Manifold Business Forms Printing: 2002. Manufacturing, Industry Series, 2002 Economi: Fill & Download for Free

Necessity is truly the mother of invention. There are so many ways to “skin a cat” goes the saying and in renewable energy one of the indexes of progress is the really remarkable long list of configurations of every type to get wind, solar, geothermal, hydro and efficiency technologies to a ‘proof of concept stage, where their relative advantages can be weighed. This incredible fertility of the human mind is tragically taken the wrong way in today’s market.It is still common to hear people say that you are a huxter after funding or that the idea itself is worthless. There is no question that many ideas, most of them, won’t actually make it, but we have to make the case that trying to bring about a solution to a challenge is a form of sacred human activity, designed to improve the quality of our lives and not a waste of time. Inventiveness is the great hope against the nastiness and struggle of life.Given the remarkable technical feats that human beings can achieve in wartime, developing guns and jet engines, moving the entire capital production of the Russian economy to the East of the Ural mountains and safely out of the way of the Nazi’s in the Second World War, causing production lines of big companies like Boeing and GM to switch to production of planes and tanks within just a month, the extraordinarily high quality identity documents forged by prisoners to use when they escaped from prisoner of war camps. The list goes on.Innovation is an undersung quality of humanity and is responsible for all the good things and many of the bad things we have experienced. The difference is education. Here is a limited list of those technology configurations that I have collected so far in ONLY solar and wind. My total collection has pictures and is well over 400 items long:SOLARSolar - Poly-Crystalline SiliconSilicon is 27% of the Earth’s crust. It’s often compared to carbon because it forms complex molecular chains. A common form is white beach sand. It's also the commonest form of semiconductor used in microchips and solar cells where it comes both as polycrystalline and mono crystalline (below). Poly crystalline is lower purity and makes solar cells with lower efficiency at around 12 - 17%. Silicon demand has seen huge cycles over the last decade shooting the price from $50 per kilo well into the hundreds of dollars, following demand for the product and low supply of it in the form required.Solar - Mono-Crystalline SiliconMono-crystalline silicon has been purified and cooled more slowly as a single crystal ingot. It’s more efficient because there are no crystal boundaries that form resistance to the flow of electrons picked up by the silver/lead bus bars printed on the surface of the cell. Monocrystalline silicon solar cells have efficiency up to 25% but commercial varieties, such as those sold by Sunpower in the US have efficiencies at 22% which is already very good. Mono-crystalline silicon often has superior aesthetics and since roof space is often limited, benefits from higher demand for its higher productivity.Solar - Thin Film, Copper, Indium, Gallium Di-Selenide (CIGS)CIGS technology is another Thin Film variety which helps a solar panel generate more electricity in low light conditions by using its higher bandgap. This market grew very fast from 2002-7 because of the higher absorption coefficient. Its sometimes referred to as a I-III-VI compound referring to the rows on the periodic table where its constituent elements derive. Highest efficiency cells have been at about 20%, the highest for any thin film, but normal commercial levels are lower at about 13%. Many companies have entered this market but few have been successful.Solar - Thin Film, Amorphous Silicon (a-Si)This is a variation of silicon which can be applied to a substrate material like glass or plastic as a very thin layer. Thin Film uses as little as 1% of the silicon used in crystalline cells. It has a low efficiency but because its so economic to assemble, it still has a low cost per Watt. Due to its thinness it can be used as a multi junction solar cell able to address different bandgaps of the electromagnetic spectrum and thereby excite more electrons. This format is also useful in low light conditions such as clouds.Solar - Molded Silicon Solar Cells (Kerfless)Frank van Mierlo of 1366 Technologies (the name is the quantity of Watts that hit the Earth from the Sun per m2), in Boston produces silicon solar cells at higher quality and half the cost by molding molten silicon directly into cells using a furnace. There is no kerf loss and surfaces are already finished. The method is much faster, cells have less variation and are 40% cheaper. I will never understand why this method was not the first method adopted and remember talking to the then CEO of REC about it in 2006. It reduces module manufacturing energy use giving an energy payback of less than 1 year.Solar – String Ribbon Solar Cells (Kerfless)Put two wires into molten silicon and draw them upwards and the surface tension will produce a solidified ribbon of silicon attached to the wires. Continue drawing the wires upwards and the ribbon of hardened silicon will continue to lengthen in a continuous process as it draws molten silicon behind it adding to the ribbon. There is no kerf loss of silicon in this process so twice as many wafers can be produced per unit of silicon. The ribbon can be cut into individual wafers which due to their being rectangles, provide a much better wafer density. Evergreen Solar was sold off in 2011.Solar - Cadmium Telluride (CdTe)Another substance that releases electrons when bathed in photons is cadmium telluride. This is one of the Thin Film technologies and is very good at generating power in lower light conditions. Depending on the substrate, which is usually glass, it can also be flexible. First Solar was the main company to forge ahead with this technology and they grew very fast and were able to cut their costs significantly until they are now contemplating costs of only 50 cents per watt.Solar - Concentrated Solar Photovoltaic (CSP)Normal solar panels experience a single "Sun", or normal sunlight. If you place a lens above a much smaller and therefore cheaper piece of PV material the sunlight is concentrated up to 2,000 "Suns". This way you can obtain much more power from the PV material but the heat often cuts efficiency, so despite being more expensive, they use PV materials developed for use on Satellites called III-V semiconductors like Gallium Arsenide which are heat tolerant. This way efficiencies of up to 40% can be achieved.Solar - Dye Sensitized Solar Cells (DSSC, DSC)Natural colored pigments such as chlorophyll or ruthenium offer electrons when illuminated. This effect was first seen in the late 1960's and developed as the Grätzel cell in 1988 at Berkeley. Australian Dyesol is currently the main manufacturing company in this space. The CEO once gave me a mini, sample panel, rather than take it all the way back to Australia. It’s a 'thin film' so it's easy to make on reels, but limited by expensive materials like ruthenium. Its efficiency is climbing to 15% and its very good with low light conditions and promises to be economic. Below attached to a motor.Solar - Graphene Solar CellsDoped graphene emits 2 electrons for every photon that it intercepts. Graphene is a single layer of carbon atoms in hexagons. It is very light, much stronger than steel and conducts electricity better than copper. It is an ideal solar sensitive material and may need to be combined with other ultra-thin materials to be effective and reach above today’s photovoltaic ceiling of 32% to the theoretical 60% doubling the electricity. It is expected to be equally useful in batteries and fuel cells. also acts very well for solar panels. Oxford University and a Spanish university claim 15.6% efficiency for a graphene solar cell.Solar - Nano-Photonic Solar EnergyWhen light hits the surface of a metal, it stimulates the movement of electrons. There is a 'nano photonic' technology that is attempting to tame even this exotic phenomenon in California. The upper limits of efficiency and the possibility of a price breakthrough are already the subject of a business plan. Suffice it to say that very thin layers of common materials promise to bring us a kilowatt of solar cell capacity for less than $100 by 2017.Solar – Solar BotanicsSolar Botanics in the UK has a “tree” which combines solar, thermal and motion together. Wind energy is collected by small Piezo Crystals in each attachment of the ‘leaf’ to the branches of the tree. Thermal energy is collected by tubes of working fluid collecting heat from the leaves and finally each leaf is a solar cell, generating electricity. Trees can be aligned with the sun and then rotate on their trunk axis following the sun all day and maximizing/optimizing output. This example answers a need for aesthetic taste in our power station choices and is also an example of bio-mimetics, imitating nature.Solar - PerovskiteDiscovered in 1839, perovskite is calcium titanate, a common semiconductor mineral that can easily be made into a pigment and deposited on a variety of substrate surfaces. It can emit electrons under a wide bandwidth of incoming irradiation making it a promising candidate to replace other 5-3 solar chips as a much more economical alternative. Incoming photons can travel deep within the material to release more electrons. Perovskite has increased in reported efficiency (from 3.5% to over 20% in just the last 5 years!) faster than any other such material and is being championed by NREL.Solar – Quantum DotsCommon silicon solar cells are only sensitive to light in the near infra-red where most of the Sun’s energy lies. If a way to obtain the energy from other parts of the spectrum was possible efficiency would improve to as high as 31%. Quantum dots take different sizes of light sensitive materials which have been adapted, or tuned, to the bandgap to get better efficiency at much lower prices. Materials such as indium and gallium arsenide nano-particles can reach increased efficiencies of 42.3% by including the far infra-red. This is a potentially cheaper way of making a multi-junction cell.Solar - Zinc Oxide (ZnO) Is Another Light Sensitive ElementZinc Oxide promises to deliver solar panels that are 10 times cheaper (which means 10c/Watt), by tripling the efficiency from about 17% to 50% because it is sensitive to a wider range of solar radiation than just the red light for silicon. This could have been done much earlier if a way had previously been found to produce ZnO as a "p" type material to offset its natural state as an "n" type material. This has now been achieved with stable results and it’s only a matter of time before improved solar panels arrive.Solar - Enhancing Solar Panels with WaveguidesMuch light is reflected off shiny glass surfaces of solar panels. It’s to do with the critical angle of reflection; simple optical physics. If a corrugated waveguide is placed over a panel, light arriving lower than this angle can be fully absorbed, increasing the power generated significantly. Early morning sunlight and late afternoon sunlight can now be captured effectively, further reducing the cost of a kilowatt hour of electricity produced.In the photograph at left, the glass covered picture has no reflection because the light is directly overhead. In the picture on the right, the angle of the picture has been reduced so that the image of the 'Sun' or light bulb in this case (yes, full marks, it’s a Philips LED) is visible as a clear sign of reflected light.A waveguide can capture this light and redirect it at the solar panel, releasing more electricity. This means that when the sun is low in the sky at 'A', the light that would normally bounces off the glass will be absorbed just as it is when the sun is at 'B' and the Sun is at 12 o’clock. When the radiation is fully absorbed it yields a bell curved shape on the power output chart.Solar - "Black Silicon"One of the major problems with solar cells is that part of the light is reflected from the surface of the cell, especially if that surface is smooth and flat like glass. The promise of capturing that extra light and more bandwidth in the infra-red and its effect on potential efficiency gains has galvanized research on the subject. One answer is a form of nanotechnology with silicon deposited on a substrate in a way that provides a non-reflective and increased surface area. If the silicon surface is matt black, then you know that the surface absorbs more of the radiation.Solar - CSP, Solar Parabolic Trough, Oil and Molten SaltParabolic dishes have been in use for a long time as evidenced by the Schuman-Boys technology used in the 1913 Meadi installation in Egypt. Frank Schuman’s efforts were well received but poorly timed. The first world war set him, and us, back over 100 years. Trough temperatures reach 700⁰C and you have a costly nightmare of plumbing with hot and often caustic liquids like molten salts which can "freeze" at 230 ⁰C. This is a very common form of solar power and can incorporate up to 15 hours of storage by holding the hot liquids in tanks for later use.Solar – Low Concentration Solar Power, (LCSP)The use of flat and cheap mirrors is a simple and economic way to double up on the solar exposure and therefore the electricity you generate. The mirrors can be placed in the optimal position to reflect sunlight directly onto the panel and double the solar irradiation on that part of the panel that receives the light, significantly increasing its power output for a low cost. This is an example of a low concentration solar power, or LCSP. Low concentration also means low heat compared to the hundreds of suns of concentration which can come from optical concentrators and lenses.Solar – Triple Junction Solar CellsEarly solar power was so expensive that its markets were very restricted and only the space program was going to pay for cells. The really expensive solar cells were made of semiconductor materials like gallium arsenide. Photons of different energy levels, red, green blue are separately filtered and trigger electrons with a significant increase in efficiency……and price. A revival of high efficiency triple junction cells used with CPV, which concentrates sunlight onto a cheaper postage stamp of the expensive stuff is becoming increasingly successful. They are also investigating quintuple junction cells.Solar - Parabolic DishParabolic dishes concentrate the Sun's energy, like a lens, to a point, so by definition the temperature can be higher than 1,000 ºC. Its really making a Sun image complete with the associated high temperatures. 1,000ºC means that greater efficiency can be had at the power block and less land is required for a specific output. There are many designs of these, with a range of power block technologies from Rankine turbines to Stirling engines or circulating liquids like oil or molten salt as in the example below which turns a turbine.Solar - Parabolic Dish with Stirling EngineThe focus of parabolic dish is called the receiver. Stirling engines need a heat source. Parabolic dishes perform this function ideally. Focused heat operates the Stirling engine and thereby the generator. They can be noisy, but it’s in the desert and so nobody can hear it. Stirling engines have been expensive to maintain as well and the efficiency has been relatively uninspiring, but it’s a simple and easy concept and Stirling specialists are working on all the outstanding issues with the result that they are becoming more and more the external combustion engine of choice.Solar - Glass Orb ConcentratorRawlemon has embraced aesthetics for a solar concentrator. Andre Broessel, a German architect concentrates 100 Suns using a spherical acrylic/water lenses to onto a small PV panel. It can also concentrate diffuse light giving an efficiency boost even in cloudy conditions. They are doing a crowd funding for a 10-centimeter phone charger and an electrical storage of 27.5 Whr. They have larger 100, 1.1 kWh/day and 180 cm, 3.4 kWh/day models. Being spherical, the system also acts as its own tracker and the sun’s concentrated rays can easily be picked up on a small moving plate.Solar - Parabolic Dish with Ceramic ReceiverHigh temperature thermal energy can be stored in ceramics. Research has been done in cement, sand, rock and graphite among other media. We invested in this 146 kW machine and the design evolved into this beautiful system that parks its glass mirrors almost horizontally if the wind gets strong. The machine below can produce 250 kWh of thermal storage and hold it for 7 days resulting in 33% of it being available at any time of the daily cycle AND making it available for even replacing ‘spinning reserve”. I’ve used this slide in the storage section as well because it belongs in both places.Solar - Linear Fresnel CSPFlat mirrors arranged in strips, each at a slightly different angle, reflect the Sun's light directly onto a pipe, which collects the heat in a liquid which can be oil, molten salt or water depending on the power block and overall design. The mirror strips can be the width of the pipe or larger and curved which is a bit more expensive. This system is simple and reliable and good for sunny places. In Australia its used by coal fired power stations (Liddell) to pre heat water for the boilers, saving on coal consumption, but it is just as useful as a direct source of power in its own right.Solar - Thermal Tower, Heliostat Mirror Field CSPA single tower with a field of mirrors which follow the Sun's movement using trackers or heliostats. The mirrors can be flat glass and a variable number of them can reflect light onto a receiver at the top of the tower. Temperatures can be very high proportional to the quantity of mirrors and can get well over 1,000 ºC. Such fields have been built in MENA, Southern Europe and the Nevada deserts. There are versions which can store thermal energy also by using a working fluid that has a large volume stay hot enough to generate power hours after the sun has set.Solar - Chimney, Solar Heated Air. UpdraftHot air rises. Under glass the Sun’s heat accumulates. Put the two together in a truly huge tower that’s a 600 meters tall and a huge glass skirt the size of New York’s Central Park and the air will enter at the periphery and slowly accelerate toward the center where it will turn up to 200 megawatts of turbines before exhausting out of the tower. The higher the tower and the more extensive the skirt the better the effect. It also continues at night because of the residual heat of the sun making the system immune to intermittency. It needs no water and operates 24/7 with very low LCOE costs of about 1c – 3c/kWh.Solar - Chimney, Water Cooled Air, DowndraftAlternatively, spray cold water at the top of the tower and a 40 mph downdraft will spin wind turbines at the base. Originally a 1970’s idea from US physicist Phillip Carlson now championed by the Israeli Technion. 45% of the power is deliverable, 33% pumps the water and 22% is energy losses. At 1,200 meters, the tower can provide electricity at 3 cents per kWh. Scale helps economics. Public company SWET plans to build one of these soon in Arizona. Water can be condensed and used again but clearly some of it evaporates for good but there is also much potential for desalination.Solar - Hot WaterIf you can fry an egg on a car on a summer day, then it makes sense that some black painted tubes with water flowing through them will retain a lot of the Sun's heat during the day. This offsets any heating expense for the house owner and such savings add up. This is the most frequently installed variety of solar power and is found all over the Mediterranean and other sunny parts of the world where ambient temperatures mean its less likely to be inefficient. It is widely available, is not intimidating in any technological way and is cheap and effective. Many household plumbing groups offer this service.Solar - Evacuated Glass Tube Collector, Hot WaterRooftop and garden solar hot water heaters also come in this evacuated glass tube configuration where the theory goes that the vacuum will not let the water cool down as fast as if it were in contact with the cold ambient air common in more temperate climates. There is a black painted tube within a glass tube. Sunlight passes through the glass tube vacuum, hits the black surface and heats the inner black tube. The heat cannot escape again and a liquid like ethylene glycol is used to collect the heat and transfer it to the main water supply via a heat exchangerSolar – Solar Roadway, a Unique ApplicationScott and Julie Brusaw have had two funding rounds from the Federal Highways Administration and a successful Indiegogo crowdfunding raise to develop the solar roadway. The cost of the solar is buried within normal road structure integrating LED lines and signs. The surface involved is truly huge so large power generation is easy. Challenges include heavy weights, traction on glass and water and ice damage and other spilled items. Since the surface also gets rid of polluting tarmac chemicals from the groundwater it’s got even more value. Modular panels make roads easier to repair.Solar – Ocean Solar Thermal EnergyThis variation is a variation on OTEC technology but emphasizing the solar angle. When you think how many places are hot but also in the ocean you get a sense of the total addressable market of this format. The Blue Planet Consulting Company want to build it of strong economic materials like black polycarbonate reaching down to the deep cold water. Surface solar concentrators heat the basin water to ~50⁰C which evaporates and goes through one way valves drawing colder 10⁰C water from the depths. Like a solar chimney incoming cold and possibly tidal waters generates power from a turbine at the base.Solar – Twin Creek’s Hyperion Hydrogen Ion Particle AcceleratorSilicon is used in 120 micron thick cells. The amount of silicon you actually need is much less but the saw blades are just as thick, wasting half the silicon as sawdust. Twin Creek developed a unique method to overcome this drawback. They place 3mm thick silicon blanks in a machine that bombards them with hydrogen ions which accumulate at a precise distance, exactly 20 microns below the silicon surface. This sheet sheers off as the ions expand into hydrogen gas in a furnace. The resulting silicon sheet is totally flexible, and promises a cost per watt of only $0.40 cents approaching grid costs.Solar – Semprius’ Gallium Arsenide and Glass CSPVWith efficiency of 34% by using expensive gallium arsenide, the Semprius system works by putting a tiny glass bead which concentrates the sun like a lens at 1,100 times, directly above a 0.36 mm2 of gallium arsenide semiconductor. The system is resistant to heat and its manufacturer, now owned by Siemens of Germany, claims that they can compete with coal and natural gas power plants with prices of about 8 cents per kWh. The entire panel acts as a heat sink for the tiny cells which keeps them efficient in full sunlight. They have a cheap and innovative method of cutting the gallium arsenide.Solar – The Atmospheric Vortex Engine (AVE), Solar ChimneyThis is a neat way of using natural phenomena to replace the huge task of building an actual solar chimney. It has the goal of using a large vortex of twisting air created by louvers or deflecting vanes in a much easier to build ground structure which look not unlike the manifold air intake structures of a turbine. The sun still heats a large area of ground below a transparent surface. The trapped hot air is guided into the louvers at the center of the collector and passes through wind turbines as it twists upward into a much higher spiral ascending air column whose integrity drives the speed of air below.Solar – Masdar’s Solar “Beam Down” Configuration of CSPSantiago Muros Cortes won the first prize in the Land Art Generator Initiative, a Danish design competition for his extraordinary entry “Solar Hourglass” (left) using the ‘beamdown’ CSP configuration that is installed in Masdar, Abu Dhabi. The array of sun tracking mirrors reflect light to a tower which reflects it back down to a point on the ground so that pumps don’t have to raise heavy thermal fluids hundreds of feet to the power block. Masdar’s 100 kW system generates 75 – 85 MWh annually. Cortes hid all the mirrors inside the upper section and the bright light is where it is reflected down.Solar – The Eyes Cone Cells Capture 65% More LightIn another case of biomimicry, it turns out that the fovea centralis inside our eyes, the bit that holds the visual object of attention, has color sensitive cone cells which are all stacked in an optimal light gathering configuration. German scientists Silke Christiansen and Sebastian Schmitt copied the configuration to silicon and it captured 65% more light than a conventional silicon cell. The test samples were also easy to make with individual silicon cones 800 nanometers at the top and only 200 at the bottom. In a world moving towards vertically packed nanowires this is a key revelation.Solar – Solar Roof TilesRooftop residential solar is in a significant growth phase as grid parity, where the cost of solar becomes competitive and then cheaper than fossil fuels, is upon us. Cheaper solar equipment goes right along with new solar products as this book illustrates. One of the big issues with solar panels is the ugliness of the big rectangles on otherwise beautiful roofs. The aesthetics of a roof can be unbroken with solar tiles that fit right into the original overall design. Weaknesses can include a huge increase of interconnections but getting free solar energy and keeping your house value high is great.Solar – Transparent Solar Panels Using Ultra VioletUp to this point, the UV part of the electromagnetic spectrum has not been tapped for solar power. It’s a smaller part of the energy spectrum. Ubiquitous Energy has made transparent solar cells which capture electrons from UV photons which then are collected by edge mounted PV. There is a transparent coating that enables any surface to convert ambient light into electricity. It would be great as windows and screens, perhaps finally giving your battery some power. The UV screen is transparent using small organic molecules developed by Richard Lunt of Michigan State University.Solar – Solar to Syngas to Liquid FuelsSolar-Jet in Europe has generated beakers full of carbon neutral kerosene by combining sunlight, water and CO2. Concentrated solar heat, brings metal oxide catalysts (very economic Ceria) to high temperatures which turn H2O and CO2 into syngas (H2, CO) which is the feedstock for liquid fuel, in this case kerosene, by the Fischer -Tropsch ‘gas to liquids’ process. Hans Geerlings, a Delft University of Technology professor has reached an efficiency of 2% so far but believes that 20% is possible. We are going to need liquid, carbon neutral fuels in the future and there are few better ways to procure a supply.Solar – Pentralux, Amorphous Silicon with a TwistPentralux have a new method of ‘printing’ solar panels which cuts the cost to just $1 per watt. The company based in Wales, UK, can print solar cells on flexible substrates with about 6 watts per sheet of letter size paper. This is a technique that could be applied with great cost advantage. Here we can see their proprietary quantum inks designed for high definition screens with and without ultra violet illumination showing how the quantum dot molecules release photons when stimulated. Below you can see a simple screen printed on ordinary copy paper reacting to the stimulus as well.Solar - Space Based Solar Power (SBSP)In 1968 Peter Glasser filed a space solar patent and became the father of the space solar power (SSP). Positioning your array as close to the Sun as possible to make the best of your PV array is sensible and PPA's already exist in this field. Getting the power back to Earth can work with microwaves, and collimating the beam for greatest efficiency. Currently outside the atmosphere is all that's available, but NASA's SORCE satellite tells us there are 1,361 watts /m2 in orbit as opposed to about 1,000 w/m2 at the Earth's surface and you can believe it’s much more close to Mercury!Solar – Solar PondIn May of 1986 a specially designed pond in the University of Texas, El Paso, has produced hot water, electricity and fresh water. The sun heats salty water at the bottom of the pond and the liquid is drawn to preheat water for local industrial processes. It also generates 70 kilowatts on demand working 24/7. Such ponds are easily built and are low cost at $2/W, and can use and store solar energy on a large scale. They have special interest for desert nations and can make use of otherwise unproductive land. Ormat, the geothermal company, in Israel generates electricity in large solar ponds like these.Solar – ThermoPhotoVoltaics (STPV)Silicon solar cells are sensitive to only a part of the electromagnetic spectrum. Concentrating sunlight onto a receiver collects the unused part of the energy and re-emits it to the solar cell. Cells have a 33% Shockley-Quiesser (S-Q) limit in efficiency because they don’t work when exposed to the entire spectrum of Sunlight. Experiments at the Solid State Solar Thermal Energy Conversion (S3TEC) lab at MIT show that if you absorb the total energy and re-emit in a form that can be captured then efficiency of 83% is theoretically possible with 45% demonstrated under 300 suns.Solar - Aerotaxial Nanowires for Solar CellsSwedish, award winning, solar group Sol Voltaic’s CEO, Erik Smith in 2015 announced that his gallium arsenide (GaAs), III-V, nanowire array demonstrated a 1 sun conversion efficiency of 15.3% (backed up by the Fraunhofer Institute in Germany). This layer can be printed over any solar cell adding its efficiency, resulting in one sun efficiency of almost 30% or an additional 65%. So little material is actually used that the process is very economic with an LCOE of 5 c/kWh. The nanowires only cover 10% of the actual solar cell surface and increasing the surface to volume ratio by 30 times.Solar –3DSolar, High Efficiency Solar CellsSchoolboy William Yuan won a $25,000 Davidson Fellow scholarship award for his idea of a 3D solar cell that could obtain 200% of the power output of a normal solar cell by first using a 3D layer to trap more photons increasing efficiency of the cell to about 25.47% and preventing the re-absorption of generated electrons. The second approach is a wider angle of collection of light, not dissimilar to the SEC Optics waveguide, capturing more sunlight when the sun is not directly overhead. It also uses collector bus wires that are below the light absorbing surface, using nearly 100% of incident light.Solar – Mirrors and Heliostats Bring Sunlight to ShadowsThe Italian village of Viganella in an Alpine valley gets no sunlight and they decided to install a 5-meter x 8 meter (16 x 26 feet) on the mountainside in 2006 to reflect sunlight onto the main village square far below. The mirror has a heliostat so the light remains firmly centered on the square all day. It cost about 100,000 Euros to build and install and was financed by local authorities and a bank. Rjukan in Norway has done the same thing when Martin Anderson, a local artist and municipal baths lifeguard installed 59 square meters of mirrors to reflect the sun into the town's central square.Solar – Orbital Mirrors Turn Night to DayImagine large mirrors in a geostationary orbit, 25,000 miles above the same spot on Earth all the time. Former Newt Gingrich, ex US House Speaker endorsed mirrors in space to light the night sky for remote highways or northern farmers for crops and towns, entertainments, conferences, concerts or plays could use the light. Emergencies could use the light to illuminate remote spaces, mountains, oceans to help locate survivors or ships or aircraft in time to save lives. You can even use reflected sunlight to divert asteroids. Russia sent up a series of experimental mirrors called Znamya 1 – 2.5.Solar – Large Scale Fresnel Lens with High Temperature StorageThis 13 meter concentrating solar plant with a hot media tank is located in Serbia and financed by UK investors. Dr. Vladan Petrovic, a mechanical engineer built it to incorporate thermal storage and operate 24/7. The battery stores 450 kWh/m3 at temperatures up to 1,600⁰C and loses less than 6% per annum. The continuous production of energy is 4 to 5 times greater than for current systems and it can be installed in any meteorological location. The Fresnel lens components were cheap to manufacture. A 55-meter diameter model would be large enough to supply power for a local town.Solar – 3D Solar Panel ConfigurationThis tower configuration allows a vertical angle that captures up to 20 times more solar rays when the sun is low in the sky when a flat panel will quickly lose power output. The MIT team tested many 3D configurations such as cubes and accordion shapes. Over time the 3D version generates a more uniform output and more per unit area which is one of solar power’s biggest hurdles. As prices for solar cells have fallen, this version becomes more economic. There are shading conflicts if mounted en masse, but as individual receivers this configuration works really well.Solar – Molybdenum Solar CellsAbundant molybdenum has a few advantages over silicon when it comes to making solar cells. It is sensitive to light in the visible spectrum whereas silicon captures infra-red. Layers of moly are similar to and when added to graphene they push the boundaries of solar power production towards their limit and have more energy per kilogram says Jeffrey Grossman of MIT. The challenge is to increase the thickness of the layers until they have the same or greater efficiency as the silicon variety. Moly cells produce over 1,000 times more power weight for weight than silicon solar cells.Solar – Spin Cell Solar PVA company called V3Solar is aiming to cut the LCOE of solar power to 8 c/kWh, cheaper than retail energy prices which average 12c in the US. The Spin Cell solves two problems, flat panels are only optimal once a day when at the perfect angle for the sun, but as a cone, they always have a surface in perfect alignment. When cells overheat, efficiency drops, but the Spin Cell spins on its axis like a top. They use an effect called the penumbra effect which uses optics to stimulate electron avalanches within the PV. It increases efficiency by 20%, reduces the cost by 34% and uses linear Fresnel lensing.Solar – High Concentration Photovoltaic Heat DissipationHigher solar concentrations allow the use of a very small piece of multi junction solar wafer but the chips get very hot for long periods of time. The chip on the left is fried by too much heat. The removal of heat in the cell mounting makes the multijunction chip much more long lived and cheaper. This allows concentrated solar PV to climb to 2000 times, a huge leap in economics that has prevented it from moving ahead like other forms of CPV, until now. Solstice Power have already managed a delta T of 9 C at 800X concentration, almost an order of magnitude better than the closest competition.Solar – Natural LensesVery large lenses can be made more easily than you might think. This is water in a plastic sheet and can easily cook a meal. We are familiar with glass and plastic traditional lenses and also Fresnel lenses which work using concentric optical rings focusing the light where the image is less important than concentrating the incoming energy. In nature lenses come about via atmospheric effects, water droplets, gravitational effects over massive distances around large celestial objects like stars or galaxies. We are here only interested in ones that might be usable for making solar power possible.Solar – Solar Chimney on a MountainOne of the original versions of the solar chimney was using the side of a mountain as the source of the height for the solar chimney. There are many advantages in this route. Often the mountain is actually taller than the tallest tower we could build but with the mountainside as support we can build a much less expensive ‘wind passage tunnel’. This in turn allows the glassed-in area at the bottom of the tower to be much smaller and it also allows the tower itself to be hidden in the topography of the mountain creating a much less invasive, cheaper and just as valuable a source of electricity.Solar – Solar Pond TowerWater has much tighter hydrostatic qualities than air so when it is moving, much more energy can be extracted for a given volume. Since warm water rises, the same technique as the solar chimney can be utilized but with less ambitious civil engineering to obtain a similar 200 MW output. Water packs much more energy density into its thermal movements so the engineering cost will be reduced significantly.Solar – Concentrated Universal Energy Solar System (CUESS)Four times as efficient and three times cheaper. The Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) and Technique Solar (TS) developed a concentrated solar module consisting of 9 troughs with an acrylic lens concentrating the sun onto a strip of PV cutting the PV usage by 75%. It has a 2 axis tracker, an essential item with CPV. It produces hot water which where the extra efficiency comes from. A 3.5 m2 array produces 2.1kW of power while standard PV needs 12 - 14 m2. 400 Watts of power and 1,700 Watts of heat combine for 2,100 total Watts and make for a total 50% efficient panel.Solar – ThermoElectric SolarDr. Gang Chen of MIT has championed the use of the thermoelectric effect in the cogeneration of electricity along with hot water in solar hot water tubes. In traditional silicon solar cells, the semiconductor bandgap makes the silicon effectively blind to some of the electromagnetic spectrum which is largely responsible for the maximum theoretical efficiency of 33% and the best lab efficiency being 25% and field, 18%. If this substance is used, then the heat can be kept off the silicon and both will work like a multi-junction cell yielding theoretical efficiency levels of 45%.Solar – Hydrogen from Sunlight using an Artificial LeafHarvard professor Dan Nocera coats one side of silicon with cobalt and phosphorus and the other with nickel and molybdenum. This means that oxygen and hydrogen are produced on their respective sides. 5 to 8 drinking bottles of water would generate enough energy for a single day for a house.Solar – Passive Solar HouseGiven that the Sun describes an arc every day over the Southern part of the sky in the northern hemisphere and the northern part of the sky in the southern hemisphere, it makes sense that you can position a house so that its array of windows will collect the solar radiation inside the building and benefit from the greenhouse effect. The solar chimney effect can be used to circulate air flows. If you have the means, the window’s transparency can be controlled via thermostat to vary the Sun’s input. If the walls and windows are well insulated the house can be warm even in a cold climate.Solar – Solar Aluminum SmeltersAluminum is normally made from Bauxite ore (Al2O3) by electrolysis. 14 megawatts hours are used per ton of aluminum metal produced or about 500 Euros of power. This process is very inefficient, generates a lot of pollution and CO2 and means the energy cost is a substantial part of the eventual value of the final product. Very high temperatures (2,200 ºC) are required for aluminum smelting, but these are well within the capability of a heliostat field. Only solar, nuclear fission or electric arc can do this, but solar power has a significant cost and simplicity advantage.Solar – Passive Solar ChillingA building can move heat to heat sinks, such as the night sky, the outdoor air or wind, and the earth without using extra energy to do so. There are two route used. The first is to prevent the heat and the second is to modulate or dissipate the heat. Sun and wind, the use of shade, the design of the building, thermal insulation and the patterns of behavior of the occupants combined with efficient lighting and electronics. Dissipation of heat can come from the use of the buildings own thermal mass as a heat sink, or natural cooling, and ventilation. At night air can circulate to cool the building further.WINDWind - Wind Turbine, Horizontal (HAWT)Horizontal wind turbines face the oncoming wind. They have evolved over time to have three blades which is a blend of balance, economics and efficiency. No wind turbine can be more efficient that Betz' Law allows which is a maximum of 59.3% but most commercial wind farms achieve at most 80% of that. While small turbines are available, new materials have pushed single turbines to 10 MW in size. Complaints they kill birds are serious but exaggerated when compared to the damage done by cats and windows. This type of big wind turbine has become the face of the aggressive uncaring utility.Wind - Horizontal Saphonian Bladeless TurbineThis configuration springs from a design by Tunisian born Anis Aouini and named for the Carthaginian goddess Saphon. Wind hits the round front plate and rocks it against pneumatic actuators which turn a generator. They claim this turbine can beat Betz' Law and more than double the output of a HAWT with the same swept area. It certainly promises not to hurt birds and save on blade expense but until there is some more information its very difficult to make an evaluation. I feel like making several different types and doing disciplined testing with stable wind tunnels etc.Wind - Vertical Axis Wind Turbine (VAWT) – DarrieusVAWT's look like egg beaters and spin on a vertical axis. The big advantage of this is that they don't need to point into the wind and are able to take gusts from any direction. The blades are also attached on two sides increasing security. This means they’re safer and work better in cities or mountains. This version uses lift generated by its blades with faster blade speeds and more power. Until now, upwind blade motion is a dragon the system. I have always thought it possible to design blades where upwind resistance was minimized with clever feathering arrangements.Wind - Vertical Axis Wind Turbine (VAWT) - SavoniusSavonius vertical wind turbines can't go faster than the wind but use a simple shape with a hollow side and a convex side which cause drag pulling the shape around. Anemometers are the windspeed apparatus most common in weather stations. This type of turbine is rarely very efficient but often cheap to install or make yourself and there is a domain of homebuilt installations. Our fund invested in Helix Wind which is now in Thailand while Israeli Leviathan make a beautiful 'tulip' version. Going helical helps the wind rotate it without help. With cowels, just over 30% efficiency is possible.Wind – Tubular Wind EnergyYou don't need to have rotary motion to generate electricity. When we blow over the mouth of a bottle we can generate a sound. If the other end of the bottle or tube is equipped with a linear alternator transducer it can generate power very efficiently. WindPipe, a Colorado company have the lead in this domain and claim 20 times the power per unit area, three times the power per unit wind and all delivered at only 1/3rd of the cost of the normal HAWT variety. At left an actual demo with a couple of computer visualizations below.Wind - Tape, Band, Strap, BeltA strap in the wind will vibrate creating lots of potential energy. The Tacoma Narrows suspension bridge vibrated and fell apart for the same reason. Humdinger Windbelt is one manufacturer whose founder, Shawn Frayne recognized that rotating propellers didn't scale down well and that micro generation was done better with vibrating ribbons fitted with a magnet that was vibrated within a coil to make electrical power. It unusually generates AC right away and with a sort of solid state manufacture could be reliable for a long time, and simple to maintain.Wind - High Altitude or Buoyant Wind Turbines (BAT)A wind turbine generates power as a function of the cube of the windspeed. A mile above the ground windspeeds can be hundreds of miles per hour and much less prone to intermittency so a reliable, automatic, economic solution is highly desirable and only a matter of design. Magenn (below), SkyPower (bottom left) and Altaeros Energies (left) are three designs in this space which have real world demonstrations. Nobody pretends there are no problems associated with developing this form of energy collection but the facts say there’s a lot of power up there.Wind - Airfoil Electricity GenerationIn 2013 Google acquired Makani Power in San Francisco, whose sadly, recently deceased CEO and founder, Corwin Hardham, realized that a kite-like plane could circle endlessly in the sky with propeller style wind energy generation and obtain the best efficiency by capturing the wind that normally would be the domain of a normal turbine’s blade tip. This is the edge of the swept disk, generating 50% more power. This design can avoid blades, towers and gearboxes costs of traditional wind turbines by using 90% less material and because of this it can access higher altitude and higher energy winds.Wind - The Selsam Turbine (HAWT) - Many Rotors on the Same ShaftDouglas Selsam's design avoids use of large amounts of material by placing many rotors on a single shaft. This is connected to a direct drive generator for more power and efficiency. He has designed the Superturbine and Sky Serpent, one end of which is hoisted by helium balloons, both pictured working really well below. It has advantages over traditional, huge HAWT machines. This 7 foot, 7 rotor model on the left turned in 5.3 kW at 32.5 mph winds which would be 6 kW at sea level. You really have to go see the video of this one working to be left in a state of awe at how apparently good an idea this is.Wind - (HAWT) Many Blades on the Same TurbineIf more rotors mean more power, then so do more blades, says Brad Sorensen This was of course the configuration of the old style cattle ranch water pump turbines that needed power in low wind speeds. Brad's smaller turbines he claims generate in the 4 to 5 kW region on a regular basis and he has some very cool designs for attaching the individual short blades which automatically yield in very high winds to shed some load. This configuration also matches the kite wind turbine by Makani for targeting only the outside part of the traditional blade where all the work is done.Wind - Oscillating Kite SystemDr Wubbo Ockels, Dutch Astronaut, designed this kite system with Delft University. One kite draws the cable out, turning the generator as well as reeling in kite 2. Advantages include extra height for extra windspeed and very low material use which helps cost. A one kite variation also exists on this configuration called the “Laddermill”. VentAir Technologies in North Carolina’s “Vast 6” system has a single kite system with louvres in the kite which open when the kite is at full cable distance rewinding the kite with very little effort and it can be let go again to pull the generator pulley.Wind - Squirrel Cage, the Lafond Turbine VAWTBelow, this "Squirrel Cage" is yet another form of multi-bladed VAWT, and is exactly the same design as inside air conditioners or the chimney top spinners in this photo. Many do it yourselfers choose a design like this for its simplicity and structural rigidity. The picture on the lower left is a real Lafond multi bladed VAWT turbine, dating from the 1930’s. It is situated at St. Marie-de-la-Mer in the Rhone valley of France. It is set up as a water pump. The ‘disk’ is 30 m2 and with a 6 m/s wind it can pump 80 liters of water per second.Wind - Sheerwind's InveloxSheerwind's Invelox configuration clearly offers certain advantages over traditional wind turbines but they also claim a lot. They tell us its easier to handle with the generator at ground level where the wind collected up top can be accelerated or concentrated to provide more power. They claim it works in 1mph winds and that it increases energy produced by 72% over an equivalent HAWT design. It has a very low cost per kWh, is competitive with hydroelectric, needs no subsidies to be profitable, has 50% of the O&M cost of a regular turbine and saves birds from being hit by huge blades.Wind - Aerotrope Katru Implux 225 Omni-Directional TurbineSimilar in concept to Sheerwind’s Invelox, the Aerotrope, Katru Implux 225 omni-directional turbine, redirects turbulent wind from any direction upwards through a central collection chamber and then to a multi bladed rotor. The design is improved by the effect of wind streaming over the top of the machine which ‘sucks’ the air in from lower levels. The concept is urban and industrial and works at low windspeeds and they believe that it exceeds the energy produced by a similar rotor swept area.Wind - Festo’s Dual Wing Wind GeneratorThe DualWing Generator system by Festo has two wings supported by a vertical column. Air passing over them drives them up or down in opposite directions and the motion is converted to rotation inside the column where belts and wheels transfer it to a classic generator. There is thought to be an interaction between the wings. Festo claim a 45% efficiency with windspeeds of 4 – 8 meters /second (Betz limit of 59.3%). They think that intelligent control technology can further optimize and adapt to wind conditions. They see this as a small scale efficient generator which may have applications to water as well.Wind - The Aero – EWind provides an endless opportunity for human creativity and insight. Applying our intuition to the design of power extraction mechanisms which take advantage of the motion of our atmosphere results in marginal increases in efficiency with new design and we are living in an age where entrepreneurs are able to have an idea and then manifest it in reality. As we move to a 3D printing world, complex shapes will no longer have to be artfully cut by hand and such creativity will have a new outlet. The blades on the window sticker look like something on the wheels of a chariot in “Gladiator”.Wind - The Eco Whisper 650Renewable Energy Solutions Australia (RESA) has developed this interesting 23 meter high, 30 bladed HAWT. They claim it’s a very quiet 20 kilowatts for residential and small commercial. Interestingly this design was first tried in 1946 but material science had to wait for today. It can resist a category 2 hurricane and can be taken down on a hinged mast. With windspeeds of 5.5 m/s the turbine will generate 27 MWh annually and can reach its nominal rating of 24 kW with windspeed of 15 meters per second.Wind - Energy Ball® V200This is a spherical horizontal wind turbine which has 5 rotor blades and operates soundlessly. It can generate up to 2,500 Watts at maximum performance which comes from 19 meters per second (m/s) windspeeds. It will cut in at 3 m/s and can endure 40 m/s. The blade diameter is 1.98 meters and it sweeps a square meter of the wind stream. The surface is 3.8 m/s. The weight is 90 kilograms and it sits on a 15-meter pole. It is self-starting and blades are constructed of reinforced glass fibre and polyester. The strange thing about the wind sector is the cornucopia of different designs to draw on.Wind - Electrohydrodynamic Wind Energy (EHD)Accio Energy has built a wind panel that releases a small amount of sea water with a positive charge. The wind separates the positive and negative charges. From a patent from the 1960’s, the key is control of the complex electric fields that form between the charged droplets. The wind panel, which has similar energy density to solar panels, harvests the accumulated electrons as high voltage direct current. This configuration effectively cuts capex for installation and opex but offers a much higher capacity factor and works in lower wind regimes. Its silent and stationary so no wildlife is in danger.Wind - Electrostatic Wind Energy Converter (EWICON)Electrostatic Wind Energy Converter (EWICON). Yet another original wind technology in pursuit of electrons! This prototype developed in Delft Technical University in the Netherlands lets the wind push charged particles, in this case water droplets, against their natural disposition to move, creating potential energy. It is a bladeless wind turbine. They spray charged positive particles/droplets of water leaving the EWICON frame in a charged state. This charge can be saved or used directly to drive appliances. It is aesthetic and has no moving parts to break and no noise or flicker.Wind – The Liam F1 Urban Wind TurbineThis Dutch/Korean joint venture has resulted in an apparently strong commercial start with 7,000 turbines already sold as of mid-2014. This natural spiral design copied in Archimedes’ screw and Leonardo da Vinci’s helicopter blades is an example of bio-mimicry. It claims higher efficiency at 80% of the Betz limit (most wind turbines average around 25% - 50%). This turbine weighs 75 kg (165 lb) and is 5 feet across. It is silent and the design faces the wind (yaw control) automatically. It generates 1.5 megawatts annually at 16.4 ft/s wind speeds, which is half the demand of an average house.Wind - Lidar Oncoming Wind and Gust DetectionTraditionally, wind turbines, especially the horizontal ones which have to face the wind were equipped with a rudder or wind vane that keeps the system pointed directly towards the oncoming breeze. Lidar projects a laser beam which bounces off water droplets or dust which air is always full of. All the myriads of reflections carry a Doppler signal showing how fast those points are moving and software creates a model of the airflow in the few hundred meters ahead of the turbine, which can now face each gust and turn to be ready to catch the energy generating airflow by turning ahead of its arrival.Wind – Wang Yigang’s “Flow” Vertical Wind Turbine with Solar PVWind turbine blades are often real estate that could generate extra electricity. This version, introduced by Wang Yigang, which won the “Red Dot” Design award in 2007, called the “Flow” is an adjustable, six bladed, Darrieus type, vertical wind turbine. Each blade is also a form fitting photovoltaic panel. It’s a simple design except for the PV panel contacts which have to cope with the turning blade articulations. The arrangements of the blades works as a wind concentrator and forms a mini whirlwind in the center of the apparatus in the same manner as a Tesla turbine, for extra efficiency.Wind - Two Bladed HAWTThe issue of how many blades a turbine should have centers around the amount of wind intercepted in the ‘disk’ described by the blades as they turn. Four or five blades obviously intercept more of the oncoming airflow and increase the torque generated. The question is whether the extra blade expense is worth the extra power. Two bladed HAWTs are economical, but lack the power of three bladed versions. The multi bladed systems illustrated in this reference have to be much smaller.Wind - The NHEOLISThe NHEOLIS NT 100 has a very unusual blade configuration. This company, based in Marseilles, France, is offering a turbine that works well in high (45 m/s) or low (2.5 m/s) winds. The three, 21 kilogram blades which occupy a different space than normal wind turbine blades. They are arranged in a more three-dimensional manner to produce a nominal power of 2.5 kW to 3.5 kW, perfect for residential and small office use. The manufacturer also claims a very low noise output. (ONERA) the French Aerospace Research Center is scaling up the innovation for larger turbinesWind - Wind Turbine Blade Generation SystemImagine a typical wind turbine with a long cylinder inside the hollow space within each blade. Inside each cylinder is a heavy piston which constantly falls to the hub and then back to the tip each rotation of the blade. The piston compresses air which is then taken away in hydraulic tubes to a pump. Most compressed air systems rely on ordinary pumps working with excess wind or solar electricity, but this system rides right along with the ability of a wind turbine to generate normal electric power. It’s not clear whether swinging the weight of the pistons around degrades the original wind generation.Wind - Wind Turbine Blade Generation SystemImagine a typical wind turbine with a long cylinder inside the hollow space within each blade. Inside each cylinder is a heavy piston which constantly falls to the hub and then back to the tip each rotation of the blade. The piston compresses air which is then taken away in hydraulic tubes to a pump. Most compressed air systems rely on ordinary pumps working with excess wind or solar electricity, but this system rides right along with the ability of a wind turbine to generate normal electric power. Its not clear whether swinging the weight of the pistons around degrades the original wind generation.Wind - Windstalk - Bladeless Wind EnergyMasdar, the Abu Dhabi cleantech center has been responsible for many innovations including this initiative. We’ve all seen a field of grass in the wind, swaying gently. The stalks move back and forth in the wind, shouting resilience. This New York design comes from Atelier DNA and won 2nd prize in Masdar’s “Land Art Generator” competition. 1,200 poles, a foot thick at the bottom taper to 2 inches at the top with a hollow center filled with piezo electric ceramic plates compressed every sway. Also each pole has a hydraulic generator using the kinetic energy of the swaying pole.Wind - Flettner Rotors, the Magnus EffectGustav Magnus investigated artillery shells which curved their trajectories and discovered that a sphere or cylinder spinning in a moving airstream develops a force at a right angle to the direction of the moving air. Isaac Newton saw this phenomenon but it was physicist Anton Flettner who put the idea into ships in 1924 sailing one across the Atlantic and with uncertain fuel costs some use this today and more will follow. A modern design has a telescoping Flettner Rotor which can completely disappear when retracted.Wind - Vortex BladelessDavid Suriol is the CEO of Spanish Vortex, a group that have successfully brought into the world a bladeless wind turbine option which is a long conical tube, with one end anchored in the ground and the other end high in the sky, and able to be pushed by the wind. Piezo electric and magnets cause the electrical generation. They want to have nothing to maintain. In the lab they have achieved 40% efficiency and can see that the cost of a kilowatt hour is 3.7 cents, or a 40% reduction. It also has fewer parts like 53% and they can be stacked, like the Masdar ones, in forests. Also it doesn’t hurt birds.Wind - Enerlim’s “Clothesline”This configuration nicknamed “clothesline” is mounted on two columns with steel cables wrapped around pulleys. Blades are attached to the cables, in a fence configuration. The windward, ‘fence’ moves in one direction and the rear fence moves the reverse way. A New Jersey Utility commissioned Spanish group Julius Madaras to study this in 1933. Another pilot, based on the Magnus effect was erected in Tehechapi in California by Transpower. It has a huge collector but can’t adjust to wind direction. This 1992 Spanish Enerlim installation won the Babcock Foundation’s First Prize.Wind - Kyushu University’s Wind LensAs we now know, any increase in windspeed results in a cube function or tripling of the power that can be extracted. Professor Yuji Oya of Kyushu University saw that eddies caused by a cowel ring around the turbine blades causes up to 30% faster air. In turn this generates up to three times the power of the blades without a cowel. Japan uses about 280 million kilowatts and the offshore wind resource is about 1.6 billion kW. If just one sixth of this was available by using smart turbines like these there’s a chance all of Japan could be powered by wind.Wind – Akimoto Floating VAWTHiromichi Akimoto of the Korean Advanced Institute of Science and Technology has a floating vertical wind turbine design which literally bends over with the wind while revolving in it. He and a colleague realized that regular floating wind turbines lost a lot by trying to be upright and stable. Do away with these characteristics and suddenly you can earn an economic reward.Wind - Blade Tip Power System (BTPS)A company called Honeywell Windtronics developed this bicycle wheel-like wind turbine with 20 blades. This means that it will be sensitive to slow windspeeds. They produced a 10 kW version and a smaller one, but have since gone out of business. The key innovation was that there was no generator at the center of the turbine, merely an axle and bearing. The power was generated by all the magnets and coils held at the circumference of the turbine inside the black shroud. This also meant that the turbine acted slightly like a flywheel and did not slow down fast if the wind stopped.Wind - Compact Wind Acceleration Turbines (CWAT)Diffusers, shrouds or cowls accelerate the wind (Grumman, NASA and the DOE established this with research in the 70’s). Unfortunately, the shroud adds more material and weight to a turbine so it needs more strength in high winds and is also more costly which is not compensated by extra power in current designs. The best options have so far favored smaller turbines, building design or areas with wind scooping regional topology such as the Tehechapi or Desert Palm Beach locations where the hills and mountains do the same thing and invoke Bernoulli’s principal in huge scale.Wind - The Kohilo Vortex Wind Turbine with Stationary Outer BladesI met CEO Derek Grassman at a NYSERDA conference in the Javitz Center in New York on the 20th April 2016. He showed me the cowled blue unit in the picture on the left. In the middle is a spinning Savonius VAWT. The vertical axis has a generator. The cowling disciplines the air and provides pressure and vacuum zones which cause the VAWT to spin faster than if there was no outside cowling. The company calls this the Kohilo vortex and maintain that it provides a more efficient way to obtain useful power from a wind turbine. The stationary outer guides make the system safer and less of an eyesore.Wind - Wind Power Energy ConverterThis format of wind power uses pressure differences which are the common characteristic of any moving air. The demonstration even shows an LED lighting up on a human breath over the apparatus, but is designed for the lowest winds of 0.5 m/s and up. Modules can be scaled to the particular application and they even have a flat top ideal for a solar panel. A small 1 meter by 1 meter by 2.5 meters tall, tower prototype can generate 8 megawatts annually. An interesting side development is that it makes a good alternator in a car where a speed of 30 mph will generate over 1 kWh.Wind - Jet Stream Ram AirOn a web blog called "Salient White Elephant" I found this description of a tethered, high altitude blimp. The wind inflates a large parachute and a large tube guides the high pressure wind down to a ground based turbine or generator. The site is a veritable explosion of variations on using blimps to guide airflow to a turbine with high altitude variants and one configuration that guides wind onto a ground based wind turbine by suspending a huge tarpaulin in front if it. Imagination is most evident in wind and water forms of energy generation.Wind - The Tesla Turbine ConceptNew Hampshire based Solar Aero, a not for profit research organization has manufactured this prototype based on a 1913 Tesla steam turbine. Called the Fuller turbine after Howard Fuller, its principal, it is silent and nice to animals. Disks on a rotor within the box are subjected to the incoming air from the large opening using laminar flow physics they spin at high rpm and efficiency. This is a prototype and the full size version is intended to produce 5 kW in 15 knot winds and the electricity cost (LCOE) is expected be about 12 cents a kWh.Wind – The Windship (Vindskip)Norwegian Lade AS have come up with the partly wind powered hybrid ship. A specially shaped hull can harness the power of the wind to save 60% of fuel and reduce emissions by 80%. The hull becomes a symmetrical airfoil, essentially a wing sticking vertically out of the ocean which does the job of a permanent sail, generating ‘lift’ and pulling the ship along in the water. Computer navigation could plot the optimum course automatically to help the ship get from A to B.Wind - Water Pumping Low Windspeed Wind TurbinesThe Restec model HAWT wind turbine emulates the successful multi-bladed American ranch turbine of which there were over 6 million deployed in the 1930’s. They have increased its size to 7 meters’ diameter, and at least an 11-meter hub height. The turbine weighs in at 4.5 tons starts to work in windspeeds of just 3mph, but optimal at 11 mph. Such windspeeds are far more available. The real innovation here is that the gearing pump no longer depends on the blades to lift all the weight of the water due to a counterbalance on the gear mechanism which means the turbine only bears the weight on the upswing.S���