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Comment by rpedela | Hacker News Reader

600% sounds impressive, but what is the typical output of wind turbines in absolute terms?

If I look at http://sheerwind.com/technology/field-data it seems to me the 600% improvement is highly deceptive: that huge funnel tower gives up to 600% (average 300%) more output than the same tiny turbine inside it when it's just placed on top of a pole.

If you want to use this technology to boost the output of a modern 100m diameter turbine by 300%, you'd need to build a funnel tower that's over 1km high. I kinda doubt that's cheapter than building three of those turbines.

Also, the longer tube you build the less effective the system becomes because the pressure at the top has to move the entire column of [viscous, turbulent] air down the pipe. I haven't done any math on this but I'd imagine it would not take that much height to hit a point at which point piping losses become overwhelmingly large in proportion to the energy you're producing. The turbine and the inlet need to be close together.

Maybe by "the same turbine" they mean the generator at the center, having swapped out the short blades shown on their site for a traditional set.

Doesn't look like it, neither in the photo nor the comparison table. Besides, I doubt that it's even built to allow that.

I had to dig into that one too. I lost where I found it, but it's actually "up to 600%." Range is 85%-600% with average of like 315% or something.

If the windspeed is lower than required for the wind turbine to operate, you can get + infinite % more kwh with this technology.

Find that hard to believe, and that doesn't answer my question.

Yes it does, if the wind is too slow for a normal turbine the normal one outputs 0 kw/h and this one more then 0 and therfore if you let it do its job it will naturally produce much more power then the one which doesn't produce anything.

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