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Discussion (25 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews
A couple:
* 1m² = 1x2m? 4m² = 2x4m? etc. I'm confused by this.
* Why 25 m² (5x10 m) = 20.8kW, but 100 m² (10x20 m) = 62.4kW? 4x the size in m², but only ~3x the power? Shouldn't it be 83.2kW, not 62.4kW? It doesn't make sense efficiency would drop....
* You're speccing this as having a 25 year life (with $50/yr maintenance). I'm feeling a bit doubtful that zip-tied tarps under UV and dynamic load are going to last that long, to be honest. The tracking system also seems extremely susceptible to dirt etc.
* This thing looks pretty janky. I'm also not convinced a good 20-year storm wouldn't completely wreck it. Proper wind turbines have the ability to weather-vane into the wind, lock the rotor, etc etc. Again, in it's current incarnation, I'm doubtful it would survive.
* Your "guaranteed Cp of .32" seems... optimistic. Given it looks like you've built actual units, what are your real-world results vs the CFD numbers?
*technical term
Don't we want innovation in renewables? Shouldn't we be encouraging this kind of thing, trying out different designs to the traditional windmills and trying to make something easy to build, scale, install and operate?
In this case, they're charging a lot of money for a flimsy-looking product that is unlikely to capture much energy (low wind speeds at ground level).
On Amazon, a 1KW wind turbine is $500 to $1000. About half that on Alibaba. This is a common technology now, with lots of makers. Almost everybody sells a bladed turbine that mounts on top of a pole and has a tailfin to make it pivot in the wind.
What's with this thing? It's at ground level. It's expensive. It's built out of plastic tarps that probably won't survive a storm. The scheme for making it follow the wind looks flaky. Their "business plan" consists of copies of the business cards of people they met at a trade show.[1]
When I read this article, I was near a little 200W wind turbine at a horse barn. Little five-bladed thing up on a pole, with a tail that makes it follow the wind. It powers a few lights. It's been running for years now with no attention. It's 2026, people. This stuff just works.
[1] https://www.windtowatt.com/doc/Market%20Validation%20En.pdf
And wind turbine power scales with the square of the blade length. Which is why turbine blade designs have completely displaced this sort of "wind catching surface" device which scales linearly at best in terms of materials. Solar PV scales linearly which is what makes small and domestic PV practical.
The advances in wind power over the last decade or so have come from engineering bigger and bigger blades.
I don't see domestic wind power ever being practical at all but especially given the competition of solar PV even far from the equator.
So far my conclusion has been that it’s not yet time for this.
And what is the failure mode?
The mechanical cost and complexity and maintenance issues will surely be more costly and hassle prone over a 5-10 year time span than buying three 400W PV panels (1200W STC rating) and mounting them using some similar hack job DIY ballasted ground mount.
The rotating/moving thing at ground level also seems like a good way to mangle pets, wildlife and small children.
If you really want a "1kW" wind turbine? There's a reasonable number of different chinese domestic manufacturing sources for vertical axis turbines that are nominally rated at 1kW in a brisk wind. And you can mount them on a thick pole 3 meters off the ground so that nobody can stick their arm into it.
You could build something as good with duct tape and an old washing machine for the cost of picking it up for free when the owner is trying to get rid of it without paying to have it picked up.
The Vevor 1 kW wind mill that looks like a windmill instead of TechCrunch×MadMax is $300.
Also if you have a real project (which this seems to be), don't get AI to slop out your website. Terrible look.