this post was submitted on 07 Nov 2023
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Green Energy

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"ENLIL is a roadside turbine designed to capture wind power from highway traffic."

There's also an article on the technology from 2019.

I'm thinking even if we drastically reduce the number of cars, get rid of the wide-lane highways, and use just buses, trains, and planes to generate the wind, it would still be useful.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 years ago (2 children)

There is no free lunch. Harvesting the wind forming around the moving vehicle must increase drag. Therefore they use more fuel. The only advantage is: the fuel is bought by someone else.

Burning the fuel directly in a generator should be more efficient

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

Yep, my thought was similar, but more focused on the manufacturing/install energy cost vs energy production.

It all looks like classic vaporware, renderite, and wishfull thinking all combined with a (deliberate or not) lack of scientific reasoning.

The process I tend to use is that if I during their sales pitch find myself asking one or more of the following questions, then it is probably BS.

"Why would they make it that complicated?"

"Why not just build a normal concept?"

"Do they only have CGI and no real product?"

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago

Thanks for pointing all this out, I'll definitely keep it mind.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago

damn, good to know.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 years ago

The green grift is alive and well.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I would be curious as to how this affects airflow of a vehicle moving past- does it increase the drag of vehicles passing?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago

Signs point to yes. Pretty sure this is well debunked. Energy available is negligible and the disturbance to nearby traffic is probably measurable.