Mini Mills Wind Turbines
by Frank John Holmquist Artist/Inventor
02 march 2009
Just as solar panels are made up of individual cells and then arrayed in parallel and series to obtain the needed voltage and current, so can mini windmills. The problem with solar cells is that they are semi-conductor and the weakest link in the chain such as an individual cell determine the strength of the unit when shaded. I propose a demonstration project to be funded by art in public places of an array of a hundred or more placed on the middle of a divided highway to harvest both the natural winds and the man-made winds created by passing cars and trucks. The overall height to be near that of the currently used night blind protectors normally placed on curved sections of road where the inside head-lamps tend to blind oncoming traffic. The mill design would be that of a vertical savonious or double cupped with one curve feeding in and out of its mate. It should be designed with a cycloid inside base to shed rain and snow. For the art project, they would light up a number of LED (light emitting diodes) proportional to the wind speed/spin if the mini-mills. From a distance a lone vehicle on a slow wind night would form an illuminated sine wave and two cars passing each other in opposite directions would show sine waves passing through each other. The faster wind speed the more LEDs would turn on.
For a practical demonstration, each mill would generate usable amounts of electricity and store it internally until a signal is generated to release that energy into a common battery an/or end use such as night lights, traffic signals etc., etc.. Pulsed DC or direct current behaves like alternating current and can be sent over longer distances than regular DC currents with their inherent problems of line resistance eating up the current. Batteries do not care if they are recharged by DC or pulsed DC. Power removed from the storage batteries can be used directly or inverted into AC or alternating current for end use purposes. By looping a signal feedback circuit so that only one mill at a time sends out pulses of energy to the batteries, over-voltage and over-current problems are reduced. If the circuit is designed to Regulate the electrical energy in same sized packets then the battery life should be extended.
One or more prototypes need to be made and tested before going on to larger arrays. Initial costs per unit will be high but mass production can greatly reduce costs to less than 100-200 dollars. The first few may cost ten times that amount. Greatly mass produced units should be well under 100 dollars each. Installation, maintenance and other costs need to be evaluated and allowances made for damage, failure and theft. The secondary benefit is that each mill placed on curved sections of highway will act as night blind preventer for a double benefit.
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