ENERGY FLASHES

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Issue #79 - January/February 1983

A WIND TURBINE THAT WORKS BEST WHEN THERE'S NO WIND AT ALL . . . that's how engineers describe the prototype 40-kilowatt, 200-meter-tall solar chimney now producing power in Manzanares, Spain. The air beneath a two-meter-high, 40,000-square-meter transparent plastic skirt surrounding the column is heated by the sun to 20°C above ambient temperature . . . and is sucked by convection past a gigantic inverted funnel at the base of the smokestack-like chimney and into the tube at speeds as high as 60 MPH. A four-bladed rotor, installed a few meters up inside the wind tunnel, then churns out current for a regional utility . . . and the warmed area beneath the wide cover is used for growing vegetables!

AND HERE'S YET ANOTHER INNOVATIVE WIND MACHINE! Inventor Donald E. Lipfert has received a patent on a rooftop-mounted domestic power plant that has no props or rotating turbines whatsoever. Instead, wind is directed through a housing at a flexible membrane . . . and the flapping material actuates a generator! The experimental device is said to be capable of producing as much current as — and may someday be marketed for only one-fourth the cost of — a "conventional" windplant of the same size.

JUDGE KEEPS REAGAN ADMINISTRATION FROM HOLDING UP SOLAR BANK: The administration had fired the staff of the Solar Bank and attempted to withhold the $21 million allocated by Congress for the project (which was created to provide low-interest loans to families that install solar systems or take energy-conserving measures in their homes). Now, thanks to a federal judge, the administration has been ordered to start making those funds available.

A NEW 60-MILLION-GALLON-PER-YEAR ETHANOL PLANT IN SOUTH POINT, OHIO . . . a 40-million-gallon facility in Loudon, Tennessee . . . and a 20-million-gallon factory near Franklin, Kentucky will boost national production of fuel alcohol to an estimated 600 million gallons annually. But the trend toward large, centralized production facilities is worrying many ethanol industry experts, who point to the high cost (and fuel consumed as a result) of shipping grain to — and freighting alcohol from — the plants. A network of small- to medium-sized regional distillers would be more efficient, they say.

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