permaculture

[FranandDave Nokes <fdnokes@hotmail.com>]

  Wind Power Without the Blades




By Alyssa Danigelis

Noise from wind turbine blades, inadvertent bat and bird kills and even the 
way wind turbines look have made installing them anything but a breeze. New 
York 
design firm Atelier DNA has an alternative concept that ditches blades in 
favor 
of stalks. Resembling thin cattails, the Windstalks generate electricity when 
the wind sets them waving. The designers came up with the idea for the 
planned 
city Masdar, a 2.3-square-mile, automobile-free area being built outside of 
Abu 
Dhabi. Atelier DNA’s “Windstalk” project came in second in the Land 
Art Generator competition a contest sponsored by Madsar to identify the best 
work of art that generates renewable energy from a pool of international 
submissions. 
 

The proposed design calls for 1,203 “stalks,” each 180-feet high with 
concrete bases that are between about 33- and 66-feet wide. The carbon-fiber 
stalks, reinforced with resin, are about a foot wide at the base tapering to 
about 2 inches at the top. Each stalk will contain alternating layers of 
electrodes and ceramic discs made from piezoelectric material, which 
generates a 
current when put under pressure. In the case of the stalks, the discs will 
compress as they sway in the wind, creating a charge.
“The idea came from trying to find kinetic models in nature that could be 
tapped to produce energy,” explained Atelier DNA 
founding partner Darío Núñez-Ameni. 
In the proposal for Masdar, the Windstalk wind farm spans 280,000 square 
feet. Based on rough estimates, said Núñez-Ameni the output would be 
comparable 
to that of a conventional wind farm covering the same area. 
“Our system is very efficient in that there is no friction loss associated 
with more mechanical systems such as conventional wind turbines,” he 
said. 

Each base is slightly different, and is sloped so that rain will funnel into 
the areas between the concrete to help plants grow wild. These bases form a 
sort 
of public park space and serve a technological purpose. Each one contains a 
torque generator that converts the kinetic energy from the stalk into energy 
using shock absorber cylinders similar to the kind being developed by 
Cambridge, 
Massachusetts-based Levant Power 
.
Wind isn’t constant, though, so Núñez-Ameni says two large chambers below the 
whole site will work like a battery to store energy. The idea is based on 
existing hydroelectric pumped storage systems. Water in the upper chamber 
will 
flow through turbines to the lower chamber, releasing stored energy until the 
wind starts up again. 
 

The top of each tall stalk has an LED lamp that glows when the wind is 
blowing -- more intensely during strong winds and not all when the air is 
still. 
The firm anticipates that the stalks will behave naturally, vibrating and 
fluttering in the air. 
“Windstalk is completely silent, and the image associated with them is 
something we're already used to seeing in a field of wheat or reeds in a 
marsh. 
Our hope is that people living close to them will like to walk through the 
field 
-- especially at night -- under their own, private sky of swarming stars,” 
said 
Núñez-Ameni. 
After completion, a Windstalk should be able to produce as much electricity 
as a single wind turbine, with the advantage that output could be increased 
with 
a denser array of stalks. Density is not possible with conventional turbines, 
which need to be spaced about three times the rotor's diameter in order to 
avoid 
air turbulence. But Windstalks work on chaos and turbulence so they can be 
installed much closer together, said Núñez-Ameni. 
Núñez-Ameni also reports that the firm is currently working on taking the 
Windstalk idea underwater. Called Wavestalk, the whole system would be 
inverted 
to harness energy from the flow of ocean currents and waves. The firm’s 
long-term goal is to build a large system in the United States, either on 
land 
or in the water.
Link:  http://news.discovery.com/tech/wind-power-without-the-blades.html



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