Video of a working version from eight years ago:

Jacek Nicpoń, who could have an email address of janic10@wp.pl

Updating my version.

So I'm attempting to rebuild my thing with help.  Thoughts in my head:

1. Nylon instead of metal bevel gears?
2. solid sails (fiberglass, instead of cloth)
3. cloth sails with some mechanism to expand and contract to account for wetness/dryness of sail. Worm gear + electronics or spring loaded?
4. If cloth - two vertical bars per sail (one at each edge), or three.
5. The plate at the bottom - square of triangular (you'd do three guy-ropes minimum of course).
6. Two sails, or three, or four?  I'm thinking four would interfere with each other too much and three might either increase or decrease the wobble/yaw over two sails (per my 1991 construction).
7. Are the sails rectangular or ovular-ish?

From 2011: one with six or so sails doing the 2:1 rotation and hoisting a weight to prove a workload.

Also:

And:

From 2007, video of something that could well have been operated for electricity for many years before that. An additional aspect (over the 2:1 ratio) is the adjustable sails. Wow!

A University team's well documented project

John C. Nappo documents his University project on his website (currently offline). Here's a pic of it from the wayback machine:

There are plenty more pictures of the project on that site, and a couple of videos of the rigs being tested.

John's website is down for (he's left University and now has a job), but he tells me that 

Vertical Axis Wind Turbine with Continuous Blade Angle Adjustment by Samuel Bruce Weiss (MIT, 1993) guided the effort.

Working version in Croatia

Sasa Galic build a VAWT in this design that is shown working:

I think the 2:1 gear is in the upper assembly and hidden from view.  Great work.

Sam Weiss's animation of the design.

You'll have to click it, as the author has disabled linking - http://youtu.be/vdMGdF9g490

This one's a nice plan view of what happens, and should be instantly understandable to anyone that done dingy/yacht sailing.  Sam Weiss even did his MIT thesis based on this :)

..And another similar version found on youtube today

This one is not the same, it snaps shut, rather that geared 2:1 according to the points of sailing.

One more from China found on youtube today

yay, a production ready version!

Close, but not the same

This one slams shut as it goes from 'into the wind' to 'with the wind'.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDiE7jL5UMI

A Frenchman: Qualité d'animation haut de brevet français

(high quality animation from French patentee)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qg7hxaPAjnw

The website that has the source materials for this clip :- http://www.eolprocess.com/ and a more in depth presentation of the same clip :- http://www.eolprocess.com/start.php

My Original 1992 patent application & response

Here is my original patent application and the response from the UK patent office that turned up prior art.

C'est la vie - in 1992 the only reasonable way to search on an invention was to file it and use the patent office to do the search. As it happens, the UK patent office was linked into the European one. Thus the results return some Europeans as well as Brits as patentees. These days (2009) the patent systems of the world are linked. Google finds hits (listed below) that pre-date even the ones cited in my application. I've corresponded with Gooden a couple of times, who felt that maritime applications may still happen. His patent times out soon I think.

Why don't we see this 2:1 windmill design

I'm referring to prior posts of course. No end of people have tried to patent this turbine design. There are some thirty that are presently or were previously in force. There must be another hundred that are failed as applications. I'd imagine that most, like me, built their model and watched it rotate with some force in a moderate wind before penning the patent application, yet we don't see these things dotting the hillsides.

There must be some limiting factor.

I speculate that its one of a few things:

1. Keeping the rig pointing into the wind is too expensive. In the 1890's your only choice was a vane of sorts. The very fact that its rotating and using the torque to drive a generator must mean that a significant amount of energy must be expended to tune to the winds position. With a vane design, it would have to be large. Some of the historical patents are showing smaller vanes and some mechanical magic to turn the rig. For an electronic turning of the rig, you would most likely employ some software to average out the eddies and momentary wind changes before turning. A dampening effect if you like.
2. Each blade on its own axis may momentarily have some torque that would potentially cause it to jump its own gearing. It might do this because the wind on the individual sail might be uneven left to right. That 2:1 gearing is crucial to success of course, so perhaps even going one tooth different would be enough to require manual intervention. The gears and chains (or axles) might have to be substantial to reduce the chances of cogs slipping. For a design where your using a motor under each sail to turn, you might suffer increased motor stress because of the squalls and eddies of the wind in any situation.
   

Perhaps best thing is a motor design, but one that is not a stepper motor, but instead a more industrial design with some gearing itself and the ability to fine tune based on a knowledge pf the orientation of the other blade(s) and the direction of the wind.

Tracking the historical patents for the 2:1 turbine idea

Prior art. Lots of it apparently....

Patent number: 566747
Filing date: Jul 18, 1895
Issue date: Sep 1, 1896
Inventor: LAURENCE ENGBERG

Patent number: 662944
Filing date: Jan 18, 1900
Issue date: Dec 1900
Inventor: Jones

Patent number: 1075060
Filing date: Jun 10, 1912
Issue date: Oct 1913
Inventor: O'Toole

Patent number: 1201184
Filing date: May 8, 1915
Issue date: Oct 1916
Inventor: M. W. HOLBEN

Patent number: 1430406
Filing date: Nov 25, 1921
Issue date: Sep 1922
Inventor: Schulthes et al.

Patent number: 1651067
Filing date: Jan 23, 1926
Issue date: Nov 1927
Inventor: Nitardy

Patent number: 1741248
Filing date: Mar 19, 1928
Issue date: Dec 1929
Inventor: Nitardy

Patent number: 1741247
Filing date: Mar 5, 1928
Issue date: Dec 31, 1929
Inventor: OTTO J. NITARDY


Patent number: 2603300
Filing date: Jul 16, 1948
Issue date: Jul 1952
Inventor: C. A. KING

Patent number: 2542522
Filing date: Aug 23, 1945
Issue date: Feb 1951
Inventor: D. L. HINGS

Patent number: 4178126
Filing date: Sep 7, 1977
Issue date: Dec 11, 1979
Inventor: Gehres D. Weed

Patent number: 4282944
Filing date: May 22, 1979
Issue date: Aug 11, 1981
Inventor: J. Walter Trumpy

Patent number: 4303835
Filing date: Mar 31, 1980
Issue date: Dec 1, 1981
Inventor: Puran Bair

Patent number: 4764090
Filing date: Jan 9, 1984
Issue date: Aug 16, 1988
Inventor: David P. Danson
Assignees: Wind Feather, United Science ASC

1930's use of the turbine - yay!

Here is a youtube video.  Fast forward to 43 seconds. 

Yay! this still must be mostly out of patent. I think's there's a fellow in the south west of the England who patented in 87 - 89, and with 25 years from that date, his will timeout soon too.  It must be for some exceptionally fine grained difference to the base idea though as the video above is exactly the minima for the turbine (mounted hoziontally).

1991 Meccano Windmill - spinning

This is cheating as there's no wind indoors. So I'm spinning the thing and Dad is taking the picture. In a gale some nights later on a patch of grass, it spun faster than I expected with my hand holding the top to keep in vertical. In this picture we're seeing that an old fashioned camera's slow shutter speed can be used to your advantage :-)

1991 Meccano Windmill - from above

corresponding to a previous post  here is the pictures of the windmill from above :

Its positions 1, 2, 3 and 4 (but could as easily be 5, 6, 7 and 8).

1991 Meccano Windmill - construction

The whole thing (resting on 1970's carpet)

Close up of the 2:1 gear ratio .....

one of the arms...

a

Motor madness

Bay-area buddy Simon Quellen Field (and well known fiddler of magnetic things) suggested that motors could turn the sails, instead of the 2:1 gear.  Of course they still turn at the same speed, in accordance with the 2:1 ratio - but no pulleys, chains or turning shafts.

As the main generator is making electricity, there is ample to power two smaller ones to turn the sails.  The two smaller motors would only be under modest load as there is little torque due to the sails being symmetrical around an axis. 

Its even possible that the whole contraption could recover adequately after the wind (or fluid flow) drops to zero.  As there is bound to be some movement causing a random rotation, to create some modest electricity to allow the sails to adjust to their optimal positions.

This would be the case even if the wind changed direction.

It may be that some local battery, capacitor or fly-wheel storage would be needed.  Or (or all things) a solar powered battery could be modestly sized.

Very clever Simon.

US Farming

I've just finished reading "Omnivore's Dilemma".  It's highly recommended.   There's a farmer Joel  Salatin, who is bucking the industrial agriculture trend.  His farm is not the main feature of the book, but its one of many narratives that stay with you.

I wonder how cows would react to a grid of  VAWTs above them.  They wouldn't mind the guy ropes, but would the rotating turbines disturb them?  You'd need transparent (plastic) sails of course so that the grass would continue to grow at full speed. 

Plowed fields couldn't be used of course as farm machinery and guy-ropes are incompatible.

Alternate Rig

In purple, a different rig that would allow the fixing point to move as tides rise and fall. It's shown as a circle, but it would more likely be a custom curve. Again under pressure from the flow the orange roller would find the right place on the curve to keep the turbine perfectly vertical.

Another side view

Given the contraption is pushed 'down stream' the tethering cables/ropes/etc (orange) could flexible apart from a bar (black, center) keeping them apart.

Side view of the underwater VAWT.

OK, so the sails are a different angle to previous pictures.  They are both reaching, but in different directions.  The floatation/buoy thing is visible breaking the (crude representation of) water surface.  The counter weight at the bottom is not resting on the sea/estuary/river/lake/lough bed.  In this design there is only one cable/rope/cord preventing the thing from floating downstream.  Also shown is a simple squared rig, that sets the direction of the contraption, and is a fixing to the cable/rope/cord/etc.

Underwater string of turbines.

I emailed José Antonio Pérez in Spain, congratulating him on the lego turbine he made and could drive with a hair drier. Hi José!

Meanwhile a turbine was installed in Northern Ireland to take advantage of a huge tidal flow ..

It's a classic design, that required a floating crane to be borrowed from Norway to install. The company website is http://www.seageneration.co.uk/ but search in Google for 'SeaGen Strangford Lough' for other articles starting in 2007 (it took a lot of planning to install).

Using the VAWT design, you could have a much lighter setup. It could float for one, and be anchored upstream using two tethered lines..




Illustrated are three VAWTs. A Buoy keeps it afloat, with a counter weight at the bottom keep it the right way up. There are two cables to anchor it upstream. They might have to be stays to prevent it fowling the blades, because at each change of tide, the contraption is going to relocate to the a new position slowly. This does not need a crane from Norway to install. Indeed it may well be easier to clean the inevitable lifeforms that attach themselves overtime, by floating it to the surface (still tethered, but now flat to the surface).

Whether a river or a tidal flow, the current is going to be strongest in the center of the channel. If not in a channel, then it doesn't really matter about the position of the blades to take advantage of greatest flow.

Unlike the the same VAWT design for wind farm, the device needs no constant orientation to the flow - underwater the tide flows in only two directions, and the VAWT will tune to that automatically.

Please forgive the crude graphical representation of a river bed / water etc.

and another youtube video

it appears to be called a butler windmill

video of the same VAWT design

Someone else made one out of lego.  This is the first time i've seen the design on the internet

Nice work!

Turbines on the African Savanna, easy assembly

Two men, one flat bed truck, 5 windmills in one day. Well maybe ignoring the generator. The key here is that the support for the central spindle is relatively simple - just a plate on the solid ground, with spikes banged through. The windmills/turbines are erected as a large marquee tent would be - guy ropes, pulleys, strong arms and hopefully no wind.

What differentiates this from standard horizontal axis windmills is the construction.

With horizontal axis wind turbines (HAWT) on hillsides, and the flat, you need a decent foundation (concrete), and potentially a concrete tower to support the weight of the generator with most likely has to be bought in by helicopter. That's costly by anyone's standards.

Don't even mention the the maintenance cost of the HAWT. With this design of VAWT, you could just lower it to the ground with the ropes/cables again. It weight perhaps 1000 times less that the HAWT.

The likelihood is that the VAWT with sail cloth will be less fatal to birds. Potentially less interfering with radio signals too. Both of those are 'in theory'.

Lastly, the HAWT design requires a support more than half the length of the blades to stop them biting the ground. The VAWT design, being guy-roped can go much higher in the same square-footage on the ground.

Next up pictures of the Meccano model from 1991 that actually worked. If I can find the negatives.

Image thanks to Stargirl from flickr and drawingcoach

VAWT on hillside

The wind is coming over the hill towards us/the camera. Two sails are shown. The left one is coming towards us, and the right one is going away. The left adding to rotation, the right momentarily resisting it.

The sails shown in this design are solid.  If they were cloth and between two bars, then the sails could adopt a modest aerofoil shape and add to rotational force in multiple positions. Most notably, positions 4 & 6 in the previous blog entry.  As is with this solid sail design, positions 4, 5, and 6 are effectively drag.

Also, the gearing is shown as a chain and cogs here. That would be impractical due to chain sag. The real one that I built was used bevel gears that are also inefficient.

This illustration shows something that is a couple of hundred yards tall. It will keep going in low wind conditions and still perform in higher winds.

Next up, horizontal vs vertical axis wind turbines. 

My Windmill

I had the idea in 1984 or thereabouts, but did not attempt to patent until 1991.  Its a design for a vertical axis windmill.  The patent failed, because of prior art. Some that art goes back to the 1850's.  I used to have the failed patent application, with 1" of stapled relevant patents. I think I left it at a client site a couple of years ago.

A guy from 'the west country' of the England had been granted a patent on it some years before me.  He's still above and hoping to make some business from it with under-water turbines, but I think the best use is for wind.

How it works - view from above

So this diagram describes one sail and its rotation around a central axis under the influence of wind.  Eight freeze-frame images give a single rotation of the sail around a central axis.

Each sail has to run in two directions - the red dot shows that the sail after one revolution around the axis, would be facing in the other direction.  Meaning there is a 2:1 gear ratio between the (fixed) central spindle and the rotation of the sail around its own axis.

Directions of force are shown via small arrows. It's pretty obvious that all angles to the wind are helping the general rotation apart from frame 5.

You could make each sail as a sheet of sail-cloth between two vertical rods. In the case of my prototype, I made them out of cardboard.  With a sail-cloth form, you could get some aerofoil effect. 

Points of Sailing

Anyone familiar with yachting or dingy sailing will note that sailing positions to the wind guide the design for this turbine.  The novelty (and the thing I tried to patent) was the 2:1 gear ratio.

More in a follow up.