The Green Optimistic

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A blog whose articles I read daily, cleanbreak.ca, has published some news about a company from Alberta, Canada (Lancaster Wind Systems) that wants to bring an innovation to the classic and old wind turbines. The company itself hasn’t described the exact method by which they are going to improve the efficiency of the wind turbine, but the main idea is that they’re going to store a few hours of energy in a hydraulic system, so when the wind doesn’t blow, you’ll still have energy, converted at a higher rate.

Japanese scientists explore the usefulness of clean-tech energy generators that are floating on the sea as a source of energy for the whole country, announced a Japanese newspaper.

A Swedish company called Home Energy is working with alternative energy sources such as solar, wind and bio-energy. One of their products is called the Energy Ball. It is practically a small wind turbine. The wind turbine they designed is suitable for home of small office use. So, if you have a passion for going green these days, this could be a way to follow it!

A recent experiment performed by a team of researchers from the Delft University in Netherlands (aka country of wind mills) used kites to transform the wind power into electricity. They created 10kW of electricity with their project, which is sufficient to power about 10 households with normal energy requirements.

They only have four wind turbines, which is not much (and probably so are their enegy consumption habits). The four turbines are part of a larger setup made up from 75 of such turbines, helping the power grid of three counties.

In the desert of Sahara, in North Africa, a solar farm has been built. The area is slightly smaller than Wales but some scientists said yesterday that it could one day generate enough solar power to supply all of Europe with clean electricity.

Today I found another DIY project for generating alternative energy, by using the wind. It is a Vertical Axis Wind Turbine (VAWT), and it works by the same principle those huge wind turbines do, but they are much more easy and less expensive to build.

The MARS wind turbine is lifted by helium, and it floats at an altitude of 1000 feet above the ground where it can easily capture any kind of winds, whether they’re as slow as 4mph or as fast as 60mph. Speed is not a big problem here.