Sky Serpent: new and efficient way to produce clean energy

[lupercal]

An interesting proposal. Probably not as revolutionary as the article suggests but it raises the questions

 

Of how can future Energy planning incorporate ideas like this? I dont think they can.

How can simliar inventors be encouraged? Also difficult.

 

It is always nice to see a creative idea developped in someone's garage. Well, this is exactly what Doug Selsam did with his "Sky Serpent". His impressive design uses twenty-five small turbines instead of the massive blades on a modern wind power plan. To get a better idea, Environmental graffiti explains the technology :

Doug Selsam's Sky Serpent is the right invention at the right time: traditional turbines are perpetually on back order, and he has 3kw of generation capacity that's far more affordable and requires fewer materials to build.Selsam, who attended college at UC-Irvine but didn't graduate, has very little formal training in the ways of physics or wind power, which is probably what left him prepared to break the mold. "This is a 1,000 year-old design" he says of the single-bladed turbine, "I knew if I could get more rotors, I could get more power."

 

While on the surface that is in fact true, it flies against the dogma of the engineers and physicists that dominate the wind power community. The complicated physics of ensuring each rotor doesn't simply encounter the prop wash of the ones in front of it, may have been enough to drive them away. However, Selsam figured out a method: he's found the proper angle to align his string of rotors at in order to ensure they all have flow, and the optimum spacing for the rotors themselves.

 

So far, Doug sold 20 dual-rotor turbines that produce 2,000 watts and is getting a lot of attention from engineers. Let's see where it leads, but it's clearly a nice technology.

[drbubb]

 

Interesting.

But it looks dangerous. What it it breaks?