Here’s a great concept for re-using the wind generated from cars racing on the highways. Great idea! Save earth and peace!
Average vehicle speeds on the valley highways are approximately 70 mph. Using average annual wind speeds of 10 mph as a baseline, each single wind turbine will produce 9,600KwH of energy, annually (enough to fully power my 700 s.f. apartment). This power production estimate will increase exponentially with an increase in wind turbulence speed. I believe that the wind stream created over the freeways by our primary mode of transportation will create an average annual wind speed well beyond the baseline of 10 mph.
via 
3 Responses to Wind Power from Highways
Leave a Reply
Other interesting stuff at Zedomax.com: annually, apartment, average_annual, baseline, Business, cars_racing, Consumer, Earth, Educational, Energy, Entertainment, exponentially, freeways, Government, Industrial, make, makezine, Misc, peace, power_production, production_estimate, wind_speed, wind_speeds, wind_stream, wind_turbine, wind_turbulence, Zedomax
Check out more interesting categories: Business, Consumer, Earth, Educational, Energy, Entertainment, Government, Industrial, Misc.
we need more of these… as long as the power bill goes down…
Wow thats an extrmely useful idea…
Yeah, it is a good idea, but there’s more factors to be considered. Natural counter winds could be greater than the wind produced by cars preventing the blades from turning since the design won’t allow the blades to turn at an angle where it catches the best wind.
Another problem is that the blades would need constant traffic running at optimal speeds and that won’t happen at traffic rush hours, or at night.
The turbine placed on the side of the road would seem to be more efficient since it could work with both, natural wind, and wind produced by cars, but it may be too far away from cars to be affected by the highway wind.