What is a Sky Serpent?
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Introduction

Hopes are high and so are the goals as several countries through out the world, including US are making substantial efforts to harness the wind energy in the best possible manner. For instance The American Wind Energy Association of US, along with the department of Energy has proposed a goal that 20% of the total electricity of US would come from wind energy by 2030. Moreover, the things are also looking positive with more and more companies are putting substantial time and money into developing better technology for creating green energy.

In the past few years, the renewable energy industry has seen various designs of wind turbines coming to the market. However, a few of them have significantly proved their worth through their performance. The Sky Serpent is one such type of project that uses the wind turbine concept but in a peculiar way.

The Sky Serpent

Most of the electricity generated from wind energy comes from huge wind farms located miles away from the city that uses the power. Installation of such turbines requires a significant amount of investment, in money as well as human labor. The Sky Serpent is one such project that can be fixed on a building or a near by place and can still be used to supply a substantial amount of energy.

The Sky Serpent, as the name suggests is a long shaft suspended in the air, on which approximately 25 wind turbines revolve with the help of rotors. The multiple rotors are attached to a single generator, which generates the electricity. Invented by Doug Selsam, the Sky Serpent has a capacity of generating power of up to 3 Kw. Moreover, as the construction of the system is simple with fewer materials, the maintenance required is low.

Each of the turbines is approximately 20 inch in diameter and produces about half a kilowatt of energy. Most often, the shaft is attached to a pole exactly at the center. The turbines are generally attached to both the sides of the pole at an angle from the horizontal, making a staircase. This arrangement is to avoid interference of one rotor’s wind with the other. The greater the number of rotors attached to the shaft, the greater the amount of output power generated.

The turbine uses massive parallel wind processing to increase the wattage from all the turbines. The Serpent is capable of generating 200 watts easily in the wind speed of 20 miles per hour, which can easily light four 50 watts bulb.

References & Image Credits

Popular Mechanics website

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