The market
The total energy stored in the wind is a hundred times higher than that which humanity needs today. It is not surprising that electricity produced from wind energy increased worldwide between 2006 and 2010 at an average rate of 21 %. In 2009, growth even exceeded 30 %. It is now good for 2 % of the total energy supply. At this rate of expansion, the global wind production capacity will double every three years. Thanks to annual investments of 11 billion euros, wind energy has increased from the status of marginal supplier to that of the main component of the energy bouquet. China is the locomotive of wind activity, with more than double its production capacity each year for four consecutive years.
In addition to increasing capacity, over the past 20 years, wind turbines has been multiplied by 100, going from 25kW to 2.5 MW. Today, the largest units are already reaching 7MW. The multiplication per 100 of the scale made it possible to divide the cost of energy by five. The increase in the size of the turbine has slowed down rotations, thus considerably reducing the risk of bird mortality. At a rotation speed of 12 strokes per minute, a complete turn every 5 seconds, the mortality rate of birds has dropped to zero. While at the origin, the wind was blowing at the mountains and shores, a growing proportion (20 %) is produced off the coast. Wind speed at sea is higher and more uniform.
We just learn to harvest the wind and build bigger is not the only option. Creative solutions include the harvesting of jets with kite and the creation of piezoelectricity from artificial sheets. While wind energy becomes an essential component of our energy portfolio and innovations spread in the sector, R&D budgets and employment are increasing in parallel. By 2012, more than a million people are expected to be part of the payroll of companies related to wind energy.
Innovation
The advantages of wind energy compared to fossil fuels such as oil and coal are indisputable. There are still drawbacks. Structures, blades and turbines are based on rare land metals. If 30 % of global energy depends on wind energy, then the rare metals on which the sector rests will be in shortage. As there is more high altitude wind, the horizon lines are more and more dotted, or should I say strongly painted with pylons. The cost of pylons that place the high rotary mill in the sky can reach a million dollars. It is in this context that three French architects and innovators, Nicola Delon, Raphaël Ménard and Julien Chopin, have created a solution, very in line with one of the principles of the blue economy: sustainability is the ability to meet the needs fundamentals with what you have.
There are millions of pylons available worldwide. The most abundant are used for transmissions by cell phone, many of which are fed by diesel generators. The oldest pylons network is intended for high -voltage electricity transport, often built against the will of local citizens who feared that the proximity of electric cables increases the risk of cancer, in particular leukemia. While science on health issues is consolidated and more and more governments are taking precautions, the team of still Happy (architect Boutique) and Elioth (the R&D branch of the French design office iOSIS) decided to install wind turbines on existing pylons, a decisive breakthrough in the design.
The already existing towers retrace nearly 160,000 miles of power lines that crisscross the United States. There are about 78,000 pylons in the United Kingdom and the Indian Minister of Environment and Forests guesses that more than a million units distribute electricity in the country. The additional advantage of the visual pollution saving and investment costs is that the necessary wiring between the generator and the network is reduced to a few meters, instead - at best - by a few kilometers. The proposal is so simple and practical that it is difficult to imagine that it will not become a dominant component of the electricity production mix.
The first cash flow
The small wind turbines market remains a niche, but it went from $ 203 million in 2009 to 400 million in 2013. Urban Green Energy (UGE), a small wind turbines that turn on their vertical axis like the corkscrew movement. The American start-up based in New York has teamed up with the French telecommunications giant Alcatel-Lucent to apply this concept to existing cell phone relay stations. It is therefore no longer necessary to have generators on site, which operate in diesel. Alcatel-Lucent wind turbines use on-site energy, an excellent option for the mobile telephone network. However, most pylons are located in distant regions where there are no energy takers. The project proposed by the "Wind-it" trio is simply to inject additional wind energy into the existing network. The success of Urban Green Energy has been demonstrated and is now extended to the telecommunications masts in Verizon, Raytheon and the US Air Force. Cost is an important factor in decision -making. A turbine with a capacity of 300 watts costs just over $ 3,000 without the post, and $ 5,300 with the post, which sends a clear message to all telecommunications networks.
The opportunity
The wind, the pylon and the electricians barely get used to the idea and are often embarrassed that no one has thought about it before. Wind prospectors began to assess the potential and a study of the French network concluded that if all the pylons were equipped with wind turbines, this could generate an additional 15 % of the country's energy needs. This is equivalent to the construction of six nuclear power plants whose construction takes more than a decade and costs about five times more expensive, not to mention the cost of treatment of nuclear waste and the guarantee of the State which implies that all citizens assume their starts from the risk in case a major nuclear disaster was to occur.
The use of existing pylons, with a preference for a series of small generators with vertical axis which integrate into existing metal structures, can be facilitated by wind guidance systems such as sails, reinforcing and orienting the winds in generators. This can be integrated into the existing pylons and from now on, any new pylon must incorporate the design. It is a system that can easily be installed all over the world. The only missing factors may be government agencies and electricity companies that decide to order this, and entrepreneurs who deliver and maintain this network in the network.
