Wind Turbine Powered Car Test 

+Tholaran97 It can be useful if you are going to park the car and have the turbine charge the battery, and than unplug it. Or the other way it could be useful is if you are traveling downwind, but your speed must be lower than the winds in order for turbine to be of any use. If you move against the wind, or with no wind at all, there will be more drag to overcome, which takes more energy than the turbine produces. So it is most practical to just leave the turbine at home and let it charge your home batteries.

+GrimFaceHunter But.. I dunno how does it drive forward into the wind if it takes more energy than the turbine produces.. please explain :)

+bartmane It probably has an onboard battery or a supercapacitor that is being recharged by the turbine. When there is no enough power left in whichever is used to store it to be enough to move it it stops, and than it recharges again. They have either set it to stop when the voltage of the battery drops to a low level or they are doing it manually. Without those regulations and stopping, this car would just be standing still, it's motor unable to overcome the resistance of standing still and wind resistance.

+bartmane it is inefficiencies in the energy conversion you would be better just using the energy directly in a sail lol, if i push against you 100% and you convert 80% of my energy to push me back you will still go backwards lol

+GrimFaceHunter the only saving grace is that it can use friction energy to stand still (by putting on the brakes) while still generating and storing energy to move forward

Sir, can I ask, what if we use the wind turbine in a vehicle to charge a battery, say a 12v battery car, will it work? We are planning on making a vehicle with a wind turbine installed to charge its battery to increase the distance it covers, but it won't be powered by the wind turbine alone. It will be charged just like ordinary e-vehicles, we just aim to increase the distance covered. Thankyou.

EE student it will work if the speed of the wind is several times higher than the speed of the car, otherwise, no.

Maybe if we used this wind power to move a watercraft, rather than a landcraft? Imagine, cruising over the waves pollution and fuel free.

​I think you should try inplix plans. It's easy to learn how to make it :D

There have been all kinds of alternative sail designs & they are never as efficient as standard sails but I see what you are saying & I see lots of applications for it. Like if you took a standard diesel powered tanker & generated electricity, you could use electric motors to help drive the prop shaft & reduce diesel burn.

+PATRICK MCKOWEN hey how about the fun used for cooling the engine being used at the same time to run a generator just like a dynamo for the old bicycles lights

+kateba hassan Hi, Not sure I understand your point -- the dynamo bike lights, at least the one I had when I was a kid, only stayed on if the wheel was moving back then, and the light back then was incandescent and not very bright. I remember riding faster to get the light to go brighter. I think wind charging is a great idea - just not practical when the vehicle is moving- only practical when the wind is moving faster than the car is moving to over come the looses, and that does not happen too often in a car. A stationary charging scenario is the only practical one I can see. If it is windy there all the time like that, you pop up a wind genny while parked, your going to get some good charging. Cheers, Patrick

Cargo ships?

There are cheaper alternatives than a wifi router. Both economically and energy efficiency. Here are just two examples: low energy bluetooth or a battery cell RF receiver.

I'm afraid you'll just have to take our word for it. You can see a bit of the build process here: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-MOiN0HD8zb0.html

If Batteries are used, They could have made it to run more faster.

+DeFALLOUTFrog you would lose energy instead of gaining it. such a device would increase air resistance on the vehicle and basically convert some of the car's forward motion into electricity. But what you forget is the energy that was used to get the car to move forward in the first place. it would be better to let the car's engine recharge the battery.

+MassDynamic or use the energy directly in a sail lol

Thank you. They knew it but they just ignore it.

MassDynamic's got it. The turbine can make use of the flow of air *relative to the ground* - I'll call this "natural wind". It slows this wind down, capturing energy and delivering it to the wheels. You *can't* use the flow of air relative to the car - i.e. wind the car "makes" itself. This just introduces additional losses (friction and electrical). It would be like pushing on a car you're inside, expecting it to go forward. You need to have your feet on the ground when you push the car. So if this car you're talking about captures the "natural wind", moving against the ground, it can harvest energy. But most of the time, the drag from capturing the car's own apparent wind would make this a net loss, especially at highway/motorway speeds.

Raise your hand if you've actually tried it. No, you haven't And if there is wind resistance anyways, why no divert that through a charging fan?

Once and for all everybody! This works! This is no hokus-pokus. But it will not work on a car where the wind turbine uses the drag wind. The reason is that the power to the car needed to overcome the "drag force" from the wind turbine increases with the speed of the car. Function "P=F*v". As long as the speed of the wind is say 10m/s and the car drives at 1m/s it will work easily. But if the wind speed is the same as the car's speed it won't work because then it is an perpetual motion machine, a machine that drives itself, impossible.

The turbine is free to swing around to face the wind at all times (guided by a tail fin - same as a weather vane), while the vehicle continues to travel in the direction the wheels are pointing.

Downwind faster then the wind?? - Challenge accepted! - watch this space :)

For light duty transport, I agree. But batteries just can't cut it when heavy cargo or long distances are involved. We're unlikely to see battery lorries or freight liners ever become feasible. One sensible application of this idea might be on freight liners, where there's nothing around to obstruct the wind, and speed of travel is fairly low. Though if we don't start taking finite oil seriously in good time, I wonder if we might see ourselves forced back to sailing!

except a sail can't store electricity or let you drive in any direction no matter where the wind's coming from.

it's not a propeller, it's a turbine.

putting something in quotation marks doesn't make it any less wrong, shouting in all caps doesn't make you any more right and cutting and pasting the definition of something you have no understanding of doesn't make you any less ignorant.

EvenStar LoveAnanda Try to go forward against the wind with a sail

I didn't know that! That's amazing! Do you know how efficient it is?

No, it can drive in any direction.

But only if the wind blows consistently battery backup helps you to flaten out the spots without wind so you reduce the amount of accelerating and slowing down. A steady movement is much better, than that.