Tree Wind Generator

It would be pretty cool if you put the trees on a merry-go-round. Put up some sort of wind screen so they only sway on the windward side. Instead of

Moving/living sculpture projects aside, sway has the advantage of working in place. Can't say I've heard of it before though.

Invent it, then market it to nut orchards -- turn the generator around and it doubles as a tree shaker for harvest. :-)

Tim

-- Deep Friar: a very philosophical monk. Website:

By attaching two lines at right angles it would not matter which way the wind is blowing. All the material needed are pretty cheap on a per watt basis (as well as absolute)

Wave generator, same principle.

I wonder if there is a shape of a tower that is fundamantally unstable in the wind, and that would oscillate. A tall flexible cylinder, like a smokestack, can be unstable.

I suspect efficiency must be low because the intercepted cross-sectional area is small. All those leaves on a tree help.

One could breed trees specifically to convert wind power.

Hydraulics as the power pickoff?

John

I've heard of a micro power generator based on a paddle that waves back and forth in eddies in a stream. The generator part is a magnet and coil, similar to one of those shake flashlights.

No ratchet is needed. Just let the generator rotate back and forth, producing AC. Then rectify it. Less moving parts, more reliable.

The question is how to turn massive force short stroke, low velocity movement into energy efficiently. A simple magnet and coil would not work well at all.

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Trees only shake a lot in high winds. A wind generator needs to work in light winds. There's a 'forest' of man made wind turbines that I see every day driving home. I think that 90-95% of the time they are spinning... I look at the tree's, sometimes I can't even see the if leaves are blowing.

George H.

UK

But a tree is a lot cheaper than a wind turbine on all counts. It would be quite easy to make a portable unit for camping, or recharging batteries off-grid. A cheap fill-in for PV.

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Didn't E.T. do something like that in the woods to phone home?

-mpm

What kind of trees are you thinking about ?

I have wire antennas hanging from pine trees and if the movement and forces would be as large as stated, the antennas would have snapped a long time ago.

Possibly a usable system to power some flea power meteorological station that transmits the cumulated data a few times a day.

For any real power production (e.g. summer cottage) this is unfortunately a bad idea.

The kinetic energy of the wind is proportional to the third power of wind speed and directly proportional to the cross section area and air density. While there are quite stable winds above 600 m, the surface roughness will drop the wind speed close to the ground.

On a small low island in the middle of a sea or a moderate tower in the middle of a crass land will produce some usable power levels. In areas with trees and bushes within a few kilometer, the wind turbine would have to be well above the tree tops to produce usable levels of power.

This tree spring idea was compared to wave power, however, the density of water is about 800 times larger, so the extracted power density would also vary in the same way.

would be as large as stated, the antennas would have snapped a long time ago.

I've had long wire antennas in trees in New England for 50 years. The wind motion WILL snap even strong wires, so there has to be hundreds of pounds of force, at least some of the time.

The typical "Solution" is to have one end supported by synthetic rope going through a pulley attached near the top of the tree, and routed down to the ground. A weight of 20 to 50 pounds (Typically a concrete block or two) is attached to the lower end, keeping constant tension on the antenna wire.

I've been out in a high wind, checking antennas, and seen those weights move 2 or 3 FEET up and down. So the energy is there. I never tried to USE it :-)

How to capture and store it?? A ratchet / generator like those hand- powered flashlights but bigger. (A rotary one-way clutch from an old lawn mover, a drum and a rope?) Or pump water uphill and use it later??

Lots of people will tell you you're crazy. But I have personally adopted this quote from Buckminister Fuller (Inventor of the geodesic dome) since I heard him say it at IBM many years ago:

"Dare to be Naive" ! !

would be as large as stated, the antennas would have snapped a long time ago.

The question is, how much sag do you accept in calm warm environment ? With sufficient sag, the wire will not snap.

I have a multiband inverted-V dipole hanging from the tallest pine tree with the ends of the element suspension wires suspended via other pine tree branches "pulleys" into small trees acting as "springs".

Anyway, most of the dipole radiation is created close to the high current point, i.e. close to the dipole feed-point, so the wire sagging does not drop the radiated power in a significant way.

Thus 10 .. 25 kg and 0.7 .. 1 m with unspecified cycle.

The original poster claimed

Thus up to an order of magnitude less and then only during a storm.

Using trees swaying in the wind to produce a small amount of electricity might be an interesting way of powering micro-power electric gadgets and hence very much on topic in this news group.

Unfortunately, I have became quite allergic to some "green" claims that if something works in a very specific environment, it will also work for a whole family or solve the national or even global energy needs :-).

would be as large as stated, the antennas would have snapped a long time ago.

Just because the stroke is moving 25kg does not mean that it could not move something 10x heavier. After all, the above poster was adding weight merely to tension his lines.

forces would be as large as stated, the antennas would have snapped a long time ago.

Do you expect that the amplitude of the tree oscillation will remain the same, when you put say, 250 kg hanging from the line ?

forces would be as large as stated, the antennas would have snapped a long time ago.

No, I assume it will probably be in line with my example ie around 30cm stroke in moderate wind. That's what I observe.

I've seen cylindrical turbines placed at the edges of buildings where bad aerodynamics causes extreme winds. I found this for the turbines on Park Ave. in San Jose, CA: