Do want...
 

YouTube - New Wind Turbine Design Good for Rural, Urban Environment

AH! I want this for my house!!!

Yeah, vertical wind turbines are all really neat.

I can't believe it turns at such speed when there is almost no wind there :shock: look at the guy's hair!

Nice.
I hope in the wake of this upcoming election in Aus, they'll get rid of these coal plants.
We've already got plans for a giant wind farm in NSW.

Pic from: Near Broken Hill:
http://www.smh.com.au/ffximage/2008/..._470x301,0.jpg

Very cool. I want one for my house too! Where do I sign up? :P

Interesting design, wonder if it reduces the noise and dangers of normal ones :)

Yeah, it's supposed to. However, I heard that turbines being hazardous to birds was a myth. But I don't know if that's true or not.

No, they definitely are. (2008 debate season topic was renewable energy, I'm always neg, we shot down a dozen plans with them) But there are ways to minimize bird and bat casualties.


Or use vertical ones, like this.

There is a vertical one near where I live. Its rather old and its installed on top of a large office building. I dont know about the effects on birds though - guess there are not enough studies yet on that specific design. However there are disadvantages also: The efficiency is not as good as with regular turbines and the material gets weak quite a bit faster. I think these are great for private homes though, just as the parabolic mirrored solar stirling engines - as in that cases economic pressure on efficiency is not that high and the gain by reducing transport losses are compensating.

While ago I had a short discussion with an windmill hobbyist. He said that none of the windmills today are used in their full capacity or even near their full capacity. 3kW generator could easily do 10kW for a few hours without burning but all the windmills reduce speed when their maximal nominal capacity is reached. If the turbines were allowed to run over their nominal capacity, their power could easily be doubled.

He is, and has been working with a small company for a while so a new generation of small but powerful windmills may be coming in the next few years :)

Well I guess to drive them to full capacity would mean an increased wear of the parts, so that has to be taken into account in the total eco-balance: Go Solar, Wind Or Geothermal If You Want Renewable Energy With Life-cycle Efficiency

Speaking of that - I'm wondering how these offshore windparks will go with all the salt water there. I hop ethey have done their testing and calculations well and they really churn out much more energy in the end than they cost to build.

Personally I think, localized energy supply would be the way to go if one wants to keep using this. A windmill and solar power on the house, a storage for energy in the basement. That way, little energy is lost in transport, people do not have to pay large companies money to build nuclear plants and there can be no grid failure. People would also see what it takes to produce the energy they consume and may be more aware of it then. Of course this does not take into account the huge amounts of energy consumed by industry that ends up in the homes in form of products.
And as always - cities are a problem here. They cannot sustain themselves from the land they sit on. Neither in food nor in energy...

These things produce a trifle amount of power compared to coal plants, natural gas plants, and nuclear plants. Sure, I'm all for new, cleaner ways of producing energy, but these flimsy things are hardly the answer. Same with solar panelling. :S

A parabolic solar stirling dish with 3m diameter can create 1kW - that is about enough to supply the needs of one home if energy is conserved and stored for bad days. In cloudy reagions, maybe a larger dish is required or a wind turbine, but these things can clearly supply a private home. This is already a reality. But yes - to produce steel, cars, computers and all that, you need factories that cannot run on small things like this. You need some of these then: YouTube - Stirling Dish 500MW solar power plant
Or maybe even this will work one day: Electricity collected from the air could become the newest alternative energy source - but I prefer to think about the present and not hope about miracles for the future, putting off possible solutions in hope for future developments.

I mean - this is all under the premise that one really wants to keep going like this. I personally think, the way to go would be to reduce wasteful consumerism greatly and use energy and resources much more wisely instead of trying to maintain everything as it is and just attempting to "green it".

I agree with Woodsprite.
Solar isn't as bad as some people say, but still needs a huge amount of space for the energy (even worse than wind or hydroelectric), but biggest disadvantage is it's even less reliable than wind, and even less consistent than hydroelectric. It's only viable for 50% of the day maximum, and does absolutely nothing for demand at night or during bad weather (you know... the exact kind of times that energy use increases...) - every other energy source from geothermal to nuclear to coal is not limited by these (although only natural gas, oil and large and expensive storage systems (mostly using water pumped up to a reservoir) can cope with spikes in demand.)

Couldn't electricity be produced via hydrogen instead of fossil fuels? Yes, it's unrealistic right now. But isn't it possible? Just wondering...