Counter Rotating Wind Turbines More Aesthetic Than Single Rotor

The inventor should have made an axial view video touting the visual appeal:

Dear Bret Cahill:

Bullshit on the visual appeal. Just cite the number of people killed and / or dollars lost when a single rotor wind turbine locked up due to either a stupid mistake or component failure, folding its tower in half. Insurance rates would do the rest.

David A. Smith

Can't do that with all these aesthetes running around whining about wind turbines being eyesores. You'll need to take some art classes if you want to compete in today's sustainable energy market. Start with Leonardo's notebooks.

Is there any reason double rotor cannot be designed to be just as safe?

Bret Cahill

Bret Cahill wrote: ...

The aft rotor takes three torque pulses per revolution for a three blade C/R prop, or two pulses per rev for a two blade ensemble. This drive vibration needs design attention.

Brian W

For visual purposes the rotors could have some separation distance.

Bret Cahill

** So what!! They are really only economically viable in locations remote from power lines. Then there are the batteries ... ** A friend of mine lived in an hundred year old cabin on top of a mountain in Maine. Unwilling to pay extortionate fees to Central Maine Power for an hundred amp line, he bought a wind turbine and an huge storage battery which he put in the basement. ** While he was absent the battery exploded and burnt the house to the ground along with a few million dollars in artwork, about half his own. Several years later, a representative from CMP drove up the mountain to tell my friend that CMP was "taking" an easement across his property for a new high tension line. My friend said, "Oh! And you are going to drop a 220 line for me??

"Oh no! We can't do that." "We have 'eminent domain'"

"So what! I'll see you in court," said my friend, who was on the county planning board by that time. The agent's stupid arrogance cost CMP multi million$ just to bypass that mountain.

My friend died in '05. He was 76. RIP.

I wonder what he'ld have thought about my idea of sticking brightly colored disks at the rotor tips of a counter rotating turbine.

They would have no aerodynamic benefit whatsoever but from a distance it'ld look like balls were bouncing back and forth.

Bret Cahill

I wonder what he'ld have thought about my idea of sticking brightly colored disks at the rotor tips of a counter rotating turbine.

They would have no aerodynamic benefit whatsoever but from a distance it'ld look like balls were bouncing back and forth.

Bret Cahill

** As a renowned landscape painter he would have hated the abstract image

A back to back pair of counter rotating wind turbines (2 or 3 bladed) sharing the same tower could get

One patent was touting better efficiency from the alternator. Maybe the relative speed of counter rotors is somewhat higher but it can't be much of a breakthrough.

Bret Cahill

Another approach would be to come up with something that is so razzle dazzle revolting -- maybe purple "s" shaped blades with Christmas lights for night -- that they'll be happy to get back to the conventional wind turbine.

Bret Cahill

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