T-Pain Is On A Boat: Re: [Electric Boats] Station keeping Azipod -- was Re: Multidirectional Docking Electric Motors

Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Re: [Electric Boats] Station keeping Azipod -- was Re: Multidirectional Docking Electric Motors

I like this kind of windturbine very much. No aligning to the winddirection. The "footprint" is much smaller, thus a far more smaller safetyzone around the turbine and a protective cage is very easely made. I think it is ideal for on a boat.

I do not believe their claim of a win, win situation when clustered. The upwind turbine takes a lot of energy out of the wind. How can there be more energy for the second? There is a low pressure effect so the second turbine has less resistance to turn (in theory) and could spin faster but it has to overcome the resistance from the dynamo and it will have less power to do so. My two cents is it does not work that way. But if they have a pudding to proof, I will eat it.

May be they got fooled by jetenginedesigns but there work other fysics.

I think there claim is indeed counterintuitive but for the moment I believe in my intuition.

Carel

----- Original Message -----

From: Galstaf

To: electricboats@yahoogroups.com

Sent: Wednesday, November 10, 2010 2:41 AM

Subject: [Electric Boats] Station keeping Azipod -- was Re: Multidirectional Docking Electric Motors

Feel free to check out the turbines... http://ftcenergy.com/

Their website blows (pardon the pun).. but they have some interesting videos on youtube http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=realracecom#g/u
They have 50 videos posted covering about 2.5 years of progress.
They have about 20 turbines deployed in the real world and claim to have a new contract with a Californian university and some federal contracts, but I have yet to see any evidence of that.

Let's just say they are much better engineers than they are sales people, but they claim that if the turbines are clustered together that the exhaust from one actually can accelerate a counter-rotating unit downwind with a vacuum (low pressure) effect.
Seems counterintuitive, but makes a little sense when you see the turbine blade design.