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25
The most exciting thing to happen to the Cleveland Indians this season isn't on the baseball diamond. The newly patented turbine on Progressive Field's rim could make urban wind farms a reality and help relieve Cleveland's economic woes.
Mounted on a steel base on the ballpark's southeastern rim, the helical wind turbine is designed to amplify airflow and funnel it into four small turbine fans. The turbine assembly is 40 feet tall, 18 feet wide, and it weighs 3,000 pounds. The helix is constructed from 80 vacuum-formed, hard plastic pieces affixed to an aluminum frame. Four off-the-shelf wind turbines rest within the grooves of the corkscrew.
"The easiest way to explain it is this: there are two wind turbines hanging on both sides of the spiral," said the corkscrew's creator, Cleveland State University mechanical engineering professor Dr. Majid Rashidi. "When air passes by the spiral, it gently deflects the wind towards the turbines to power them. If the spiral were not there, the air molecules would typically miss the turbines entirely."
The array will generate an estimated 40,000 kilowatt-hours a year—roughly four US houses-worth—during its year-long test run. If successful, the design could prove useful in urban and confined environments where conventional long-blade turbines simply can't work.
Rashidi found that his array actually amplifies wind speed by a factor of 1.5—10 MPH winds deflect off the structure and push through the turbines at 15 MPH. Even modest wind speed increases will greatly increase the power generated. "Because you are creating an obstacle, you are directly funneling more wind into each turbine with the structure," Rashdi explained.
The Department of Energy footed the $1.1 million prototyping bill. The Indians organization hopes to employ it for its energy-generation abilities and also to educate a new generation of baseball fans about sustainable energy. "This is a great opportunity to teach fans about the importance of clean energy technologies," said Brad Mohr, the Indians' assistant director of Ballpark Operations.
Kiosks located around the stadium will illustrate how the new technology can help the planet and the local economy—fans can pedal stationary bikes to try and generate as much wattage as the turbine. Presumably these bikes are also connected to the stadium's grid. "The ballpark is having kids from elementary school through high school see that we are being innovative and trying to design something that can have an impact on the economy around the country," said Rashdi. [CleanTechnica - USA Today - Switchboard - CNet - GreatLakesGeek - Image: Cleveland State University]
Sounds cool, but the cost of these will need to come down almost a thousand fold before it could be commercialized.
(Assuming 4 homes electric bills for a year at ~$100/mo = $4,800. Divide that into $1.1 million = 229 years to pay itself off. 916 years for one home.)
pilot project costs are always much higher than the commercialized cost. The cost of the dies to mold the spiral, the cost of the labour to design the device and others are one time costs.
If you were going to build a car from scratch it would cost $200-500 million assuming you didn't reuse engines, suspension parts and did a real testing program to meet safety requirements. (as opposed to a race car design which would only be in the $100 million range)
If it came down a thousand fold, than it would pay itself off in about 2 months. That would be impressive indeed :) Most clean energy initiatives generally expect around a 20 year payoff(that would only require the cost to come down ten fold).
You have to realize that any prototype costs WAY more than normal. This thing has to be completely created from scratch(i.e. no machine templates, or assembly lines to cut costs). Not to mention working out the design kinks that always come into play for first time implementations.
If it does work as planned, than I expect they'll either find a way to manufacture them for around 100k, or significantly increase the power generation. All in all, I'm excited to see some clean energy initiatives embraced by a sports team(and considering I'm originally from Cleveland, double bonus).
