h a l f b a k e r yIdea vs. Ego
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Paint your windmills matt black and lie them flat during the day and only hoist them into position at night.
You could use solar power to lower the tower when the sun rises each morning!
Maybe [knowtion] is right...
http://www.madsci.o...146592099.Es.r.html
"In my reasearch in North America, I typically find it about 30% windier during the day than at night" [wagster, Nov 04 2009]
It would seem he is...
http://books.google...=onepage&q=&f=false
about twelve lines down the page [wagster, Nov 04 2009]
Wind Turbine Streamers
Wind_20Turbine_20Streamers
Promoting my elf... [wagster, Nov 05 2009]
Bladeless fan
http://www.dyson.co.uk/store/fans.asp
Dunno how it works - some ingenious application of electrostatsics, or massive subwoofers or something. Could be quite stealthy if they got rid of that massive base. [coprocephalous, Nov 05 2009]
[link]
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And waste all the wind that blows during the day? I think not.
Why not just paint the so they blend in with the sky? |
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Many people complain about the noise created by nearby windmills - especially problematic when trying to sleep. |
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Most wind occurs during the day. |
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Let's just improve solar energy conversion. |
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Or make them out of aerogels? Or those new transparent materials where light bends around? Or mirrors that are aligned to reflect sunlight down on solar collectors located throughout the farm? This whole "lets use the energy harvested from an energy harvester to make it incapable of harvesting energy" bit has me in a bad way... |
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Sometimes there is no wind so they may as well lie flat. |
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Just paint the sky the same blue as the windmills so they blend in. |
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Apparently if you light the shaded side of a wind turbine (or
any narrow structure, really) it tends to disappear from any
real distance. This may have significant applications in
offshore wind farms, less so on land where people are both
closer and at more angles. |
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//Most wind occurs during the day// |
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Do you have any evidence for that? |
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//Most wind occurs during the day// never been married obviously. |
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ignore that, yes, I'd like evidence as well. |
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It does make a certain amount of sense... wind is created by
temperature differences, and there is more heat in the day,
which expands more air, thus pushing more air and creating
wind. I'm not saying it's true or not, but it does bear some
research. |
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ah, remembering (and given that I live on an island) the wind goes seaward I believe at night and landward during the day due to the sea being slower to warm up during the day and later in releasing the heat at night. |
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21Quest, yes, temperature differences do have an effect, but that's both positive and negative temperature differences - so while heating during the day is responsible for some wind, cooling during the night (should) create just as much. |
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// it tends to disappear from any real distance // |
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This making them much less useful as VRP's for air navigation. |
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Anything that makes a tall structure less visible is a bad thing for air traffic. However, the "fold them down when not needed" idea is ingenious. |
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Looks like it really is windier during the day (links). |
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Telescoping into the ground is an alternative to folding. |
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8th, it should be possible to make something less visible from
the ground *and* more visible from the sky. We're talking about
2 different angles. My issue with this isn't the visibility, but the
fact that you'd be sacrificing more than half of the available
energy by folding them down at night. Better would be to make
windmills more visually appealing, rather than trying to hide
them. Personally, though, I quite like the way they look. Like an
island of green in an urban cityscape, the contrast between
nature and technology when they coexist for mutual benefit is
beautiful. |
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Been there, done that (link). |
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With a tripod design they could put themselves away in the evening. Even better if painted like martian attack machines. As a second use they could herd cattle by illuminating the ground with a red beam. |
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If Dyson can make a bladeless electric fan, could he not be persuaded to do the inverse, and make a bladeless windmill? [link] |
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//Some folk don't like to see windmills on the skyline//
Some folks will complain about anything, regardless of how unobtrusive it is. I think the best disguise would be to put them in plain sight and build hundreds of crazy golf courses populated entirely with gigantic, energy generating windmills. |
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//If Dyson can make a bladeless electric fan// |
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Spoiler Alert ! The fan is hidden in the base which is piped into the ring. It uses the same principle as the rocket assisted inflation mechanism on large escape slides. |
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Aha - so it's not really bladeless at all. |
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The version powered by actual magic is. |
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Why not just plant tall trees around them and obscure them from view? |
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[DrBob] "Giant Mini-Golf"? - I like it! |
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//herd cattle by illuminating the ground with a red beam.// |
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Cows follow laser pointer beams ?!! |
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//The fan is hidden in the base which is piped into the ring//
You could've put a spoiler alert on that one. |
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hippo, you put it so much better than I did! |
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//Cows follow laser pointer beams ?!!// |
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No. Avoid. Unless they want to be prematurely seared. |
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