PROBLEM

• Realization that electrical energy-sourced accessories to an evolving lifestyle are cleaner and thus more environmentally sustainable than other readily-available forms of energy provision.
  
• Not enough electrical generation to economically power all the consumption that has increased since that realization.
  
• Excessive space taken up by windmills, photo-electric arrays, generating stations.
  
• Excessive pollution caused by atomic and fossil-fueled electricity sources, CFL and CCFL lighting.
  
• Expensive electrical provision from general suppliers to consumer locations.

SOLUTIONS

• Frequent readers will also be aware of the Eco-Friendly power station I devised and whose URL appears on the home page of these blogs.

**[ If you are not a frequent reader of this website, I strongly suggest you become so in order to lift yourself --at a minimum-- slightly above the information sources upon which your fellow citizenry totally depends (i.e. the mass media), so that in future you may be more selective in your election of officials running for office in your own neighbourhood, town, city, province, state, and country. You will also develop an ability to suggest your own viable solutions to problems besetting humanity in a far more informed way than you currently possess.]

• In this blog, I intend to show that the -best- source of electrical energy for our current needs is wind power produced by a variety of windmill known as a HELICAL GENERATOR. I will demonstrate several ways to employ helical generators to solve the electrical energy supply shortage.
  

HELICAL GENERATORS

A helical windmill differs from others in that its blades revolve around a vertical axis rather than a horizontal axis, and are very small in diameter. You've seen helical windmills outside stores and gas stations in the form of signs that seem to magically spin all by themselves,


Images are from Internet Advertising Websites and belong solely to their advertisers.
They are portrayed here as excellent examples of their craft only, and may be removed upon request of the owners.

or perhaps in roof vents as a ball-shaped housing with slots that spins around its base without using electricity.




With very little modification, Helical Windmills can provide electrical power in similar quantities to standard windmills, with a vastly smaller footprint (i.e., they take up much less room).

Helical windmills can also be housed in containers that provide noise attenuation, protect them from the elements, and face them into the prevailing winds in order to make more efficient use of the energy supplied to them in that manner.


HOW DO WINDMILLS WORK?

A lot of people think that the wind pushes the blades of a windmill and that the windmill converts the force of the wind into motion as it is blown around. This is completely incorrect.

A windmill works because its blades, like the wings of an airplane, are airfoils. An airfoil is a piece of material with one side made longer than the other by forming it into an arc. The arced side of the material is longer than the straight other side. This means that wind currents take a little longer to pass over its surface. If the surfaces are both in a wind current of a steady speed, then the shorter side of the airfoil will allow the current to pass over it at its normal speed; but the arced side will force the current to take a little longer to pass over it, simply because it is a longer surface.




This has two effects: first, because wind current is being slowed down, it exerts less pressure along its route than the side that is not being slowed down. Thus, the piece of material with two uneven-length surfaces will have two different air pressures acting on it: a stronger air pressure on the short side, and a weaker --or lower-- air pressure on the long side. And second, because the air pressure on the longer side is lower, the airfoil will tend to get sucked in that direction. Creating a lower air pressure causes suction in a manner similar to drinking through a straw.

If you put the long side on top, the airfoil gets sucked up, and an airplane stays in the sky that way.

If you put it on the side, the airfoil will be sucked in the direction of the longer side, and the material will turn on an axis, as is the case with a power generation windmill.



So, an airfoil is actually SUCKED in its direction of travel, not pushed by the wind. All windmills work this way.

Interestingly, it's not necessary for the airfoil to actually have a shorter side, so long as it has a longer side.







For example, children's handheld windmill toys and boat sails, while being airfoils and working in the above fashion, have no short sides...just an empty space and a billow-shaped side.



























(c) Google Images

The wind merely blows at its own rate right past the empty side of those airfoils, and more slowly past the curved or billowing side. This means that sailboats are actually SUCKED, not blown, in the direction of travel. The sails suck the boat in the direction of the sails' billow, and the keel of the sailboat acts as a resistance in the water that enables the boat to travel in a fore-and-aft direction.













(c) Google Images/Wooden Boats







Helical windmills have an airfoil as well, but helical airfoils are established vertically so that the lower air pressure sucks the windmill around a vertical axis.

Normally, there are airfoils on opposite sides of the axis to keep the spinning constant. Sometimes, the airfoil is in a spiral configuration around the axis.

They work marvelously in even a whisper of a wind current, but their chief advantage is that they take up a great deal less space than a standard wind vane style windmill.

The distance measured by including the size of the vane-ends and their bodies is longer than that measured only down the length of the vanes where there is no end in the way.





Wind currents hitting any one of the vanes are split in two, and one part of the current must travel around the end of the vanes to their axis while the other half of it only travels the distance between the vane ends and the axis, which is shorter.

The long side will have a lower air pressure as a result, and the helical will turn in the direction of the long side. As it turns, the next vane will present itself to the wind direction, and so-on. Because it is air pressure turning the helical and not wind power, even the smallest breath of wind will keep a smoothly-floating (i.e. one with good bearings around its axis) helical turning madly.

When a electrical generator is attached to the turning axis of a windmill of any variety, the turning vanes' energy can be converted to electricity.
The amount of electricity that can be generated by a windmill depends upon the amount of pressure-differentiated surface offered to wind currents by it. More electricity can be created by

• more windmills
• windmills with more airfoil surface
  

Adding more airfoil-type vanes to larger --or many-- windmills can drive bigger --or more-- generators and create more electricity.

An important point to note for comments being made later on in this page is that a bigger number of vanes on small windmills have the potential of creating a comparative amount of electricity to a lesser-veined larger windmill.

Using this theory, which of the following makes more sense?

This?


Or This?
Wikipedia Image
The first automatically operated wind turbine, built in Cleveland in 1887 by Charles
F. Brush. It was 60 feet (18 m) tall, weighed 4 tons (3.6 metric tonnes) and powered
a 12kW generator.

The answer is that the second windmill was designed as a turbine, and could potentially generate more electricity than one of the windmills in the wind farm had the wind vanes been designed as airfoils and the low-pressure surface of the airfoils added up to more surface area than a wind farm turbine's airfoils. The reason it did not supply a larger amount of electricity is because the blades were slightly tilted in the belief that power supplied by the wind was wind force, rather than differential pressures. They had no air foil shaping. Three-blade windmills such as are found in modern installations are designed for an economy of construction resources, designed to milk wind current energy with fewer parts, but could be redesigned to create more electricity per square area of generating-unit space if they were multi-bladed instead of three-bladed turbines. The environmental impact of such a design would be the same amount of electricity --or more-- generated out of a wind farm a great deal smaller in area.


ANOTHER EXAMPLE OF CREATING HELICAL MOTION USING AIRFOILS


The slots on a ball-shaped slotted roof vent are bent into airfoil vanes so that one side of each slot represents a longer distance than the other, as far as wind currents are concerned.

The base of the vane component floats on a low-friction connection that acts as its axis, and the ball constantly turns not only due to an outer wind-provided pressure differential, but also due to the movement of heated air currents as they rise out of the attic creating its own differential as they move past the blades.

The purpose of roof vents is to keep the moist air in the below-roof airspace changing in a controlled fashion with a self -powered helical windmill.




But here's the most interesting thing about those roof vents: Even if the vent has no moving parts, the airfoil slots in it will draw air current through it simply because they set up a low pressure draw on one side of the slot. This type of roof vent is called a "Passive" roof vent. Here's one commercially available model.









BACK TO HELICAL WIND GENERATION OF ELECTRICITY...

Next is a helical electricity generating system I designed that uses one long airfoil spiraled around its axis. There are a few varieties of these (one or two shown below. Mine differentiates itself with its single long airfoil wrapped around its axis and multipurpose housing. It sits in a sound-attenuating columnar housing (i.e. a column whose construction is deliberately designed to absorb most of the sounds created by an operating windmill inside), open on opposite sides. A little wind vane on the column's top end electronically sends signals to controls that move the closed column so that the openings are always in the direction of the prevailing winds. This is to prevent operational noise from radiating off the system. The column has "shutters", much like a sliding door to an outside house deck, that can be closed to limit the impact of severe winds or shut down the helical inside during maintenance. The design may be used under water or on land where its screw-shaped anchor keeps its "footprint" very small. But as I've never built one, I can't say for certain how well (or if !) it would work.

Can you see which "side" of the airfoil is longer? Which way will this helical turn?





As is the case with all windmills, manufactured electrical power can be used instantly while excess power can be stored in banks of storage batteries and/or capacitors to be used at times when more power is required. Excess electricity (this means more electricity being generated by the windmill than is being used at the moment) can also be "uploaded" into the standard electrical grid. In most municipalities, uploaded excess electricity is paid for by the local hydro provider, just as if it was purchased from any other of its generation sources.


EMPLOYING HELICAL GENERATORS TO SOLVE THE CITY'S ELECTRICAL SUPPLY PROBLEMS -- AND MORE...

The generating capacity of a helical windmill combined with its small footprint makes it an ideal rooftop generator for high rise buildings.

If every highrise over ten stories were required to posses enough helical generators on their rooftops to supply more than half their electrical needs, the city would be populated by low-usage energy-conserving tall buildings.

To offset the cost of installation, landlords may become, under current Ontario Canada law, their own electric companies, and make their buildings more attractive to renters by charging a much lower price for electrical usage by their tenants than Hydro.

These installations and electricity charges would be regulated by the city in a similar manner to the way rent conditions and controls are now regulated by the province. Buildings like MURBS and other lower-rise apartment/condo units could follow the same example, if they wish to become regulated users.

Combining generators with geothermal-assist HVAC as a requirement in all new high rise buildings would make the buildings very inexpensive to operate and much more environmentally friendly in terms of energy use.

Required greening of the sides and rooftops of the buildings would make them more attractive and support avian and insect wildlife rather than being a detriment to it.


SOME COMMERCIALLY AVAILABLE HELICAL GENERATORS

(c) Savonius VAWT










(c) http://helixturbineenergy.com











"Rooftop" generator
(c) Google Images and MWPS (My Wind Power Systems) Denmark
[Note that there are three Helical Vane Sets in a row]




















(c) Energy Beta.com












(Vanes elongated by emphasizing the curve and extending them past their upper and lower connection points.)







c) Darrieus Wind Turbine















(c) Taiwan 2009 JinGuaShi Historic Gold Mine FRD 8738. jpg

"Combined" Darrieus Savonius Wind Turbine





























(c) GHT 'Blue'
Water-Generator Helical Turbine












(c) 'Helix Wind' 4.5 KW VAWT
Note how many airfoils have been incorporated in this double-spiral helix.


























Turby Vertical Axis Windmill



HEATING THE STREETS

A helical generator enclosed in a vented casing to protect it from the elements and perched atop lamp posts could store energy to run bright (LED) street lamps at night. In winter, triggered by temperature and moisture detectors/controllers, the stored energy supply from these generators could run glycol-filled snow-melting coils beneath the paved surfaces to keep streets and sidewalks clear of falling ice and snow, thus saving plowing and salting costs; and the streams, rivers, and lakes would be spared the polluting influx of salt and snow-melting chemicals currently in use for snow removal purposes.