Tagged: wind energy

Photo of the Week: Belgium’s sail trains ride out

In a country that needed six years to reach an agreement in principle on the burden sharing of the efforts to be made to tackle climate change, you wouldn’t expect much inspiring climate change mitigation. The opposite is true. Where the Belgian governments linger, communities and businesses have taken initiatives to start limiting emissions themselves. Last week, such a project entered a new stage: the first sail train rode out.

What? A sail train? No, it is not some kind of cart on rails with a big sail on top of it. The so called sail train is a normal train but fully powered by wind energy, harvested by a wind park stretching along the trajectory between the cities of Liege and Leuven. The project is a collaboration between the railway infrastructure manager InfraBel, the city of Sint-Truiden, energy producer Electrabel and the Brussels electricity distribution company.

"Moving by the wind": the first sail train on the trajectory from Leuven to Liège rode out last week (photo: Electrabel)

“Moving by the wind”: the first sail train on the trajectory from Leuven to Liège rode out last week (photo: Electrabel)

 

The first seven wind turbines have now been taken into service, with another eighteen to be build in the near future. Together they will yield 34 000 MegaWatthour in clean energy and save 15 000 tons of CO2 per year. Two third of the generated electricity will be feeded directly to the trains, one third will be transmitted to the distribution system to be used by households and companies.

When fully operational, around 170 trains will be powered by wind daily. That makes up to around 5% of all train traffic in Belgium. Commuters don’t have to worry: there’s a backup connection with the national electricity grid to keep the trains going on a windless day. There was never more reason to let the car behind and take the train instead!

Sources (Dutch)

deredactie.be
HetLaatsteNieuws

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Photo of the Week: the Wind Tree

If you are following the Photo of the Week series, you probably remember the Vortex bladeless wind turbine. This radical new way to harvest wind energy is bringing a new ehm… wind in the industry. The asparagus-like structure is an improvement for those who don’t like the large rotating fans in the countryside. But the Wind Tree  (originally called the Arbre à Vent by its inventor Jérôme Michaud-Larivière) is raising wind energy to a whole new level of aesthetics.

Further developed by French engineers, this tree has rotating leaves that generate electricity regardless the direction of the wind. Other advantages are its silent operation, the possibility to start generating at wind speeds of 2 m/s instead of 5 m/s as for most traditional systems and the ability to be installed in an urban environment. One tree costs around 35 000 euros and has a capacity of 3kW. That is enough to power a small household. The real innovation is to be found in the leaves, designed to rotate in both laminar and the turbulent air flow near buildings.

The Wind Tree harvests wind energy from slower and turbulent wind flows than traditional systems, making it a perfect solution for an urban environment (photo: Fred Tanneau)

The Wind Tree harvests wind energy from slower and turbulent wind flows than traditional systems, making it a perfect solution for an urban environment (photo: Fred Tanneau)

Sources

NewWind

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Photo of the week: Vortex, wind turbine without blades

Large wind turbines spinning in the background of a magnificent landscape are not such an exceptional sight anymore. But the Spanish start-up Vortex Bladeless proposes a whole new way of generating electricity from the wind, without any rotor. Using the  vortices of wind that flows around the bladeless wind turbine, the asparagus-like structure starts resonating. With a system based on the same principles of an alternator, electricity is generated in a magnetic connection with no bolts or gears. This is one of the biggest advantages of the Vortex since it requires less maintanance and the initial cost is much lower. In addition, on the same patch of land you can put twice as many vortex devices than spinning wind turbines. The Vortex Mini is estimated to produce 4kW, a larger version, the Vortex Gran, is planned to generate at least 1MW.

Prototype of the Vortex , the wind turbine without rotor (photo: Vortex Bladeless)

Prototype of the Vortex , the wind turbine without rotor (photo: Vortex Bladeless)

Sources

Vortex Bladeless
Wired.com

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