The New NIMBY-Defeating Wind Turbine
Wind turbines? Dontcha hate them! Horrible things going round-and-round. Roundandroundandroundandround. They make a lot of noise, and bits seem to keep on falling off them. Dangerous.
Then there’s the NIMBY neighbours: “Oh, we don’t want one of those here,” they say. “Renewable energy: yes. Somewhere where it’s inconvenient: NO!” It’s as though they think a wind-energy solution can be integrated into every house with minimal visual impact.
Well blow me down, it can!!
Ridgeblade is a fabulous wind-turbine solution from UK based The Power Collective. It’s very simple: instead of a large standalone windmill-like structure, put a long bladed turbine along the ridge of a building’s roof.
The blades are about the same length as a medium wind turbine, so you can catch about the same amount of wind. What’s more, as these can be mounted along an existing roof, there’s no need for an additional NIMBY-provoking superstructure.
So revolutionary is this approach that the company has won $750,000 from the Green Challenge Awards.
“It’s beyond a dream,” said Power Collective CEO Dean Gregory when Skype founder Niklas Zennström announced him as the winner. I’ll bet: he’d only entered the competition two days before the closing date!
This is the right kind of innovation, one which will bring a community together to provide energy together on a collective scale, rather than relying upon some far away power station to provide the same for a profit.
Let’s hope it succeeds.
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October 23rd, 2009 at 7:28 am
I have been see this desing in last week. It is really unique idea for the rooftop wind turbines. How about its generator efficiency?
October 23rd, 2009 at 9:11 am
It’s not going to rotate to catch wind from every direction, so it can never be as good a traditional one.
Still, better than nothing.
October 23rd, 2009 at 9:57 am
thats a great idea, but not as efficient as the big turbines. and what about the people who live in wooded valleys? people need to get over it. put one in my back yard!! im not a thick skulled elitist..
October 23rd, 2009 at 3:09 pm
i don’t imagine a regular turbine would work much better in a wooded valley.
this would be g
October 23rd, 2009 at 4:03 pm
another theory goes down in flames, this is just fine as long as the wind direction never changes
the conventional wind turbines track the wind and have a feathering device to avoid damage in case the wind speed becomes to intense
lil more thought needed
October 23rd, 2009 at 5:39 pm
It would work well on ranch-style houses with L-shaped ridges on the roof.
October 23rd, 2009 at 6:37 pm
Wow. Will these bad ideas never end?
Re: “The blades are about the same length as a medium wind turbine, so you can catch about the same amount of wind. ”
The amount of energy captured is not related to the length of the rotor, but to the **swept area** which is very small in this case. But, why not check in with Paul Gipe and Mick Sagrillo, leading wind power experts:
http://www.wind-works.org/articles/RoofTopMounting.html
Re: “Wind turbines? Dontcha hate them! ”
nope!
October 24th, 2009 at 4:39 am
We will never see one in use!!
October 24th, 2009 at 7:52 am
We keep trying to take a non efficient system and making it worse. Wind power is only as good as the battery or system that stores it. It reduces down to the cost per kilowatt. Remember, poverty kills more people than wars, diseases or anything else. The solution must be inexpensive energy. The cheaper the better. I’ll trade in “feeling good” over being poor anytime.
October 24th, 2009 at 10:26 am
Thanks for all the thoughts everyone!
bawbag’s point that they cannot rotate is a con when compared to traditional turbines; however in most places the roofs are not aligned in straight lines but curve with the road. From a community POV a roof somewhere may be generating at any point in time.
The thing is that this ideas is for a good, unobtrusive turbine which could be fitted to every building. Sure it won’t be as efficient as a large scale wind turbine, but with these fitted to houses the need for large turbines could be drastically reduced.
thos’ point about poverty is also well made and this, once the fundamentals have been sorted out, could well become the lightweight low-technology solution of choice.
October 24th, 2009 at 2:26 pm
One day, when NIMBY’s pantry is low, and oil exceeds $150.00 a bbl, America falters and sputters lacking power, and his lights dim in brown outs, and his favorite fishing spot glows from the effluent of the local Nuclear plant, one day! When Nimby’s wife needs surgery in a hospital without even wind power, his child studies by street lamp, he works 14 hour shifts to keep up with Asian realities, his streets are filled with discontents, Anarchists, ready to render his fat ass for their nightly marauds , his daughter cannot shake her gangster boyfriend, and has no medicine for her STD’s, One Day! Nimby will put down his imported Scotch and water, get off his Italian leather sofa, reach for his Chinese made side-arm and shoot the South Korean made bullet right into his thick temple and relieve the rest of humanity of his asinine blinkered follies! We await that day in great anticipation, We the peons, the communal care givers the proletariat of this country, wait for the day that asshvle sees more than himself, his personal needs and desires and realizes the awesome damage he has done to the group, for his lone-star ways!
October 24th, 2009 at 4:20 pm
Wind power is a great idea and we should have a lot more of it, however roof-mounted wind turbines simply don’t work usefully because of the turbulence proivded by the building itself, and usually other nearby buildings and trees. Mounting a turbine anywhere near other structures is a bad idea because it is very close to being a total waste of time/money effort which should be spent on something more useful, such a larger turbine away from buildings, or solar thermal or PV (which do work, even at house-size microgeneration sizes), or of course insulation which pretty-much every house in the country needs more of.
The fundamentals of this problem mean that it doesn’t matter what shape the turbine is – putting it on a house is dumb. I don’t know how long it is going to be before this info sinks in to everybody and people stop getting $750,000 prizes for things that are dangerous close to scams. (see Windsave in the UK who got a lot of investment money and sold a lot of turbines to ill-informed victims in the UK before finally going bust). Lets hope that the power collective are not going to repeat the performance.
October 24th, 2009 at 10:53 pm
“The blades are about the same length as a medium wind turbine, so you can catch about the same amount of wind.”
Poppycock. The swept area is so much smaller.
October 25th, 2009 at 12:26 am
Thank you Chris for the article. This innovation seems promising. Like you said – if every roof has one – it will go a long way in reducing the dependence on fossil fuel guzzling alternatives.
I think these methods need to be looked into even for the poor countries where traditional power supply is appalling.
October 25th, 2009 at 7:58 am
Cool idea!
You know in the years that I have read articles on solar and wind power one overpowering realization I have had is that there are people who think these devices need to function 100% of the time to be of benefit. Newsflash… It’s simply not true. They don’t need to take you off the grid. They just need to save some power. That’s all. I can just imagine that if a home with such a device fitted also had solar roof tiles then you would be saving a lot of power. A savvy financial investment? – I don’t know… Green common sense – Definitely.
October 25th, 2009 at 8:00 am
Don’t forget solar water heating! lol
October 25th, 2009 at 8:29 am
the US government has all the technology to be running everything off of nuclear power and very efficiently… practically no waste, but they aren’t gonna let us do it because everything is about money. that’s why all of these ideas do go to waste. no matter how good or bad
October 25th, 2009 at 8:40 am
Nice and clean, maybe better for birds. I have to wonder if this poses any noise or vibration problems for the house itself. It would not be worth it if I had to live inside of a buzzing box.
October 25th, 2009 at 1:02 pm
I wonder if they’ve thought of using vented attic air to augment the captured wind? Electricity generation plus chimney-effect cooling!
October 25th, 2009 at 10:10 pm
It always amazes me to see such negative comments about the valuable and creative problem solving approaches they themselves have failed to visualize.
I congratulate the designer on a clever, usable and practical solution that if implemented in the aggregate could do much to ameliorate our present unsustainable reliance on fossil fuel energy.
The rest of you sound like so much sour grapes. How do people put up with you? If you must speak, do so respectful of the efforts of others and offer solutions yourselves to the problems before us.
October 26th, 2009 at 12:08 am
Thank you everyone once again for your comments: it’s a real pleasure to provoke such debate.
My comment about the length of the blades was deliberately not about swept area, which is essentially a measure of efficiency. Because this is not an HAWT solution, comparing swept area is misleading.
Similarly, wind turbulence in built up areas is caused by wind rushing off the ridge of a roof. Because the Ridgeblade captures wind at that pinch point it’s actually harnessing pitched roofs to channel wind into the turbines.
The Power Collective estimate this will make the Ridgeblade up to 9 times more efficient than a HAWT solution.
October 26th, 2009 at 3:05 am
It is not clear from the article, whether the Green Challenge Award was given after veifying the performance on at least one prototype installed on a roof. Proof of pudding is in the eating. If a prototype has proven the concept, it will certainly make a revolution in the industry. However, the ecoomic feasibility would be limited to certain areas only.
October 26th, 2009 at 9:13 am
What about the noise and vibration. There has to be some. I don,t want hat over my bedroom.
October 26th, 2009 at 2:51 pm
Cute, but useless. Not only can it generate nearly nothing of power, it would be too noisy and generate too much vibration for people to tolerate. Wind is dead, leave it alone.
October 26th, 2009 at 4:13 pm
These actually aren’t that bad. Do you know anything about how much they will cost, noise levels, or power output? Just curious.
October 26th, 2009 at 5:00 pm
The surface drag of the roof will make this very inefficient. Think of a stream, where the water near the banks flows slower than the midstream current.
October 26th, 2009 at 6:31 pm
I’d think it would tend to cause the whole structure it was attached to to vibrate and resonate with the turbine. Based on the amount of noise and vibration my conventional turbine produces out in the back yard, I’d hate to have it attached to the house. It’d be deafening. Thirty feet away, anchored to solid ground is fine, but on the roof – yikes! I realize the design being discussed probably produces _less_ vibration, but still, the slightest imbalance, even from crud on the vanes, seems like it would shake the house. I’ll keep mine where it is, where I can watch it whirling gracefully in the wind, but not hear it.
October 26th, 2009 at 6:37 pm
they should add a gutter system on top to catch rain water and use it as a water turbine as well
October 26th, 2009 at 9:26 pm
wind turbines need to be high enough so that there is nothing that will creat a turbulent wind, when wind hits a flat surface it shoots 12 meters strait up before leveling out…so this design probably wouldnt be very effective. and i love seeing regular horizontal axis wind turbines.
October 26th, 2009 at 9:49 pm
hi I’m a roofer and I know better than any one that is bloging to you that you do got a great Idea but there are some details you need to figure in like blade design and lenght to corispond with the roof that the systom is being instaled on please contact me if you would like to further talk about it or meet to see what I’m talking about I would love to see some one stick it to the electric companys and help the people I have pput my email on the thing here and keep up the good work
October 26th, 2009 at 11:36 pm
@Pramod brief entry criteria can be found here (http://www.greenchallenge.info/web/show/id=68083): products need to be able to be taken to market within 2 years.
In this case Ridgeblade is currently installing the first prototypes in the North Yorks Moors (a UK National Park, which has also give the solution a grant).
Noise & cost: The Power Collective describe Ridgeblade as “extremely quiet” and “low cost”.
There are no hard figures currently available, other than the nine-times factor against a typical HAWT microgeneration solution.
October 29th, 2009 at 3:26 pm
I see a lot of great ideas like this one, but hardly ever see them materialize, what gives?
October 29th, 2009 at 4:49 pm
well, perhaps the turbine does not need to turn in only one direction. what if the turbine has no forward or reverse? and to solve the problem of the directional curve of the blades, just have a twist in the blade as in a badly twisted piece of lumber. This way, whichever way the wind is blowing strongest, the blades will be turning. i have seen something similar to this outside a building in Washington DC, only it was standing on end and was not encased as this one is. and, another issue that would need to be addressed is whether or not the same roof vent would work, or if they would need to be extended down. if it was layed out properly, the heat being expelled from the house may be able to turn the turbine even when there is no breaze outside.
these are just some thoughts i had.
October 29th, 2009 at 7:31 pm
might be good for barns and outlying strutures, but houses usually have trees nearby as well as neighboring houses all of which act as various buffers to the wind flow. wind turbines reaching high catch nothing but air.
October 29th, 2009 at 7:35 pm
Are your marketting people behind this? Put out a story with very few design details and let the rest of us fine-tune, applaud or shoot down your idea. free survey with benefits. nice.
October 30th, 2009 at 7:21 am
guys capturing ANY wind from the roof is more than what almost anybody is doing now.
This guy, when he was FOURTEEN took junk he found and built a wind turbine in Tanzania. He used a book he had found to make his own generator and he was able to generate enough energy to get people lined up at his house to charge their gadgets…
every single thing is a step in the right direction.
we should invest enough so that 95% is guaranteed to be so crazy that it fails. that’s the only way to have the really amazing innovations… that’s also how nature works… fish lay thousands of eggs in hopes that one will survive to the next year… when a man ejaculates only 15% of the sperm he makes are even viable… but it only takes one success for such a large investment, to completely pay off big time.
October 30th, 2009 at 7:31 am
This is the least-efficient form of turbine to begin with (compared to prop-style, or Darien). Then, it’s mounted low and next to obstructions. Very small swept area. Doesn’t follow wind direction.
I would bet money that this will never be worth installing en masse. These horizontal designs come out every few years, people coo over them, and they disappear when the developers realize it’s a fundamentally weak technology. Unless they knew all along.
Award fail.
October 30th, 2009 at 2:49 pm
There will a challenge isolating the vibration of this rotating mass from the home since it will need to be mounted rigidly.
November 1st, 2009 at 9:54 am
why is everyone trying to shoot down this idea? I think its a great solution to simple renewable energy.
Imagine if every single house in the country had one of these on them. They could cut the country’s energy intake by like 10 or 15 percent! and because of the simplicity of it, it could become just as essential to any house as a hot water heater or a fridge!
November 1st, 2009 at 11:33 am
It is a good idea and a very neat solution. They seem to be in sections these sections be made to rotate through 180 degrees with fin in the centre of each section.This of course means that each section would need to generates independently.Not so neat and maybe cause problems with weather proofing the the ridge but these could be over come with careful design.
November 1st, 2009 at 10:00 pm
hmmmm…..looks very simular to a U.S. Patent already out there since Sept. of 2007?
November 3rd, 2009 at 7:20 pm
jesus folks, at least someone is out there working on it and thinking in new ways. Get of your asses and do something about it yourself, instead of ripping someone else’s ideas to shreds!
November 3rd, 2009 at 7:24 pm
@Uncle B….very well written, eloquent and on point…I applaud
November 4th, 2009 at 2:26 am
Thank you once again to everyone for their comments.
I applaud Tara’s cynicism, but I can guarantee that I’m not PR for the company, just an honest jobbing journalist who thought this story was worth writing about
Would someone be able to clarify about the comparison to HAWT swept area? I understand the principle, but this is not a HAWT so as far as I’m concerned swept area is irrelevant (apples and pears). Am I missing something?
November 4th, 2009 at 2:42 pm
I do like new ideas, even this one, but i wonder a lot about the level of noise. It seems to me that a rotor like this produces little torque which… creates a need for a lot of RPM to be very effective.
November 16th, 2009 at 5:37 am
Chris, there is discussion about this on LinkedIn as well:
http://www.linkedin.com/groupAnswers?viewQuestionAndAnswers=&gid=71342&discussionID=8800495
It is within a group about Wind Energy, guess you have to become a member to see the discussion.
December 1st, 2009 at 1:24 pm
the wind direction problem (as well as turbulent wind ) can easily be solved with the use of helical blade arrangement.
http://www.aerotecture.com
eventually, the fossil fuels will run out, and i wouldn’t bet on any sort of clean fission or fusion being available by then. besides, who wants to keep storing lethal radioactive waste?
I guess some people just live to shoot down other peoples ideas.
December 3rd, 2009 at 8:39 pm
While there are some efficiency issues, it’s not all bad news. At the ridgeline of a roof, the flow will be accelerated slightly, adding a little boost to the system. This is why you will sometimes see wind turbines mounted along ridgelines in the mountains.
Efficiency is somewhat less important when the power source is free.
December 17th, 2009 at 7:05 pm
http://wind.energy-business-review.com/news/caltech_researchers_develop_wind_farm_design_based_on_fish_schooling_091123/
in light of the Caltech study finding that when they school together a bunch of barrel wind turbines, they MULTIPLY the amount of energy collected…. it would be fascinating to see what would happen if instead of just the ridge, the entire roof was covered with rows of your style wind turbines… perhaps in such a way so that all of them are kind of hidden in the structure of the house….could you get 100x as much energy like they did with their “school of vertical wind turbines?” I wonder.