The first electricity generating wind turbine, was a battery charging machine installed in July 1887 by Scottish academic, James Blyth to light his holiday home in Marykirk, Scotland. Some months later American inventor Charles F Brush built the first automatically operated wind turbine for electricity production in Cleveland, Ohio. Although Blyth’s turbine was considered uneconomical in the United Kingdom electricity generation by wind turbines was more cost effective in countries with widely scattered populations. In Denmark by 1900, there were about 2500 windmills for mechanical loads such as pumps and mills, producing an estimated combined peak power of about 30 MW. The largest machines were on 24-metre towers with four-bladed 23-metre diameter rotors. By 1908 there were 72 wind-driven electric generators operating in the US from 5 kW to 25 kW. Around the time of World War I, American windmill makers were producing 100,000 farm windmills each year, mostly for water-pumping. By the 1930s, windmills for electricity were common on farms, mostly in the United States where distribution systems had not yet been installed. In this period, high-tensile steel was cheap, and windmills were placed atop prefabricated open steel lattice towers.

A forerunner of modern horizontal-axis wind generators was in service at Yalta, USSR in 1931. This was a 100 kW generator on a 30-metre tower, connected to the local 6.3 kV distribution system. It was reported to have an annual capacity factor of 32 per cent, not much different from current wind machines. In the fall of 1941, the first megawatt-class wind turbine was synchronized to a utility grid in Vermont. The Smith-Putnam wind turbine only ran for 1,100 hours before suffering a critical failure. The unit was not repaired because of shortage of materials during the war.

The first utility grid-connected wind turbine to operate in the U.K. was built by John Brown & Company in 1951 in the Orkney Islands.

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http://How-To-Build-Cheap-Solar-Energy.info

Not possible.

Most of these do not produce enough lto sustain power (long term power) to move a vehicle (normally weighs about 1 ton).

Also problem on efficiency and mounting of equipment which will make the car even heavier.

You might want to ask yourself this questionon whether you want to drive at 25 mph to your destination. And instead of taking 30 mins now it takes 2 hours.

The one example I saw for a proposal in the Boston area was about 3 times normal cost, before subsidy, and 2 x after subsidy. And this area has some of the highest cost of power in the country.

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Now, do the math. $300 Mill. as fixed cost. Operating cost will at least be $1 Mill a year that includes salary, admin, maintenance, land cost electricity distribution cost etc…

How many homes this windfarm will serve?. That’s the key. Each home on an average consumes 1500 Kwh; at about say, 12 cents a Kwh, that is, $200 per month. ie., $2500 to $3000 per year.
Then, you work backwards: How many homes can YOU serve with your wind farm?. What is the generating capacity.? Higher the capacity, more investment is the result and more running cost.

So, it is difficult to answer until we know how many Kwh can your plant produce for how many homes.

Then, you will know the profit you can make after all the disbursements. If you repay $300Mill over 20 to 25 years with interest, then your profit must be…..xxxxx….dollars. So, you see, it is not that simple to answer.
But wait. Government will kick in quite a bit of money becauise windfarms are environment friendly, no pollution. So, that’s where you go first with hat in your hand.

I actually don’t have an idea, it’s more of an engineering solution to some problems, and also several evolutionary advancements in wind power technology that need at least 3 patents (for sure). It could take as much as $20,000 to secure these patents and I just don’t have it!

I’m not a marketing genius or a financial wizard (if I were, I probably wouldn’t be here asking this question!). What I am is an unconventional, independent engineer with a working model of my creation that performs magnificently! . . . and I can’t demonstrate its potential without its protection. What do I do?

Wind Energy, Innovative Engineering Idea, Vertical Axis Wind Turbine, Angel Money, New Patent Investment
I would be grateful for any good counsel on this.

windfarmhorse@yahoo.com

Bringing a new product to market is difficult, and your product is not an easy one. One option is to work for a company that can develop it, and that would be a large enough one with enough capital.

I am a self-employed person 56 years old with my own business, but I chose one that didn’t require much capital to get it started, and I operate it out of my home, so I don’t have virtually any overhead.

You’ve got a huge gap between your idea and production/ marketing that you have to deal with. For me personally, I could not do it, and I do not believe there is any easy solution, except to keep moving forward. Join a local business group in your area.

What you need more than anything else at this point, I believe, is to network with other people. essentially, that is what you have attempted to do here in Yahoo Answers. I just posted you information to my Yahoo Los Angeles business group at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LosAngelesBusiness/message/572 to try to get some response there. There are 129 members, but it’s best to try.

Also you maybe already know this but I found it interesting. Mesa Power, controlled by billionaire investor Boone Pickens, ordered 667 wind turbines from General Electric Co. to begin a $10 billion wind-farm project in Texas that will be the nation’s largest.

(CNN) — Billionaire oilman T. Boone Pickens is sinking billions of dollars into a new wind farm in Texas. It is likely to become the biggest in the world, producing enough power for the equivalent of 1.3 million homes.

CNN’s Ali Velshi asked the oil legend why he thinks wind could be the answer to this country’s energy problems: Ali Velshi: Tell me about the wind. Now, you are buying, for a start, more than 600 wind turbines from General Electric. You’re going to put them on this big tract of land in Texas, and you’re going to generate a lot of electricity.

What happens to that electricity? Tell me where you think you’re going to make your money and how this is going to help the situation in America.

T. Boone Pickens: Well, that’s the first step to a 4,000-megawatt wind farm. This is 1,000 megawatts.

We start receiving those turbines in mid 2010. We will have the total 4,000 megawatts finished by the end of 2015. That power will go into a transmission line that will tie into the Electric Reliability Council of Texas system in the state of Texas, and it will be transmitted downstate.

I have been in Yahoo Answers for only about two months, but I like to answer a small number of questions and answer them well. I don’t think I’m doing so well for you, but I’m trying.

I like to go to questions that have been posted several days and have no answers yet. Those are usually tough questions to come up with answers for. They require more research on my part, and I enjoy the challenge and learning experience for myself.

I am a UCLA MBA Finance ‘75. My online business is at http://forklift1.com

That’s the low overhead one I just referred to above. You can email me if you want to keep in touch. Maybe through further discussions, we can develop some more concrete ideas.

Your product requires, it sounds like, some capital investment and some "staying power" to get it going operationally. In order to get investors, you have to prepare some financial statements, a proposal, and, if you want public investment, that’s a whole quantum leap, as maybe you know.

I hope I do not sound negative. I’m not. I’ve been in business 30 years. Researching, and that includes looking at all the scenarios, especially what can go wrong, is necessary to avoid having those things go wrong.

I always look at my own projects very skeptically, because I know I am emotionally attached to them. I would suggest a couple of things you don’t do. Don’t get any money from family or friends.

If you are uniquely gifted as an engineer, you can look at the option of selling the technology to a larger company. Get an attorney first, so you can protect your rights and get residual benefits.

I think you’re in the position of someone who has a gift or talent like singing or comedy, and you’ve gotten to the point of feeling you’re ready to go out on your own. People always say, "Don’t quit your day job"! because you’ve got to make a living.

Before I "quit my day job" and went into business for myself, which meant no paycheck, no health plan, no vacation, no sick leave – I had saved enough money so I could survive.

The question you have posed here is very tough. It requires a very tough answer!

The turbine is nothing more than a device used to convert energy of a fluid flow stream into mechanical shaft work. There are no electrical parts that are key ingredients to making a turbine work. The turbine is just a set of blades on a shaft with a connection to a fluid stream.

The generator (or alternator)…(thermodynamics isn’t really concerned with the difference)…is the component which converts the shaft’s mechanical work into electrical energy.

So, strictly speaking, you CANNOT "use an automobile alternator as a turbine" because it doesn’t have any blades or whatnot to interact with a fluid.

You need a turbine to act as a turbine. Or maybe a pneumatic cylinder turboexpandor, which is one of the strokes of the automobile by the way.

You can MECHANICALLY COUPLE a turbine with an automobile alternator…but you cannot "use an automobile alternator as a turbine".

"How much power" could you expect the system to produce depends on the details of your ENERGY SUPPLY. What IS your energy supply?

plus here in texas we’re building new solar collector array power plants. It claims 100% efficiency, 100% self sustaining, 100% clean (water, salt, and sunlight) 100% available all of the time (clouds and night time don’t effect it) and can power 400,000 homes. (due for completion in 2012)

heres one in Euroupe.(its only 11mw texas will be 300mw)

http://judykitsune.wordpress.com/2007/09/12/solar-seville/

thats real sunlight

with wind you need a large amount of fans, constant winds all day every day, and an alternate power source for when there is no wind. Plus they are expensive.

regular solar, plus a few fans, plus underground temperature exchanges are the best ways to reduce your electrical usage to almost 15%, yet can get into the $100,000 range fairly quickly.