Hydrogen highway? What about wind expressway?
Nice local story here. Some students at Toronto’s Centennial College are measuring wind speeds along the 401 Highway — Canada’s busiest and largest highway stretch — to find out if the wind from passing vehicles can be harnessed to spin turbines. The students refer to it as “wind tunnel power” created by the movement of a 16-lane highway.
“Collected data will be used to determine the amount of available wind energy so that the college and its partners can put up an appropriately sized wind turbine that will feed electricity into the local power grid,” the school states.
If this works, there are some interesting possibilities. The province of Ontario owns the land along major highways, so it could scatter wind turbines along appropriate stretches of high-traffic areas. These turbines, in combination with battery storage, could provide electricity to nearby highway lights and various buildings (restaurant stops, tourist offices, etc.) along the 401 and other highway corridors. I’m just thinking aloud here, but hey, why not? Why not use the highway light structures themselves as platforms for the turbines?
Earlier data has been reviewed and approved by engineers at Toronto Hydro. The school says a full-scale turbine could be erected as early as next summer, adding that it intends to augment wind-power generation with other alternative energy sources, “such as solar panels and biofuel electrical generators.”
The idea is to put these systems in place to support a new renewable energy program being developed by the college, which wants to give students and real-world environment for training.
Glad someone out there is thinking.
Tyler Hamilton is editor-in-chief of Corporate Knights magazine and a business columnist for the Toronto Star, Canada's largest daily newspaper. In addition to this Clean Break blog, Tyler writes a weekly column of the same name that discusses trends, happenings and innovators in the clean technology and green energy market. This blog is a personal project started in April 2005. It is not an official blog of the newspaper.
August 16th, 2005 at 9:52 am
These students should consider basic laws of thermodynamics.
If cars create enough wind to put up a turbine, then that turbine will effectively create more wind resistance on the highway – higher drag on the vehicles. This will mean each car burns slightly more gas to get through that section of highway. I am sure that this will totally negate the electrical power generation that you get as the so-called “benefit”.
In reality it’s a case of robbing Peter to pay Paul. The turbine owner gets free electricity at the cost of the driver, who has to burn more gas.
These people who think of these ideas are the same ones who seem to believe in the perpetual motion machine.
You cannot overcome the laws of physics. This “wind tunnel” is man-made and gasoline is used to create it. If you want to harness it with a turbine you will create zones of higher local pressure. That will result in more gas being burned.
Chris
August 16th, 2005 at 10:43 am
Good point, thanks for contributing it.
Tyler
August 18th, 2005 at 11:00 pm
You are sure, are you?
Maybe the wind is not only from the vehicles. Maybe it is a combination of geometry of the highway tunneling natural wind down the road and the air deflected by the vehicles.
And anyways, some reading here http://www.windpower.org/ might help you understand the way wind and turbines work.
At 424,000 AADT, how much extra fuel would each vehicle use? A greater difference than between when the highway is full and empty?
And what about the temperature rise from all that air being compressed?
Come on, man. Get the scale right with some math before you start typing.
bd
January 3rd, 2007 at 3:46 pm
And futhermore, just an additional thought…..what about all the bushes along the freeway constantly swaying with the wind? Aren’t they creating as much resistance as a turbine?
June 22nd, 2007 at 3:55 pm
if you’re still out there… you should read these comments
http://www.engadget.com/2007/04/30/proposals-would-turn-highways-into-wind-farms/