Bladeless wind turbine - GIF

**Altair** · Dec 24, 2021, 03:42 PM

Bladeless wind turbine.

Previously:

How wind turbines are built - video
Transporting wind turbine blades up a hill - GIF
Giant wind turbine blade testing - GIF
Raising a wind turbine - GIFs
Wind turbine nut runner - GIF

**Frank S** · Dec 24, 2021, 05:30 PM

This has gone around many times, and is just so much more internet hype.
Can electricity be generated by vibrations alone? sure it can. could even a 1000 if these non-decorated totems ever produce even a fraction of the energy of a single nat, gas or coal fired plant or an aging hydroelectric turbine? Highly unlikely. Why not simply strap generators to the billions of trees that grow naturally? Here's an idea just shove an anode deep into the ground then create a huge screen cathode and suspend it it the air then draw energy from the earth's natural battery effect. Oh, that's been tried as well but the technology died with Nicola Tesla.
so we are stuck with generating energy from the sidewalks

**nova_robotics** · Dec 25, 2021, 06:30 PM

I'm with Frank on this one. These all generally turn out to be flashy PR campaigns to vacuum up investor money. Technically we can harvest goldfish farts and utilize them as an energy source. But the practicality of these ideas is all extremely limited.

**mwmkravchenko** · Dec 25, 2021, 06:37 PM

Originally Posted by Frank S

This has gone around many times, and is just so much more internet hype.
Can electricity be generated by vibrations alone? sure it can. could even a 1000 if these non-decorated totems ever produce even a fraction of the energy of a single nat, gas or coal fired plant or an aging hydroelectric turbine? Highly unlikely. Why not simply strap generators to the billions of trees that grow naturally? Here's an idea just shove an anode deep into the ground then create a huge screen cathode and suspend it it the air then draw energy from the earth's natural battery effect. Oh, that's been tried as well but the technology died with Nicola Tesla.
so we are stuck with generating energy from the sidewalks

The standard idea of centralized generation is here. But a distributed model of generating electricity is also possible. And easier to work out on the existing electrical grid. I'm sure you know that the further from the generators you go the less the current capacity of the wiring available. That's one thing skipped over on the internet ideas.

Biggest problem is that companies make a lot of money doing this and the people owning them want to keep it that way. De-centralising the whole shooting match takes away all the bucks.

What could be done if profit was not the sole reason to do something.

Maybe smaller profits. But it'll never happen. A distributed grid of production is cheaper than a centralised system. Requires maintenance, and can be much more resilient to outages. Pretty much why it will be such a battle to ever do it.

Even here in Ontario Canada. American love to paint socialist on most things Canadian. The main producer of electricity ion the province of 18 million is partially owned by the province. There is a "delivery" charge for the electricity. Still waiting for the delivery truck to show up.... The fee is to refinance the nuclear reactors and their super expensive maintenance that pretty much finishe din the late 60's. Still paying for the reactors that make near 40% of the electricity here. The rest is natural gas and hydroelectric. Ontario has fully tapped out it's hydroelectric potential. Quebec, Manitoba and Labrabor are the areas where there are enormous untapped potentials. Manitoba being the toughest one as there needs to be near 900 mile million volt transmission line to get to the U.S. border. Yeah Canada is big. Texas is a small fry compared to the larger Canadian provinces. Texas is 40% smaller than Ontario, And just a week bit larger than each of the provinces to the west. Hey, geography killed no one!

**nova_robotics** · Dec 25, 2021, 07:18 PM

Originally Posted by mwmkravchenko

Maybe smaller profits. But it'll never happen. A distributed grid of production is cheaper than a centralised system. Requires maintenance, and can be much more resilient to outages. Pretty much why it will be such a battle to ever do it.

I don't agree with this part. There's currently a massive push toward distributed generation. More and more solar is being installed on houses everyday, and when you drive through places like Ontario it seems that every farmer has installed a massive solar array. It's a dead project now, but MicroFIT resulted in huge small-scale residential and commercial adoption. Medium scale wind projects are popping up everywhere as well. It's happening, just in parallel to centralized "old guard" generation methods, which is actually a good thing. We need both. Where I live in the East Coast we're at 30% renewable, which has been largely led by medium scale distributed projects. They're trying to get to 80% by 2030, but that has a snowball's chance in hell of happening.

**old kodger** · Dec 26, 2021, 12:48 AM

Quote Frank's "Oh, that's been tried as well but the technology died with Nicola Tesla. "

Actually it's more sinister than that. At the time of Nicola Tesla, there was another guy called Stublefield, (I've actually seen a photo of him WITH tesla).
He managed to get arc lamps to light from the ground, then later got the ground to "glow" like daylight. And they said that two weeks after that he died of malnutrition, Yeh, I believe that. Like tesla, there was nowhere to place a meter.

**mwmkravchenko** · Dec 26, 2021, 11:47 AM

Originally Posted by nova_robotics

I don't agree with this part. There's currently a massive push toward distributed generation. More and more solar is being installed on houses everyday, and when you drive through places like Ontario it seems that every farmer has installed a massive solar array. It's a dead project now, but MicroFIT resulted in huge small-scale residential and commercial adoption. Medium scale wind projects are popping up everywhere as well. It's happening, just in parallel to centralized "old guard" generation methods, which is actually a good thing. We need both. Where I live in the East Coast we're at 30% renewable, which has been largely led by medium scale distributed projects. They're trying to get to 80% by 2030, but that has a snowball's chance in hell of happening.

I live near Ottawa and yes there are many more Solar arrays then even ten years ago. Trouble is that there is not the true infrastructure to keep it working out to the full possibilities. Utility style batteries are only beginning to be available at realistic prices and capacities. A few in Canada mind you, in Ontario and Alberta. Wind and solar applications. What we could really use is a truly engineered distributed grid. A few full container sized battery packs per so much generation. Possibly it will happen. I certainly hope so.

**mwmkravchenko** · Dec 26, 2021, 11:56 AM

Originally Posted by old kodger

Quote Frank's "Oh, that's been tried as well but the technology died with Nicola Tesla. "

Actually it's more sinister than that. At the time of Nicola Tesla, there was another guy called Stublefield, (I've actually seen a photo of him WITH tesla).
He managed to get arc lamps to light from the ground, then later got the ground to "glow" like daylight. And they said that two weeks after that he died of malnutrition, Yeh, I believe that. Like tesla, there was nowhere to place a meter.

There are a few things that are interesting about Teslas ideas. Some of them are still not reproducible. His inductive power transmission within his machine shop is one of them. But sending electricity through the ground would not work without there being repercussions for the environment. Similarly the idea of long distance electricity transmission. If anything alive were in this path of transmission you have the same effect as being in front of a powerful microwave array ( RADAR ) array. Things die. Happily a few of his ideas were to far ahead of his time. Take his remote controlled torpedo as an example. The navy brass didn't know what to do with it. They thought it was a toy. Late 1880's and a radio controlled torpedo. Happily that took a little longer to come about.

There are a few people that if they were allowed to pursue their ideas could have changed the way the world worked.

**nova_robotics** · Dec 26, 2021, 01:08 PM

Originally Posted by old kodger

Quote Frank's "Oh, that's been tried as well but the technology died with Nicola Tesla. "

Actually it's more sinister than that. At the time of Nicola Tesla, there was another guy called Stublefield, (I've actually seen a photo of him WITH tesla).
He managed to get arc lamps to light from the ground, then later got the ground to "glow" like daylight. And they said that two weeks after that he died of malnutrition, Yeh, I believe that. Like tesla, there was nowhere to place a meter.

There is no big conspiracy. The science behind this is well known. I learned about it in my first year of university. But it is insanely impractical and expensive. You can achieve far more power generation by putting up a tiny solar panel. ...which is the downfall of all of the crazy fringe theories. Yes you can power your house with AA batteries, but it will cost hundreds of dollars per kWh versus $0.15/kWh from the power company. Yes you can power your home with 10,000 hamsters running in wheels, but it's completely impractical to do this when compared to numerous other alternatives. But no one will murder you with malnutrition if you try.

Originally Posted by mwmkravchenko

But sending electricity through the ground would not work without there being repercussions for the environment.

We use ground return transmission all the time for power transmission. It's not that interesting actually. No worse than having electrified 3rd rails for trains.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-wire_earth_return

**mwmkravchenko** · Dec 26, 2021, 01:56 PM

Originally Posted by nova_robotics

We use ground return transmission all the time for power transmission. It's not that interesting actually. No worse than having electrified 3rd rails for trains.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-wire_earth_return

I am aware of this. I do not know the entire system dynamics as in the voltage through the ground and the return path in Amperes. I should look this up. Fill in a few holes in my understanding. What I was specifically referring to was the Colorado Springs experiments where Tesla was trying to use the earth as a part of a resonant system that made a lot of people and animals rather uncomfortable due to the millions of volts he was trying to pump into the ground. And yes I understand the basics of how a power generation ground grid is installed at a generator and the return path is indeed the ground. Every house has ground rods or ground plates. I have wired up quite a few homes and understand that end of the system a little more.

The second through the air system was at Wardencliff funded by J.P. Morgan until he found out that Tesla was trying to make electricity free. That's the one that would never really work on the scale that Tesla was hoping for.

Nicola Tesla had his brilliant side for engineering problems. But life in general and concept of profit making was not one of his strong points.

There are enormous qualities of electricity generated high up in the atmosphere by the solar wind magnetosphere interaction. Just not so easy to get it to plug into and be useful. Also some of Teslas presumptions of how the atmosphere would work proved to be totally wrong for large scale through the air transmission of electricity. The ionosphere was unknown for example.