Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “DIY Hydroelectric Devices: Strait Power”.
This has been sitting outside and kind of, decaying and aging, and getting that patina that detroit is so known for yeah. I designed this piece originally. It was for the shows, called america here and now, and i was asked to design this piece that described what i thought about the city of detroit and i decided to go for the industry itself like the what built the city from lumber to automotive. You know what’s happening in the city and what is possible change and well for me, you know it’s alternative energy, it’s green power, it’s something new and important hi. My name is anthony reale and i’ve been a artist engineer designer. Basically, since i was born, it’s been in my blood and i’m a maker and i’m a maker here in the city of detroit, so we’re here in wyandotte michigan, and this is down river, so this is down river from the great city of detroit. This is where all the steel mills and all the fabrications and everything kind of went from the detroit industry, and this is the detroit river over here we have a beautiful coal-fired uh plant that powers the city of wyandotte.
You know this is this is the motor right here. It hasn’t stopped flowing since we’ve been here and it produces about a two mile, an hour 2.5 mile, an hour current and you’re like well, that’s not a lot, except that water has 60 times the potential energy that air does so 60 times. Two that’s 120 mile an hour. If i said i had 120 mile an hour wind blowing past my city you’d be like.
Why aren’t you guys on wind power i designed straight power, which is a hydrokinetic turbine? Basically, it’s an underwater windmill. It makes electricity. It’S based off of a basking shark, which is a filter, feeding shark and it improves the efficiency of a turbine blade by 40 percent. I was watching tv and there’s something on about the basking shark, which is this filter, filter feeder. It’S a giant 22 foot, long monster that just kind of swims along and it just eats plankton and i’m looking at it and i’m watching it swim and it’s got its mouth open and i’m like this thing.
It’S it’s like fighting itself, but pushing forward with its mouth. Open. There’S got to be something about this and i’m like.
I can make a hydrokinetic turbine out of this thing and i took this little sketch and then i turned it into a 900 pound model made out of 4 800 individual pieces of wood that were sculpted with a chainsaw and then cut on a mill and glued And doweled, together built a transmission out of some go-kart parts, put some fans together out of a truck out of a big diesel truck uh, the cooling fans, and i made it and took it to u of m. And i worked with the university of michigan’s hydrodynamics laboratory, and so my shark inspired cowling system improved the efficiency of the blades comparatively by 40, which was like a big deal like now we’re getting 40 percent more energy than we would have. If we didn’t have the cowling system isn’t something just for detroit, i mean the world is full of moving water, it doesn’t have to be a river, it can be a tidal system. So putting these small things in like creeks and stuff would be really interesting, but again you know.
Maybe we need to if we’re going to do a creek in a low level bait. Maybe we need to step away from this basking shark. Maybe we need to look at the manta ray. Maybe we need to look at the cuttlefish and see how it swims and propels itself to change that.
You know whenever i’m designing. I always tell myself if my answer is more than five feet away from me. I am not looking hard enough. You know there is just enough inspiration everywhere to find something that will take you to that next step and being that i’m from the down river area and we’re surrounded by these big empty, like steel mills and stuff down by our water uh.
There’S the sense of construct: that’s always there and it’s half built and half falling apart, and it was once the driving factor and now it’s just that would be filled with. You know molten, steel and just pour out and the volume and the amount of of stuff that would be coming out of these factories. I mean this is where all the metal, for you know the big three came from you know all the way up and down this river is just iron factories and they’re they’re closed um. Most of them either went to china, and then you know, germany did a good job, making some steel and there’s talks of bringing some back, but there’s always talks. We just have to make more things.
I always ask myself like what: what would it take to bring this back? That’S kind of the other thing about being a maker or designer it’s like. I could go, get a job or i could make things that make jobs and help out the people around me. You .
