Feasibility of Wind Energy Farming at Highway.
Wind Energy: Wind energy is one of the natural energy beside solar which is readily available 24hrs (may vary time to time). On the other hand Solar is totally dependent on the day time, clear sky etc which make it unproductive during night and cloudy seasons. The wind energy is always available (!! I know its not), let me explain. First of all wind flow is always available which is a fact but the technology is limited till now so we can’t produce anything with wind velocity less that 2m/s. Until the technology evolve to be more productive we have to rely on existing technology. wind is always there and its in a motion otherwise we could not have breathe.
Location: In general, the Wind farm’s are located around the sea shore (on shore and off shore) where the average annual wind speed is higher than any other location. But there require a huge amount of investment to setup the wind turbines and maintenance cost is also higher too. Those conventional wind turbine’s have very long post’s (50-60+m height) where they are mounted. Even though the high investment the output is not very good compared to conventional powerplant and the power generation is also not continuous (dependent on wind velocity fluctuation). That’s why WIND ENEGRY from highway’s can be a great location and where a continuous wind flow may be found (dependent on traffic though). Which i will discuss today with data.
As per my research you will need assess the following things during selection of a site for roadside wind farming:
- Average Vehicle speed (45-50+km/hr)
- Average Vehicle Density at a point (2-3 vehicle/sec)
- Straight Roads without any pedestrian crossing
- Low congestion
These four points are the key points to success in roadside wind farming project.
Data collection at highway:
1st Video:
Summary Graph of this video:
2nd Video:
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3rd Video:
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4th Video:
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From the above video’s and summary data its clear that the vehicle density is very important to obtain necessary wind speed. On the other hand congestion at road will seriously hamper the energy farming process.
More detailed feasibility study with small vertical axis wind turbine can be found in my research paper: “Utilization of Small VAWT on Highways of Bangladesh“.