[news] Birmingham to get UK's first of a new breed of wind turbine

[unixman_again]

Birmingham to get UK's first of a new breed of wind turbine - Birmingham Post except this design isn't new - there were some in Australia in the 1960s and I think the design goes back to the 1920s.

 

I am highlighting this story because I've often wondered why they don't install hundreds of these, maybe a metre tall in the central reservation of motorways. The passing traffic would make them whizz around. Along similar lines, I've also often wondered why they don't install a small turbine in the drain of every sink.

[just_david]

Birmingham to get UK's first of a new breed of wind turbine - Birmingham Post except this design isn't new - there were some in Australia in the 1960s and I think the design goes back to the 1920s.

 

I am highlighting this story because I've often wondered why they don't install hundreds of these, maybe a metre tall in the central reservation of motorways. The passing traffic would make them whizz around. Along similar lines, I've also often wondered why they don't install a small turbine in the drain of every sink.

 

Distraction to drivers?

 

Replacing lamposts with them seems win win though, especially as they replaced the old bulbs with LED's

[speckytecky]

Not such a danger and distraction as mobile phones have proved to be or come to that rubber neckers who just have to try and see as much as they can of someone else's misfortune.

Distraction to drivers?

 

Replacing lamposts with them seems win win though, especially as they replaced the old bulbs with LED's

[pcstru]

I am highlighting this story because I've often wondered why they don't install hundreds of these, maybe a metre tall in the central reservation of motorways. The passing traffic would make them whizz around.

There are two things to consider, the first is most important - there is no such things as a free lunch. If you can extract energy from the passing traffic, you have decreased their efficiency (so even if it did work, you would effectively be getting the energy from their petrol but extremely inefficiently). The second is the environment would be very turbulent, which is not a good prospect for the site of a wind turbine.

 

Along similar lines, I've also often wondered why they don't install a small turbine in the drain of every sink.

Here there is just too little energy to get any return. Let's say a sink contains 10 litres of water, which should be 10Kg. Say we measure the drop to the turbine of 1 meter then the total energy available would be 10*9.8*1 or 98 Joules. Conversion will lose ~50% of that (more in this case as small generators struggle to achieve high efficiency) but probably a lot more (80-90% loss), so you will be left with at best 50 Joules. If we want that as power, 1 Watt is 1 Joule per second, so we can have 1 Watt for 50 seconds or we could light a 50 Watt bulb for 1 second. I wash up twice a day so I might get 100 Watt seconds a day, or 36500 Watt seconds a year. If I have a 1watt LED I would be able to light it once every 864 seconds or if I collected and stored all that energy over the course of the year I would be able to power my 1KW kettle for ~31.5 seconds, possibly enough for a tepid/lukewarm cup of tea.

[Chuckster]

The H&S brigade will probably say in the event of an accident on the motorway the little turbine could chop a person's head off upon impact. Assuming the driver is going at breakneck speeds and whatnot.

[just_david]

The H&S brigade will probably say in the event of an accident on the motorway the little turbine could chop a person's head off upon impact. Assuming the driver is going at breakneck speeds and whatnot.

I thought about that, but I figured if someone has enough of an accident to hit one, then actually hitting one would be the least of their issues.

[Duranis]

Also laying power lines and installing them would cause massive disruptions on a motorway system that is already plagued with massive disruptions.