Dairy farmers $750m windfall
The Greens have been getting plenty of stick from Fed Farmers etc for daring to suggest that the dairy industry should cover the cost of their excess greenhouse emissions rather than the taxpayer, as the govt proposes. Well this article puts an interesting light on it. Dairy farmers just received an extra $750m last week - i.e. more than the cost of their increased emissions if carbon was $15/tonne.
Smiles on the farm as dairy farmers get pay rise
By Eugene Bingham, Sunday October 28, 2007About $750 million hit dairy farmers’ back pockets last week when they got a long-awaited pay rise. The average farmer’s monthly cheque was about $70,000 as they earned 50 per cent more for their milk than at the same time last year.
Dairy giant Fonterra divvied out the extra cash in recognition of its expected record payout to farmers for the 2007-08 season.
Some farmers have already started spending the windfall. They’ve taken the increased forecast as not only an opportunity to buy machinery, upgrade the farm and clear debt, but to treat themselves a bit.
About 35 Southland cow cockies headed to the World Cup, and travel agents report farmers’ bookings for holidays in Australia, Europe and the Pacific Islands have significantly increased.
Toyota says demand for the Hilux ute is so great, it’s almost impossible to buy one. And one Hamilton car dealer said some farmers had also developed a taste for “heavy metal”, with his sales of secondhand, late model BMWs and Mercedes Benz cars up over the past three months.
“Farmers are not Flash Harrys and they don’t spend money until they’ve got it, but we’re seeing the older farmers who are probably thinking, ‘Bugger it, you’re a long time dead’,” he said.
“They seem to be a lot happier because they’ve been working for nothing for a long time so it’s a bit of a bonanza for them.”
The dairy boom is being driven by rising international prices which have prompted Fonterra to forecast the season payout will be $6.40 per kg of milk solids - up from $4.46 kg/MS last season.
October 29th, 2007 at 6:40 pm
So if you tax them does that stop the “greenhouse emissions”? of course not.
Why not call this what it really is, a wealth tax.
October 29th, 2007 at 7:24 pm
Why has the price of butter doubled recently?
October 29th, 2007 at 7:50 pm
bb
you dont even need to do the math. as it stands you and i pay “directly” for the dairy boom, they get away scott free. no, worse: they get paid to emit.
tax them (as you put it) and they’re forced to consider their impact (cost) before passing the increased cost to us (of course).
if there’s a tax to be levied it might as well send the right signal. so best levy it as close to the emissions source as possible.
a carbon tax (as proposed in nz by the greens) would eventually reduce emissions as the take goes to research etc. if however a genuine tax shift were implemented then consumers would be led to emissions lean alternatives. business would follow.
the act of taxing dairy would be a simple wealth tax only if the ecological impact of dairy production was benign.
the injection of cash for travel agents and car dealers spreads the love a little, but there’s no love lost from the point of view of your average central north island lake or canterbury water table.
October 29th, 2007 at 8:02 pm
why has the price of butter doubled recently? short answer is “because fonterra can”.
almost as short answer is “theres more corn going into gas tanks, less corn available for animal feed.”
high priced input (corn) = high priced output (milk solids). thats globalisation for you.
October 29th, 2007 at 8:32 pm
The Green policy is to require the processing companies (of which Fonterra is by far the largest) to purchase Kyoto credits and hand them over to the Government to administer. It is not actually a tax, although has some of the characteristic os one.
What happens to those credits depends on what theprocessing companies do. If they invest in nitrous oxide inhibition, developing technology for methane inhibition, and moving unsustainable dirying land int forestry, they’ll get a lot of them back. If they do nothing, they’ll have to further increase the price of butter, or reduce the payment to dairy farmers, or both. But if they choose the former alone, eventually people will resist becasue they can’t or won’t pay.
October 29th, 2007 at 8:36 pm
IT’s more than that though also, butter was bad for people not so long ago…debt based money has as it’s natural consequence in society an impulse that creates scarcity for anything of value independent of the supply. If you think outside the box about it long enough you will see why, but i can elaborate if interested.
October 29th, 2007 at 9:55 pm
# big bro Says:
October 29th, 2007 at 6:40 pm
>So if you tax them does that stop the “greenhouse emissions�? of course not.
>Why not call this what it really is, a wealth tax.
From 2008-2012, New Zealand will have to buy carbon credits to cover this emission. The dairy industry creates the emission, and under Labour’s policy, taxpayers in general pay for it. That is effectively a subsidy. Charging the farmers is simply user-pays. There are a number of situations where user pays is not economically efficient (such as hospital treatment, where it naturally leads to insurance-based systems which are less efficient than taxpayer-funding), but I haven’t heard any explanation why this would be one of them.
And the tax would lead to lower emissions - it would encourage farmers to take up the use of nitrogen inhibitors as fast as the fertiliser companies could boost their production of them, and it would create a price differential between beef and lamb (sheep farming producing lower emissions), which would encourage low-income meat-eaters to choose the more environmentally-friendly option.
It’s hard to know what effect it would have on the use of technology to reduce methane emissions, because we don’t know how far away that is from being developed (though there’s a lot of work being done on it right now).
October 30th, 2007 at 5:48 am
Tax them and yes they will stop greenhouse emissions, they will look to ways of stopping there emissions such as garlic feed. We should Tax everyone who is destroying our planet and dairy farmers twice as much as the average lazy stupid farmer has cow farts and nitrogen run off, we need to stop allowing people to destroy this planet! I’m sure there are many more ways as well if you took the time to investigate.
greedy damn farmers
October 30th, 2007 at 6:30 am
May you live in interesting times
Nothing gloomier than a big yard full of shiny buses and rental cars all waiting for the tourist season to get going. There aint much to eat amongst all that redundant metal (unless there’s a lollie under a seat somewhere).
Where are our farms (post abundant oil)?
October 30th, 2007 at 7:43 am
“.. butter was bad for people not so long ago…”
um..!..even..butter still is ‘bad for people’..!
where is your/any(?) evidence to the contrary..?..
phil(whoar.co.nz)
October 30th, 2007 at 9:50 am
Sure we have to ensure that people are not generating profits by using farming practice that increases GHG emissions. Demonising farmers while being statisfying is a) not very nice, and b) not very productive. We need to work on ensuring that the knowledge that is becoming more commonplace in cities in New Zealand makes a fast transition to the country. We need the support of farmers to implement any agricultural basic GHG reductions. Once we have the support of farmers it might be that they get stuck into city dwellers for our large footprint? Cause who is more at risk here. Someone who works in the city or someone whom is dependant on a regular stable climate for their livelihood.
October 30th, 2007 at 11:40 am
The elephant in the room here is :
How much profit must Fonterra extract to keep dairy farmers over-producing this commodity?
Because anyone in the MFAT sector has been struggling to control the warehousing of the NZ butter mountain/milk powder mountain since the nineties. We make this stuff, Fonterra ships it out of the country, and we compete with other dairying nations to inflict our fat of the land onto their consumers.
Our market is growing by trying to convince lactose intolerant nations to consume milk products and by-products.
The Dairy farmers of NZ are powered by greed and the promises of huge bonuses; it’s not a true market of supply-and-demand related reward.
Meanwhile, non-dairy-farming NZ is paying for the cost of the pollution, and can’t afford to buy milk for children to drink, in many households, which 50 years ago was given to children in schools, compulsorily.
We’ve come a long way from the original purpose of dairy farmers’ co-ops which took their product to the world markets.
October 30th, 2007 at 12:46 pm
We make this stuff, Fonterra ships it out of the country, and we compete with other dairying nations to inflict our fat of the land onto their consumers.
The world shortage of food means that the commodity milk market has a good future in the next decade.
Meanwhile, non-dairy-farming NZ is paying for the cost of the pollution, and can’t afford to buy milk for children to drink, in many households,
Agreed. But at the same time dairy farmers are going broke, doing dairy farming, and more and more rely on capital gains from their property.
If the price of milk stops rising, there will be a lot of pain in dairy farming areas.
W
October 30th, 2007 at 5:18 pm
and when is the motor racing INDUSTRY going to be asked to reduce their emissions ?
eg: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7kuPwtNMfI
eg : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXkkWX5rmcA
explain to me why i should leave my car at home and catch the bus when this sort of crap happens every weekend ?
October 30th, 2007 at 6:15 pm
There was a documentary about Formula 1 on the BBc on Saturday night. They said that F1 will come under greater pressure due to GW etc,, they will have to show (spin?) that they (can/will) develop new technology that everyone benefits from.
As an aside there were interesting comments about the supreme power of Formula 1 as a marketing tool… the speed, the power… the epitomy of (something)… Makes you think about the green movement (kind of at the opposite end… bloke on a bike wearing sandals (with beard..)???? and of course the Greens with their ayatollah and ayatollaress who know and dispense their (superior) wisdom on the narrow field of Social Justice… under the Eye with no lids (aka The Green Chater)
October 30th, 2007 at 7:18 pm
My greater environmental concern is over dairying pollution to waterways –we should be taking care of our habitat heritage first. It’s one problem we alone own. It’s probably appropriate, given the growth in dairying, to constrain it by requiring environmental standards in this production. Existing producers can now afford to do this and new entrants should not come into the field and add to existing problems.
On the wider issue - carbon tariffs on pollution in global market production. The market follows market signals.
October 31st, 2007 at 1:41 am
haz, Here is the simple explanation you should leave your car at home and catch the bus when this sort of crap happens every weekend. The technology that gives us our modern fuel efficient low emission cars was developed and proved on the race track decades ago. Aerodynamics, the use of low weight alloys, low reciprocating mass, multiple valves and camshafts, fuel injection…all pioneered and proved on race cars.
Honda became the first car company to meet California’s strict emissions standards without sacrificing fuel economy. It managed this feat by handing the challenge to it’s formula one engine designers.
So your question really should be “and when is the motor racing INDUSTRY going to be credited with reducing everybody elses emissions ?
October 31st, 2007 at 7:39 am
so when the v8s are guzzlin their way around pukekohe and some neandertal is smoking his tires until his car disappears into the cloud of smoke, we shud all be grateful because some
of their mob worked on fuel injection.
i’m sorry but i still ask goverment : why isn’t the motor racing INDUSTRY being told to cut their emissions , same reason as dairy farmers ? big money? don wanna piss off the voters ?
if i burnt tires the same as on that video id be up for a huge fine , how come its ok on a race track ? dont they share the same sky as us ?
October 31st, 2007 at 9:31 pm
Haz-Dont you believe in balancing enviromental concerns with the economy. The amount that the motor industry generates for the economy compared to their emmisions would make your suggestion seem incredible
October 31st, 2007 at 9:53 pm
Nick C and Kevyn - the fact that smart engineers work on F1 race cars is a particularly weak argument. The same problems are likely to have been solved by exactly the same people, even if motor racing didn’t exist.
Not that I’m keen to see the motor racing industry disappear, but they should have to cover the cost of their emissions just like everybody else (apart from dairy farmers!).
SPC - dairying pollution of waterways has been a huge focus for the Greens over the last decade. It’s been very difficult to get media traction on the water quality issue, particularly with the Federated Farmers running spouting lies.
October 31st, 2007 at 10:45 pm
Dairy farmers just received an extra $750m last week
No, they earned it.
October 31st, 2007 at 10:48 pm
Haz-Dont you believe in balancing enviromental concerns with the economy. The amount that the motor industry generates for the economy compared to their emmisions would make your suggestion seem incredible
whats incredible about it ? thats like saying dairy farmers can pollute all they want because they bring in big bucks ? isn’t this attitude exactly whats causing the problem.
i could probably make a bundle disposing of everyones old tires by burning them, some of it might even trickle down to you nick . does that mean its ok to pollute ?
big series of v8 racing comin up - hows tht for a mixed message? catch the bus, even better try walkin or car pool, drive a smaller car - then watch a bunch of rich guys drive round in circles using up the gas you just saved
November 1st, 2007 at 1:22 am
Stu, If motor racing didn’t exist those same people would have had neither the training, experience or any reason to solve those problems. Either the problems wouldn’t have been solved or they wouldn’t have been solved in a timely many.
The first person to drive across Australia in a solar powered car was former formula one driver and current V8 supercar team owner Larry Perkins.
http://www.speedace.info/solar_racing_events/world_solar_challenge_his tory.htm
Motorracing fuels are subject to the same punitive taxes that all motor fuels are subjected to so they do cover the cost of their emissions just like everybody else, or at least when everybody else has to pay a specific carbon tax on their petrol so will motor racers.
Haz, the spectators use more petrol than the competitors. Seems like a pretty good reason to ban all professional sports. Come to think of it, how much gas is wasted each weekend by mums and dads taking their kids to play sports? Yep, we gotta ban school sports. In fact we could avert global warming simply by banning all sports and entertainment. Whoops…just had a shock revelation. Recreational fishing probably uses more petrol than motorsports.
November 1st, 2007 at 7:45 am
im not talking about banning anything . im talking about paying for emissions and lowering emissions. what i see on those vids is pure waste and deliberate pollution. good on that the first person to drive that solar car - shame he doesn’t stick with that and forget the v8’s.
if we’re depending on F1 to save the world we’re in the sh#t.
id be far more impressed if those guys started racing GREEN (not british racing green ! ) but no they still screamin round in gas guzzlers like a bunch of dinosaurs.
motor racing is the advertising for big biz like tire companies, oil companies and car companies - and thats why its splattered across evry tv channel evry weekend- big money mate
nothing justifies the deliberate pollution in those vids and thats just 2 vids - they shud be made to clean up their act.
November 1st, 2007 at 10:06 am
Recreational fishing probably uses more petrol than motorsports.
true ?
i dont think so
that sounds like a soundbite to me and one full of spin at that.
put aside car racing being called a sport which to me is a huge oxymoron - i posted the vids of blatant polluting on racetracks in nz. any business ( which is what motor racing is ) shud be made to curb emissions- burning tires is the worst kind of polluting. tell me who else would get away with it ? why shud motor racing be exempt ? if dairy farmers were burning tires to keep their cows warm you’d be leaping up and down.
November 1st, 2007 at 10:55 am
Kevyn - that logic is absolute bollox. Let’s outline it more explicitly:
1. “Smart engineer” works for Honda F1 racing team
2. Government regulation requires improved emissions standards from cars
3. “Smart engineer” is transferred to improving emissions standards from normal vehicles
4. Therefore: F1 racing industry deserves credit for reducing emissions
Again I say - bollox! The same people will be just as smart and capable of solving these problems whether or not they work for F1 racing, NASA, or whoever. I strongly resist the tendency for people to glamorise certain industries/activities in terms of their spin-offs for general mankind.
The prime example is the space program, which is often extolled for delivering technological benefits. Well blow me down with a feather - they spend a quadruple billion dollars and invent something new. Who’s to say it wouldn’t have happened anyway?
I’m reminded of Ernest Rutherford - “We haven’t the money so we’ve got to think.” The world’s best engineers and scientists are not working for F1 racing or NASA - they’re slaving away in little garages and sheds all around the world.
And being far more productive at the same time.
November 1st, 2007 at 11:52 am
Haz,
I think you are missing Kevyn’s point regarding what we use our personal petrol (read emisions) on. We live in a democratic society where we are free to do with our time and purchases (petrol in this case) as we like. Be it driving our kids to school or racing cars.
Stu,
“The world’s best engineers and scientists are not working for F1 racing or NASA - they’re slaving away in little garages and sheds all around the world.”
Urban legend not borne out by any evidence at all. Remember every invention need to be marketed to sell its benefits. Something the back yarder has neither the finances or skills to do.
The current climate change debate is bringing about a “tension for change” hence development in many areas that the back yarder cannot even hope to compete.
“The same people will be just as smart and capable of solving these problems whether or not they work for F1 racing, NASA, or whoever. I strongly resist the tendency for people to glamorise certain industries/activities in terms of their spin-offs for general mankind.”
Problem for those scientist not working in closely competitive environments is motivation. There is no “tension for change”.
I would say that all inventions are a result of competition whether this be sport (car industry, cycling industry, shoe industry, etc.), war (nuclear development, creation of the internet, gps systems, etc.) or industrial (boeing v airbus, intel v amd, toyota v hyundia, etc.).
November 1st, 2007 at 12:04 pm
Gerrit - you’ve missed the point.
I’m arguing that massive state-funded agencies, such as NASA, do not deliver technological output equivalent to their financial inputs.
I agree that competitive tensions deliver technological progress. However, this holds for all industries, and not merely glamorous western sporting events.
November 1st, 2007 at 12:20 pm
hi Gerrit i think youve missed MY point.
i’m talkin about this sort of stuff:
eg: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7kuPwtNMfI
eg : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXkkWX5rmcA
this is flagrant polluting and an insult to the planet and when people do things like this i think they need to be bought into line as i would be if i burnt tires. if motor racing people are going to pollute for entertainment and for financial gain they shud suffer consequences.
November 1st, 2007 at 12:45 pm
why has the price of butter doubled recently? short answer is “because fonterra can�.
almost as short answer is “theres more corn going into gas tanks, less corn available for animal feed.�
high priced[/high carbon] input (corn) = high priced[/high carbon] output (milk solids).
Longer and more complete answer.
The corn fed dairy industry as existant in the USA and Europe is according to latest Lincoln study 20% more greenhouse polluting than the grass fed dairy industry of New Zealand (inclusion made for carbon miles, etc.). Because of this there has been a reduction in worldwide greenhouse gas pollution as cows are removed from there and added here.
low cost/low carbon input (grass) = low cost/low carbon output (milk solids)
That’s globalisation for you, reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
However becuase Kyoto is a non-global system (& our local Greens seem hell bent on following Kyoto) it requires we pay heed to NIMBYism and place limits on our greenhouse emmissions even when our efficiency is world leading. To impose a tax on NZ dairy emmisions is to impose a tax on the most efficient production of milk and reduce production here. This will price in more highly pollluting production in the northern hemisphere.
low cost/low carbon input (grass) + taxation = high cost/low carbon output (milk solids)
Institute NIMBY taxation - the world produces more pollution and increases global warming; thats Kyoto for you.
November 1st, 2007 at 12:52 pm
Sorry haz,
dont do youtube.
Could you specify consequences that they may face?
Would you consider the horse racing entertainment industry in the same light (horses fart)?
Have a serious question for. Where does the rubber from all the tires, on all the motor verhicles, from every road, go every time it rains?
Must go somewhere as my tires wear out, so the rubber must build up at every drain, creek, stream, river outlet.
With the millions of tires on the road wearing down all the time where does the rubber go?
November 1st, 2007 at 1:02 pm
Stu,
“I’m arguing that massive state-funded agencies, such as NASA, do not deliver technological output equivalent to their financial inputs.”
Totally agree, however is that a failure of management to set defined targets for the scientist at NASA to deliver?
Or a lack of problem solving to a commercial realistic outcome by the scientists?
Personally would rather NASA spent it money on researching deep sea exploration and settlement than outer space. Would have a far greater beneficial impact on the human species.
November 1st, 2007 at 2:00 pm
Completely agree.
November 1st, 2007 at 2:33 pm
Stu
In one word.
NO.
In two
You are wrong.
The people at NASA do produce a hell of a lot with an amazing amount of research and you cannot… you ABSOLUTELY cannot, accomplish the same thing in your garage. The Research and Development at NASA is stuff that has paybacks decades and even a century or more in the future. It does basic research that no corporation could economically justify.
I worked on NSCAT, QuickSCAT, on AVIRIS and on MER. NASA used to have a brief for Earth Observation, removed by Bush but many of the projects are still around. I don’t have a warm spot for NASA management, but the productivity of the various centers is awesome… and it gets used, but not always acknowledged, all over the world.
The NASA budget has decreased in real terms over the several decades now. It is one of the most efficient agencies in the federal government.
… and I think neither you nor Gerrit really appreciate just how much it is producing.
More, deep sea settlement can’t save our bacon. Space settlement can… (just don’t get hung up on going to Mars).
BJ
November 1st, 2007 at 3:07 pm
BJ,
“… and I think neither you nor Gerrit really appreciate just how much it is producing. ”
I understand your sentiments, do NASA produce a “we are working on, the benefits will be, the costs are, the return is” type report?
Seems like NASA has a marketing problem, rather than a perceived lack of performance issue.
Do private companies contract NASA to do specific work? Are they like a SOE in New Zealand where they would contract for specific research projects?
“More, deep sea settlement can’t save our bacon. Space settlement can… (just don’t get hung up on going to Mars).”
Totally disagree BJ, We havent even began to explore (in terms of living there) or settle the 3/4’s of the planet under water.
While space colonisation may allow a thousand? people in the year 2050 to inhabit space, the under ocean capacity for migrating people is much greater. And I would say much easier to sell to the populace as they can still retain conctact and access to the planet.
I guess by space colonisation you mean in orbit around the earth or set up on the moon?
November 1st, 2007 at 3:41 pm
BJ - guess I touched a nerve?
I don’t think the costs of investigating space has bought commensurable benefits to mankind. Various programs may have delivered scientific advances, this is true.
Feel free to provide evidence as to how NASA has substantially improved my quality of life? I live in a 90 year old apartment building, use my bike, bus or train to get around, and eat healthy food. Activities consist of ultimate frisbee and swimming. My point is - the type of technology that NASA develops is not that important on a world scale.
You are correct in that space may ultimately provide an alternative habitat than the Earth. But that doesn’t save our solar bacon anymore than looking after the one we’ve got. In fact, given the uncertainty associated with developing alternative habitats, surely it’s a lower risk investment to develop sustainable economies in our little part of the galaxy.
November 1st, 2007 at 6:13 pm
Not talking about habitat, talking about energy.
No energy down there… not additional to what we collect at the surface. Can’t even grow seaweed, as even seaweed needs light. The deep ocean is more like a desert than most deserts.
CATS and SSPS give you a fundamentally unlimited access to energy… it “expands” the collection surface. The only thing needed besides CATS is a meaningful ability to live and work in space. SSPS needs a real workforce up there.
Without NASA you wouldn’t have GPS or weather satellites, you’d have no idea how much to worry about global warming, the extent of the melting in Antarctica and Greenland, the atmospheric warming, the die-off of the oceanic phytoplankton, or the extent to which CO2 absorbtion has been reduced there. You’d have problems mapping pollution, your telecommunications would suck swamp water and your TV signals would be brought to you via cable IF someone had bothered to install any nearby… you’d have a hope in hell of developing fuel cells… and there is way more than that….
AVIRIS itself pioneered methods of using airborne sensors to detect mineral deposits, among other things, which have been adopted for firefighting, disaster recovery and evaluation, pollution measurements and of course resource extraction. BHP uses a simplified variant of our equipment. We mapped the asbestos release from the 911 and we mapped the saturated ground in New Orleans.
You DID touch a nerve. I’ve seen this before in other contexts and it is simply wrong. The money is not spent in space and it is not (for the most part) wasted. NASA can’t afford waste. The budget for NASA is tiny compared to most of the Federal government. Hell, the SIV rescue funds they are trying to put together are 5x the size of the NASA budget.
NASA does not usually do contracted research. It does research collaboration with companies that are involved in similar pursuits though. Its research is also sometimes spun off to create companies.
That’s without doing a lot of research either… I do not doubt at all that I could find a great deal more if I worked at it a little.
Be Fortunate
BJ
November 1st, 2007 at 9:27 pm
No BJ still not convinced of NASA’s value, for the following reasons:
1. The technological developments would have to fundamentally improve our potential for sustainable living. GPS, weather satellites, TV, airborne sensors, and other scientific measurements are not by any stretch “essential technology.”
2. The technological developments may have happened somewhere else at some later point in time, with less money.
So by all means indulge your technological interests in the excellent technological developments that permeate from NASA. Don’t, however, allow your appreciation of that technology to discolor the fact that:
1. We don’t really need it; and/or
2. We are likely to have developed the same technology anyway
Be realistic.
November 2nd, 2007 at 1:41 am
Stu, Your problem is you’re not normal, you don’t think like a normal person, you don’t appreciate the things that normal people appreciate, you don’t use the latest technology like normal people do, you’re not contributing to global warming like normal people do, you haven’t been programmed with unsustainable and irreversible bad habits that normal people have and you don’t need sustainable technology to save the planet like normal people do. All of which means that, in this one instance, it is you who needs to be realistic, not bj.
Your comment about the best scientists and engineers being the ones beavering away in garages and sheds is only marginally true. While I understand the sentiment I also recognise the romantic myth that it really is. F1 and NASA attract precisely these same type of people because F1 and NASA need inventive minds, the type that would wither and die in the normal corporate or government environment. Working for F1 or NASA means that they are better resourced, not allowed to procrastinate, and when their genius bears fruit the glamour and prestige of F1 and NASA opens doors and chequebooks that would remain forever closed to the backyard inventor. But most importantly from the environmental perspective, the glamour and prestige of F1 and NASA help to make the invention a desirable must-have consumer item rather than a conservation sacrifice or burden.
A backyard inventor would never have achieved Honda’s main achievement with the CVCC engine - convincing the state legislature not to defer the introduction of it’s low emmissions standards. All the other car companies had been united in opposing these standards because the technology didn’t exist or would be too expensive. Honda turned up to the US equivalent of a select committee with
a) a pre-production prototype
b) a licensing contract with Ford
and that was enough to stop the deferral. A backyard inventor would not have been able to do that, and it is unlikely they would have been crack the enigma of combining low emissions with good fuel economy and peppy performance in just five years. Honda was able to do it because their engineers had spent years in F1 where problems have to be solved before the next race and where innovation is admired.
You can check out NASA’s commercialised technology for yourself and see if your final facts to bj still stand. (try searching the database for “power”, efficiency” or “conservation”
http://www.thespaceplace.com/nasa/spinoffs.html
http://www.sti.nasa.gov/tto/
November 2nd, 2007 at 2:32 am
haz, your argument has some merit. But you do need to bear in mind that these victory donuts are no worse than the halftime fireworks at Crusaders games.
You might not think that recreational fishing probably uses more petrol than motorsports but the numbers certainly add up to that conclusion. This is because of the popularity of fishing and the remoteness of good fishing spots. It’s less fun but more sustainable to hook your fish in the chiller at the local supermarket.
November 2nd, 2007 at 5:36 am
I am not satisfied with mere survival. I am not satisfied to offer my children nothing to dream of in the future. I am not satisfied for the my children’s children to eke out a living in thatched mud huts toiling behind patient oxen. I am not satisfied with the species being at the mercy of the next dinosaur-killer asteroid, or the next religious lunatic to gain a nuclear arsenal or a bioweapon. I am not satisfied with subsistence living, I enjoy civilization as I know it and I want it to get better.
Human industries in space do not pollute the earth.
No coal is burned to make foamed steel or aluminium sandwich, it is not feasible to MAKE it here on earth, only a solar powered microgravity smelter could roll it out. The opportunities once you’ve left the gravity well are difficult to imagine… No coal is burned to collect the sun’s energy, package it in a microwave beam and send it to a rectenna farm on earth. We know how all the pieces work. All we need is CATS and some improvements in our living and working in space understanding. Engineering science.
The problem, which Kevyn understands well, is that you don’t get many of the advancements that improve civilization’s efficiency and capabilities by waiting for the corporate inventors or the backyard boffins to come up with them. Why? Because we all have jobs and families to support. You can’t build this stuff in your spare time, and you can’t do the research from your garage.
Without the government research organization you not only do not have NASA, you don’t have NOAA either. Hansen works for NASA… and if he and others didn’t have access to what NASA has done YOU would still not know enough to be worrying about AGW. You might guess. You’d know damned little.
I’ve seen that same retreat from R&D on the part of most businesses, and your view is shared in many places far distant from you on the political spectrum. Business does not, unless someone at the top has the vision and faith to drive it that way, look far enough info the future to put in the basic research. The businesses that DO make the effort make the exceptions… uniformly they are not US businesses.
The hybrid car came out of a government funded research project. Ford, GM and Chrysler round-filed the development which was theirs for free…. Toyota and Honda got hold of the briefing papers and put together the first commercially viable hybrids.
Toyota spends a million dollars a minute on R&D … but they aren’t planning any effort to live and work in space. They are, like Bell Labs, an exception to the corporate myopia. Those exceptions would eventually give us some of the things that the government research has brought… but no corporation has the sort of money and vision it would take to build a space program.
The NASA budget looks like about 18 Billion $ per year. About half is spent on manned missions, the other half on satellite and robotic missions to earth and other planets. Until Dubya, a lot of that was spent on earth observation. A fair bit still is (NASA works in multi-year commitments to projects).
We don’t really need to know what we’re doing to the planet?
What in the world IS your definition of “essential”?
Hawking:
http://tinyurl.com/26pgm2
Asimov:
http://www.wronkiewicz.net/asimov.html
“We must keep the problems of today in true proportions: they are vital - indeed of extreme importance - since they can destroy our civilisation and slay the future before its birth. The crossing of space may do much to turn men’s minds outwards and away from their present tribal squabbles. In this sense, the rocket, far from being one of the destroyers of civilisation, may provide the safety valve that is needed to preserve it.”
“The Exploration of Space”, 1951, p.194, by Arthur C. Clarke, F.R.A.S.
http://www.ariovist.de/carl_sagan-essay.htm
You may be happy for our children to scratch out a futile existence without dreams of any future except survival in the mud of just one planet…. I am not happy with that limitation at all. I want our children to be able to dream of better futures, always.
Most greens have a “seven generations” outlook, and I am no different in that regard…. but I don’t accept that that future has to be a limited one.
respectfully
BJ
November 2nd, 2007 at 12:45 pm
BJ and Kevyn - I admire your passion and energy for technology.
Some personal background may help. I have a masters in engineering. My research focussed on developing computational fluid models of wind flow in complex terrain, as well as optimization of wind farm layouts. Thus, I certainly appreciate the value of modern technology.
Where we differ is on our response to the following question:
How can the world transition towards sustainability?
You place your faith in technology. I take a lower risk approach, which first says “do as little harm as possible.” The essential difference is that I see more scope for conserving resources through the efficient use of current technology rather than in developing new technology.
Take cars for example. Yes there are efficiency gains to be made. However, the replacement rate of the vehicle fleet means the impact of this technology is more than swamped by growth in vehicle numbers. In short, a 10% reduction in per vehicle emissions is outweighed if vehicle numbers increase 20%.
I instead prefer to focus the following questions - Do we need so many vehicles? Could they be more efficiently used? Could they be more efficiently priced?
I feel answers to these questions will ultimately make a greater contribution to the sustainability of the planet than any amount of research coming out of NASA. Ultimately, the future of the world relies more with economics, than it does with engineering.
November 2nd, 2007 at 1:19 pm
Unfortunately Stu, I believe that the future of the world will be determined by neither engineering or economics… it will be determined by ignorance, ideology and superstition, as those things, more than any other, dominate the politics of the people who actually decide the courses of the largest nations of the planet.
The value of NASA is what it is. I don’t put it greatly ahead of the value of doing the social engineering to reduce populations or reduce the demands of existing populations on the planet. I put it ultimately ahead because its access to space is so much more powerful than any other advance in the history of the human species, and I value it because we CAN do it, while the political and social sciences have proven to be incapable of moving the ball at anywhere near the same rate.
We “Naked Apes” are simply not past the tribal stage in our social intelligence, instincts and motivations… no matter how large the nations become. We are much better at building things than we are at building societies. NASA plays to that strength and technology MAY buy us enough time to evolve into more civilized versions of ourselves.
respectfully
BJ
November 2nd, 2007 at 1:21 pm
Which isn’t to say I don’t support conservation efforts and efficiency increases and improvements in the way we move and live within the society. I require both of myself, as much as possible.
respectfully
BJ
November 2nd, 2007 at 1:22 pm
In a nut-shell:
Use economic tools and policy measures to improve the efficiency with which the resources are used.
Once we’ve converged to a relatively sustainable economy, focus on improving technological efficiencies.
November 2nd, 2007 at 3:03 pm
Yes bjchip there is a kind of convergence in our opinions. Certainly agreed with the sentiments in your last post more than previous ones.
Possibly my mistake in identifying NASA with high-tech waste? I should possibly should draw a distinction between space research and wasteful technological consumerism driven by marketing.
Food for thought …
.s
November 3rd, 2007 at 12:32 am
Stu & BJ, Good to see we’ve all cooled down and started seeing what we’ve got in common instead of being stuck on relatively minor differences. The main point I was trying to make to Stu is the importance of competition in spurring create solutions and bringing them to fruition quickly. I would definitely agree with Stu that technology for technology’s sake is no solution to anything.
However, speaking as a systems analyst, changing peoples behaviour frequently takes as long as turning over the vehicle fleet so we need to be improving technological efficiencies at the same time that economic and policy tools are being used. But if those tools are in the hands of politicians then technology is our only hope.
We might also have slightly different definitions of technology. Mine is very broad. Anything that is man made is technology. So double glazing is a technology we should be using. Hot mix instead of chipseal. LEDs or flouros instead of antique light bulbs.
To follow Stu’s example, part of the cause of growth in car use is wasteful land use. Specifically the New Zealand penchant for single story houses. Two stories use land more efficiently to give the same amount of urban greenspace with much smaller distances between where people live and work or go to school. It’s these fundamental choices that dictate our transport choices that we are not currently addressing. “Do we need so many vehicles?” With our current land use practices the answer would have to be yes. “Could they be more efficiently used?” Yes, and not just by altering behaviour but also by fixing emmissions blackspots in the roading network, ideally in a manner that smooths traffic flows without reducing travel times, in order to prevent inducing more traffic., ie grade seperate key intersections but don’t add more lanes between them. “Could they be more efficiently priced?” Cars? Probably not, Roads? Definitely.
November 3rd, 2007 at 12:55 am
Stu, On your specialist topic of computational fluid models of wind flow you might be able to help this potential garage inventor.
Am I correct in assuming that a venturi effect occurs when wind passes over the ridge of a roof? If a flat plate was mounted above the ridge would the effect be significantly increased?
I have a wind sculpture that rotates in very light breezes. I can see how it could be modified to function as a bladeless wind turbine with very high torque at low RPMs. I’m not much good with my hands so I would hate to waste a lot of effort building a prototype if my basic assumptions are all wrong.
Sincerely, Kevyn
November 3rd, 2007 at 4:20 am
What you describe is a static venturi effect to get a local increase in wind velocity. The question for your site would be how often the prevailing winds would give you an advantage out of this, and how big would be the advantage… and … can your structure take the added loads?
You’re correct that you get a half-venturi effect over the ridge of the house. It is crude but it is already there. You will see (when the wind is favorable) an increase in wind velocity maximized nearest the peak of the roof but may be present to some small degree anywhere on the roof. It vanishes as you leave the roof.
You can also see this effect between buildings as opposed to over the tops of them…. and this may be more useful for reasons that will become apparent in the discussion that follows.
Building a plate on top however, would not likely enhance things. A tilted plate might but….
…because the top of the plate creates a fundamental flow separation the area behind it, that region becomes turbulent and predictable wind direction is lost. A sharply peaked roof without a plate will give the same result. Even a very small plate will break the flow.
The plate will also produce a torque on the peak of the roof that no roof is designed to take. That torque exists if you put a turbine on the roof without the plate as well.
http://home.earthlink.net/~mmc1919/venturi.html
All of these tell you that in order to get the maximum benefit you’d have to build your turbine as close to the peak of the roof as physically and economically possible.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vertical-axis_wind_turbine
http://www.platek.com/wind/verticals.html
http://www.mag-wind.com/roof-effect.php
http://www.windpower.org/en/tour/design/horver.htm
The issues you need to consider are that the thing is going to exert (depending on its size) a force on the roof that the roof is not likely to be able to resist, I can almost guarantee that the numbers for any NZ built roof will not support this usage for any significant amount of power… and if you think of the energy you are extracting from the wind you can see why this must be so.
We are also talking about NZ winds, which are not usually so light and zephyr like as to require a lot of “amplification”.
Since the advantage falls off rapidly as you leave the roof ridge, these problems tend to dominate.
http://www.wipo.int/pctdb/en/wo.jsp?IA=WO2006054091&DISPLAY=DESC
has a particularly telling entry
“The cost of resisting the toppling moment is uneconomical.”
The unstated problem is that the toppling moment is always produced, whether the turbine is generating or not… it presents its drag and produces the moment proportional to ANY wind present, is not easily feathered (but could be masked) and that makes it much harder to design a solution.
Other similar applications of interest.
http://www.wipo.int/pctdb/en/wo.jsp?wo=2003004868
http://pdf.aiaa.org/jaPreview/JE/1983/PVJAPRE62724.pdf
http://pdf.aiaa.org/jaPreview/JE/1978/PVJAPRE47968.pdf
=========================
If I were inclined to pursue this AND I was building a new house, I would consider the prevailing winds frequency and force possibly designing the house so that I would get some advantage in more than the two primary directions orthogonal to my roof peak ( House in the shape of an X? I have not thought about this seriously yet) …
I would then calculate the maximum overturning force, or torque to be resisted for a given turbine size in a 220KPH or so wind and then add the amplification the roof peak causes… and I would have to optimize the turbine size vs the roof and structural costs to resist that force. The house structure gives a broad base, so it is possible that this will not prove completely prohibitive.
I would also consider means of altering the shape or profile of the turbine mechanically to reduce those forces in such winds. This is not entirely free of risk. Whatever is done has to happen automatically as the force reaches dangerous levels and it has to be completely reliable, or in the strongest wind and the worst conditions the roof will peel off the house or punch the turbine into the roof.
Altogether this is a bit daunting as a project, but not impossible at all. The other issue to confront is noise and vibration in the house as a result of attaching the turbine to the roof. This is not a trivial issue either I likely would be forced to immediately abandon any such project by my wife who has veto power on the building consent? Oh bother
Instead I would consider a ground mounted structure and small sails arranged to feed it. Furling the sails in a high wind is not so difficult and as winds increase the sail structures can be designed to furl or fail before the turbine does. In this way the amplification is lost before the most expensive bits are broken, and the vibrations and noise are not directly communicated to the structure where my wife is sleeping.
Anyway, I hope this all helps somewhat.
respectfully
BJ
November 3rd, 2007 at 4:44 am
Stu
Use economic tools and policy measures to improve the efficiency with which the resources are used.
Once we’ve converged to a relatively sustainable economy, focus on improving technological efficiencies.
I would not put this sequentially… it is a parallel operation. People who are good at the technology don’t have much stick in social sciences, economics and policy. They do technology improvements…. and vice-versa.
My point of view has always been that as an engineer I can buy the species a bit time to adapt its social structures, its economics and its politics… but I cannot SOLVE those problems. If I could get some traction with Cheap Access To Space I could defer them a few thousand years (until we use up the entirety of the Solar System) but I have no illusion that I can solve them. We remain very close to the apes in terms of our social understandings and our ability to restrain ourselves from increasing populations.
That stuff is learned behaviours and is up to the politicians, the social scientists and time. If the species live long enough we may evolve and develop sufficiently to know how to behave ourselves as nations as well as we manage as tribes and families.
I don’t actually think we have that long, we’re in population overshoot already, but I’ll be damned if I am going to just give up.
My wife told me “Men are just bears with furniture” … which is how Russian women perceive us. Civilization is not completely embedded in our genes.
Right now I’ll be surprised if we can defer the worst problems we’ve ever faced as a species by more than a couple of decades. Far too many people, and far too many who understand nothing of engineering and science, expect us to save their bacon. Sagan provides a pointed observation :
We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology.
Carl Sagan
respectfully
BJ
November 3rd, 2007 at 5:03 pm
Kevyn - without going into too much detail :
Wind flow over the ridgeline of your house is likely to be very complex and non-linear. This may invalidate certain assumptions underlining the Venturi effect, such as incompressibility. Flow separation may be induced over the ridgeline, depending on the wind speed and pitch of the roof, which creates a circulating eddy on the lee side of the roof. Installing a flat plate above the ridgeline is unlikely to amplify the wind speeds to the point where it makes a significant difference to wind energy. A wind turbine called Vortex has previously tried to exploit the Venturi principle, but was not commercially successful.
I’d suggest you’d be better using an abandoned telegraph pole than putting one on your roof.
Cheers,
stuart
November 3rd, 2007 at 5:34 pm
So true BJchip.
Mr Kevyn - what are your thoughts on workplace travel plans? I’m writing one for my company at the moment and am finding it a very worthwhile experience. I’ve got lots of ideas about how to reduce our transport costs, which naturally results in indirect economic benefits for the wider region.
Seems like there’s lot of opportunities for reducing peak hour travel demand. Naturally the punitive way to reduce peak hour demand would be congestion charges, which I would certainly support.
.s
November 4th, 2007 at 12:40 am
Kevyn
The short form.
Yes.. it CAN be done, but you have to pretty much put the thing at the peak of the roof. The roof of most if not ALL houses in NZ would be way past its design tolerances unless substantially reinforced or the turbine is too small to be of much use.
Amplifying the wind in NZ is usually unnecessary, at least here in Welly it is, the trick is more to have something that will survive the excesses of supply. I would not attempt a roof installation unless I were building from scratch.
The plate will give you flow separation and no improvement.
respectfully
BJ
November 4th, 2007 at 4:17 am
Stu, I googled Vortex and found this one. Not sure if it’s the one you mention.
http://www.eco-nex.com/32.html
At risk of invalidating any possible patent application, I will say that this design, with a very small radius and a completely different screw profile, layed horizontally along the entire ridgeline, is similar, in principle, to my concept.
I was dubious about the benefits of the flat plate at normal wind speeds. However one of the objectives was for the turbine to be inconspicuous, or at least sympathetically blended into the existing structure, and to be protected from UV depending on what material the rotor is made of to be inexpensive and have low inertial mass. The small radius should mean that rigidity is less of an issue than with conventional rotors.
November 4th, 2007 at 4:28 am
Stu, I’ve never worked anywhere that had workplace travel plans. Except a courier company, and that was mainly about efficient use of time. But it did ensure the shortest routes were used.
Where I work now the shifts are arranged to coincide with the end of the school day, so one parent can work days and the work evenings. That means start/finish times of 7.30, 3.30 and 11.30 so none of the factory staff commute during peak periods.
November 4th, 2007 at 5:02 am
BJ, Thanks for the short answer, I look forward to the long one with all the links.
I must admit the question of dynamic loads on the building frame has had me rather confused. I am familiar with the complex nature of heavy vehicle interactions with pavements but couldn’t really get to grips with exactly what stresses would be placed on a building when the force of the wind is transfered to a rotating mass and then converted into electrical energy.
However, the design I have in mind would have to have a very low inertial mass as the intention is to utilise the gentler winds typically found on the Pacific islands and African continent. For these low income countries I see small power output/small capital cost as being the right balance. If it is cheap to install and can drive a car or truck alternator for a significant number of hours on most days that IMHO is going to be an important step forward to improving the quality of life in these nations without creating a dependcy on fossil fueled generators or needing an immediate investment in a full grid system.
The application was for remote baches and farm sheds where the grid is an uneconomic and inefficient way of supplying power.
The modular nature of what I have in mind is intended to make it easy to fit to any size roof and easy to install for anybody skilled to home handyman level, ie semiskilled or supervised unskilled. That’s important for the developing nations but in developed nations the building consent process will probably prevent this from becoming the next big DIY craze. If it actually did become a DIY craze the biggest benefit would be the attitude change regarding energy rather than the modest amount of renewable energy generated.
November 4th, 2007 at 2:06 pm
Kevyn
If I understand you correctly you might be better with an X or star shaped house design, utilizing the cheap (exceedingly so) jute(canvas)-concrete formed curve construction to create an upper surface that is curved. (no peak)
At the center put a vertical axis turbine. Built the reinforcements needed into the structure at the center as well. The X captures and channels wind over the center from most directions… the vertical axis takes power from any direction. Most of the bits that want maintenance are down where they can be maintained easily. If you are sensible you don’t leave it running in hurricanes (which are relatively rare and predictable compared to the typical weather in Wellington, where you probably should be applying for an alarm permit if you want to put up some wind chimes) .
The structural problem doesn’t come from the inertial mass. It comes from the fact that the power coming from the wind requires that you must in some manner have reduced the velocity of some portion of that wind. There is a resultant force that does not go away no matter if you had no inertia whatsoever. Assume you had somehow managed to create an electromagnetic charge on it, and then ran it through an empty tube ( as in magnetohydrodynamics ) … you still wind up with resultant forces in the foundation structure, or the whole thing blows away.
Smaller is most assuredly easier to deal with though, and what you are talking about does sound smaller than I thought you were aiming to build.
Some of the links may prove useful to you, but if I understand your proposal you are thinking about a horizontal axis, but one that is at right angles to the wind, which is the same power generating profile that the vertical axis turbine uses, but with a vastly different arrangement than usual. Assuming that you are trying to extract energy from “trade winds” which are relatively consistent and predictable in direction you could be onto a winner. Your moment arm is not the length of the vertical axis but the width. This is pretty clever…. it gives up omni-directional acceptance but it becomes relatively much simpler to support the structure.
Interesting problem in computing efficiencies. I would recommend, barring any commercial interests you have that I don’t know about, that you see if someone at one of the universities could be interested in helping. This’d be an ideal masters’s thesis project to model and analyze wind-tunnel performance with different roof forms and with different rotor configurations.
You have what I think now, is a pretty good idea. It doesn’t suit every purpose, but it does suit some. An ounce of experimental data is worth a truckload of theory.
Only thing is, I don’t agree much about the batteries. Battery tech has not gotten a lot better than moderately horrid. Better to compress and liquify some gas and then expand it to get your storage (what’d I just say?)
respectfully
BJ
November 5th, 2007 at 11:53 pm
The benefit of agencies such as NASA is that most of the research is documented in the public domain, so anyone can make use of what they learn. Most private R&D stays private to maintain a competative edge so it has to be redone for others to benefit or eventually the secret gets out.
When developing new technology, there are countless wrong approaches, but much is learned going down these wrong approaches and techniques learned which can be applied to other problems. Back yard inventors don’t gain the same peer support and don’t spread what they have learned so others can build on their findings.
Trevor.
November 6th, 2007 at 6:12 am
Time shifting power generation cycles…
Energy storage.
Cyclical and Intermittent generation.
During the any time the wind blows hard enough to make a surplus, any time the tide is flowing but demand is light…. compress air into tanks at very high pressures, this will make the air and the tanks quite hot, but it can be released from the tanks ( through much the same hardware) to run generators. At night when it is cool liquify the compressed gas, during the day or using ocean water to provide the heat, boil it off for power. The combined cycle is complicated but burns nothing to achieve storage, and by using a phase change it achieves a higher energy density than the compressed gas can offer. A big compressed gas tank may (I think) smooth load vs production curves better than batteries do.
? So… can it work ? I have to learn somewhat more about compressor efficiencies and costs to get an answer. Got to take this idea somewhere else…. homework…
bj
November 6th, 2007 at 6:15 am
United States Patent 5634340
November 6th, 2007 at 7:24 am
Yup… other people have thought the same thing already. Not all at the same time in the same place with the same results, but it is all patented.
And there is (I think) prior art for the roof ridge thing as well.
http://eeru.open.ac.uk/tdg.htm#wind
BJ
November 6th, 2007 at 8:03 am
BJ said:
“Battery tech has not gotten a lot better than moderately horrid.”
Google “vanadium flow battery” for a new type of battery which has inert electrodes and about a 70-78% cycle efficiency and can take deep cycling without damage. Not really suitable for portable or vehicle applications but ideal for peak load shedding or smoothing tidal generation output.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanadium_redox_battery
Trevor.
November 6th, 2007 at 1:46 pm
55000 liters for 800 KwH ? !! Ouch! Figure my house at 10-12 KwH/day we see support for 80 homes for one day or 8 homes for 10 days… out of 55000 liters? Figure roughly 3000 liters of Sulphuric-Acid-Vanadium liquid for a reasonable 3 day storage for a home… and my statement about “moderately horrid” remains IMHO, pretty valid.
Yes, it is good that it is a flow battery, but the problems are seem to be just different, not less.
respectfully
BJ
November 6th, 2007 at 11:52 pm
OK BJ, so the energy density isn’t very high, but the efficiency is acceptable (over 80% according to one link) and they can take a lot of cycling. Tidal power peaks every 6 hours, so that is about two hours of generation and charging, two hours of discharging and around two hours where demand roughly matches supply. That 55,000 litres - about 55-60 tonnes - can supply 400kiloWatts for those two hours of discharging, and repeat four times a day for something like a decade. Not too bad for something that might fit into my (double) garage.
The trick is to use them where their strengths count.
Trevor.
November 7th, 2007 at 5:23 am
BJ,
B*gger, there goes my dream of following in the footsteps of Edison and Westinghouse. That’s pretty much the concept I had in mind. I wasn’t thinking of using a darius turbine. I’ll have to see how they plan to transfer the energy from the each turbine to the generator. Serious amount of torque being transmitted along the drive shaft if they have a single generator.
Incidentally, how about a carbon fiber Archimedes screw in a boiler smokestack? Lightweight and heat and acid resistant.
November 7th, 2007 at 6:11 am
Kevyn,
“Incidentally, how about a carbon fiber Archimedes screw in a boiler smokestack? Lightweight and heat and acid resistant.”
While carbon fibre is heat resistant (it is only a nylon filament - an oil derivative - burned at high temperature) the resin holding it together is not. Has a temperature range to about 100 to 150 C before it melts.
Also the resin tends to be flammable.
Not to say a resin could not be developed to be heat resistant but then you would have problems in an autoclave getting a proper cure. You need pressure and a little heat to get the resin to flow through the matrix and then a final cure at the right temperature to set it.
November 7th, 2007 at 6:15 am
Had a thought though,
Aircraft jet engine technology would be better for what you are thinking about. Must be a million odd engines lying around from which to scrounge parts from.
November 7th, 2007 at 11:31 am
You’d want ceramics and there’s a particulate erosion problem that doesn’t exist for the jet application.
You may have missed that I actually liked the idea at the end of all that, for the purpose of cheap access to small amounts of electricity in areas where the winds are more or less predictable and more mild mannered than the boisterous stuff here in Welly. It DOES have possibilities.
respectfully
B J
November 8th, 2007 at 2:18 am
Gerrit, While it was only an off the top of my head suggestion the use of carbon fibre was inspired by the use of carbon fibre brakes in F1. Obviously someone has solved the resin problem. Unfortunately the disks cost as much as a family car so they definitely haven’t solved the cost problem. I can think of many technical hurdles so it’s definitely not a very practical suggestion. A more sensible use for an archimedes screw would be to capture the energy in the tailrace water from a conventional hydro station.
November 8th, 2007 at 2:44 am
BJ,
I did get that you liked the idea in the right context. Still I reckon I can take a pat on the back for thinking of a concept that only one other person seems to have thought of.
I haven’t seen anything that uses the rotor design of my wind sculpture. I’ll have to put my thinking cap on and work out a test rig to see whether this “thing” actually produces any power. It doesn’t really matter if it doesn’t work, the process of discovery will make the effot worthwhile.
Followed your link and did a bit of googling and found this UK paper “The Feasibility of Building Mounted /Integrated Wind Turbines (BUWTs)” at http://www.eru.rl.ac.uk/pdfs/BUWT_final_v004_full.pdf
November 8th, 2007 at 3:03 am
Stu & BJ, Backtracking to my original question about the venturi effect at the roof ridge and the effect of a flat plate. After following BJs link I found this paper by the other guy who has stolen my glory (DR. Derek Taylor): “Computational Fluid Dynamic Modelling of wind speed enhancement through a building-augmented wind concentration system” He calculates that a peaked roof increases wind velocity by 40%, 10cm upwind from the ridge. An inverted airfoil above the ridge gives a total increase of 58% and moves the point of maximum velocity directly above the ridge. http://www.2004ewec.info/files/23_1400_derektaylor_01.pdf
November 8th, 2007 at 10:11 am
Good find with that paper. I read it briefly and it looks like a lot of good oil in there.
Don’t forget that in your considerations, the shape of the roof is important, in terms of wind acceptance (from which direction it generates reasonable power), in terms of structural integrity, and in terms of ease of manufacture.
Imagine two poles of bamboo parallel to each other.
Bend them in the same radius, planting both ends of each pole in the ground.
Stretch burlap or canvas between them.
Plaster them with concrete. They will sag in the middle when you do this.
When it dries you will have a natural concrete shell in the shape of an arch with double curvature throughout.
Now put another next to it (and another and another)…
The structure is arbitrarily long.
The roof shape that the wind sees is a vastly more aerodynamic hump with a longitudinal profile that looks like it was designed for installation of small darrius rotors laid down horizontally.
Refer to “The Owner-Built Home” by Kern , I think this was initially developed in India.
I wouldn’t want to have to get council to sign off on it though
respectfully
BJ
November 9th, 2007 at 3:05 am
BJ, When I was at primary school we had one as a playground slide. Now, if I was a property developer building townhouses I would get Hebel to produce a batch of them instead of using conventional rooves. It would also be interesting to see if an overlay of pv tiles would function more efficiently on these complex curves than on a flat roof, viz the arc that the sun follows and it’s seasonal changes in angle.
http://www.hebel.co.nz/benefits/index.php