Energy News: Silent Mini Windmills From Scotland

Minwindmills_scotland_big
Elaine Meinel Supkis

A Scottish company has developed silent, safe energy-producing windmills that can be installed on rooftops! They are expensive right now but will come down in price. Someday, I hope to have some on my own mountain.

MSNBC:

By Benjamin Sutherland
Newsweek International
April 24, 2006 issue - As projects to build "wind farms" of massive, electricity-generating wind turbines continue to multiply, so do the ranks of "not in my backyard" protesters. The turbines, some with blades that sweep as high as a 20-story building, are increasingly seen as unsightly and dangerous manifestations of the industrialization of the countryside. "The volume is going up higher on opposition to wind farms," says Kathy Belyeu, spokeswoman for the Washington, D.C.-based American Wind Energy Association. Although protests have generally failed to nix many farms, they frequently translate into costly delays or relocation to sites with less favorable winds.

One thing I have is wind! The government of Massachusetts wanted to put up a windfarm down the road from me on Greenhollow only the natives shot it down (everyone has guns) because it was on NY land. Heh. Well, I want wind energy. In summer, solar energy is great since we have many hours of sunshine but in winter the wind doth howl and there is precious little sun.

Here is the homepage of Renewal Devices. They are virtually hippies, heh! I love them already. Their company is small, only 20 employees and the owners and it is run as a cooperative and the staff has a variety of techie backgrounds including designing race bicycles and various sorts of boats! And it shows for they have developed the neatest device! I want it!

Here are pictures of their windmills. I detect someone with bicycle esthetics. Lovely machine. I do hope they expand and have sales here on my own continent.

They also made the news in another way this last year. Sunday Herald:

By Matthew Magee

When the e-mail dropped into Charlie Silverton’s inbox he must have known instantly that it was the kind of message entrepreneurs dream of, the kind that can change lives.
A follow-up phone call confirmed it: Silverton could be rich. Very rich. The company, which builds drone spy planes for Nasa and the US military, wanted to buy Silverton’s young business.

“One thing I do know is that once you start painting things green and selling them to the army you are talking in millions," he says. But Silverton rebuffed the offer, from a company whose name has been withheld, without even knowing how much was on the table after discussing the deal with his 20 staff. He is the man who turned Nasa down.

Silverton is, along with David Anderson, the founder of Renewable Devices, an Edinburgh-based manufacturer of micro wind turbines designed to fit on a roof and power individual houses. The American army has little interest in the turbines; what they wanted was a little plastic ring around the outside of the turbine blades. Silverton and Anderson had solved one of the biggest problems in turbine manufacture, and the world’s biggest army wanted their solution.

“The problem with wind turbines is that they make a lot of noise. If you want to put one on your house that is a problem,” says Silverton. “The blades are rotating at up to 1000 times a minute. We tried some mini turbines and it makes as much noise as an outboard engine or a lawnmower. You couldn’t work in the room below it.”

Far bigger companies than Renewable Devices have tried and failed to solve the problem, but a plastic ring around the edge of the blades configured to guide the air in a particular way rendered the turbine almost silent.

It is that silence that interested the drone builder. Drones, which are light unmanned propeller- driven aircraft, are most often used for surveillance. The attractions of a propeller silencing device are clear.

The headline said NASA was interested in this company. But it wasn't. It was the miltiary arm of NASA which has been peverting NASA for years now. Like the recent failed rocket/robot in space attempt that can't explain what happened because it is a military secret, the dark side of NASA continues to have money poured into it while the science/civilian sector dies on the vine. The military flies all sorts of craft large and small all over our mountains here, many at tremendously low altitudes, sometimes skimming so close to my house, I can literally see who is flying them. I am nervous about them doing this with robots. Flying silently, that would be unnerving since I am outside a lot and I love to watch my birds in flight so I notice the aircraft more than most people down in the valley.

The owners refused to sell because they didn't want to be rich, they want to save the planet earth. One can be a patriot to the planet, indeed, that is the noblest form of patriotism! They love this planet and want to save it and this is their contribution to this cause and the fact that they would rather continue to toil to bring this about, unlike today's news that we can turn coal into diesel which will use up the 500 years of coal in a mere 50 years and make global warming much much worse...this is good news, the windmill solution that is clever, clean and quiet.

Thank you, Charlie Silverton and David Anderson!

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Comments

I have a feeling they're going make far more money selling windmills than they ever would licensing it to the US government. The market for this sort of thing is going to be huge.

Posted by: Skamandros | April 19, 2006 at 02:44 AM

Wow, I want some too!

Posted by: judah | April 19, 2006 at 12:07 PM

They don't have a big factory yet churning them out but when they do, I can't wait!

Posted by: Elaine Meinel Supkis | April 19, 2006 at 05:49 PM

I live in the desert and get lots of high winds. There are a couple of U.S. companies already which make these roof-top models. We investigated them but eventually decided against a purchase. But my partner observed one in action at a neighbor's home. It worked well but the problem was that birds would fly into it, both killing the birds and damaging the unit. The home owner loved being "off grid".

This one sounds interesting. Thank you.

Posted by: celynmcgoo | April 20, 2006 at 11:21 AM

My husband and I have great bird watching here on the mountain, dozens of species come and go, winter and summer. Migration season, we see hundreds of birds who use our extensive woods/fields and streams to graze on their way north or south. Butterflies do this, too.

We are very concerned about harming them, too. This is why I loved this news story. We are waiting on the wind generators only because the technology is rapidly improving.

Posted by: Elaine Meinel Supkis | April 20, 2006 at 07:34 PM

Dear Elaine, That little ring does more than just damp sound [ unless I hypothesise wrong]. It performs a function similar to the outer shroud on a ducted turbofan redirecting the bladetip vortices back at the blade bodies increasing efficency and incidentially making the whole thing more visible to the wild life. In other words more bird friendly. I never thought of that approach, smacks of genious. Like the way he runs his company.

Posted by: John Szczesniak | April 19, 2006 at 08:29 AM

The two men running that company are for real. We can hope they will prosper and the price come down.

Posted by: Elaine Meinel Supkis | April 19, 2006 at 08:12 PM

Posted by: Elaine Meinel Supkis | April 30, 2006 at 09:38 PM