I would put this as a Mailbag question but I actually already emailed David about it...
I was listening to the recent pod about the Blatchford development in Edmonton, AB, and there was a bit where they were discussing distributed solar, and I had the thought, maybe in winter they'd do better with some kind of distributed wind? Over the years I have looked around online at small-scale wind turbines, and in the last few years, I have started seeing products that are shockingly cheap for their claimed peak power output. (For instance: https://tesup.com/row/products/tesup-vertical-wind-turbines-for-homes ) But I'm not sure if these are mostly vaporware. Like, they don't really produce nearly what they claim, or they'll break down in a year, or whatever.
The street my home is on is something of a wind tunnel. Like when people post political signs, if they don't zip-tie the frame to a street sign or similar, the sign will almost immediately blow away. In theory it seems like it should be possible to capture some of that energy, and it would be super useful since the winter depression in our solar production is exactly when the wind gets most consistent.
The Department of Energy _had_ some stuff about small-scale wind systems on their site -- presumably it's no longer up because of some MAGA purge.
I was pretty excited about the product from Aeromine Technologies, Inc. But, I don't hear much news.
Seems like David has a good filter for this stuff. I get excited about a lot of things where more diligent people do the math and find it doesn't work.
I'm very much inspired by (and indebted to) Volts. But I wanted to create a resource that's a little more accessible -- something that starts from first principles, written specifically for the energy transition newbies.
If you're reading this, my guess is you're already more advanced than my target audience. But if you've got friends and family who never know what you're talking about when you ramble on about heat pumps and advanced geothermal -- I hope you'll consider sending them my way.
Hi all! I am a student at Duke working with some other clean-energy minded folks on a campaign called Students for American Jobs. Check out our website here (https://www.studentsforamericanjobs.org) and would love to be connected to folks who are interested in helping out and spreading the word!
--- SHARE WORK, ASK FOR HELP, FIND COLLABORATORS ---
I would put this as a Mailbag question but I actually already emailed David about it...
I was listening to the recent pod about the Blatchford development in Edmonton, AB, and there was a bit where they were discussing distributed solar, and I had the thought, maybe in winter they'd do better with some kind of distributed wind? Over the years I have looked around online at small-scale wind turbines, and in the last few years, I have started seeing products that are shockingly cheap for their claimed peak power output. (For instance: https://tesup.com/row/products/tesup-vertical-wind-turbines-for-homes ) But I'm not sure if these are mostly vaporware. Like, they don't really produce nearly what they claim, or they'll break down in a year, or whatever.
The street my home is on is something of a wind tunnel. Like when people post political signs, if they don't zip-tie the frame to a street sign or similar, the sign will almost immediately blow away. In theory it seems like it should be possible to capture some of that energy, and it would be super useful since the winter depression in our solar production is exactly when the wind gets most consistent.
The Department of Energy _had_ some stuff about small-scale wind systems on their site -- presumably it's no longer up because of some MAGA purge.
https://web.archive.org/web/20240627180524/https://www.energy.gov/energysaver/installing-and-maintaining-small-wind-electric-system
Anyways I asked David if he's looked into this topic, potentially for an episode, and he said he has the impression that this mostly _is_ vaporware.
I wondered if anyone else in the community has some deep expertise on this, or any experience installing something with good results?
I was pretty excited about the product from Aeromine Technologies, Inc. But, I don't hear much news.
Seems like David has a good filter for this stuff. I get excited about a lot of things where more diligent people do the math and find it doesn't work.
Hey folks, I just launched a weekly newsletter about clean energy technology. It's called Green Juice -- I hope you'll check it out :)
www.greenjuice.wtf
I'm very much inspired by (and indebted to) Volts. But I wanted to create a resource that's a little more accessible -- something that starts from first principles, written specifically for the energy transition newbies.
If you're reading this, my guess is you're already more advanced than my target audience. But if you've got friends and family who never know what you're talking about when you ramble on about heat pumps and advanced geothermal -- I hope you'll consider sending them my way.
Hi all! I am a student at Duke working with some other clean-energy minded folks on a campaign called Students for American Jobs. Check out our website here (https://www.studentsforamericanjobs.org) and would love to be connected to folks who are interested in helping out and spreading the word!