All Energy is Good Energy (AEnGE)

Votes: 6
Views: 4369

Wind energy harvesting technology has established its market due to the excellent advantages it possesses. At the same time, severe limitations of this technology has emerged. This is a step forward from the combustion based energy generation techniques used before; in a way that the ill-effects of green house gases were realized much later in time. The intermittency of power generation is the largest pitfall of current wind energy source. Therefore, an integrated system that can harvest more than one energy source, while operational, is proposed.

Along with wind, rain and snow are also highly energetic resources, if harvested right. A long pendulum like structure will gather large swing distances during high winds. It will naturally continue swinging even when the wind speed drops. A gearbox will convert each stroke into electric energy, just like any conventional generator system and store it (See Fig. 1). As the season changes, depending upon the geographical location of the installation site, the rain or snow fall will start. A simple bucket like collector will collect this mass up to a certain level (See Fig. 2). This collected mass will use its potential energy to gradually pull the pendulum to one direction and at a preset distance, the pendulum will be released and will resume energy generation, but without any wind this time!

The advantages of such a system only stack up higher than the now-conventional wind harvesting. The technology does not depend on wind alone, but has the ability to harvest wind energy. The energy generation can continue smoothly even if there is an interval between two wind gusts. When the seasons change to low wind conditions, rain and snow modules can be activated to harvest the potential energy of the large amount of water mass that is naturally pumped to great heights. The movement of the pendulum is closer to the ground and very limited compared to a full rotation of wind turbines that pose great danger to flying birds and cast long, flickering shadows. Plus, the basic idea that energy generation units of the future need not depend on only one type of energy source is the core principal of AEnGE. This will lead to further integration of multiple technologies to higher the efficiency and lower the risks involved in new-age energy generation.

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  • ABOUT THE ENTRANT

  • Name:
    Kulbhushan Joshi
  • Type of entry:
    team
    Team members:
    A. Deepti Dutt, Kulbhushan A. Joshi
  • Profession:
    Student
  • Number of times previously entering contest:
    never
  • Kulbhushan's favorite design and analysis tools:
    FLUENT, MATLAB, AutoCAD
  • For managing CAD data Kulbhushan's company uses:
    None
  • Kulbhushan's hobbies and activities:
    Badminton, Tennis, Table Tennis, Cooking
  • Kulbhushan belongs to these online communities:
    Society of Fire Protection Engineering
  • Kulbhushan is inspired by:
    The lack of efficiency and instant emergence of limitation that is tagged to the new energy sources and techniques is the early sign of repetition of mistakes done with coal and petroleum energy era. Therefore, harvesting of new energies should be reconstructed based upon versatility and foresight.
  • Software used for this entry:
    Google Docs
  • Patent status:
    none