
Heat Your House with a Water Brake Windmill - nyc111
https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2019/02/heat-your-house-with-a-water-brake-windmill.html
======
Animats
The article doesn't show a single non-demo installation.

This thing looks like a giant mechanical kludge. If you put the brake (the
paddles in water part) at the top of the tower, you have to pump water up the
tower. If you put it at the bottom of the tower, you need a top gearbox with a
right-angle bevel drive, a bearing ring supporting the gearbox so it can face
the wind, long shafting, and bearings. Some early power turbines were built
that way, but nobody does that any more.

Vertical axis turbines like the Savonius turbine and Darrieus rotor can be
used, but they're not very efficient, so you need a big one. They also are
hard to shut down in an overspeed condition; they can't change direction,
change blade pitch, or tilt upward, so you need a strong emergency brake
system. Which is why they're rarely seen any more.

All this outdoor hot water plumbing needs to be well insulated, or you lose
most of the heat. So a field of wind turbines, or one unit some distance from
where the heat is wanted, is a problem. Moving energy around over wires is so
much simpler.

Driving a heat pump mechanically might work better, but that's because heat
pumps are far more efficient than heaters. (Moving heat is much cheaper than
making it. See [1]). An electric windmill driving a heat pump is probably less
hassle.

[1] [https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2012/06/heat-pumps-work-
miracles/](https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2012/06/heat-pumps-work-miracles/)

~~~
foxhop
Speaking of heat pumps, I installed one 2 months ago, and dropped my
electricity bill for heating water from $85/mo to around $25/mo. This saved me
around 69%!

Reference: [https://russell.ballestrini.net/hybrid-hot-water-heater-
save...](https://russell.ballestrini.net/hybrid-hot-water-heater-
saves-69-percent-on-energy-consumption/)

~~~
xattt
What’s your payback period?

~~~
djaychela
It's in his article - 1 year due to rebates, 2 years without.

------
roland35
I worked on a wind turbine related project for some time and while I overall
love renewable energy wind does have a few factors which can limit its
effectiveness. This applies for heat as well as electric generation.

\- As noted in the article, wind can be highly variable in most areas.
Optimizing a wind turbine for the average low speed (like here in the US
Midwest) means that at super high speed winds can damage your turbine and it
may need to be shut off. If you optimize for the high speeds you can get a ton
of energy at those speeds but your turbine will mostly be still. Regions with
a nice steady wind profile work better for power generation.

\- Wind turbines with variable pitch blades do exist but add cost and
mechanical complexity.

\- Turbines often are installed at remote locations and maintence is
difficult. One crazy story is a friend of a coworker was a tech for the giant
wind turbines and fell _INTO_ those giant fiberglass blades and almost died
wedged in there before he could be rescued!

\- "Urban" wind turbines was an idea here in Cleveland a few years ago, but
wind turbines generate a lot of vibration which isn't good for buildings. Plus
the turbines don't always spin all the time which is bad PR!

All this said I think wind power can be a part of a good energy portfolio but
like with anything in engineering it boils down to a big "but if.."!!

~~~
dgzl
> Wind turbines with variable pitch blades do exist but add cost and
> mechanical complexity.

I was about to suggest the idea of using gears like from a vehicle's
transmission (i.e. first gear is easy to turn, will shift to larger when
certain condition achieved), but it sounds like these ideas have been hashed
out already.

~~~
richardhod
Yes, I'm curious about this, and a FAQ on the technical limitations which lead
to the situation that GP mentions. I'd have thought that you could have a
mechanical / electrical brake on the blades to keep velocities reasonable, or
gears as uyou mention, or maybe it's other mechanical stresses.

~~~
bigiain
The thing that's not obvious to most people is that the power contained in
moving air is proportional to the cube of the airspeed.

If you're local "average wind speed" is 5m/s (~12mph, a "Gentle Breeze" and #3
on the Beaufort scale), and you size your wind turbine to generate useful
power (say, 1000W, for example) at that speed, you have two consequences due
to that speed-cubed term.

1) When there's only light wind - say half your design average speed, you're
only gonna get 1/8th of your 1000W target, so only 125W which isn't very
useful if you've got a 1000W requirement.

2) The _bigger_ problem is when the wind blows faster than average. If you get
twice average speeds, your turbine is going to generate 8kW which you'll need
to safely deal with. But twice isn't your problem - in the real world it's not
uncommon for 3 or 4 times average windspeed (what we'd normally just call "a
windy day" and 7 or 8 on the Beaufort scale), at which stage you're going to
need to safely dump 64kW of power - if your turbine hasn't been braked/parks
appropriately (or torn itself to pieces.) If you're still spinning in
hurricane conditions, you've got another doubling of windspeed, and another
eightfold increase in power, so now your "1000W generator" is unleashing half
a megawatt into your wiring and control electronics (or the plasma in the
smoke where your wiring used to be...)

Beaufort scale with speeds and descriptions:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beaufort_scale#Modern_scale](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beaufort_scale#Modern_scale)

Some real world windspeed measurements showing upper end outliers of 8 times
average speed: [http://www.wind-power-
program.com/wind_statistics.htm](http://www.wind-power-
program.com/wind_statistics.htm)

~~~
hvidgaard
That assumes that the turbine have the same efficiency over all wind speeds.
Realistically, it will not - but your point stands none the less.

------
PietdeVries
While the idea is new to me - using friction in a windmill to heat your house
- the practical use in Western Europe could be limited. Installing a 12 meter
windmill in my backyard is not going to happen... And then efficiency. A
heatpump has a COP of around 4 or 5, so every 1 kW into the system results in
4 or 5 kW out. A heatpump uses electricity, which can be generated using a
windmill, but also via solar panels. And a heatpump is relatively easy to link
to your general central heating system. Now if you'd want to link your water-
brake windmill to the central heating I guess it would be a 'different
biscuit'. And since the smaller systems generate 3.5 kW with a firm breeze,
you need backup. Suppose you'd not use a water-brake but a generator and
heatpump; wouldn't the overall system efficiency be better in that situation?
Or at least more convenient if you add solar panels in case there's no wind?

~~~
icebraining
The article talks about this; it says the most efficient system is a
mechanical heat pump (where the wind provides direct mechanical power to the
compressor), but only for local generation, since heat transfer is much less
efficient than electricity transfer.

~~~
ams6110
Yes, my thought was to use the windmill to run the heat pump, then buffer the
heat as hot water in an insulated tank to heat the house. Not really practical
unless you live in a place with fairly regular wind in the winter. Where I
live, winter air tends to be fairly still with occasional exceptions and I
could be wrong but I doubt it would be a great way to heat the house.

Same with solar, in the dead of winter the sun is at quite a low angle in the
sky, not even above the tree tops, and I doubt there's much to be gained
either from photovoltaic solar or using it to directly heat water for the
house.

~~~
harpastum
Electricity production in winter can definitely be lower, but it depends on
latitude. As you might guess, near the equator there's almost no difference in
season.

According to the US Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy:

"Countries such as the United States, which lie in the middle latitudes,
receive more solar energy in the summer not only because days are longer, but
also because the sun is nearly overhead.

The sun's rays are far more slanted during the shorter days of the winter
months. Cities such as Denver, Colorado, (near 40° latitude) receive nearly
three times more solar energy in June than they do in December." [1]

Looking at these maps [2][3] for solar production in January and July, it
seems like a lot of places drop by around 50% summer to winter. So it's a
significant drop, but unless you're extremely far north, there's still energy
to be harvested.

[1] [https://www.energy.gov/eere/solar/articles/solar-
radiation-b...](https://www.energy.gov/eere/solar/articles/solar-radiation-
basics)

[2] January:
[https://www.nrel.gov/gis/images/map_pv_us_january_dec2008.jp...](https://www.nrel.gov/gis/images/map_pv_us_january_dec2008.jpg)

[3] July:
[https://www.nrel.gov/gis/images/map_pv_us_july_dec2008.jpg](https://www.nrel.gov/gis/images/map_pv_us_july_dec2008.jpg)

------
apo
_The Joule Machine was originally conceived as a measuring apparatus. James
Joule built it in the 1840s for his famous measurement of the mechanical
equivalent of heat: one Joule equals the amount of energy required to raise
the temperature of 1 cubic centimeter of water by 1 degree Celsius._

Although this confuses the definition of joule with calorie, Joule's
experiment was brilliant and laid the groundwork for the laws of
thermodynamics:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanical_equivalent_of_heat](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanical_equivalent_of_heat)

A weight was suspended from a rope and allowed to fall. The falling weight was
mechanically coupled to a paddle in a pool of water. As the weight fell
slowly, it turned the paddle. Given that the mass of the weight and the water
were known, the work performed by the falling weight and the heat absorbed by
the water could be quantitated.

Here's a kitchen test of the principle where a household blender is used to
boil water:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GjcOobt9Ef8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GjcOobt9Ef8)

I suspect some heat transfer from the motor through the blades, but it's very
surprising the water boils. He could have run a calculation, based on the
power output of the blender, to see if the temperature increase was
reasonable.

~~~
theoh
Joule's apparatus can be seen at the Science Museum in London.
[https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Joule_Apparatus.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Joule_Apparatus.jpg)

It's a beautiful device, worth googling around for the various photos that are
online. I would embed a few choice images that I found but of course HN
doesn't allow that. _rolling eyes emoji_

There's also an old Open University programme which reconstructed his
experiment (conducted on his honeymoon, allegedly). It doesn't appear to be on
YouTube.

------
mauvehaus
Related: Boil water with a blender:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GjcOobt9Ef8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GjcOobt9Ef8)

~~~
itronitron
I wonder if this was ever used in a MacGyver episode.

------
seiferteric
> one Joule equals the amount of energy required to raise the temperature of 1
> cubic centimeter of water by 1 degree Celsius.

I believe he meant 1 calorie, in Joules would be 4.184.

------
jdblair
This impeller design is clever, but it seems that a DC generator and a
resistive load would be an easier way to brake the windmill and generate heat.
The first advantage is off-the-shelf parts. Electric generators and resistive
loading are well known technologies. You can locate the resistive load
(literally, an electric heating element) close to where you need the heat and
there will be very little mechanical wear.

~~~
bluGill
You are missing something important: they are storing enough heat to last for
a couple weeks of no wind (or a cold snap). Enough DC batteries to heat a
house that long are expensive and dangerous (fire hazard). A large water tank
(10 tons of water or more!) is a lot safer to have around the house. The water
tank also means the ability to locate your load anywhere isn't important:
either way you have to design your system around the tank.

Also, DC is less efficient as the losses at your generator is heat that isn't
captured. Generators are typically 80-90% efficient. This is pedantic though
and doesn't matter (if this was the only concern DC is wroth the losses
because you can divert it to lights or something else that is also useful)

~~~
teambob
10 tons of boiling hot water? What could possible go wrong?
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Molasses_Flood](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Molasses_Flood)

~~~
fourthark
It's ten cubic meters, not as crazy as it sounds. Yes it would flood your
basement if it burst, and you probably wouldn't want to be directly under it,
but not going to drown you.

Water is heavy!

------
pkulak
Seems like generating power to feed to a heat pump would still be more
efficient, despite electrical losses, considering that good heat pumps can be
3x more efficient than friction/resistive heating.

~~~
Topgamer7
One of the main benefits of the water brake system is the storage of heat.
With a sufficiently large insulated tank, you can retain head for days to
weeks when the wind subsides. The water brake gives you a little more
insurance compared to electricity generation for an off-grid solution.

~~~
mdorazio
Why couldn't you use a heat pump to heat an insulated tank and get the same
benefit?

------
kazinator
Electricity conversion: pretty darn efficient.

Conveying the heat from a brake to a building: not so much.

~~~
seanalltogether
Yeah, this article seems like bad engineering, especially when the opening
paragraph is trying to compare mechanical energy to solar heat.

A windmill with a generator inside it that is hooked to a wire that drives an
electric heating element inside your house will be more efficient then a water
break inside an insulated chamber that pushes hot water through tubes into
your home.

~~~
bluGill
I agree it is mostly bad engineering, but they are correct in one point: to
make wind work you need to store the energy somehow. Water is a lot better
than batteries if the goal is to heat your house for a few weeks of no power
input (batteries are expensive and a fire hazard).

~~~
kazinator
That doesn't imply that the water must be heated directly by the braking
system, however.

------
carapace
Kind of a tangent, but also check out the Ranque-Hilsch vortex tube, "a
mechanical device that separates a compressed gas into hot and cold streams"
\-
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vortex_tube](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vortex_tube)

------
mark-r
Can anyone explain to the ignorant among us (i.e. me) why converting to heat
is so much more efficient than converting to electricity? The article makes
the claim but doesn't back it up. What are the losses involved with each
approach?

~~~
sleavey
I think the main point the article was eluding to was that if you use wind
power to first generate electricity then convert this into heat, you have two
conversion steps with loss: wind to electricity, and then electricity to heat.
The overall efficiency is then the product of the efficiencies of the two
steps. If you produce heat directly from wind, you cut out one conversion with
its associated inefficiency.

~~~
mark-r
I always figured electricity to heat was nearly 100% efficient, it's the
generating of electricity where the losses occur.

------
oftenwrong
There are two stories for this URL:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19263814](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19263814)
(this one)

and

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19263603](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19263603)

I would have expected the anti-duplicate-submission mechanism to prevent one
of these from being created, redirecting the later submitter to the already-
existing story, given that these were both submitted around the same time.

------
koala_man
TL;DR: Everyone knows that solar can provide electricity at 20% efficiency or
heat at 80% efficiency. Almost no one is aware that windmills can do the same.

Instead of connecting a windmill to an electric turbine, you can have it churn
a pool of water where friction raises the temperature without the conversion
loss.

Fascinating article. I had never considered this.

~~~
wallace_f
I am not a builder, but I wonder if tech like this is stymied by the nature of
the housing market?

From what I understand, housing is one of the most-regulated sectors, and one
which has also seen not much innovation (compare to computers or autos).

Were I a Bill Gates, I'd sponsor housing projects where innovators could be
rewarded based on sustainability and cost. I guess, in order for anyone to
live in them, I'd also have to sponsor some politicians to get government to
then allow it.

From an _efficient resource allocation_ (in other words, economic)
perspective, there appears to be almost noone solving sustainibility problems.
What I mean is, _sustainability per dollar spent_ should be at the forefront
of our minds, and I'd be very surprised this kind of tech did not find a place
in the market if that were allowed to prevail.

~~~
mxuribe
I believe there are entities that benefit far more from keeping the status quo
as-is, instead of innovating. While I've only worked in large real estate
enterprises in my past, and not actual housing (though the two industries are
quite linked), never forget that beyond the science and conventional
challenges of innovation, there exists human elements who block forward
progress; because - sadly - some of these humans gain too much ($POWER or
$MONEY, etc.) in the legacy world.

~~~
wallace_f
I'm convinced this is one of the biggest problems with our generation--
corporatism or cronyism, whatever it is. It is the fact that the private
sector and government collude to keep the status quo profiteers safe from
innovators obsoleting them.

It should be the opposite. The government should work to resolve market
failures.

This is one of those issues which is not left vs right, but rich vs poor...
That just gets completely ignored, whether by accident or design...

------
toss1
Great concept to reduce the losses in transmitting and converting energy, and
reducing the weight, complexity, and cost of the wind system. But there are
issues.

1) It takes a rather large system and stiff breeze, "a rotor diameter of 5
meters and a height of 9 meters – produced 3.5 kilowatt of heat at a wind
speed of 11 m/s", ~25mph wind, to produce a modest heating output. that is the
equivalent of two small 1750 watt heaters, which would barely heat a decent
size room in cold weather.

2) The system is completely dedicated to heat production, and will be a waste
of space over half the year. In the summer, most of the wind will be of
essentially no use except for warm tap water. In contrast, you can use
electrical generation any time.

The best system I've seen of this was at a remote boarding school in Florida.
On the roof, they had black serpentine pipes in flat black boxes with glass
lids, so mini-greenhouses. In the utility area, they had large insulated water
storage tanks. They could get the water to 180F, and had to warn people to be
careful when using the tap or taking showers. Pretty impressive, and this was
decades ago.

------
ip26
Just for fun, here's a link to their solar+storage server:

[https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2019/02/heat-your-house-
wi...](https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2019/02/heat-your-house-with-a-water-
brake-windmill.html)

[https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/about/](https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/about/)

------
benj111
It occurs to me that this could be combined with a standard wind turbine.

I assume turbines already generate heat, and they also require brakes for when
wind speed gets too high. Best case you could be generating maximum
electricity and using the brake to generate useful heat. I guess this would
aid dispatchability of the electricity, certainly with regards to limiting
output as well.

------
VBprogrammer
Whenever I read anything about wind turbines I'm reminded of this article.
It's a shame the photos are missing at the moment. Maybe Jacques is around
somewhere and can restore them.

[https://jacquesmattheij.com/how-to-build-a-
windmill/](https://jacquesmattheij.com/how-to-build-a-windmill/)

~~~
ashtonbaker
The photos are working in the Wayback Machine:

[https://web.archive.org/web/20160813143636/http://www.jacque...](https://web.archive.org/web/20160813143636/http://www.jacquesmattheij.com/how-
to-build-a-windmill)

------
GrryDucape
Another model could be to run an air compressor from the turbine. Compression
will give you a heater, and then releasing the compressed air will give you
cooling.

Thinking about it some more, you should also be able to get kinetic energy out
(or electricity) and water, by running a turbine on the compressed air and
collecting moisture from the cooled air.

Essentially one of these:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_pump_and_refrigeration_cy...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_pump_and_refrigeration_cycle#Gas_cycle)
\- they're not technically as efficient as a phase change, but if it's simpler
and there are fewer moving parts, it might be a win.

------
severak_cz
The point of the article is that (unlike people would expect) THERE IS a
direct way how to convert mechanical energy to heat. It can be even more
effective (in theory) than heating via electricity from wind, because there is
only one energy conversion (motion -> heat unlike motion -> electricity ->
heat).

Big downside is that heating with water brake is somewhat impractical and
unexplored territory.

However big plus of this approach is that you can make water brake with
middle-age technology.

------
kristiandupont
I've heard several times that electrical heaters of any kind are expensive and
much less efficient than other heat sources and I feel like I am throwing
money out of the window when I turn them on.

This doesn't make any sense to me though. Can someone with a better
understanding of physics than me explain to me why this would be the case? I
would imagine electricity to be just about the most efficient way to transfer
energy. And furthermore, as I understand it, lost energy tends to become heat!

~~~
semi-extrinsic
The thing about electricity is that it's perhaps _the_ most "useful" form of
energy. Not only can you use it to heat your house, but also to drive your car
or run your phone or your power tools etc.

On the other end of the spectrum, you have "low grade waste heat", take for
instance the heat from running a computer. Almost all the (useful) energy
input as electricity gets turned into hot air coming out. You can use that to
heat your room, but nothing else.

So because electricity is so useful and high grade energy, we prefer not to
use it "just" for resistive heating. Running heat pumps is an example of a
much better use (you can get 4-5 times as much heat out).

~~~
kristiandupont
>you can get 4-5 times as much heat out [...]

..but _why_?

The second law of thermodynamics says that the amount of energy won't change,
it can only change form, right? (Correct me if I'm wrong, I'm not sure). So
the electricity should either remain electricity or turn into heat?

I get that it might not happen at the place where we want it to. For instance,
we don't want to be heating up the ground between the power plant and my house
where the cable runs. And I also get that turning heat _into_ electricity (as
it happens at the power plant) might not be efficient. But I still feel that
it should perform better than running a pipe with hot water which seems more
likely to leak heat into the ground along the way.

~~~
semi-extrinsic
>>you can get 4-5 times as much heat out [...]

> ..but why?

Because you are literally pumping heat from outdoors to indoors. You are
reducing the energy of the outdoor air and increasing the energy of the indoor
air.

The electric energy spent is used to drive a motor that is pumping a fluid
round in a loop. The pump is placed where you go from outdoors to indoors.
Opposite the pump in the loop, you have a pressure reduction valve, and
together these give you a higher fluid pressure on the indoor side, say 40 bar
vs 20 bar. The trick is that this pressure difference means that the low
pressure fluid is also cold, so it can be heated by the outside air, and the
high pressure fluid is warm, so it can release heat to then indoor air.

The thing about running hot water (e.g. district heating) is because you use
heat that is literally free. E.g. if you have a waste incineration plant
burning all the garbage, that's a lot of free heat. Or if you have a big data
centre, lots of waste heat. Let's use it!

In systems like the OP post, the water acts as both energy storage and a
convenient way to distribute heat. No DC/AC inverter, etc.

------
VBprogrammer
I've come across this concept before. I think it might have been another post
on the same site where they talk about direct mechanical use of hydro-power
which made me look further into it.

I wonder what the efficiency of using direct hydro / wind power to power an
air compressor (say rejecting the excess heat to preheat the hot water supply)
and releasing the compressed air for air conditioning.

------
frankus
I nearly flunked thermodynamics in college, so take this as the harebrained
scheme/Burning Man hack that it would be.

But I've wondered if you could get a useful amount of cooling/greywater
disposal/hot clean water supply by mounting a wind-powered vacuum pump on top
of a tall (11m +) column of water so that the water in the column would boil
at ambient temperature.

~~~
tlb
It turns out that water boils quite slowly at room temperature and low
pressure, so you’d need a very large surface area.

------
neilwilson
Why do we keep trying to come up with ways to heat things when a human is a
100 watt heater at rest?

Just insulate the building properly and then you can use rooftop solar to cool
it down on those days when it gets too hot - largely because the sun is
shining.

Moving heat is generally easier than generating it.

~~~
speedplane
Unless you live in a styrofoam box, you're going to need heating. Also, people
like windows.

~~~
neilwilson
PassivHaus standard can be warmed with a 1Kw heater at -10 degrees celsius.
They have windows, doors and mechanical ventilation.

~~~
speedplane
I just read about Passive House, thanks for citing it. The standard requires
less 15kWh/m^2 per year. I live in the U.S. in a 1200 sq ft apartment, small
for U.S. standards, and that comes to ~4.5kwH per day. To put that in
perspective, an 80 Watt computer running all day uses up nearly half of that
margin. A small 6000 BTU A/C (good enough for a small bedroom) uses up the
entire allowance if you run it for 8 hours in your bedroom while sleeping. An
electric dryer will use up the entire allowance if you do two loads of
clothing.

I love that people are thinking about this, and I truly hope that it becomes
standard, but it's not exactly reasonable for folks to expect such a level of
efficiency without paying through the nose.

------
ggm
The obvious critique is that people in extreme poverty deserve every attention
moment they can get, to derive a benefit with the lowest cost (to them)
possible. But, when this represents an ad-hoc, it can often leave them
stranded on a low increment from zero. So, adding proper drains to a favela is
good because it reduces child mortality from bad drains, but its still a slum:
the fix is unclear but probably involves a revolution.

These mechanisms are good because they can be easily understood and whilst
they will require patching and hacking and repair and are inefficient and
can't do all things, if they can provide a stable heat source to remove the
burden of burning things, which actually kills more women and children because
of lack of oxygen, CO/CO2 poisoning, asthma and other effects, there is a huge
positive upside.

But, as has been said since at least the 1920s what we really need is soviet
power, plus electricity.

------
QuamStiver
I am curious about the potential for a hybrid wind turbine (clutchable):

Generate electricity during peak hours (high price) / Generate storable heat
during off-peak hours.

Or would it be better to generate e-power all the time if the turbine is
capable of it?

------
AltmousGadfly
What I don't quite understand is: heat will be a byproduct of using
electricity anyway, since it is always the waste product in the end. So why
not generate electricity that can be put to good use first?

------
markovbot
>The owner of this website (www.lowtechmagazine.com) has banned your IP
address (x.x.x.x).

Anyone else getting this? I'm just going to read it on archive.org but it
seems weird. I'm coming from a Digital Ocean NYC IP

~~~
LinuxBender
Some sites block VPS's to mitigate bot abuse. Some just send you to endless
captchas. Others block in haproxy. Some just 'ip route add blackhole ${ip}'

------
SketchySeaBeast
I didn't see mention of the noise levels - I know that wind farms are noisy, I
wonder how noisy a single windmill would be.

~~~
war1025
I have never found wind farms to be particularly noisy. Certainly not any more
so than having a road nearby.

~~~
SketchySeaBeast
I did some research after I made that comment (as one typically does) and I
wondering about use in an urban setting - it looks like the ambient noise
would be much more obnoxious than anything the windmill puts out.

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usrusr
Cities can be surprisingly quiet at night.

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viburnum
I wonder if this could be scaled up to provide district heating for villages
and small towns.

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bluGill
They discuss this: yes but small is key here. It doesn't scale to large towns
much less a city. (though if you take each neighborhood separately...) Losses
from transmission are high.

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jacobush
But no? It says small city. In my town we have residential heating for 100k
people. It's a power plant dumping all of it's heat into the hot water grid.
(Co-generation.) If there were windmills, at the power plant, or really just
along the heat distribution waterworks, they could dump their heat into the
hot water grid.

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bluGill
Presumably your small city is using waste heat, so efficiency isn't as
important: the goal is electric and the heat is just waste heat that needs to
be dumped anyway. When there isn't the co-generation involved efficiency
matters more.

Note too that nobody has defined the actual size. Your idea of a small town
could be larger than my idea of a large city. Local factors matter in this
definition as well.

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netjiro
Or, wind -> electricity -> heat pump (1:5) -> lots of heat?

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nmg
Post links to front page. Direct link to article:

[https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2019/02/heat-your-house-
with...](https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2019/02/heat-your-house-with-a-water-
brake-windmill.html)

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nyc111
I don't know how that happened but now it won't let me update the URL now.

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sctb
Updated. Thanks!

