Posted by Fourwindsroy
on April 21, 2009, 11:31 am, in reply to "Look at this new windcharger"
Hi folks,
SCAM ALERT: There are NO viable vertical axis wind turbines (VAWTs)on the market today...NONE! These turbines all spin very nicely for the investors and will produce, at best, a trivial amount of energy. Run screaming from the room now.
People that own the Pacwind units are very unhappy and Pacwind is now bankrupt. But Jay Leno has one on his garage so it must be good, right? Wrong...the first unit installed there burned out. The 2nd unit does not produce any significant energy. And of course we know that Leno got where he is today because of his scientific acumen, ehh? Same with Ed Begley jr.
He promotes products that look cool but don't function well.
Mariah Wind's Windspire actually made it to testing at the NREL site but the testing was terminated 10 months in due to dismal performance. It actually augered into the ground a couple of times and when it did run, no significant energy was produced. This info is available at the NREL.gov website.
Some of these siding salesmen belong in jail...they're outright scam artists like the one in the video. That unit spins nicely and you might even measure a few volts on the output but there will be no amps measured. Voltage with no amps = no power. No power produced over time means there is NO (as in NO)energy being produced there. In winds under 7 mph, the amount of wind energy in the wind is trivial. At ground and/ or roof level, it's even worse as turbulent winds have very little energy to offer. NO WAY can that turbine in the video power the air compressor...a pmg type alternator produces 3 phase wild AC which must be rectified to DC and attached to a storage battery to keep it under constant load. These types of generators can NOT run appliances directly, they are just battery chargers. There is a battery bank and inverter in the turbine base which runs the appliances, not the turbine.
Bottom line...you have to ask yourself this: Do I want expensive kinetic lawn art or something that will produce significant, usable energy that will contribute to my energy independence? Your choice!
And for those that don't know me, I teach wind installer workshops for SEI, Windustry, AWEA and several community colleges around the country. I hit this junk science all the time and will rabidly protect the small wind industry from harm due to deceptive marketing and other scams.
OK...rant off....we now return you to your regularly scheduled program!
Roy
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