CoolIP index Most recent edit: Friday February 14, 2014 SearchSite
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WECS Curtains of Tiny HAWT FlyGens under Mothras (update
and review) As discussed a couple of years ago; the revolution in modern automated manufacturing might enable very small HAWTs to be made so cheaply that the energy-unit LCOE could compete with giant conventional HAWTs. Vast "WECS Curtains" of these tiny turbines* might overcome the scaling barrier conventional unit HAWTs face; at a fraction of the embodied mass. High inherent voltages, excellent cooling, flying-carpet motoring modes, and many other interesting possibilities open up. The engineering challenge is to design-build a rugged tiny unit-turbine, either caged or flexible-bladed, so as to be snag-free; along with a system of rugged electrical interconnects integrated into a rope load-path network. WECS Curtains hung from the TE of a Mothra is a feasible use of Mothra's unmatched airborne crosswind extent potential. Testing is required to downselect the best WECS for curtain use. Tiny HAWT FlyGen Curtains are a worthy contender to add to the test mix of SkyMills, wing-mills, looping-foils, and so on. This is a very easy concept to explore by a small R&D team with limited resources, based as it is on small low-cost units. A minimal array, if carefully shown to be cheap, robust, and potent, will indicate prospects for a scaled-up many-unit WECS curtain. There was an odd British inventor, whose name escapes me, who prototyped an AWES of this sort, and posted a video (clue: his voice sounded like Hitchcock). Several other known AWES concepts are also close in spirit to a WECS curtain. CC BY NC SA * "Tiny" could mean from hummingbird size to a few meters wingspan.
Comment and development of this topic will be occurring here.
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