A YouTube video making the rounds on social media (with over 27 million views!) describes a system of small wind turbines placed in the median between two lanes of traffic.
The wind generated by the traffic spins the turbine blades and generates (a very small amount of) electricity:
The question is, does such a system recapture energy that would have been lost anyway?
The answer is NO.
When the blades turn to generate electricity, they are slowing the wind generated by the moving traffic. That creates additional wind resistance, which increases aerodynamic drag on the cars, and reduces their gas mileage.
In effect, the turbines are stealing energy from the cars and converting it to electricity.
No, it’s not like regenerative breaking in hybrid cars, nor is it like turbochargers. It’s forcing the car to do more work than it would have otherwise done… and inefficiently converting that extra work into another form of energy.
Wouldn’t the cars have lost energy through aerodynamic drag anyway? Yes! But this system INCREASES the drag on the cars. It would be like putting a little wind turbine on the roof of the car and generating electricity that way.
The electrical energy created would not be worth the gas you wasted to do it (unless you really needed the electricity…but that’s what car alternators are for, and they don’t run all the time anyway).
I’m pretty sure the system would waste energy, not save energy. That’s why I’m calling it a “scam”.
Here’s a short discussion by some engineers who come to the same conclusion.
Read more at Dr. Roy’s Blog
The big trouble with GreenEnergy is its unrelible because the sun down shine for a full 24 hours and the wind dont always blow this is just more reasons to reject this poppycock lets harness the Hot Air produuced by the Eco-Wackos and AL Bore
We had some cross walk lights that were powered by a solar panel / battery set up. The short days and long nights of winter proved to be their undoing. The batteries were dead when kids walked to school in the morning. I wonder, how many people who saw this realized how ineffective solar farms are? Same with the traffic beanie experiment. How many people saw what was wrong with the picture?
Do you mean aside from the fact that it’s obviously just an artist’s impression, not a real thing?
There is a basic concept here that too many people can not grasp, return for the investment. I have seen this ignored long before the climate change fraud. One of my engineering co-workers was advocating installing a generator that would run off of the water coming down a home’s drain pipe. I couldn’t convince him that the trivial amount of electricity would never pay for the investment. However, unlike the climate alarmist, he was only interested in doing this for himself and didn’t want to impose it on all of society.
The tides have tremendous energy. Yet, the cost of the equipment to harness that energy compared to the energy generated would make it even more expense than wind power.
Aside from the fact small wind turbines placed in the medians steal energy from cars, you can bet that the small amount of energy produced would never pay for the turbines.
And just when you thought they had run out of stupid ideas.
Even a cursory thought (of this engineer) says that the amounts of energy possibly generated are (1) so small as to be a total waste of time (not even counting the turbine & transmission losses), and (2) likely to be driven by natural not vehicle generated wind.
Socialists tend to support ideas regardless of return on investment. I’d venture that the cheapest way to cook roadkill in Venezuela is over a bolivar bonfire.