We encourage all readers to go take a look at some remarkably fresh approaches to powering and managing the grid. And applause to General Electric and the sponsors supporting this contest, as this is how we will advance toward the development of a saner and more sustainable world.

The joint submission from John Tuttle, president of Windpipe Corporation, and myself is as follows:

Title:

Highway & Traffic Wind Energy Recycling System Using a Bladeless Wind-to-Electricity Generation System

Summary: Heavily trafficked stretches of Interstate highway create megawatts of lost wind power daily from passing vehicles. We will capture, convert, store, and recycle wind from this traffic into usable power, feeding it back to the grid or fueling stations that can power electric or hybrid vehicles creating the bypass wind.

The Idea: If a stranded motorist has ever stood on the edge of a busy highway they recall a place where the wind gusts from passing vehicles swirled powerfully. This very roadside happens to be a reservoir of lost wind energy, which can be captured as raw energy and converted to electrical power, and then distributed to the grid. Put in practical terms for the 21st century, such a highway sporting numerous electric-powered vehicles, is capable of producing its own roadside recharging stations where motorists to take a driving break while their car gets juiced up.

The Solution: In an era of diminishing energy supplies, now is an ideal time to capture lost wind energy, by converting, or recycling that energy into useable AC power. Such captured power can be fed to utilities, homes, or fueling stations that serve some of the very vehicles creating these bypass winds.

Available technologies: There are three basic types of wind-to-electricity technologies that might be used for roadside wind capture: horizontal-axis blade-driven turbines, vertical-axis blade-driven turbines, and a newer bladeless technology that uses resonance to convert wind to electricity (Windpipe, Inc. U.S. Provisional Patent App. No. 61/226,950 filed July 20, 2009, titled “Improved methods and systems for generating electrical energy from wind energy,” and International Utility Conversion: 7062-00100).

Windpipe uses non-linear feedback to amplify the percentage of Vortex Energy from Total flow Energy, leading to surprisingly high overall conversion efficiency.

The period of Vortex generation locks to the transit time of the pressure waves in the pipe, while the vortex generation acts as a reciprocating piston, launching pressure wave fronts down the pipe, applying dynamic pressure to the flexible diaphragm at the closed end of the tube, providing mechanical motion to another dynamical system, which can be a linear alternator, fluid pump, or both.

The engine is based on a principle from Fluid Dynamics: Bluff Object Vortex Induced Vibration (VIV) with Coupled Mode Flutter to a Second Order System – in WindPipe’s case, a standing wave tube where the resulting mechanical motion at the closed end is converted to electricity, pump action, explosion or both.

Because horizontal and vertical wind turbines are large, noisy and potentially dangerous in locales where people travel, we believe the Windpipe technology provides the soundest technology to test multiple applications of wind-to-energy in developing a viable and cost-effective wind to electricity capture and distribution infrastructure.

Bladeless system advantages:

• Uses an array of lightweight horizontal pipes, reducing transportation costs
• Harvests wind power at higher wind speeds (Regions 3 and 4)
• Is harmless to birds & bats
• Linear motor motion has a lifetime of over 60 yrs, with minimal bearing wear
• Produces power at a cost of 0.5¢ to 1¢/kWh
• Equipment easy to access & maintain

Control of highway wind turbulence: We believe the use of attractively designed chutes and foils will be important in the system design in order to best manage potential wind turbulence.

Collaborators:  Glenn Meyers, storyteller and founder of Green Streets, envisioned a wind recycling system that could convert displaced highway wind energy to electricity. John Tuttle, a leading patent holder in the RFID space, invented the Windpipe, a bladeless wind-to-electricity generation system.

It has been an honor working with John Tuttle on this endeavor. Congratulations, also, to the many worthy entrants in the Challenge.

Windpipe developer, John Tuttle Photo: http://windpipenews.com

The dramatic vista of noisy wind farms featuring towers that go the length of a football field will soon change, if John R. Tuttle has any say about the matter. “We’re nearing the end of that road,” says this engineer and inventor, who has multiple patents pending for his direct conversion wind-to-electricity system known as the Windpipe.

The most remarkable detail about this simple mechanism is that has no visible moving parts – only a hollow pipe with a configured nozzle that draws wind down its length, then converting it to electricity. The Windpipe requires no propellers, turbines, or rotating machinery. And unlike numerous propeller-driven towers, does not stop generating electricity when the wind velocity reaches higher than 55 miles per hour.

Contemporary wind towers in operation Photo: National Center for Renewable Energy

If all components involved in redrafting part of this wind energy infrastructure come into place, the landscape of the wind-to-energy business may go through a dramatic transformation.  It stands to reason why this mechanism has generated such interest. As such, Mr. Tuttle and his team have attracted attention from some leading venture capital firms – unnamed here for reasons of due diligence.

Unlike the traditional vertical tower that features three blades, Tuttle’s system is horizontal. To visualize, each component – virtually a long box containing a long, hollow tube – measures eight feet by eight feet square and runs a length of 40 feet. The size is similar to that of a shipping container, a practical detail when the systems is installed at a remote location.

“Our concept is that you can build that array on site,” says Tuttle. The array he mentions can be constructed in a stackable fashion, one container on top of another, and laterally, as well.

When first-phase funding is in place to build the first demonstration Windpipe system, Tuttle believes it will probably be constructed at the Golden, CO-based National Center for Renewable Energy test farm.

Tuttle is mum on exactly how a windpipe works, other than to state the pipe converts vibrations into electrical energy, adding the unequivocal formula, “energy is equal to velocity cubed.” There is a certain promise behind this formula, especially when the invention has almost no moving parts.

Windpipe vs. GE turine comparison Source: John R. Tuttle

I found this video of Jay Leno discussing his new MagLev Wind Turbine with Ken Johnson of Enviro Energies.  The turbine, technically christened “MagWind Vertical Axis Wind Turbines (MVAWT),” uses magnetism to suspend the turbine, thus providing for virtually friction free operation.  Simply put, the upside is drastically reduced maintenance cost (no bearings to wear out), and improved efficiency (little energy lost to friction).  See for yourself:

In Denver, Qwest and Grubb & Ellis, the property manager for the Qwest headquarters building in Denver, extinguished the iconic blue Qwest light in the Denver skyline in observance of Earth Hour.  We’d love to see more business participating in this event in future years.  It’s an easy, yet powerfully symbolically way to raise awareness about the need to address climate change in our public debate.

Here’s some images taken from the north side of Downtown Denver from before sunset, until after Earth Hour ended.

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According to alternative-energy-news.info,

The Agucadoura station will open another 25 Pelamis units later on, thus generating 21MW of power. They will save 60,000 tons of CO2 per year compared to a conventional fossil fuel plant. Humankind has realized that ocean waves can prove to be good alternative energy resources.

For the Portuguese, ocean waves might end up being a GREAT alternative energy resource.  When one considers the powerful Atlantic waves that continiously lap at Portugal’s shore, it’s hard not to get excited about the potential.  Indeed, power-technology.com estimates that “wave power could make up to 30% of the country’s gross domestic product by 2050.”  And startup costs are about half that of wind power and a quarter the cost of solar startups.

Here’s an animation demonstrating the principal:

And here’s a few photos:

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At DADS, a V-16 electricity generating engine is powered by methane

Not all greenhouse gas is going to waste, some of it is generating electricity. At the gigantic Denver Arapahoe Disposal Site, known to mot natives as DADS, Waste Management Corp. and the city of Denver are now capturing the greenhouse gas, methane –  generated from decomposing rubbish — and powering four Caterpillar V-16 engines. In turn, the engines generate enough electricity to feed power almost 3,000 households.

The enormous DADS facility is used as a landfill for the metropolitan Denver area and is projceted to have a 100-year lifespan. As methane gas collection grows, the Waste Management plant has been designed to add another four engines. V-16 engines will eventually be replaced with V-20 engines.