When God farts, somewhere a lightbulb goes on

Thursday August 22

Here’s something out of Left Field. And there’s just as many over on the right, too.

So on this trip, we will have seen wind turbines into the hundreds. Literally. Hundreds. We saw heaps out to sea when we were in north Wales. Today I even saw a couple of solar crops growing in the same fields. 

It’s so impressive that this country has embraced ‘alternative’ energy to this degree. 

A lot of people are offended by the rows and rows of fidget spinners on giant lollipop sticks, disappearing over the horizon. To be fair, there are downsides. 

First, they are expensive to install. Probably between USD3-4 million per unit, installed. Somebody has to pay for that, and it’s always the end user. So don’t expect your power bill to go down any time soon. 

Second, they are miles away from where the power is needed. Even those we see in pastures near the motorways, have a long way to go to reach the supplier, and then the consumer. Those offshore flotillas are much worse. A very large chunk of the generated power is consumed just to get the remaining power to the end of a very long cable. That’s because most companies are still sending that power as AC. There are advancements every day in making the transmitted power into DC more cost effective, which can travel much further without loss. No prizes for guessing who will be paying for those costs. For a very long time. 

Regardless, the aim is noble. Renewable energy is always the best kind. 

That also includes solar. Years ago, only greenies and hippies were into renewables, and most of them couldn’t afford it. 

So what to do. We can just keep paying our power bills, with their guaranteed annual increases, while the generation companies continue to improve system efficiency. Why not? It’s what we’ve always done. In New Zealand, we have primarily hydro generation. So that’s pretty green. Many countries use coal. Some nuclear.

One thing that seems standard across all types of generation: Once a model has been established as the standard, R and D starts reducing over time. After a number of years, not only has R and D atrophied, but maintenance is often not what it should be. Is this lack of investment reflected in lower rates to customers? Oh no no no. 

Will the renewable industry follow this model? Probably. The only upside is that by then most of our power generation will be renewable. 

Is there anything we can do? Probably. 

More and more people are going off-grid, but that is the extreme solution.

Somewhere in between is, well, somewhere in between. Solar is becoming more affordable, and you can have it set up so that when you aren’t generating enough yourself, you can top up from your provider. Conversely, when you generate more than you are using at any moment in time, you can release it onto the grid, and your provider will pay you for it.

You can now buy solar packages for your home, many that include a big-arsed battery. The battery adds value (at a cost) because not many providers around the world offer decent rates to buy back excess power. So instead of selling your excess, you are saving it. This means that your reliance on your provider is reduced. Rather than using the provider as the power ‘bank’ where you are buying during a shortfall and selling excess, the battery is your bank. You only buy extra if your system cannot generate enough to be self-sufficient. Most systems are designed to provide about 80% of your needs. The provider is your insurance policy, to cover any shortfall. The advantage is that your power bill will be a fraction of what it was.

Many people cannot afford this kind of system, unless they wrap it up in their mortgage. That’s another conversation.

There are now companies that offer to rent you the system. This is fine for those who own their home, but will never afford the lump sum for the installation.
The downside is that you are paying for that system forever. It’s not Hire Purchase.
The upside is that they guarantee two things. First, your total ‘rent’ plus top up from the grid will be slightly cheaper than you are currently paying to your provider. Second, the rental price will not change.
Let’s  say your current charge is $150 per month. You know that it will go up every year, so in ten years you could easily be paying $250-300 per month. If the rental this year is $100 per month for 80% of your needs, then in ten years it will still be $100 per month. Even though you never own it, your saving increases yearly.

But what about domestic wind power? I know that I’ve been accused of generating enough of that, particularly when I’m on this kind of a bandwagon.

Obviously we don’t want giant wind turbines on every street. How surreal. I can imagine a Tim Burtonesque version of those skipping games, where you have to jump as the rope sweeps under you.  Sort of like one of those Indiana Jones tunnel escapes. Instead of traffic lights, you just need to wait until the turbine blade has passed, then drive through to the next intersection.
That’s just too silly. But if they did it for pedestrians, it might be a great way to thin the herd. Boom.

But seriously....

 Commercial wind turbines are of the Horizontal Axis variety. HAWT.

There is another type. The Vertical Axis Wind Turbine. VAWT.

Imagine your kitchen mixer. That’s what a VAWT looks like.

Another example is those hideous signs that shops put out on their footpaths. You know the ones. The ones that sit there and spin vigorously.

Now a lot of work has been done on VAWT turbines. Because only a percentage of surface area is facing the wind at any time, they are not as efficient as the HAWT style, and they certainly don’t get built that big. So an individual VAWT unit is never going to generate as much power as that giant fidget spinner.

But there are some surprising advantages to the VAWT, making it viable in the domestic market sometime very soon.

Let’s look at the big difference first.
The HAWT has to be facing into the wind to turn. Therefore, on those big ones, there is some technology required to make sure it’s always facing the right way.

At least one face of the VAWT is always facing into the wind. Think of that annoying shop sign. Whichever way the wind hits it, there is always a face that can start the turn.
The interesting thing about that, is that it can go anywhere. The HAWT needs to be high and away from things like buildings, that will disrupt wind flow. That’s the main reason they are out in the country. They just wouldn’t work well in the choppy, variable winds of the inner city. Sorry Tim.

Because the VAWT can accept wind from any direction, you can put it almost anywhere. I have even seen versions under development that ‘lie down’, like the mower. These were designed to sit near the edge, on the roof of a high rise building. In this position, wind that often funnels up the side of the building can be captured as it flows up and over the building. I’m looking forward to seeing how that turns out.
There is even the idea of running a VAWT up one corner of a multistory building.

These units will usually be built less than six feet tall, so they can fit in more places. So check out whether a small HAWT or VAWT would be practical at your place. Link that with a few solar panels, and you have a good return from sunny or windy days.

But let’s think about this from a community perspective for a moment. Traditionally, providers have a single source, and feed it to the many. If there is an outage anywhere in the system, everybody down line suddenly has no power.

What if a subdivision or even a city was designed as a power mesh? What if each suburb or city was able to generate a percentage of its own power?

Look at your street lights. There are dozens in your street, hundreds in your suburb. Thousands in your city. What if a wind turbine was mounted on each pole, sitting just above the street light.

When the wind blows, each street could provide  a small amount of power to each house. When there is an outage from the provider, our street lights can give us perhaps enough to keep the fridge or freezer running. Perhaps more.
What if every suburb and every city did this? Just like the way mesh networks operate in the internet and in your brain, all suburbs act as backups when one fails. All cities acts as backup for neighbouring cities

In some cities, new buildings are required to incorporate a minimum level of solar power. Combine this initiative with wind turbines atop the city’s streetlights, and the provider will have a much lighter workload. Or perhaps the city can combine with neighbouring cities to build their own, local scale solar, wind and/or hydro generators to create a micro grid. In this way, a ‘national grid’ would only be required to link these micro-grids together, when one micro-grid has a catastrophic breakdown.

And so it goes on, each node in the network is in itself a network. Country, state, city, suburb, street. Looking after their own and their neighbour. What more can we hope for?