parts and, thus, high
maintenance costs. And big wind turbines, while efficient, are also
monumental structures built at great expense with big time maintenance
costs. Personally, I really like the promise of wave power because of
its constancy. We will always have waves and tides as long as we have
the moon. Solar and wind, though, are vexed by inconstancy - the sun
sets every night on solar power plants and wind speeds must exceed 12
mph to power a turbine on a typical wind farm. Unfortunately, wave
technology is probably about 20 years behind solar in terms of
development and has a lot of obstacles to overcome due to the high
amount of wear and tear inflicted by the elements.
Wide
implementation of any alternative energy can becomes dramatically more
effective through tinkering with the equation in one of two ways. The
first way is to improve the efficiency of the technology such that it
creates many more watts at the same cost. The current record
for a solar film is about 20% conversion of sunlight into energy,
though commercially available solar cells are only in the low teens of
efficiency. On the other side of the equation, we can produce the same
or somewhat lower watts (i.e. efficiency), but at a dramatically lower
cost. Thus, our $/w ratio is greatly improved on either the dollars-in
side of the equation or the energy-out side of the equation. Alter
either one and the equation behind the technology starts to look
promising.
Here's an example - it currently costs about $20,000
to $38,000 to place enough solar panels on your home to provide 4
kilowatts of power, about what a standard middle-class American home
consumes. A German company just developed a new thin-film solar technology
earlier this year which can probably produce nearly as much energy, but
for only half the cost. While it doesn't enable a typical American
family to live entirely off the grid, it is more affordable and has a
payback period that's not measured in decades. This technology is
still in the lab, so it'll probably be a few more years before we see
it commercially available. (An irony of this scenario is that
relatively sunless Germany is one of the foremost leaders in solar
technology due to the generous government subsidies in the wider
context of energy consumption. IMO, that's reason enough to consider
our own subsidies so that we don't get left behind on one of the
21st-century's important industries.)
Now, there's an even more exciting new breakthrough in the area of wind energy. It's called the windbelt,
invented by Shawn Frayne. I seriously hope that Shawn makes a mint on
this idea. But he seems to be taking the even more laudable path of
Dr. Jonas Salk, who never exploited his polio vaccine for personal
gain. A windbelt is essentially an aeolian harp string covered in the
proper energy producing magnetic compounds which, when buffeted by the
wind, wavers near conducting elements on the sides of the windbelt.
Voila! It produces 10- to 30- times more energy than a turbine. Plus,
it's extremely cheap and easy to make and maintain while requiring only
slight winds, rather than the gusty 10+ mph required by turbines.
With
proper configuration, you can build them into windfarms. But you could
also use this technology for really interesting applications. For
example, smart sensors in the HVAC ducts of many of today's "green
buildings" require you to change the batteries every couple of years.
Factoring the cost of the batteries and the cost of the maintenance
staff, it's a couple thousand bucks over the life of the sensor. Now,
with a tiny windbelt attached to the sensor, you could create
recharging sensors that don't need any light at all, using just a
breath of wind from standard HVAC ventilation systems.
I'd love to hear your feedback! Cheers,
-Kev
Twitter @KEKline
More content at http://KevinEKline.com/