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great video. i am considering options for my house which is in a windy area. it would have been nice to understand costs of the devices. right now, there is no information about pricing and cost/kw...so it is impossible to consider. Do these companies even provide an estimate or ballpark? why keep it secret?
@@ricos1497 thanks. i understood that, but i think the companies have a target range...like "we expect to sell this unit for around $10 when we scale up". i just hate it when price is not mentioned if someone is trying to convince us to give a serious thought
I used to work in the small wind industry, and there is a huge problem that's been understated here. The wind available at a roof top is not only more turbulent, but as you get closer to the ground the wind velocity drops dramatically, and the power is related to the cube of the velocity. Putting a wind turbine on your home not only subjects it to a lot more vibrational forces that haven't been studied well, but it'd be like putting your solar panels inside a window. Sure you can improve the design, but the physics isn't on your side. You're also battling against all the wind shadows of buildings and trees nearby as well. The technology behind a savonius turbine isn't necessarily bad, but the marketing for small vertical axis turbines is very pyramid scheme like and many companies have defrauded their investors and closed. Get your turbines high, and get them away from trees and buildings. Friends don't let friends put wind turbines on their roof.
I disagree. I think the other system has just as much promise as it capatilizes on effects that are already being caused by human intervention in nature and uses natural amplification to drive up efficiency with a much lower baseline for wind speed. This application doesn't necessarily mean that it's going to be a better or worse design, but is more akin to having another specialized tool that achieves the same thing. It will come down to use case scenarios in which one design is clearly more advantageous than the other. In my humble opinion... I like have several kinds of screwdrivers when my simple objective is to drive in a screw... where the screw is located might make one screwdriver superior to the other choice. Like my analogy? lol
Yes, please, DO create more videos on residential wind power. There are so many wind power turbines you can find on UA-cam, but getting reliable information on them is difficult. Some of the ones I am interested in are Liam F1 (Archimedes turbine), Solarwind Pro, Tulip wind turbine, and many others. It seems they keep popping up regularly. The Harmony turbine looks interesting for residential use. The Aeromine only seems practical for industrial or business applications. They don't seem practical for residential roofs. Please consider the noise level of the turbine. This will be an important factor in keeping the peace with your neighbors.
Also be very suspicious of anyone promoting roof-mount turbines who doesn't talk about vibrations and engineering. There's no point saving money on electricity if the turbine vibrates your house apart.
Some of them are ridiculously expensive for no reason. Like the f1 turbine. That is what I was told. I don't even think it is an installation issue either. Think it is 6,000 dollars for just the unit.
I've been keeping my eye on Harmony's progress for years and am still waiting to see some real-world data on power output vs. swept area and wind speed. Granted it's clever and looks really cool, but viability is still a major question mark in my mind. You might say I'm a bigger "fan" of the Aeromine approach.
Have you seen any real-world data on Aeromine? I haven't been able to find any and the company couldn't provide any when I asked a couple of months ago.
The majority of small wind turbine companies will try to mislead you when/if they publish specifications. They usually will publish specifications for power produced in hurricane force winds instead of the miniscule wind most areas get. Avoid wind turbines and stick with solar power.
I like the innovation that harmony brings to the table, but with my experience, I think they would need to be an order of magnitude better than the original split barrel design. I spent a long time with alternative energy as engineering education in the early days, and as a hobby in later days. After Regan cancelled the alternative energy support the entire industry (and my chosen career) left the country. I had the split barrel design back then, as well as many of the other systems being pushed. What I found was the entire industry hid behind lies, and no one shared actual performance data except unhappy customers. But when talking to customers, we generally experienced performance levels in the 2 to 10% range against claims. Explanations were "you are in a low wind area" and "you are confusing max ratings with reality". So a 400 watt unit could be expected to produce an intermittent 10 watts. I knew this would be the case as an engineer, my job was to find the actuals, and I found very little actual, the ratings to actual was around 40:1 on a windy day, then 40:0.1 the rest of the time. But people wanting to put a lightbulb in the barn thought wind power was the best thing since sliced bread, and no math was needed if the light was able to be turned on.
@@QuintBUILDs Most experimenters, will build small models and find out what works best, then scale up. Harmony on the other hand doesn't do that. They build full scale turbines and find out they don't perform well, but what the heck , it's not their money they experiment with is it?
G'day, Sophisticated, From Sophist, An ancient Greek school of Philosophy composed of Elegantly confected Nonsense..., after Sophocles...who founded the Movement. A Sophomore is someone starting their Second years of studying any subject - they know more than a raw beginner - but not a lot more...(Sorcerer's Apprentice-Effect). Sophomoric means Callow & immature... Sophisticated as a word meant Adulterated & Impure..., It was first applied to coloured Glass, or "Paste" Fake Artificial Gemstones...; which were Made by Adulterating Pure molten Clear Glass with Impurities..., to make it Coloured - Red or Green or Blue, Pretending to be Rubies, Emeralds, or Saphires... So, yeah, Sophisticated means Adulterated & Impure ; but it's Fashionable to pretend that such a Label is Complimentary...(!). Such is life, Have a good one... Stay safe. ;-p Ciao !
Hi, Warbles. Good to see you again. Thanks for setting the record straight. Modern English has a number of words which have reversed their meanings, or changed them considerably. Another one is 'fantastic'. @@WarblesOnALot
Didn’t hear this mentioned in the video but one of the largest drawbacks to residential wind generation is the noise that most systems produce. Generally the higher the rpm the worse it is, especially if not maintained to laboratory standards.
@@landoishisname Helicopters are flying personal transports and they're far louder than regular cars, especially modern cars driving at low/city speeds.
I’m so glad there are companies continuing to explore the needs of homeowners with “dirty” wind. We have no hope for solar and being in a steep narrow valley all we have is dirty wind.
Google how many workers they kill, industrial installers who are forced to climb these structures into the wind. More than the entire nuclear industry has ever existed, including Chernobyl and Fukushima. And add to that a huge number of birds, so huge that wind turbines have shaken entire ecosystems, allowing mice and rats to reproduce.
@@adddude7524 Absolutely. There are a lot of niches to be filled. If I could get 4kw a day from the gap between 2 houses with reliable small unit that is easily serviced, I would pay over the odds. I also have security of supply issues to mitigate. Winters are worsening year on year, Big Infrastructure cannot keep up.
@@adddude7524 The map at 16:07 suggests that most of the US is well-suited to Harmony's approach over traditional American wind turbines. While I'm no authority on niches in the market, I wouldn't call that a niche engineering-design-wise. The area useful for wind energy production using Harmony's Savonius Turbine approach is bigger than the existing useful area for wind energy.
Yes. Please do more on this field and on Harmony. And, thank you for helping to get the word out that the data on these designs is and has been wrong. This has been holding back progress for long enough, and I'm not convinced that it hasn't been on purpose.
Yeah, I don't want a whole huge installation, and I'm not holding my breath for powering my whole home. But something small like that I can put in my yard to defray my electric costs a bit really appeals to me.
@@orionbetelgeuse1937 Ah, yes. Clearly. They should've gotten your advice before funding and researching their designs. You are obviously the genius they desperately needed to help them.
@@Dowlphin: Yup. Just look at the resistance to EV's, now that they're being more widely adopted and working decently, despite the persistent denial by the haters and science deniers.
Matt, I’m building a new home in Plymouth Mass and I am largely following in your steps with solar, Span entrance panel, back up batteries…. Located 1/3 mile from Cape Cod Bay and 160 ft up, we almost always get wind. Obviously, this probably makes my location a better than average one for residential wind. Keep doing what you are doing on wind. Could you add a segment on how to integrate solar and wind into a system of systems that work harmoniously? Thanks, love your channel!
Fluid dynamics is a trip for sure. I like Zipline's drone delivery approach with their engineers which is an "assume you know nothing" approach. They came up with a wind prop/blade design that is way outside the box.
Matt, Robert Murray Smith did a wonderful series of videos about variable speed transmissions, with the intent to employ these in wind turbines of various composition (horizontal and vertical). This arrangement can be applied to deliver a steady stream of motion from an unsteady source--or, applied electrically, as in the case of a transformer, to exchange amps for volts, and alter the power delivery if that is what's required, rather like an infinite version of a ten-speed bicycle. Rather than reduce the rotation--in which you are losing the potential of that resource--you can simply convert this to another form if a variable speed transmission were employed. I wonder if there is a residential or small scale wind energy research team working on this concept.
Would love to see more videos on niche wind power (roadsides, rooftops, urban canyons, etc.). These applications might never make sense in grid scale operations, but the long tail of wind could provide a significant amount of on-site generation for a distributed future.
Wind turbines one road sides actually generate their power and increase drag on passing cars. So it's a gas powered turbine. Urban canyons seem interesting but the buildings aren't rated structurally rated for the increased load both static and vibrational. The problem with the 'long tail of wind' theory is that you have to integrate that curve to find the area under it to get the energy you can harvest. And when you do that, it's very, very tiny. And to harvest that long tail you need very low friction bearings because the turbines won't spin due to the bearing friction at low speeds. BUT if you do that, then the bearings are subjected to much faster erosion from water and you're reducing their lifetime. It's like putting canola oil in a bearing instead of heavy grease. Source - I used to work in the industry and we had turbines fail for all the reasons above, both mechanically and from a business success perspective.
Yes! Deeper dives please! Would be interested in if you are seeing options from Europe. Similar to parts of US Northern Europe sees a dramatic fall off in solar generation from late September (particularly here in Ireland) but we have no shortage of wind. Keen to understand more and thanks for being at the bleeding edge!
Love to see Harmony turbines getting more attention, I've been following them for a while already. I love the design and how it's potentially still useable well beyond when traditional wind turbines have had to cease function. I actually had just watched this after watching a different video on building integrated PV panels, which makes me think of what it could be like to essentially turn a skyscraper into a power production facility, covering the glass with solar panels, using any maintenance floors as potentially giant airfoil's for Aeromine's style turbines, and I'd love to see Harmony style turbines running up the entire corner(s) of the buildings, just constantly feeding off of whatever prevailing winds are there.
@@BobDevV Do you not understand the sentence you quoted me?? There is no "making something out of nothing." as you put it, you're extracting the wind kinetic energy. The law simply states what goes in must equal what comes out, so while yes, their efficiency is low, they are still pulling a % of that wind's energy out and putting it into the building. It isn't being created out of thin air, (ironically) The wind would be have less energy, and the building would have a bit more than it did before. while impractical it may be, it wouldn't be for profitability. See, the way I see things, "profitable" is what's killing out planet. Not everything should be profitable. There should be some costs that are covered by the society that as a whole benefits from it. Things like public transportation (aka proper tram/train lines with supplemental busses) being heavily subsidized, installation of green technologies, healthcare, those sorts of things should be covered by taxes as they benefit the society as a whole. With transportation you don't need private vehicles, with green techs we won't be killing the planet and it will improve health, and that will make universal healthcare even cheaper, plus coverage for all means significantly cheaper costs per person. (talking to the USA populace here) Being so negative all the time isn't good for your physical and especially mental health. If the world wasn't so profit driven, we'd be more inclined to do things we're passionate about instead of being forced into terrible jobs we hate just because "it pays better". Our society based off profits is killing us.
profitability is not whats killing our planet profitability allows people to come up with cheaper innovation and cheaper things just look to air plane production over the years or anything else cell phones gotta cheaper why? because of profitability@@Fenthule
@@BobDevV The practicality in wind turbines is that they can harness energy when solar panels can't, such as overcast winter skies or at night. The Benefit of Harmony's design is that it's efficient at wind low wind speeds and can handle turbulence and variation that would force other turbines to have to shut down. In other words it garners efficiency due to being capable of operating more consistently and at a smaller scale. Generally speaking it costs almost nothing to build a wind turbine. The materials and energy necessary for their production are insanely cheap compared to the energy and materials necessary for a photovoltaic panel. The only reason solar is so cheap is due to cheap foreign labor and mass production. Realistically if your panels were made in the US or Europe they'd cost twice if not three times as much. Understand right now the majority of the costs associated with installing renewable energy is the home infrastructure. That is to say, installing the electrical controller, meter, converter and battery cell your panels or turbines hook into. If this was a situation where you were JUST doing wind power than yea it wouldn't be practical. But realistically, you'd be using both. With your panels being the primary energy collectors, and your turbines supplementing during days and times where your panels just aren't functioning as efficiently. Also you need to be REALLY careful when it comes to information involving renewables. There is strong financial and political incentive to keep domestic homes from being energy independent. It's why despite zoning and building codes being the fastest way to transition to renewables, neither have been touched or even talked about in the US. Both wind and Solar were invented as a means to power homes off the grid. That's their intended use case. And yet you see a strong government and commercial push for grid scale use. If that doesn't raise an eyebrow it should.
They'll never succeed, their turbine is far too expensive for the amount of energy it produces, and requires regular maintenance, as all small wind turbines do.
I would say that any wind turbines which are in ice and snow areas aught to have no exposed blades. The ones that do have open blades, or wings which revolve can be in all the other areas. Wonderful to see all the innovation, brainstorming, creativity, and cooperation.
Hi Matt. A friend of mine just imported one of those tulip style vertical turbines to test to determine with our Cape Town wind, whether it will produce the results in generating power. The wind blows a lot here in Cape Town during the summer so a turbine solution like this, if all testing goes well, will be a game changer.
What a shock to hear my alma mater, Bucknell University, mentioned on an undecided video 😱 Fun fact while in engineering school there I helped revive an old wind turbine that had been sitting on the campus farm, unused, after getting hit by lighting. I led a team which designed and installed a standalone energy conversion and storage system for the turbine which is still there to this day. The farm uses it to power all their tools from the power of the wind. 😁 That project really sparked my interest and love for wind energy and im so happy to hear about all the innovations coming in the near future for residential production!
There is a company in Europe (The Netherlands to be precise), called Ibis Power, that has a system similar to the Aeromine company you featured. The biggest difference is that they marry solar directly on top of their wind turbines. So when you buy there system you get both. They have been deploying them on tall buildings in Europe so far.
Looked at their site and they present a film with their turbines at rest. Real turbines are better than the mostly CAD turbines presented on this channel, but nevertheless
Thanks for the video (update). There is no singular magic bullet for sustainable energy. Finding solutions that can be done in parallel covering multiple environments is awesome. The Harmony solution is very intriguing and I could see putting two them on our roof as soon as they are available. I hope they focus on simplicity to keep maintenance and manufacturing down. In aviation, we have leading edge slats on some airplanes that lower stall speed when deployed. The beauty is they automatically deploy at slow speed based on air pressure. No electronics, gears, motors, etc. Simple. Reliable. Effective .. and lighter and cheaper than an overly designed solution. Would love to see Harmony open and close using a similar approach.
@@slickfastyes, I just made a similar comment, mechanical governors have been around since the times of steam engines, "how do we stop it spinning to fast" is a solved problem... the real issue with residential turbines is that the vibrate causing noise in the house, and stress in the structure of the house.
This is so cool. Where I live, solar is not an option (Quebec, you know, too far north). But the wind is blowing so strong, each day of the year... we have to really secure our winter car protections in order to prevent it to be blown away. 2 years ago, the wind was so strong that like 20% of all of them were blown or at least, partially detached. I'm even planning to plant a vegetal hay in order to limit wind damage to my fruit trees so they can grow more vertically instead of being pushed back. I don't know if they are looking for test beds, but this area is really well suited for it, especially because QC is not a traditionnal solar area.
Wrong. Southern England is at pretty much the same latitude as Quebec and you can get x thousand kwh per annum for an x kw installation, e.g. a 4kw installation will generate 4,000kwh.
Loads of solar panels performing well in Stockholm Sweden, and Stockholm Sweden is higher up north then Quebec. Not optimal conditions for solar, but solar still absolutely works and residential solar is everywhere and make sense even as high up as Stockholm. And further up north in Sweden too for that matter.
I've been looking into this for over 20 years, ever since Honeywell was trying to market their shaftless turbine. I think vertical axis is a much better solution for the small generators, and Harmony looks very interesting. One issue I've run into is that the makers of PV controllers, like Enphase, do not support the connection of turbine output to their convertors. If you have a PV system and want to add wind, there are no good solutions on the market. Any info on this would be welcome.
Get two charge controllers - one for the PV array, the other for the wind turbine. Make sure both controllers are rated for the DC voltage your system uses. Hook both up to the same battery. The battery doesn't care if it is charged by DC from a wind turbine charge controller or by DC voltage from a PV charge controller. The inverter will then produce AC from the battery.
@@wkgurr If you're not careful with that, the two charge controllers will fight each other. The sector really does need a charge controller that can take in power from multiple sources and use all of it, not just whichever single source has the highest output in the moment.
@@tealkerberus748I checked this with an engineer of the company who sold a Victron inverter to me. Just hook up both controllers to the battery via the inverter. There will be no fight between the controllers. What the system won't be able to do is display the input from the wind turbine and from the PV array separateyl. But it will detect (and display) the charge state of the battery which will increase at a faster pace if both wind and solar are active. Like the PV charge controller the wind turbine charge controller will detect the charge state of the battery and stop (or break) the wind turbine if there are no loads and the battery is full. That is the main control task the charge controller of the wind turbine has to fulfill and it will be able to do so. Regardless of the existence of other charge controllers. Btw the statment by the engineer is supported by what is written in the handbook for the wind turbine ("The book by Tesup").
@ Matt...YES PLEASE could you please do a deeper dive into wind power in urban environments. I live in the city centre and due to our geography there is always wind blowing.
Definitely interested in more on this topic, Matt Ferrell. On the grouping of vertical turbines, there was a study by a university in the UK that found that vertical wind turbines could be 'stacked' up to 8 deep and only lose 5% of the wind. Came out some years back (think I saw it on the BBC?) Funny thing is, I believe off-shore wind via utilities and distributed solar PV would be a better option.
This is the second time I have come across Harmony, and found the other company very intriguing. Would love a deep dive on residential wind power.Very interested. Thanks for breaking these topics down!!!
My dad put wind on his off grid cottage, and the problem was noise. We even looked for lower noise turbines. It ruined the peace, and we took it down. It was a ton of energy.
Another great video, thank you Matt. What I felt was missing was more data on how much power these turbines can generate, ideally compared to the output of a solar panel. That gives us a sense of how many one would need to power different types of buildings.
He didn't tell us because that would be ridiculously low power. I think the prototype they show could be around 500W maximum, but would really average 100W.
@@niconico3907 Yep, there's a good reason average power output *in a real application* are never quoted, because they're dire. People would be much better off putting the same cash they would spend on this into a community buy-in battery or full scale wind project....
Wind is one of the technologies it makes sense to centralise production. Power scales massively with turbine radius and height above the ground. For horizontal wind turbines, blade area (and therefore power generation) quadruples if you double blade length (area = pi x radius squared). For vertical axis, it just increases linearly (area = blade height x arm length) Also, having heavy equipment spinning rapidly in residential areas just doesn't sound like a good idea to me, but I've not heard of any incidents yet (probably because these turbines are rare). There's a great community project in Bristol, UK, where a community has come together to pay for the largest onshore wind turbine in England. That kind of thing makes much more sense to me, as the turbine is placed away from the city. If VAWTs made sense they would have already taken off. I can see *some* potential for putting them on top of tall buildings, but that's clutching at straws.
Please keep providing updates on development of wind power. They are appreciated. We currently have solar, but one can always use some extra energy! I also appreciate your updates on solar storage batteries.
Interesting, Matt, but we are yet to see a single meaningful number: not just raw efficiency, but actually measured production in a realistic installation.
Like you, when I was planning my new home I was looking into possible home energy production options and stumbled upon Harmony. They looked extremely promising at the time and are looking better now. I love their design and will be following their development in the future. One of the best things about them is their stuff can be sourced domestically and doesn't require reliance on foreign rare earths. I also don't really see them having the same issue as having to strip and replace thousands of acres of turbines (vs solar) every ten to twenty years - perhaps just replace some gears and tighten some bolts. These things are set to be the Maytag of home wind generation.
We live near Kennedy Space Center in FL. We always have a breeze even though we are about 5 miles from the ocean. Turbines that could self dampen during a big storm while are not around sound really amazing!
I love the research of small scale wind turbines. As somebody living in the north of Norway where we have very little sun and a lot of wind, this could become a life changer for us
Vaporware like so many things that Matt promotes. Looks like they have 1 prototype that is not even deployed. But they sure do have a shelf full of t-shirts!!!!
PLEASE keep us updated on residential wind power. I’m going to participate as soon as we know the 5 Ws. In my mind there is zero chance this is not the future for running our homes cleanly and efficiently. Thank you!
Hi Matt, I'm in western Pa and I'm a Penn State Alum of sorts....among other things. I have had conversation with Chris & Harmony as I came across them awhile back and followed as I knew what I was looking at....and relative to the area I was from. The mechanics of the design are SPOT ON and perfect as to control RPM and thus the WORK to transfer to a generator per se. I'm working on bringing the technology and another aspect of storage to my area in western Pennsylvania, as you can't have one without the other......and with natural resources...you work with what you got & the lay of the land......adapt & overcome. I look at the technology and then I also look at the opposite end and maybe what could be waste. SO as with a gasoline power plant, the heats is the waste and must be dissipated with the exception for tapping that waste for climate control in a motor vehicle. One such technology you have already reviewed is my application as also being perfect.......as though as it may seem...a Rube Goldberg-ish scenario of a symbiotic relationship for lack of a better term as You Can't Have One Without The Other. So its transfer the POWER of the Wind blowing freely via the HARMONY as it can modulate the RPM and essentially close up and shut down if needs be. BUt point being is to charge a storage battery or perhaps an array of these storage batteries at different stages of discharge as to bucket brigade charge & dis-charge.......but the nature of the Battery is that of a reactor as it produces heat as a byproduct which can be harnessed to produce STEAM as well as HOT water.....but most importantly Steam to drive a conventional Steam Turbine.....for obvious reasons and conventionality. BUT this also can invoke the Stirling aspect too with a HOT & COLD differential to be exploited. It was STEAM & STIRLING that got us the INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION and where we are in Global Warming.....and this is the Answer to That for TOTAL CLEAN GENERATION and all interactive with a purpose....and so simplistic. Its not hard to Notion an Off Grid scenario in new construction or retrofits. THINK neighborhood Micro-GRIDs and should you over produce....dump it into the GRID at large. Essentially the Wind generation is temporary to initial charge per se and as a back up, for once the battery is VITALIZED and thus steam is being produced and driving a STEAM TURBINE....its relatively self contained and....perpetual if you THINK about it. The battery has to charge & discharge and the steam aspect can be the controlled source for charge when needed applied. SO NO MORE ELECTRIC BILLS OR GAS BILLS for Natural Gas or.....FUEL OIL or BOTTLED GAS
I should add for you, NUMEC corp and Zalman Shapiro.....and NUCLEAR BATTERIES and that affair that affects my home region and the resultant contamination and recycling scenario.....and a recent Pittsburgh situation of WESTINGHOUSE wanting to produce Nuclear Batteries....boggles my mind if you think it out and with the aspect of the local history involved. WESTINGHOUSE was to develop the next GEN Nuke Reactors.....and the coal fired power generation plants are shutting down....and coal or NUKE.....its all about HEAT and making STEAM
Matt, it seems likely that a hybrid approach using both solar and wind for residential energy augmentation will be a growing industry over the next decade. It would be interesting to gain an understanding of how this can be integrated into a home’s electrical system when adding the fact that most of us will also continue to have a utility company supply power to our homes.
States and territories by customers out Oregon 59,965 Louisiana 15,939 Texas 10,208 California 8,013 Colorado 5,128 Guess how many households are disconnected from the grid in France, where nuclear power is predominantly used? Zero. It's a huge rarity there.
We have just installed solar power in our home in the Swedish Countryside. Even tho it wasn't finished until autumn, we did have days where we for a couple of hours not only were fully self-sufficient on electricity, but also were able to sell a (smallish, but at least something) amount of electricity. I am following the residential wind power evolution too, but I think it is still a few years off (at least until I install something).
@@vladimirya7166 well France is also a much smaller and older country with better defined infrastructure. its not really to do with the kind of power being used its the distribution of it.
@@yolothepinepapple7153 So it is clear that the USA is a backward country, in which there are still rotten wooden poles that often burn. But the problem is not only in California (the network is constantly down), but also in Texas, where wind turbines are a significant part of generation. And there were even cases when people paid astronomical amounts for electricity. Isn't that what you call "efficiency" and "caring for nature"? For me, it's just strange how you can call "bird killers" caring for nature.
I live in the East hills of Silicon Valley and have thinking about something like this for years. Have solar. Would like to add wind too, as in the rainy season get significant wind here. Glad to hear this is being worked on.
Yes would love to see more on urban wind. We live in a 6 story condo with a lot of open park space around us. This would make us a great candidate to use wind. Just it would have to be hurricane resistant as we are in Florida.
sir, good day! i have a unique design idea of Vertical Wind & Wave Turbine. but i don't have the fund to build a prototype. i wonder if you are interested and help me build it.
I'm glad that there are innovators in this sector! It drives me crazy that people insist that a certain type of energy generation has a certain limitation, therefore it couldn't possibly be any good and we shouldn't bother. We've barely even started to solve this sustainable energy problem. Humans are extremely creative, we'll come up with more ideas.
Even in the fossil fuel sector there is no one single solution used for everything. There's thermal coal used directly and coal powered steam generators, diesel, petrol, kerosene, lpg, methane - some people even used to burn peat to warm their houses. And yet people think one single renewable source has to do everything, and if solar doesn't work overnight or wind turbines don't work in still weather somehow that makes them useless.
Matt, I want to thank you. I was inspired by your videos to find a way to invest in some of these startups. Last year, I found Harmony Turbines via a site that allowed me to buy shares of the company. I am thrilled to see them featured in your video today, because I am in love with their concept. They still have a ways to go, but I am proud to be able to be a small part of it.
I’m one of those people who live on 1/10 acre, in suburban NW Oregon. My backyard is a pretty windy area, but it’s definitely dirty wind. But part of the factor there are the mature trees in my and my surrounding neighbors’ yards. And these oaks, red cedars, and Douglas pines create a lot of debris from summer through early winter. My concern would be how that would affect a turbine. I have a hard enough time keeping my second story gutters from becoming gardens, so what sort of maintenance would these smaller turbines require (ie. cleaning or debris causing breakage)?
After nearly two months with no sun in Southern Ontario, my hope to add solar to my house is long since dashed. The chance that wind might be able to fill that desire is a path that I will continue to monitor. You are absolutely right about NIMBYism limiting wind in the past and shorter, quieter options may finally help to make it more widely accepted. Thank you for your enthusiasm and skepticism in producing these videos. It's great to follow along!
Harmony is one I've been watching for a few years now and I'm interested to see where it goes. The issue for where I am is that we have 4-6 months of snow and I'm still waiting for something that does well in snow and not just snow, but in heavy snow loads.
Curious about the snow/ice resistance too, especially considering attention is drawn to New England, NY, etc where there's snow and ice for several months a year.
@@jimw1615 Snow removal in large quantities that collects would be considered maintenance, yes, however heavy snowfall is consider normal operation in certain areas of the world. For example, if the Harmony device appears to have close clearances that would bind or internal mechanics that would freeze, jam or fail, the device would be unsuitable for these climates, especially if the turbine were located far out of reach. Some roof-mount devices have warmers that assist with this problem, especially in the north. In my area, it's fairly normal to get 24" of snowfall, but more commonly, a lot of snow melting and refreezing as ice, or damming and cracking things. This type of weather makes it hard for exposed mechanical devices to operate properly in the winter months unless they were specifically designed for these environments. Since a large portion of the country experiences similar icing weather conditions, the question is valid. Maintenance is not and excuse for and should not be considered a workaround for failure to meet standard operating conditions.
@tresf 17 minutes ago (edited) @jimw1615 Snow removal in large quantities that collects would be considered maintenance, yes, however heavy snowfall is consider normal operation in certain areas of the world. For example, if the Harmony device appears to have close clearances that would bind or internal mechanics that would freeze, jam or fail, the device would be unsuitable for these climates, especially if the turbine were located far out of reach. Some roof-mount devices have warmers that assist with this problem, especially in the north. In my area, it's fairly normal to get 24" of snowfall, but more commonly, a lot of snow melting and refreezing as ice, or damming and cracking things. This type of weather makes it hard for exposed mechanical devices to operate properly in the winter months unless they were specifically designed for these environments. Since a large portion of the country experiences similar icing weather conditions, the question is valid. Maintenance is not and excuse for and should not be considered a workaround for failure to meet standard operating conditions. @@tresf Yes, that is the answer most lazy people offer. I lived in Park City, UT where feet of snowfall was produced by every storm that went through. Your stance on the matter is pretty much standard for many today.
Preventative and necessary maintenance is different than expected operating conditions. It's not lazy to expect an appliance to work in expected weather conditions. The question is valid.
I've been following Flower Turbines for just over a year and their concepts have me excited for better residential solutions. Their strategy is what you shared towards the end about grouping them closer together and seeing them benefit from one another. Look forward to more videos about this!
A deeper dive into O-Wind and Harmony would be appreciated. I follow Robert Murray Smith and his explorations of various wind turbines and his theme of cheap vs efficiency.... worth a look.
Yes. Agree. This efficiency fetish is not helping. A better index would be how much energy will be produced by the proposed device in a given location. This makes comparisons possible and we can see if the device repays its construction carbon footprint and maintenance effort. If the device is simple, reliable, robust, and works in the proposed location there is a good chance it will make a useful net energy contribution. We need to remember solar panels at about 25% are less efficient than some of the "bad" turbine designs... small simple turbines could still be useful. Personally I would love to have a small unit contributing to the household energy budget while ever the wind blows, and especially during storms when solar is not going to be happening.
Yes! I’d love more info! I live in an area with wind almost every day 7-12mph and down the street from a little airport. So I could use their wind data. I also live in more than 1acre. The first thing I said to my fiancé was this home was perfect for me! I love wind turbines and trying to get them more exposure because I feel they would be great along i81, I66, businesses where there are jumbled wind ripping through.etc. also on the mountain ridges near by. I’m interested in small wind walls with multiple smaller turbines built into a fence. I’m also interested in turbines that can be mounted on the roof. I have wind that rips off long rows all the way up my roof where I don’t have trees block it. I also have super tall roof ridge that would take the wind head on.
Certainly a topic of the moment. I've been running turbines of various shapes for more than 40 years now. Noise and vibration, and thus shaking loose, are a problem for building mounted turbines, and our building materials usually don't cope with long term vibrations too well. This is why I think most turbine success stories have traditionally been with installations in remote areas. I always liked Savonius rotors but its true the fixed ones can't be easily shut down and power out is proportional to the cube of the windspeed, so a 1 KW domestic Savonius at 20 ft/sec will try to generate 125Kw at 100 ft/second ( a moderate gale) - and 125 Kw continuous power is a lot to manage. I like the rotational furling idea, but again the rotor speed will dramatically increase as the diameter decreases due to conservation of ( rotational) momentum so that will need to be dealt with. Its a situation where the governor unfortunately makes the problem worse by governing. Sure the aerofoil is less exposed when its retracted - thats good - but you need to be able to absorb the extra power reliably. I had a wind blade travel half a mile at high speed once, and that was terrifying in a huge gale. You (we) need to look at the generator output vs rotational speed and work out something smart there too. One of my little turbines changes blade shape in high wind to shed the excess power, and the sound it makes is terrifying, like a huge banshee. All those Kilowatts going into sound!
My wife and I own a rather windy parcel of land in northern NH and it is far enough from on grid electric sources to make off grid alternatives very viable. We hope to build in the next few years so all of the information that could be available to help in this endeavor is helpful. So yes More information on wind, solar building techniques etc the better.
Great video! Love the new studio and lighting. I would be interested in seeing how aesthetic preferences for different turbine designs sway public opinion and the feasibility of mass-deployed wind, especially in urban areas. When I talk to people, that seems to be one of their main concerns.
That's a great point ... I need to see if there's any studies into that. And glad you like the new studio lighting! Slowly trying to update the look and feel of the videos.
I think I saw a wall of turbines that looked like Harmony's turbines. I thought it looked quite solarpunky. And I like it! Or maybe I'm remembering a fever dream.
Great video. At 12:51 you showed London's Strata SE1 building. The wind turbines here was a failure and are never used as they are too loud for residents.. Noise is a key hurdle/barrier for residents.
Matt would LOVE to see you dive deeper on current turbines for homes vs industrial applications! We have so much [strong] wind here in the UK anything would probably work here!
As far as small wind turbines go I live remote rural off grid here down under , solar and I added a small wind turbine what I found was at night the turbine acts like a battery trickle charger and keeps my 24V battery banks topped up, hence extending the life of my batteries. It was relatively cheap and whereas it wouldn't power my house on its own it definitely works and serves a purpose. I have no experience with more expensive wind generators but am watching the evolution of non bladed units with interest.
I am very interested in Harmony Turbines. Their CEO is passionate about using wind that's there, but that nobody else is using. These might lack efficiencies of big turbines, but they can catch up when the others have to stop generating completely. I have longed for snall scale wind generation for years and this is promising! Please keep us updated, Matt, I love your down-to-earth channel!
I was the senior tech for Xzeres wind which at the time purchased the rights for Skystream 3.7 model (2.4kw/hr peak) from Southwest wind power. I love the incorporation of different axis for wind turbines. Great video. Deep dive requested.
Great video, good content, i would like to see more content about the smaller wind generation setups out there for personal home use, how much those would generate, and when they become worth getting, and if battery storage is smart with the wind generation of energy, and or if best combined with solar, so please let me know what you think about it
I did see Robert Murray Smith make a type of wind turbine a long time ago that could seemingly generate electricity with little to no wind (its a small thing that produces less than a watt if I remember correctly). Other companies were doing similar things but targeting vibration as the generation source, instead of wind... hard to remember the details as it was a few years ago that I followed some of those projects, but I do remember Robert making a Darwin wind turbine similar to how Aeromine works, but it just redirects the wind from around the housing down onto the stationary turbine. They did upload a small 3d printable model that could also be made with scrap metal (if you had the time and fabrication knowhow) or plastic due to its simple shape and design.
As usual Matt, I enjoy your content. I am excited about wind turbines as I live on a 1.3 acre lot on top of a hill. The downside is that we have an abundance of trees, which blocks and / or causes swirling winds. I will continue to follow you to see the development of wind turbines. Keep the videos coming.
I built a Savonius turbine way back in the early 80's. 3 20 liter drums split in half and a generator of a car from the 50's. A disc plow shear for a flywheel all spinning on a front wheel bearing from the same car. It ran for 30 years only needing battery replacements. It kept the charge up so the electrical circuit of the petrol powered pump was maintained and work when needed. It was replaced eventually but due to rusting out.
More information on all the small start ups!! yes please Also on tidal / wave generation, this one is absolutely key for sustainability, and is currently even less publicised than wind!!
I’m up on the eastern ridge, of Massa-choose-its Pioneer Valley@ 1300 ft above sea level. Been here for 50 yrs, and always pay attention to ‘which way the wind blows.’ We had a tornado, in 2006, that re-defined, my witness, of wind speed and duration. My town , regularly, have power generation projects, as all power transmission lines, run thru this town ( of 900 residents, 450 houses, 66% of the land is forest, owned by the state)to service the state . We generate water, at 1200 ft, which fills a 5-town built reservoir , that is for the eastern half, of Mass.
This tech first piqued my interest about 10 years ago with the WindTree. I'm glad to see that others are continuing to look at ways to capture wind at lower heights in urban areas.
We live in SWCO and our property sits at a high point on the 3.2 archers we own. With CO winds we’ve often thought that wind energy would optimized our energy saving efforts. Wed love to be a demo property in rural Colorado if anyone is interested. Thank you for your channel and all the info you share. 16:08
This is awesome I blew my kids mind the other day, we had built some 'robots' simple motors and rotors with batteries, that would move around the floor, I took one and took the batteries out and connected an led to the battery pack then spun the rotor / motor, he couldn't believe it when the led lit up. he thought it was magic, and I did a deep dive into the different ways turbines are used to generate almost all our electricity. I really hope he becomes and engineer in the future because its fascinating seeing his eyes light up when he notices a wind turbine.
Please do make a deep dive into each company/update as to what they are up to these days. Would be great continuaty to previous videos and more facts for folks who are trying to build up to the point where this is a most pressing concern.
in all honesty these videos have been great and I want to hear more about the domestification of this branch of tech. A comparison with energy and mobile technology would be cool (phones vs. energy production)
Ecoflow whole house back up battery system can charge while also expending power at the same time. This turbine stuff could keep the batteries charged when power grid is up and keep replenishing during grid outages. Here in Kentucky, the power goes out a lot during inclimate weather. I wouldn't need a propane backup generator for long-term outages.
I’m so excited for this. We live in a wind tunnel. Also want one for on top of the RV. Vertical on its side to charge while driving and dip vertical when parked.
These turbines do look really cool. I would love to have something like this, an alternative to solar. Those summer winds that are so hot, would love to have them work against themselves. Would need to see what sort of storm resistence they would have
I will be buying a wind mill generator in a few years and I would really like to see more videos like this one. The one with the scoops is very intriguing, we have a place where the wind gets up to 70 mph some times, but usually its just about 5 or 10 mph.
I've worked and talked with a few ranchers or well installers, and I've been told the cheapest most reliable way for pumping water for life stock was to use windpumps. So I'm surprised that there aren't more wind turbines for rural areas, especially when you consider how unreliable power could be in rural areas. When I worked on a ranch in South Texas, rain an hour away could disrupt power on the ranch.
Our house is odd, we are a corner house at a crossroad of streets. We basically have wind funneled to us, kind of like a stream. It's been consistently windy since 2007 when we moved in. Right now, in 2024, it's absurd how windy it's been. I'm in NC. That whole thing with the Aeormine, is basically what's going on with my house. It funnels down the street, hit's a second stream coming from the side street, and then creates wild winds at my house all the time.
I live on Cape Cod, and if you think electricity is expensive on the "mainland", (ya, I know it's a peninsula) It's REALLY expensive here. For this reason, I am researching a hybrid wind/solar system for at the very least, backup power, but perhaps to permanently power some circuits, such as refrigeration, water heater ignition and scavenge, a basement bath ejection pump, and some outlets, the last being to power the fan on the wood stove. I have a heat pump, which is great for AC in the summer despite the cost, ( even though it is only a few years old and has a very high SEER) but heat with wood as my primary heat. My hope is to reduce my metered power consumption and really, undertake the design and build as a fun project. I"ve started to build a small scale solar system to power a shed and some lighting out in my firewood processing area, but 3 fractured vertebrae have put that on hold. So now I'm back to dreaming and scheming for a couple of months. Do you have any suggestions for a hybrid system? Lack of wind isn't a problem here on cape, so I'm not all that concerned with efficiency, as I don't anticipate that as a hurdle. Any suggestions would be welcome!
I’ve been waiting for something to come along that’s cost effective. One that got me excited about home wind turbines was the archemides windmill, a non traditional horizontal windmill. I haven’t checked in on it recently, but it sounds like there are a lot of companies exploring residential wind power generation these days and good solutions are in the offing.
So i was thinking about how i would fix this problem and i've got a suggestion. What if the blades of a vertical turbine would go further appart from each other by centripugal force? If you use springs it would be very simple. and if the blades would be futher appart you can make it so that the efficiency would drop, which is good if you have a wind speed that would normally be too high. and if the blades are further appart the blades would spin faster in a linear direction (m/s) but not in the angular velocity( degrees/s). you would get a lot more torque but i think this is easily compensated with a smart charger.
I live in South Dakota, and we have a lot of pasture wells with the towers from the "old west style" wind pump towers. The pumps have been replaced with electric pumps. This means they have a tower, and electrical connection.The idea of employing these existing infrastructure pieces to generate additional wind power has been bumping around my head for a while. Thanks for the informative video.
As some who lives somewhere where windshear was main concern voiced by architect when talking about an extension and the ridge tiles on our brand new rood [with integrated solar panels] got pulled up by storm within just two months, harnessing this wind whipping around our house would be great. Reason for severe wind here is that giuse is on built up land, so top of roof is effectively 5 floors above the lower level back garden [or yard in American], then markedly drops further again away from bottom of garden toward where the winds prevails from. Plus with the building next door at similar height we have our on venturi vortex running between us. Oh on a pronunciation note. Northumbria is pronounced 'Nor - thum- bria', not 'North - umbria' And that's one of the easier UK place names to pronounce. 😀 Leicester and Loughborough less so as examples. There are some entertaining UA-cams videos where they ask Americans to pronounce some UK placenames.
I've had a small inexpensive Savonius turbine on my shed for about two years. I have it hooked up along with a solar panel to charge two batteries, which then provide power through an inverter. I've been really impressed with the results. Usually when it's not sunny at our home, it's windy. So collecting both solar and wind energy has meant that the batteries have kept a pretty constant voltage no matter the weather. I wish Harmony and Aeromine all the best. Home energy production FTW!
When I saw the title and thumbnail for this video I immediately thought: “oh boy, marketing old ideas that were proven ineffective decades ago” (which is the case for grid scale vertical axis wind turbines in general). But then you managed to very quickly park that squarely away, highlighting that they may have a place yet (just not at grid scale). I’m intrigued to see where these go, or try them out myself.
Hi Matt, thanks as always for a thorough and thoughtful video. A great presentation. Also, a minor thank you: those who contribute to Patreon are patrons, not patreons!
I really like the idea of home wind turbines, and while Harmony's solution does seem to solve a lot of the issues, I'm skeptical that it will be ever be better than simply solar and cheap battery storage, especially considering the recycling of the solar panel that can be done by companies like SolarCycle. For most areas of the world that is. That being said, I live in Alaska, and many part of Alaska, especially north of Anchorage, get dark for very long periods of time in the winter. Harmony's technology could be a fantastic solution for far north communities for winter power generation, especially when paired with cheap battery storage like the stiff from ESS. And those concave fins, while very specialized I'm sure, if damaged, a suitable replacement could probably be fabricated out of aluminum in those more isolated communities.
While working on my engineering degree I tried to design a “lift” vertical wind turbine but could not get it to be efficient enough. The math just wasn’t there. I decided that you would need to have both a lift and a drag element. The drag part would work on lower wind speeds and the lift would be used for more efficient operations once it had already started to rotate, but the drag portion would be an inconvenience in that phase of operation. It would be awesome to have the Harmony Turbines opening and closing mechanism attached to an airfoil turbine.
Many urban locations have high-rise buildings that can cause a LOT of wind in a specific position making it IDEAL for gathering wind-energy. My back-garden is in between a lot of buildings that cause a LOT of wind that is ideal for vertical axis Savonius wind-generation.
I'm building a motor home, with solar. But, part of my expected stops will be in areas that have "problems" with sunlight. I've designed 2 turbines using a simple "gutter slide" design that wraps around the pole. I'll charge through a pair of Chevy 100 amp alternators to a 12 volt PowerBar. From there I can use raw 12v or inverter fed 120v. I will use the barbershop pole approach of one continuous trough from bottom to top. In a way, this combines the two approaches here. In theory, this should work in 10 mph or greater breeze. No, I'm not a scientist, I'm just handy at putting things together sometimes. And the simpler, the better. I like off the shelf solutions, they're repairable. And usually a lot less costly. $0.02
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I love my solar panels, but I would also love wind turbines. Especially today due to the snow storm, keep safe Matt!
great video. i am considering options for my house which is in a windy area. it would have been nice to understand costs of the devices. right now, there is no information about pricing and cost/kw...so it is impossible to consider. Do these companies even provide an estimate or ballpark? why keep it secret?
@@andyc3877 they're not manufacturing yet. I'm guessing they don't have a price.
@@ricos1497 thanks. i understood that, but i think the companies have a target range...like "we expect to sell this unit for around $10 when we scale up". i just hate it when price is not mentioned if someone is trying to convince us to give a serious thought
"You don't need a weather man to know which way the wind blows." Bob Dylan.
I used to work in the small wind industry, and there is a huge problem that's been understated here. The wind available at a roof top is not only more turbulent, but as you get closer to the ground the wind velocity drops dramatically, and the power is related to the cube of the velocity. Putting a wind turbine on your home not only subjects it to a lot more vibrational forces that haven't been studied well, but it'd be like putting your solar panels inside a window. Sure you can improve the design, but the physics isn't on your side. You're also battling against all the wind shadows of buildings and trees nearby as well. The technology behind a savonius turbine isn't necessarily bad, but the marketing for small vertical axis turbines is very pyramid scheme like and many companies have defrauded their investors and closed. Get your turbines high, and get them away from trees and buildings. Friends don't let friends put wind turbines on their roof.
Get them away from trees? What about sticking one on TOP of a tree? 😂
@@GlorifiedGremlin 🧠
a lot of rural homes still have tv antennas, put one up there
What shape/design would you recommend?
@@JeanneGuzzi kite balloons
The big advantage of the Savonius turbine is obviously that it is independent of the direction of the wind opposed to the Aeromine system
Also the generator can be installed in a box on the ground, they don't need to feather in high wind, and they don't make much noise.
I thought the Aeromine turbine rotated. It doesn't move with the wind?
And has shit efficiency.
I disagree. I think the other system has just as much promise as it capatilizes on effects that are already being caused by human intervention in nature and uses natural amplification to drive up efficiency with a much lower baseline for wind speed. This application doesn't necessarily mean that it's going to be a better or worse design, but is more akin to having another specialized tool that achieves the same thing. It will come down to use case scenarios in which one design is clearly more advantageous than the other. In my humble opinion... I like have several kinds of screwdrivers when my simple objective is to drive in a screw... where the screw is located might make one screwdriver superior to the other choice. Like my analogy? lol
@@MladenMijatov the efficiency isn't a problem. It's made up for in reliability and resilience. Long term you'll pay less per kWh.
Yes, please, DO create more videos on residential wind power. There are so many wind power turbines you can find on UA-cam, but getting reliable information on them is difficult. Some of the ones I am interested in are Liam F1 (Archimedes turbine), Solarwind Pro, Tulip wind turbine, and many others. It seems they keep popping up regularly. The Harmony turbine looks interesting for residential use. The Aeromine only seems practical for industrial or business applications. They don't seem practical for residential roofs. Please consider the noise level of the turbine. This will be an important factor in keeping the peace with your neighbors.
@@greatscott369 but Robert doesn't bother with commercial wind turbines. He just makes his own.
I'll look these up ^-^
Also be very suspicious of anyone promoting roof-mount turbines who doesn't talk about vibrations and engineering. There's no point saving money on electricity if the turbine vibrates your house apart.
Some of them are ridiculously expensive for no reason. Like the f1 turbine. That is what I was told.
I don't even think it is an installation issue either. Think it is 6,000 dollars for just the unit.
Learn the physics of wind turbines. That will cure you of your desire to install one.
I've been keeping my eye on Harmony's progress for years and am still waiting to see some real-world data on power output vs. swept area and wind speed. Granted it's clever and looks really cool, but viability is still a major question mark in my mind. You might say I'm a bigger "fan" of the Aeromine approach.
Have you seen any real-world data on Aeromine? I haven't been able to find any and the company couldn't provide any when I asked a couple of months ago.
The majority of small wind turbine companies will try to mislead you when/if they publish specifications. They usually will publish specifications for power produced in hurricane force winds instead of the miniscule wind most areas get. Avoid wind turbines and stick with solar power.
I like the innovation that harmony brings to the table, but with my experience, I think they would need to be an order of magnitude better than the original split barrel design.
I spent a long time with alternative energy as engineering education in the early days, and as a hobby in later days. After Regan cancelled the alternative energy support the entire industry (and my chosen career) left the country. I had the split barrel design back then, as well as many of the other systems being pushed. What I found was the entire industry hid behind lies, and no one shared actual performance data except unhappy customers. But when talking to customers, we generally experienced performance levels in the 2 to 10% range against claims. Explanations were "you are in a low wind area" and "you are confusing max ratings with reality". So a 400 watt unit could be expected to produce an intermittent 10 watts. I knew this would be the case as an engineer, my job was to find the actuals, and I found very little actual, the ratings to actual was around 40:1 on a windy day, then 40:0.1 the rest of the time. But people wanting to put a lightbulb in the barn thought wind power was the best thing since sliced bread, and no math was needed if the light was able to be turned on.
@@QuintBUILDs Most experimenters, will build small models and find out what works best, then scale up. Harmony on the other hand doesn't do that. They build full scale turbines and find out they don't perform well, but what the heck , it's not their money they experiment with is it?
Savonius turbines look cool. If your neighbors ask, just tell them it's a kinetic sculpture. You'll sound so sophisticated.
It might make it easier to get a permit for it too.
G'day,
Sophisticated,
From
Sophist,
An ancient Greek school of
Philosophy composed of
Elegantly confected
Nonsense..., after
Sophocles...who founded the
Movement.
A Sophomore is someone starting their
Second years of studying any subject - they know more than a raw beginner - but not a lot more...(Sorcerer's Apprentice-Effect).
Sophomoric means
Callow & immature...
Sophisticated as a word meant
Adulterated & Impure...,
It was first applied to coloured Glass, or "Paste"
Fake
Artificial Gemstones...; which were
Made by
Adulterating
Pure molten Clear Glass with
Impurities..., to make it
Coloured - Red or Green or Blue,
Pretending to be Rubies, Emeralds, or Saphires...
So, yeah,
Sophisticated means
Adulterated & Impure ; but it's
Fashionable to pretend that such a
Label is
Complimentary...(!).
Such is life,
Have a good one...
Stay safe.
;-p
Ciao !
There are several approaches to integrate them into fences and sound barriers which is a really cool idea.
Hi, Warbles. Good to see you again. Thanks for setting the record straight. Modern English has a number of words which have reversed their meanings, or changed them considerably. Another one is 'fantastic'. @@WarblesOnALot
I used to work in the industry about 10 years ago, most of those turbines ended up just being kinetic sculptures anyway.
Didn’t hear this mentioned in the video but one of the largest drawbacks to residential wind generation is the noise that most systems produce. Generally the higher the rpm the worse it is, especially if not maintained to laboratory standards.
and yet people WANT flying cars.
@@ThatOpalGuy regular cars are pretty noisy, that's a decent ceiling for a flying car
@@landoishisname Helicopters are flying personal transports and they're far louder than regular cars, especially modern cars driving at low/city speeds.
@@JWQweqOPDH Right but you don't have to make a helicopter to achieve flight
@@landoishisname All VTOL aircraft (besides blimps) are louder than a car of equal payload.
I’m so glad there are companies continuing to explore the needs of homeowners with “dirty” wind. We have no hope for solar and being in a steep narrow valley all we have is dirty wind.
Google how many workers they kill, industrial installers who are forced to climb these structures into the wind. More than the entire nuclear industry has ever existed, including Chernobyl and Fukushima. And add to that a huge number of birds, so huge that wind turbines have shaken entire ecosystems, allowing mice and rats to reproduce.
Same here. It's strong and dirty. Harmony is really appealing.
it does sound like a sort of niche solution, but if the niche is big enough, it still makes sense.
@@adddude7524 Absolutely. There are a lot of niches to be filled. If I could get 4kw a day from the gap between 2 houses with reliable small unit that is easily serviced, I would pay over the odds. I also have security of supply issues to mitigate. Winters are worsening year on year, Big Infrastructure cannot keep up.
@@adddude7524 The map at 16:07 suggests that most of the US is well-suited to Harmony's approach over traditional American wind turbines. While I'm no authority on niches in the market, I wouldn't call that a niche engineering-design-wise. The area useful for wind energy production using Harmony's Savonius Turbine approach is bigger than the existing useful area for wind energy.
Deep dive desired desperately
Amazing alliteration astronomically appreciated:)👍
Yes. Please do more on this field and on Harmony. And, thank you for helping to get the word out that the data on these designs is and has been wrong. This has been holding back progress for long enough, and I'm not convinced that it hasn't been on purpose.
So happy to see harmony getting more exposure. I really think they've got the answer to wind generation for homeowners.
Yeah, I don't want a whole huge installation, and I'm not holding my breath for powering my whole home. But something small like that I can put in my yard to defray my electric costs a bit really appeals to me.
They don't but Tempest Energy Systems does... No, you won't find any info about them right now.
@@MrThedrachen would be amazing for powering the ac during a hurricane
I really like Harmony's approach to this and I hope Aeromine makes more headway too. We need more small scale wind production.
👍
@@orionbetelgeuse1937 Ah, yes. Clearly. They should've gotten your advice before funding and researching their designs. You are obviously the genius they desperately needed to help them.
No, we don't. We need things that work, not cult hysterics in support of things due to fear porn
The psychological impact of mass use would match the mental agitation of eco-doomsayers. Same begets same.
@@Dowlphin: Yup. Just look at the resistance to EV's, now that they're being more widely adopted and working decently, despite the persistent denial by the haters and science deniers.
Matt,
I’m building a new home in Plymouth Mass and I am largely following in your steps with solar, Span entrance panel, back up batteries…. Located 1/3 mile from Cape Cod Bay and 160 ft up, we almost always get wind. Obviously, this probably makes my location a better than average one for residential wind. Keep doing what you are doing on wind. Could you add a segment on how to integrate solar and wind into a system of systems that work harmoniously?
Thanks, love your channel!
Very nice. May your building and various projects all turn out win win for you and nature!
Fluid dynamics is a trip for sure. I like Zipline's drone delivery approach with their engineers which is an "assume you know nothing" approach. They came up with a wind prop/blade design that is way outside the box.
Matt,
Robert Murray Smith did a wonderful series of videos about variable speed transmissions, with the intent to employ these in wind turbines of various composition (horizontal and vertical).
This arrangement can be applied to deliver a steady stream of motion from an unsteady source--or, applied electrically, as in the case of a transformer, to exchange amps for volts, and alter the power delivery if that is what's required, rather like an infinite version of a ten-speed bicycle.
Rather than reduce the rotation--in which you are losing the potential of that resource--you can simply convert this to another form if a variable speed transmission were employed.
I wonder if there is a residential or small scale wind energy research team working on this concept.
I was just about to post this, Robert has a ton of great videos about different types of wind power!
None of Robert's videos seemed to include any data. Spinning does not equal any kind of useful energy production.
Would love to see more videos on niche wind power (roadsides, rooftops, urban canyons, etc.). These applications might never make sense in grid scale operations, but the long tail of wind could provide a significant amount of on-site generation for a distributed future.
Wind turbines one road sides actually generate their power and increase drag on passing cars. So it's a gas powered turbine. Urban canyons seem interesting but the buildings aren't rated structurally rated for the increased load both static and vibrational. The problem with the 'long tail of wind' theory is that you have to integrate that curve to find the area under it to get the energy you can harvest. And when you do that, it's very, very tiny. And to harvest that long tail you need very low friction bearings because the turbines won't spin due to the bearing friction at low speeds. BUT if you do that, then the bearings are subjected to much faster erosion from water and you're reducing their lifetime. It's like putting canola oil in a bearing instead of heavy grease. Source - I used to work in the industry and we had turbines fail for all the reasons above, both mechanically and from a business success perspective.
Yes! Deeper dives please! Would be interested in if you are seeing options from Europe. Similar to parts of US Northern Europe sees a dramatic fall off in solar generation from late September (particularly here in Ireland) but we have no shortage of wind. Keen to understand more and thanks for being at the bleeding edge!
Love to see Harmony turbines getting more attention, I've been following them for a while already. I love the design and how it's potentially still useable well beyond when traditional wind turbines have had to cease function. I actually had just watched this after watching a different video on building integrated PV panels, which makes me think of what it could be like to essentially turn a skyscraper into a power production facility, covering the glass with solar panels, using any maintenance floors as potentially giant airfoil's for Aeromine's style turbines, and I'd love to see Harmony style turbines running up the entire corner(s) of the buildings, just constantly feeding off of whatever prevailing winds are there.
@@BobDevV Do you not understand the sentence you quoted me?? There is no "making something out of nothing." as you put it, you're extracting the wind kinetic energy. The law simply states what goes in must equal what comes out, so while yes, their efficiency is low, they are still pulling a % of that wind's energy out and putting it into the building. It isn't being created out of thin air, (ironically) The wind would be have less energy, and the building would have a bit more than it did before. while impractical it may be, it wouldn't be for profitability.
See, the way I see things, "profitable" is what's killing out planet. Not everything should be profitable. There should be some costs that are covered by the society that as a whole benefits from it. Things like public transportation (aka proper tram/train lines with supplemental busses) being heavily subsidized, installation of green technologies, healthcare, those sorts of things should be covered by taxes as they benefit the society as a whole. With transportation you don't need private vehicles, with green techs we won't be killing the planet and it will improve health, and that will make universal healthcare even cheaper, plus coverage for all means significantly cheaper costs per person. (talking to the USA populace here)
Being so negative all the time isn't good for your physical and especially mental health. If the world wasn't so profit driven, we'd be more inclined to do things we're passionate about instead of being forced into terrible jobs we hate just because "it pays better". Our society based off profits is killing us.
profitability is not whats killing our planet profitability allows people to come up with cheaper innovation and cheaper things just look to air plane production over the years or anything else cell phones gotta cheaper why? because of profitability@@Fenthule
@@BobDevV The practicality in wind turbines is that they can harness energy when solar panels can't, such as overcast winter skies or at night. The Benefit of Harmony's design is that it's efficient at wind low wind speeds and can handle turbulence and variation that would force other turbines to have to shut down. In other words it garners efficiency due to being capable of operating more consistently and at a smaller scale.
Generally speaking it costs almost nothing to build a wind turbine. The materials and energy necessary for their production are insanely cheap compared to the energy and materials necessary for a photovoltaic panel. The only reason solar is so cheap is due to cheap foreign labor and mass production. Realistically if your panels were made in the US or Europe they'd cost twice if not three times as much. Understand right now the majority of the costs associated with installing renewable energy is the home infrastructure. That is to say, installing the electrical controller, meter, converter and battery cell your panels or turbines hook into. If this was a situation where you were JUST doing wind power than yea it wouldn't be practical. But realistically, you'd be using both. With your panels being the primary energy collectors, and your turbines supplementing during days and times where your panels just aren't functioning as efficiently.
Also you need to be REALLY careful when it comes to information involving renewables. There is strong financial and political incentive to keep domestic homes from being energy independent. It's why despite zoning and building codes being the fastest way to transition to renewables, neither have been touched or even talked about in the US. Both wind and Solar were invented as a means to power homes off the grid. That's their intended use case. And yet you see a strong government and commercial push for grid scale use. If that doesn't raise an eyebrow it should.
They'll never succeed, their turbine is far too expensive for the amount of energy it produces, and requires regular maintenance, as all small wind turbines do.
@@BobDevV I think you don't understand kinetic capture.
I would say that any wind turbines which are in ice and snow areas aught to have no exposed blades. The ones that do have open blades, or wings which revolve can be in all the other areas. Wonderful to see all the innovation, brainstorming, creativity, and cooperation.
Hi Matt. A friend of mine just imported one of those tulip style vertical turbines to test to determine with our Cape Town wind, whether it will produce the results in generating power. The wind blows a lot here in Cape Town during the summer so a turbine solution like this, if all testing goes well, will be a game changer.
Sorry the savages screwed up your power grid down there.
@@EclecticBuddha no Buddha would invoke the karma of considering someone a “savage.” You use language unskilfully.
Yes--Cape Town has excellent wind resources! 😊
I'm in Cape Town, would love to hear the results. That southeaster has to be good for something!
Easy: low yield, high wear (by design)
What a shock to hear my alma mater, Bucknell University, mentioned on an undecided video 😱
Fun fact while in engineering school there I helped revive an old wind turbine that had been sitting on the campus farm, unused, after getting hit by lighting. I led a team which designed and installed a standalone energy conversion and storage system for the turbine which is still there to this day. The farm uses it to power all their tools from the power of the wind. 😁
That project really sparked my interest and love for wind energy and im so happy to hear about all the innovations coming in the near future for residential production!
There is a company in Europe (The Netherlands to be precise), called Ibis Power, that has a system similar to the Aeromine company you featured.
The biggest difference is that they marry solar directly on top of their wind turbines.
So when you buy there system you get both.
They have been deploying them on tall buildings in Europe so far.
use solar to spin the blades so it looks like wind is working, genius
the turbine shown is the hivawt and the turbine guy on youtube has been installing them for a decade in usa
Looked at their site and they present a film with their turbines at rest. Real turbines are better than the mostly CAD turbines presented on this channel, but nevertheless
Thanks for the video (update). There is no singular magic bullet for sustainable energy. Finding solutions that can be done in parallel covering multiple environments is awesome. The Harmony solution is very intriguing and I could see putting two them on our roof as soon as they are available. I hope they focus on simplicity to keep maintenance and manufacturing down. In aviation, we have leading edge slats on some airplanes that lower stall speed when deployed. The beauty is they automatically deploy at slow speed based on air pressure. No electronics, gears, motors, etc. Simple. Reliable. Effective .. and lighter and cheaper than an overly designed solution. Would love to see Harmony open and close using a similar approach.
Totally agree, basically use a mechanical governor to control the turbine! Or some other passive means of making it work.
@@slickfastyes, I just made a similar comment, mechanical governors have been around since the times of steam engines, "how do we stop it spinning to fast" is a solved problem...
the real issue with residential turbines is that the vibrate causing noise in the house, and stress in the structure of the house.
If that is the case, simply place the turbine on a cushioned platform, a small version of the earthquake shocks uses in high-rises. @@danielr82
This is so cool. Where I live, solar is not an option (Quebec, you know, too far north). But the wind is blowing so strong, each day of the year... we have to really secure our winter car protections in order to prevent it to be blown away. 2 years ago, the wind was so strong that like 20% of all of them were blown or at least, partially detached.
I'm even planning to plant a vegetal hay in order to limit wind damage to my fruit trees so they can grow more vertically instead of being pushed back. I don't know if they are looking for test beds, but this area is really well suited for it, especially because QC is not a traditionnal solar area.
Wrong. Southern England is at pretty much the same latitude as Quebec and you can get x thousand kwh per annum for an x kw installation, e.g. a 4kw installation will generate 4,000kwh.
@@feuby8480 Not a traditional solar area doesn't mean not a viable solar area. Solar panels also works better in colder weather.
Loads of solar panels performing well in Stockholm Sweden, and Stockholm Sweden is higher up north then Quebec.
Not optimal conditions for solar, but solar still absolutely works and residential solar is everywhere and make sense even as high up as Stockholm.
And further up north in Sweden too for that matter.
I've been looking into this for over 20 years, ever since Honeywell was trying to market their shaftless turbine. I think vertical axis is a much better solution for the small generators, and Harmony looks very interesting. One issue I've run into is that the makers of PV controllers, like Enphase, do not support the connection of turbine output to their convertors. If you have a PV system and want to add wind, there are no good solutions on the market. Any info on this would be welcome.
have you checked marine units?
Get two charge controllers - one for the PV array, the other for the wind turbine. Make sure both controllers are rated for the DC voltage your system uses. Hook both up to the same battery. The battery doesn't care if it is charged by DC from a wind turbine charge controller or by DC voltage from a PV charge controller. The inverter will then produce AC from the battery.
@@wkgurr If you're not careful with that, the two charge controllers will fight each other. The sector really does need a charge controller that can take in power from multiple sources and use all of it, not just whichever single source has the highest output in the moment.
@@tealkerberus748I checked this with an engineer of the company who sold a Victron inverter to me. Just hook up both controllers to the battery via the inverter. There will be no fight between the controllers. What the system won't be able to do is display the input from the wind turbine and from the PV array separateyl. But it will detect (and display) the charge state of the battery which will increase at a faster pace if both wind and solar are active. Like the PV charge controller the wind turbine charge controller will detect the charge state of the battery and stop (or break) the wind turbine if there are no loads and the battery is full. That is the main control task the charge controller of the wind turbine has to fulfill and it will be able to do so. Regardless of the existence of other charge controllers. Btw the statment by the engineer is supported by what is written in the handbook for the wind turbine ("The book by Tesup").
@ Matt...YES PLEASE could you please do a deeper dive into wind power in urban environments. I live in the city centre and due to our geography there is always wind blowing.
Definitely interested in more on this topic, Matt Ferrell. On the grouping of vertical turbines, there was a study by a university in the UK that found that vertical wind turbines could be 'stacked' up to 8 deep and only lose 5% of the wind. Came out some years back (think I saw it on the BBC?) Funny thing is, I believe off-shore wind via utilities and distributed solar PV would be a better option.
This is the second time I have come across Harmony, and found the other company very intriguing. Would love a deep dive on residential wind power.Very interested. Thanks for breaking these topics down!!!
I’m in Texas and wind is gusting to near 40mph today so I love learning more about how to potentially harness it! Thanks!
My dad put wind on his off grid cottage, and the problem was noise. We even looked for lower noise turbines. It ruined the peace, and we took it down. It was a ton of energy.
Life is not measured by the breaths you take, but by its breathtaking moments.
❤❤❤❤❤
Another great video, thank you Matt. What I felt was missing was more data on how much power these turbines can generate, ideally compared to the output of a solar panel. That gives us a sense of how many one would need to power different types of buildings.
He didn't tell us because that would be ridiculously low power. I think the prototype they show could be around 500W maximum, but would really average 100W.
Surely not more than a kilowatt each. These things aren't taking in more energy than an ebike puts out per unit time.
@@niconico3907 Yep, there's a good reason average power output *in a real application* are never quoted, because they're dire. People would be much better off putting the same cash they would spend on this into a community buy-in battery or full scale wind project....
Wind is one of the technologies it makes sense to centralise production. Power scales massively with turbine radius and height above the ground. For horizontal wind turbines, blade area (and therefore power generation) quadruples if you double blade length (area = pi x radius squared). For vertical axis, it just increases linearly (area = blade height x arm length)
Also, having heavy equipment spinning rapidly in residential areas just doesn't sound like a good idea to me, but I've not heard of any incidents yet (probably because these turbines are rare).
There's a great community project in Bristol, UK, where a community has come together to pay for the largest onshore wind turbine in England. That kind of thing makes much more sense to me, as the turbine is placed away from the city.
If VAWTs made sense they would have already taken off. I can see *some* potential for putting them on top of tall buildings, but that's clutching at straws.
Two things I been thinking about for wind turbine, one for on/above roof smaller turbines and two converting an old wind power well pump
Please keep providing updates on development of wind power. They are appreciated. We currently have solar, but one can always use some extra energy! I also appreciate your updates on solar storage batteries.
Interesting, Matt, but we are yet to see a single meaningful number: not just raw efficiency, but actually measured production in a realistic installation.
Like you, when I was planning my new home I was looking into possible home energy production options and stumbled upon Harmony. They looked extremely promising at the time and are looking better now. I love their design and will be following their development in the future. One of the best things about them is their stuff can be sourced domestically and doesn't require reliance on foreign rare earths. I also don't really see them having the same issue as having to strip and replace thousands of acres of turbines (vs solar) every ten to twenty years - perhaps just replace some gears and tighten some bolts. These things are set to be the Maytag of home wind generation.
We live near Kennedy Space Center in FL. We always have a breeze even though we are about 5 miles from the ocean. Turbines that could self dampen during a big storm while are not around sound really amazing!
I love the research of small scale wind turbines. As somebody living in the north of Norway where we have very little sun and a lot of wind, this could become a life changer for us
Vaporware like so many things that Matt promotes. Looks like they have 1 prototype that is not even deployed. But they sure do have a shelf full of t-shirts!!!!
PLEASE keep us updated on residential wind power. I’m going to participate as soon as we know the 5 Ws. In my mind there is zero chance this is not the future for running our homes cleanly and efficiently. Thank you!
Hi Matt,
I'm in western Pa and I'm a Penn State Alum of sorts....among other things. I have had conversation with Chris & Harmony as I came across them awhile back and followed as I knew what I was looking at....and relative to the area I was from. The mechanics of the design are SPOT ON and perfect as to control RPM and thus the WORK to transfer to a generator per se. I'm working on bringing the technology and another aspect of storage to my area in western Pennsylvania, as you can't have one without the other......and with natural resources...you work with what you got & the lay of the land......adapt & overcome.
I look at the technology and then I also look at the opposite end and maybe what could be waste. SO as with a gasoline power plant, the heats is the waste and must be dissipated with the exception for tapping that waste for climate control in a motor vehicle. One such technology you have already reviewed is my application as also being perfect.......as though as it may seem...a Rube Goldberg-ish scenario of a symbiotic relationship for lack of a better term as You Can't Have One Without The Other. So its transfer the POWER of the Wind blowing freely via the HARMONY as it can modulate the RPM and essentially close up and shut down if needs be. BUt point being is to charge a storage battery or perhaps an array of these storage batteries at different stages of discharge as to bucket brigade charge & dis-charge.......but the nature of the Battery is that of a reactor as it produces heat as a byproduct which can be harnessed to produce STEAM as well as HOT water.....but most importantly Steam to drive a conventional Steam Turbine.....for obvious reasons and conventionality. BUT this also can invoke the Stirling aspect too with a HOT & COLD differential to be exploited. It was STEAM & STIRLING that got us the INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION and where we are in Global Warming.....and this is the Answer to That for TOTAL CLEAN GENERATION and all interactive with a purpose....and so simplistic. Its not hard to Notion an Off Grid scenario in new construction or retrofits. THINK neighborhood Micro-GRIDs and should you over produce....dump it into the GRID at large. Essentially the Wind generation is temporary to initial charge per se and as a back up, for once the battery is VITALIZED and thus steam is being produced and driving a STEAM TURBINE....its relatively self contained and....perpetual if you THINK about it. The battery has to charge & discharge and the steam aspect can be the controlled source for charge when needed applied. SO NO MORE ELECTRIC BILLS OR GAS BILLS for Natural Gas or.....FUEL OIL or BOTTLED GAS
I should add for you, NUMEC corp and Zalman Shapiro.....and NUCLEAR BATTERIES and that affair that affects my home region and the resultant contamination and recycling scenario.....and a recent Pittsburgh situation of WESTINGHOUSE wanting to produce Nuclear Batteries....boggles my mind if you think it out and with the aspect of the local history involved. WESTINGHOUSE was to develop the next GEN Nuke Reactors.....and the coal fired power generation plants are shutting down....and coal or NUKE.....its all about HEAT and making STEAM
Matt, it seems likely that a hybrid approach using both solar and wind for residential energy augmentation will be a growing industry over the next decade. It would be interesting to gain an understanding of how this can be integrated into a home’s electrical system when adding the fact that most of us will also continue to have a utility company supply power to our homes.
States and territories by customers out
Oregon 59,965
Louisiana 15,939
Texas 10,208
California 8,013
Colorado 5,128
Guess how many households are disconnected from the grid in France, where nuclear power is predominantly used? Zero. It's a huge rarity there.
We have just installed solar power in our home in the Swedish Countryside. Even tho it wasn't finished until autumn, we did have days where we for a couple of hours not only were fully self-sufficient on electricity, but also were able to sell a (smallish, but at least something) amount of electricity. I am following the residential wind power evolution too, but I think it is still a few years off (at least until I install something).
@@vladimirya7166 well France is also a much smaller and older country with better defined infrastructure. its not really to do with the kind of power being used its the distribution of it.
@@yolothepinepapple7153 So it is clear that the USA is a backward country, in which there are still rotten wooden poles that often burn. But the problem is not only in California (the network is constantly down), but also in Texas, where wind turbines are a significant part of generation. And there were even cases when people paid astronomical amounts for electricity. Isn't that what you call "efficiency" and "caring for nature"? For me, it's just strange how you can call "bird killers" caring for nature.
Why will it be a growing industry next decade, what changed in this industry this decade and the last?
I live in the East hills of Silicon Valley and have thinking about something like this for years. Have solar. Would like to add wind too, as in the rainy season get significant wind here. Glad to hear this is being worked on.
Yes would love to see more on urban wind. We live in a 6 story condo with a lot of open park space around us. This would make us a great candidate to use wind. Just it would have to be hurricane resistant as we are in Florida.
Great story. as a startup investor with Harmony and a FL homeowner looking for alternative energy sources their design looks promising! Thanks Matt.
sir, good day! i have a unique design idea of Vertical Wind & Wave Turbine. but i don't have the fund to build a prototype. i wonder if you are interested and help me build it.
Matt is the kind of guy who can put the wind in our sails! 🎉😊
I'm glad that there are innovators in this sector! It drives me crazy that people insist that a certain type of energy generation has a certain limitation, therefore it couldn't possibly be any good and we shouldn't bother. We've barely even started to solve this sustainable energy problem. Humans are extremely creative, we'll come up with more ideas.
Even in the fossil fuel sector there is no one single solution used for everything. There's thermal coal used directly and coal powered steam generators, diesel, petrol, kerosene, lpg, methane - some people even used to burn peat to warm their houses. And yet people think one single renewable source has to do everything, and if solar doesn't work overnight or wind turbines don't work in still weather somehow that makes them useless.
Matt, I want to thank you. I was inspired by your videos to find a way to invest in some of these startups. Last year, I found Harmony Turbines via a site that allowed me to buy shares of the company. I am thrilled to see them featured in your video today, because I am in love with their concept. They still have a ways to go, but I am proud to be able to be a small part of it.
I’m one of those people who live on 1/10 acre, in suburban NW Oregon. My backyard is a pretty windy area, but it’s definitely dirty wind. But part of the factor there are the mature trees in my and my surrounding neighbors’ yards. And these oaks, red cedars, and Douglas pines create a lot of debris from summer through early winter. My concern would be how that would affect a turbine. I have a hard enough time keeping my second story gutters from becoming gardens, so what sort of maintenance would these smaller turbines require (ie. cleaning or debris causing breakage)?
Keen to have a pair of harmony turbines on my solar catamaran. Love the folding blade idea.
After nearly two months with no sun in Southern Ontario, my hope to add solar to my house is long since dashed. The chance that wind might be able to fill that desire is a path that I will continue to monitor. You are absolutely right about NIMBYism limiting wind in the past and shorter, quieter options may finally help to make it more widely accepted. Thank you for your enthusiasm and skepticism in producing these videos. It's great to follow along!
Harmony is one I've been watching for a few years now and I'm interested to see where it goes. The issue for where I am is that we have 4-6 months of snow and I'm still waiting for something that does well in snow and not just snow, but in heavy snow loads.
Curious about the snow/ice resistance too, especially considering attention is drawn to New England, NY, etc where there's snow and ice for several months a year.
It is known as maintenance. Not much works without it.
@@jimw1615 Snow removal in large quantities that collects would be considered maintenance, yes, however heavy snowfall is consider normal operation in certain areas of the world. For example, if the Harmony device appears to have close clearances that would bind or internal mechanics that would freeze, jam or fail, the device would be unsuitable for these climates, especially if the turbine were located far out of reach. Some roof-mount devices have warmers that assist with this problem, especially in the north. In my area, it's fairly normal to get 24" of snowfall, but more commonly, a lot of snow melting and refreezing as ice, or damming and cracking things. This type of weather makes it hard for exposed mechanical devices to operate properly in the winter months unless they were specifically designed for these environments. Since a large portion of the country experiences similar icing weather conditions, the question is valid. Maintenance is not and excuse for and should not be considered a workaround for failure to meet standard operating conditions.
@tresf
17 minutes ago (edited)
@jimw1615 Snow removal in large quantities that collects would be considered maintenance, yes, however heavy snowfall is consider normal operation in certain areas of the world. For example, if the Harmony device appears to have close clearances that would bind or internal mechanics that would freeze, jam or fail, the device would be unsuitable for these climates, especially if the turbine were located far out of reach. Some roof-mount devices have warmers that assist with this problem, especially in the north. In my area, it's fairly normal to get 24" of snowfall, but more commonly, a lot of snow melting and refreezing as ice, or damming and cracking things. This type of weather makes it hard for exposed mechanical devices to operate properly in the winter months unless they were specifically designed for these environments. Since a large portion of the country experiences similar icing weather conditions, the question is valid. Maintenance is not and excuse for and should not be considered a workaround for failure to meet standard operating conditions.
@@tresf Yes, that is the answer most lazy people offer. I lived in Park City, UT where feet of snowfall was produced by every storm that went through. Your stance on the matter is pretty much standard for many today.
Preventative and necessary maintenance is different than expected operating conditions. It's not lazy to expect an appliance to work in expected weather conditions. The question is valid.
I've been following Flower Turbines for just over a year and their concepts have me excited for better residential solutions. Their strategy is what you shared towards the end about grouping them closer together and seeing them benefit from one another. Look forward to more videos about this!
A deeper dive into O-Wind and Harmony would be appreciated. I follow Robert Murray Smith and his explorations of various wind turbines and his theme of cheap vs efficiency.... worth a look.
Yes. Agree. This efficiency fetish is not helping. A better index would be how much energy will be produced by the proposed device in a given location. This makes comparisons possible and we can see if the device repays its construction carbon footprint and maintenance effort. If the device is simple, reliable, robust, and works in the proposed location there is a good chance it will make a useful net energy contribution. We need to remember solar panels at about 25% are less efficient than some of the "bad" turbine designs... small simple turbines could still be useful. Personally I would love to have a small unit contributing to the household energy budget while ever the wind blows, and especially during storms when solar is not going to be happening.
Yes! I’d love more info! I live in an area with wind almost every day 7-12mph and down the street from a little airport. So I could use their wind data. I also live in more than 1acre. The first thing I said to my fiancé was this home was perfect for me! I love wind turbines and trying to get them more exposure because I feel they would be great along i81, I66, businesses where there are jumbled wind ripping through.etc. also on the mountain ridges near by. I’m interested in small wind walls with multiple smaller turbines built into a fence. I’m also interested in turbines that can be mounted on the roof. I have wind that rips off long rows all the way up my roof where I don’t have trees block it. I also have super tall roof ridge that would take the wind head on.
Certainly a topic of the moment. I've been running turbines of various shapes for more than 40 years now. Noise and vibration, and thus shaking loose, are a problem for building mounted turbines, and our building materials usually don't cope with long term vibrations too well. This is why I think most turbine success stories have traditionally been with installations in remote areas. I always liked Savonius rotors but its true the fixed ones can't be easily shut down and power out is proportional to the cube of the windspeed, so a 1 KW domestic Savonius at 20 ft/sec will try to generate 125Kw at 100 ft/second ( a moderate gale) - and 125 Kw continuous power is a lot to manage. I like the rotational furling idea, but again the rotor speed will dramatically increase as the diameter decreases due to conservation of ( rotational) momentum so that will need to be dealt with. Its a situation where the governor unfortunately makes the problem worse by governing. Sure the aerofoil is less exposed when its retracted - thats good - but you need to be able to absorb the extra power reliably. I had a wind blade travel half a mile at high speed once, and that was terrifying in a huge gale. You (we) need to look at the generator output vs rotational speed and work out something smart there too. One of my little turbines changes blade shape in high wind to shed the excess power, and the sound it makes is terrifying, like a huge banshee. All those Kilowatts going into sound!
My wife and I own a rather windy parcel of land in northern NH and it is far enough from on grid electric sources to make off grid alternatives very viable. We hope to build in the next few years so all of the information that could be available to help in this endeavor is helpful. So yes More information on wind, solar building techniques etc the better.
Great video! Love the new studio and lighting. I would be interested in seeing how aesthetic preferences for different turbine designs sway public opinion and the feasibility of mass-deployed wind, especially in urban areas. When I talk to people, that seems to be one of their main concerns.
That's a great point ... I need to see if there's any studies into that. And glad you like the new studio lighting! Slowly trying to update the look and feel of the videos.
I think I saw a wall of turbines that looked like Harmony's turbines. I thought it looked quite solarpunky. And I like it!
Or maybe I'm remembering a fever dream.
Great video. At 12:51 you showed London's Strata SE1 building. The wind turbines here was a failure and are never used as they are too loud for residents..
Noise is a key hurdle/barrier for residents.
Matt would LOVE to see you dive deeper on current turbines for homes vs industrial applications! We have so much [strong] wind here in the UK anything would probably work here!
As far as small wind turbines go I live remote rural off grid here down under , solar and I added a small wind turbine what I found was at night the turbine acts like a battery trickle charger and keeps my 24V battery banks topped up, hence extending the life of my batteries. It was relatively cheap and whereas it wouldn't power my house on its own it definitely works and serves a purpose. I have no experience with more expensive wind generators but am watching the evolution of non bladed units with interest.
I am very interested in Harmony Turbines. Their CEO is passionate about using wind that's there, but that nobody else is using. These might lack efficiencies of big turbines, but they can catch up when the others have to stop generating completely. I have longed for snall scale wind generation for years and this is promising! Please keep us updated, Matt, I love your down-to-earth channel!
I was the senior tech for Xzeres wind which at the time purchased the rights for Skystream 3.7 model (2.4kw/hr peak) from Southwest wind power. I love the incorporation of different axis for wind turbines. Great video. Deep dive requested.
Great video, good content, i would like to see more content about the smaller wind generation setups out there for personal home use, how much those would generate, and when they become worth getting, and if battery storage is smart with the wind generation of energy, and or if best combined with solar, so please let me know what you think about it
if Harmony keeps the metal design, I wonder if there would be a way to add a heater to warm up the scoops...?
@@I_report_scammers_spammers if you look in our FAQ we have definitely covered this topic for our followers.
I did see Robert Murray Smith make a type of wind turbine a long time ago that could seemingly generate electricity with little to no wind (its a small thing that produces less than a watt if I remember correctly). Other companies were doing similar things but targeting vibration as the generation source, instead of wind... hard to remember the details as it was a few years ago that I followed some of those projects, but I do remember Robert making a Darwin wind turbine similar to how Aeromine works, but it just redirects the wind from around the housing down onto the stationary turbine. They did upload a small 3d printable model that could also be made with scrap metal (if you had the time and fabrication knowhow) or plastic due to its simple shape and design.
As usual Matt, I enjoy your content. I am excited about wind turbines as I live on a 1.3 acre lot on top of a hill. The downside is that we have an abundance of trees, which blocks and / or causes swirling winds. I will continue to follow you to see the development of wind turbines. Keep the videos coming.
Appreciate the kind words. Hopefully there will be some good wind turbine options for you down the road. I'm excited to see how these develop.
Matt Ferrell thank you so much for constantly educating us, the work you're doing is important.
We need solar and or wind generation added to new government funded buildings when they can be justified.
I built a Savonius turbine way back in the early 80's. 3 20 liter drums split in half and a generator of a car from the 50's. A disc plow shear for a flywheel all spinning on a front wheel bearing from the same car. It ran for 30 years only needing battery replacements. It kept the charge up so the electrical circuit of the petrol powered pump was maintained and work when needed. It was replaced eventually but due to rusting out.
Great video. I would like to see a deeper dive into those companies mentioned in the beginning of the video. Thank you for all your hard work!
Appreciate that. And thanks for the feedback.
More information on all the small start ups!! yes please
Also on tidal / wave generation, this one is absolutely key for sustainability, and is currently even less publicised than wind!!
0:42 lol this guy said butt wind
Ha, it's a fart joke, I get it
I’m up on the eastern ridge, of Massa-choose-its Pioneer Valley@ 1300 ft above sea level. Been here for 50 yrs, and always pay attention to ‘which way the wind blows.’
We had a tornado, in 2006, that re-defined, my witness, of wind speed and duration. My town , regularly, have power generation projects, as all power transmission lines, run thru this town ( of 900 residents, 450 houses, 66% of the land is forest, owned by the state)to service the state .
We generate water, at 1200 ft, which fills a 5-town built reservoir , that is for the eastern half, of Mass.
The problem is the noise they make.
How noisy are they? Db
harmony turbine makes no noise, the noise is very very low.
This tech first piqued my interest about 10 years ago with the WindTree. I'm glad to see that others are continuing to look at ways to capture wind at lower heights in urban areas.
We live in SWCO and our property sits at a high point on the 3.2 archers we own. With CO winds we’ve often thought that wind energy would optimized our energy saving efforts. Wed love to be a demo property in rural Colorado if anyone is interested. Thank you for your channel and all the info you share. 16:08
I live in north dakota where its always windy. I was shocked to see it ranked so low in the wind mappings. Somethins doesnt sit right with that map😅
This is awesome I blew my kids mind the other day, we had built some 'robots' simple motors and rotors with batteries, that would move around the floor, I took one and took the batteries out and connected an led to the battery pack then spun the rotor / motor, he couldn't believe it when the led lit up. he thought it was magic, and I did a deep dive into the different ways turbines are used to generate almost all our electricity. I really hope he becomes and engineer in the future because its fascinating seeing his eyes light up when he notices a wind turbine.
Please do make a deep dive into each company/update as to what they are up to these days. Would be great continuaty to previous videos and more facts for folks who are trying to build up to the point where this is a most pressing concern.
in all honesty these videos have been great and I want to hear more about the domestification of this branch of tech.
A comparison with energy and mobile technology would be cool (phones vs. energy production)
Ecoflow whole house back up battery system can charge while also expending power at the same time. This turbine stuff could keep the batteries charged when power grid is up and keep replenishing during grid outages. Here in Kentucky, the power goes out a lot during inclimate weather. I wouldn't need a propane backup generator for long-term outages.
I’m so excited for this. We live in a wind tunnel.
Also want one for on top of the RV. Vertical on its side to charge while driving and dip vertical when parked.
These turbines do look really cool. I would love to have something like this, an alternative to solar. Those summer winds that are so hot, would love to have them work against themselves. Would need to see what sort of storm resistence they would have
I will be buying a wind mill generator in a few years and I would really like to see more videos like this one. The one with the scoops is very intriguing, we have a place where the wind gets up to 70 mph some times, but usually its just about 5 or 10 mph.
I've worked and talked with a few ranchers or well installers, and I've been told the cheapest most reliable way for pumping water for life stock was to use windpumps. So I'm surprised that there aren't more wind turbines for rural areas, especially when you consider how unreliable power could be in rural areas. When I worked on a ranch in South Texas, rain an hour away could disrupt power on the ranch.
Our house is odd, we are a corner house at a crossroad of streets. We basically have wind funneled to us, kind of like a stream. It's been consistently windy since 2007 when we moved in. Right now, in 2024, it's absurd how windy it's been. I'm in NC. That whole thing with the Aeormine, is basically what's going on with my house. It funnels down the street, hit's a second stream coming from the side street, and then creates wild winds at my house all the time.
I live on Cape Cod, and if you think electricity is expensive on the "mainland", (ya, I know it's a peninsula) It's REALLY expensive here. For this reason, I am researching a hybrid wind/solar system for at the very least, backup power, but perhaps to permanently power some circuits, such as refrigeration, water heater ignition and scavenge, a basement bath ejection pump, and some outlets, the last being to power the fan on the wood stove. I have a heat pump, which is great for AC in the summer despite the cost, ( even though it is only a few years old and has a very high SEER) but heat with wood as my primary heat. My hope is to reduce my metered power consumption and really, undertake the design and build as a fun project. I"ve started to build a small scale solar system to power a shed and some lighting out in my firewood processing area, but 3 fractured vertebrae have put that on hold. So now I'm back to dreaming and scheming for a couple of months. Do you have any suggestions for a hybrid system? Lack of wind isn't a problem here on cape, so I'm not all that concerned with efficiency, as I don't anticipate that as a hurdle. Any suggestions would be welcome!
I’ve been waiting for something to come along that’s cost effective. One that got me excited about home wind turbines was the archemides windmill, a non traditional horizontal windmill. I haven’t checked in on it recently, but it sounds like there are a lot of companies exploring residential wind power generation these days and good solutions are in the offing.
Harmony seems super cool - would love a deeper dive on them specifically! I hope I can have a wind turbine at my future house someday.
So i was thinking about how i would fix this problem and i've got a suggestion. What if the blades of a vertical turbine would go further appart from each other by centripugal force? If you use springs it would be very simple. and if the blades would be futher appart you can make it so that the efficiency would drop, which is good if you have a wind speed that would normally be too high. and if the blades are further appart the blades would spin faster in a linear direction (m/s) but not in the angular velocity( degrees/s). you would get a lot more torque but i think this is easily compensated with a smart charger.
Yes please do more of these on wind power generation. So many startups like Harmony and Halcium that one will eventually succeed.
I live in South Dakota, and we have a lot of pasture wells with the towers from the "old west style" wind pump towers. The pumps have been replaced with electric pumps. This means they have a tower, and electrical connection.The idea of employing these existing infrastructure pieces to generate additional wind power has been bumping around my head for a while. Thanks for the informative video.
As some who lives somewhere where windshear was main concern voiced by architect when talking about an extension and the ridge tiles on our brand new rood [with integrated solar panels] got pulled up by storm within just two months, harnessing this wind whipping around our house would be great.
Reason for severe wind here is that giuse is on built up land, so top of roof is effectively 5 floors above the lower level back garden [or yard in American], then markedly drops further again away from bottom of garden toward where the winds prevails from. Plus with the building next door at similar height we have our on venturi vortex running between us.
Oh on a pronunciation note. Northumbria is pronounced 'Nor - thum- bria', not 'North - umbria' And that's one of the easier UK place names to pronounce. 😀 Leicester and Loughborough less so as examples. There are some entertaining UA-cams videos where they ask Americans to pronounce some UK placenames.
I've had a small inexpensive Savonius turbine on my shed for about two years. I have it hooked up along with a solar panel to charge two batteries, which then provide power through an inverter. I've been really impressed with the results. Usually when it's not sunny at our home, it's windy. So collecting both solar and wind energy has meant that the batteries have kept a pretty constant voltage no matter the weather. I wish Harmony and Aeromine all the best. Home energy production FTW!
When I saw the title and thumbnail for this video I immediately thought: “oh boy, marketing old ideas that were proven ineffective decades ago” (which is the case for grid scale vertical axis wind turbines in general). But then you managed to very quickly park that squarely away, highlighting that they may have a place yet (just not at grid scale). I’m intrigued to see where these go, or try them out myself.
Hi Matt, thanks as always for a thorough and thoughtful video. A great presentation. Also, a minor thank you: those who contribute to Patreon are patrons, not patreons!
I really like the idea of home wind turbines, and while Harmony's solution does seem to solve a lot of the issues, I'm skeptical that it will be ever be better than simply solar and cheap battery storage, especially considering the recycling of the solar panel that can be done by companies like SolarCycle. For most areas of the world that is.
That being said, I live in Alaska, and many part of Alaska, especially north of Anchorage, get dark for very long periods of time in the winter. Harmony's technology could be a fantastic solution for far north communities for winter power generation, especially when paired with cheap battery storage like the stiff from ESS. And those concave fins, while very specialized I'm sure, if damaged, a suitable replacement could probably be fabricated out of aluminum in those more isolated communities.
While working on my engineering degree I tried to design a “lift” vertical wind turbine but could not get it to be efficient enough. The math just wasn’t there. I decided that you would need to have both a lift and a drag element. The drag part would work on lower wind speeds and the lift would be used for more efficient operations once it had already started to rotate, but the drag portion would be an inconvenience in that phase of operation. It would be awesome to have the Harmony Turbines opening and closing mechanism attached to an airfoil turbine.
Many urban locations have high-rise buildings that can cause a LOT of wind in a specific position making it IDEAL for gathering wind-energy. My back-garden is in between a lot of buildings that cause a LOT of wind that is ideal for vertical axis Savonius wind-generation.
I like the sound of the roof ones, especially if its found that having them closer together can actually improve them.
I'm building a motor home, with solar. But, part of my expected stops will be in areas that have "problems" with sunlight. I've designed 2 turbines using a simple "gutter slide" design that wraps around the pole. I'll charge through a pair of Chevy 100 amp alternators to a 12 volt PowerBar. From there I can use raw 12v or inverter fed 120v.
I will use the barbershop pole approach of one continuous trough from bottom to top. In a way, this combines the two approaches here. In theory, this should work in 10 mph or greater breeze.
No, I'm not a scientist, I'm just handy at putting things together sometimes. And the simpler, the better. I like off the shelf solutions, they're repairable. And usually a lot less costly.
$0.02